Try 55 new things (or actions, places, foods, etc) between now and the 31st December 2007

I may well have actually tried 55 new things, but I lost count a long time ago!

Anyway, I might start this up again next year, but I need a re-organize, so I’ll see how it goes.

No, not the ‘Bat out of Hell’ kind, but the kind actually made out of meat.

It’s not a big British thing, but I was out the other night, saw it on the menu and decided to try it. Ohhhh it was good…apart from there being way too much of it for me to finish. And the mashed potatoes – and I’m not normally a mashed potato person, but these were killer mashed potatoes.

Advice: If you’re in Seattle and need a hearty meal, drop into a place called the Five Point Café. It’s on Cedar, just off Tillicum Place – you can’t miss the neon signs. Hubby says the chilli is great too. Best go on a good long hike or something first to work up an appetite, though.

1: 23/2/07 – today i ate a prune for the first time! haha

2: 26/2/07 – took the the train to stafford (job interview)
quite a nice little town, closer than i thought
it was!

3. 1/3/07 – Went to Spin at Dragon eye for the first time, was
amazin! had a wicked nyt, gotta love the dirty electro beats! am defo going to go back!

4: june – Went to download Festival, rocked out like no ones business, have a new found love for marilyn manson!

5. July – Had the first part of my thigh piece tattoo, looks baaaaaad, cant wait to get it finished.

6. july – went paragliding at sunset in San antonio bay, Ibiza! never experienced anything like it in my life. recomend it to any one!

7. July – got Stung by a jelly fish, only a baby one mind, took about two days for my arm to feel normal again.

8 August – went to my first illegal rave at a dodgy warehouse in birmingham city centre, definately attending the next one!

I recall drawing cut pomegranates for an art project at school, which got tedious after a while, pretty though the inside of a pomegranate is. Have tried the juice before – not bad, and supposedly good for your heart – but I hadn’t bothered with trying to actually eat pomegranate till last week when a work colleague offered me some of hers.

Nicely sweet, although not a fruit I’d probably eat on a regular basis because of the pippiness…and the juice. Have a whole wodge of paper towels handy if you ever plan to eat one, otherwise people will think you’re bleeding all over the place.

Now the question is, how many months do I get to spend in the underworld for this? (I figure I’ve already done my time there anyway.)

OK. OK. I know. Thin Mints. They’re too good.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Jonathan Raban. You can call me biased because of where this book is set, but it actually was pretty good. I think I’m going to be looking up more of his stuff.

One of my work supervisors brought some back from Turkey and I realized I’d seen it in delis lots of times but never actually eaten it.

It’s interesting stuff, sort of chewy and with pistachio nuts in there somewhere, but very, very rich so fortunately I could only eat a small piece. (I say ‘fortunately’ because way too much sugar seems to be creeping into this goal in general. Maybe I should try a new vegetable sometime just to even things up?...)

At a little place called Café Latté in Norwich, which we’d passed but never been in before.

Hubby says it’s the same as a raspberry mocha, but it most certainly is not. It shouldn’t work, but it does, and you can taste the strawberry underneath the chocolate. They do an orange version too, which I’ll have to check out.

(This goal will develop into 55 different ways to imbibe chocolate over the course of a year if I don’t watch out. Not that that’s a bad idea for a goal, at all…just not the one I had in mind!)

It’s a good one.. but I want to make room for more.

Two new-to-me authors in one week? Well, this one was accidental. I’m not much into medical thrillers, so wouldn’t have read this book if a work colleague hadn’t left it with me when I was at a loose end.

This will sound odd coming from someone who loves SF and fantasy, but I simply didn’t find it plausible. Not the technology, but the rest of it. Why would a guy with such an obvious, striking genetic disorder think he could clone himself without someone cottoning on? Why does a company doing something so screamingly illegal have so many holes in its security system? And why don’t two educated women smell a rat much earlier, like before one of them ends up minus an ovary? I could go on, but…I wasn’t impressed, let’s say.

I ploughed through it because I had nothing else to do, but I don’t think I’ll bother with the other one she left me. Each to their own…

Finished this book yesterday. I have been meaning to read this for so long.

I’ve always thought that the Old Testament (in fact most ‘holy books’, given that men wrote them down) omitted a lot of the story, namely the women’s side. Dinah’s story is very human, real, and gives a sense that the people concerned are people, not just symbols for getting a message across. It’s a celebration, as well, of female bonding, of the universal things that unite women regardless of our era or religion.

Recommended.