Bonne année 2012!

For those of you demanding crazy stories of my wild doings on New Years Eve, I give you:


Yes, I defrosted the frozen fridge of doom! Actually not on New Years Eve, but it is the single most exciting thing I have done in a long time! I had been valiantly trying to eat everything in it so I could unplug it before I went away, but I couldn't eat fast enough (and I wasn't exactly going to drink bottles of mayonnaise and so forth) and I also had doubts about leaving it to defrost all over my flat, so I left it plugged in but decided it needed tackling regardless when I got back. At first, I just unplugged it and wandered off for a bit, but upon closer inspection it became clear that it wasn't going to just melt by itself in a hurry. So I developed a system of throwing saucepan-fulls of hot water on it, scraping at the ice with a ladle and then gathering the ice out of the bottom of the fridge and melting it in the sink.

It took about an hour of hard work before the remaining ice came off in a few big sheets. So bear in mind, this is AFTER melting about half of it:



It then took about another hour to give the fridge a thorough cleaning, including all the trays. It actually was pretty clean, considering I only got it in August, but it was a good opportunity to do it. So, New Years Resolution? Keep my beady eye firmly fixed on any signs that the Frozen Fridge of Doom is making a comeback!

Other than that, I don't really want to call it a resolution, but I went to the gym on Friday, Saturday and today. Not New Year's Day since it was closed and I was a little bit hungover, but still, good going! I read something recently by a guy whose resolution *last* year was to work out every day and he made the argument that it was actually easier to stick to, because you didn't fall in the trap of thinking "I have to go three times this week, so I won't today, and I won't tomorrow, but I'll definitely, definitely catch up later this week" and then falling off the wagon. I realise a lot of people say the exact opposite, that you shouldn't try to set these sorts of "extreme" goals, but it made a lot of sense to me. So, I might not make it to the gym every single day, but I'm going to try and make sure I get at least 3o minutes' exercise every day (which is actually not really a change from now) but that I really do also make sure I'm down at the gym as often as possible.

A la recherche de willpower

One of the best things about France has got to be the food, right? Pains au chocolat, chocolate eclairs, croissants aux amandes (croissants filled with almond stuff, one of my personal favs), chocolate mousse... A recent discovery in the frozen food section of my local Monoprix is Flammekeuche (sp?) an Alsatian dish which is to diiiiie for. Imagine a very thin pizza with its crust raised around the edges and the middle filled with this creme fraiche concoction, onions and bacon bits and you have flammekeuche. Omg it's good.

So yeah, I'm in grave danger of turning into a petit pot au chocolat or something along those lines, so in an effort to gently encourage myself to do more than walk down to the nearest bakery to get another beignet or chausson aux pommes (why? why do you have so many delicious treats, France?) I will name and shame my exercise efforts here, and if I don't then pleeeeease hassle me. My mum does already, so everyone else get on board. I work 12 hours per week, there's really no excuse.

So today I have hopped on the wonder that is You Tube and done a 10 min cardio workout, a 5 min Pilates core workout and a devilish chair-based workout, which may sound easy but was the hardest of all. If you don't believe me, you try repeatedly sitting down and getting up off a chair standing on one bent leg without using your arms. Hard! Okay so that's not a lot, but it's day one. Stay tuned.

The only other thing of note for today was some guy turning up to inspect the ceilings - there was a flood of some sort upstairs, and some minor water damage here but it didn't leak through so don't be concerned. Anyway, that in itself wasn't especially noteworthy, but I found it hilarious that 3 other random neighbours took it upon themselves to tag along. I'm pretty sure they had no reason for being here other than to sneak a peak at our apartment and have something else to gossip about behind our backs. Not that I have any reason to believe they're maliciously inclined towards us (well, other than the two occasions that people have let the front door slam in my face so I had to open it with a key instead of just holding it for me) but they definitely talk. Everyone who comes to our door opens with something like "I'll talk slowly for you" so they've identified us as dirty furreners, and today the workman asked me if I was the owner and some old lady I'd never seen before jumped in with "No, they're foreign students" (not true of course, but whatever). Luckily we run a pretty clean ship around here so there can't have been too much for them to oh la la la la about with the rest of the crew.