Day 50: Update on Goals

It is already day 50 of the year, so time for the first update on my goals (and non-goals) for the year:

As for goals for next year, I only have three:

• Books: By day 50 I should have read 4.9 books. Thanks in large part to some decently-long journeys in the first couple of months, I'm a bit ahead of schedule on this one - book four finished while in Barcelona, and book five shortly thereafter. I'm now closing in on the end of "The Fellowship of the Ring", so I'm in a really good place.
• Weight: After a fairly disastrous Christmas season, things have been going in the right direction. There's a long way to go, and so I don't want to declare any sort of a victory, but so far, so good.
• Church Website: I've made a small update to the website, and managed to clean up something that wasn't working in December, so that's not terrible. My next step is to make sure there is at least some sort of a page for all of the various groups in the church, and then I can see about populating them with actual data.
• Blog: By day 50, I would expect to have posted 16 times. I'm very slightly behind target, with this being post 15, but that's not disastrous.
• Garden: Something that has recently come up is that our back garden needs a bit of attention - last year we dug a hole for a sandpit for Lion which has turned into a disaster. There is also some damage to the lawn, and a few bits and pieces in need of repair. I didn't set a decoration goal for the year as pretty much every room (except the kitchen and adjoining utility room) has been addressed, but it turns out that this should be looked at - getting the garden fixed is a new goal for the year. But in terms of an update: we haven't yet meaningfully done anything towards it.

And that's where we are: small progress on all three goals, a very small slip on the non-goal, and now an additional goal for the list. I'm happy with that, for now.

Experimental Cookery 2026: Rib-eye Steak with Red Wine & Pastrami Sauce

For completeness, I made this for our dinner on Saturday. It was fine - nothing much to it, pretty decent results, but not spectacular. We might have it again, but I'm not in any huge rush.

Experimental Cookery 2026: Waffles

I do like waffles, but we've hardly ever had them - my previous "waffle maker" was a repurposed toasted sandwich maker that, frankly, wasn't particularly good even at its own job, and the pre-cooked waffles we've had from Tesco have never really hit the spot. All in all, it's been a disappointment. Then, before Christmas, LC and Funsize decided to plant a seed: they decided to openly muse about getting me a waffle maker as my present, so that I could make them waffles for breakfast. (When I queried how that made it a present for me, Funsize quipped that I love to cook, so it's all good.)

Anyway, they didn't get me a waffle maker for Christmas, but that did lead me to muse on the topic. So I did some research, and identified a few good ones (apparently, there are a lot of indifferent ones out there). I picked one... and then found it was out of stock everywhere.

Argos then, rather cruelly, decided to reduce the price to their "lowest ever!", while it was still out of stock. Which was nice. But then, at the start of this week, it came back into stock. And I had some money-off vouchers available, so an order was placed, and I ended up getting a shiny new waffle maker at a third of its real price. Huzzah!

This morning, therefore, was the first actual use of the waffle maker. I found a batter recipe online (it's basically a pancake mix, but enriched with butter, and with the eggs separated and the whites whipped up to soft peaks). I made this up last night, rested it overnight, and then cooked the waffles this morning.

And they were lovely - nicely cooked (not quite perfectly formed, but that's about the amount of waffle mix I put into the maker), soft and fluffy. All in all, a win.

They're not perfect, but that's not a surprise for the first time out. But give it a few more tries (and some adjustment of the waffle mix), and all will be well.

So that was nice.

The Starbucks Incident

I'm not a fan of Starbucks on several levels. However, in this case, my issue is not with them...

I was traveling to Barcelona from Edinburgh, and due to a combination of travel times and company policy, I was using BA flights with a stopover at Heathrow. Which was fine - arrive at the first airport at silly o'clock, fly to Heathrow for a tight-but-doable transfer (I had an hour, and they claimed I needed an hour), and then to Barcelona just after lunch. And, it being a BA flight I could reasonably assume I would get something to eat, and maybe a coffee, on the flight...

Silly me.

I got to Edinburgh at silly o'clock and got onto the flight. So far, so good. And then the pilot came on to announce that we were delayed by ten minutes... That was far from ideal, but there should still be time. Then I discovered that BA no longer provide any meaningful food or coffee on their "short" flights - I received a tiny flapjack and a small bottle of water.

Never mind - I didn't actually choose them for the food.

At Heathrow it transpired that we had a little more time than was expected, and so by the time I had found my transfer gate and visited the toilets I had all of a few minutes before having to board. So I visited Starbucks and bought a croissant and a medium coffee. Said coffee was almost thermo-nuclear in temperature, but never mind as it would cool down on the plane.

Oh, and the croissant was very dry, but would also be fine with the coffee to wash it down.

Oh, and it was stupidly expensive, being a Starbucks not only in an airport but in Heathrow Terminal 5.

Anyway, never mind - that was me sorted for something to eat and drink on the second flight, which would tide me over until a late lunch in Barcelona. Huzzah!

Then I went downstairs to board my plane, only to be met by an instruction that we were boarding using a bus and that no hot drinks were allowed on the bus.

And so I now found myself, having very grudgingly spent over-the-odds on a mediocre coffee that was currently burning my fingers through the cup, having to throw almost all of it into the bin because I couldn't take it onto their bus. I then found myself having to eat a fairly dry croissant without the coffee to wash it down that would make it palatable. And then on the second flight I was given two small biscuits and a small bottle of water as the 'food' offering.

All in all, that was just a rubbish experience. And I absolutely blame Heathrow for this one - at no point is there a sign saying "by the way, you can't take your coffee on your plane". I consider the whole thing an horrible, and deliberate, rip-off of customers.

(And yet, somehow, the food offering was still better than the flight back, which was a "BA" flight operated by one of their partners, and where for three hours there was nothing at all. It's fair to say I have very little intention of using them, or Heathrow, any more than I absolutely have to in future.)

#5: "The Specimens", by Mairi Kidd

Basking

I spent the second half of last week in Barcelona, at the ISE trade show. This was a fun trip, albeit made up of three very long days. It featured a new and exciting way for the airports to rip customers off, which I may or may not post about separately.

But one thing that was really nice came on the last day, when Barcelona enjoyed 18 degrees and bright sunshine. Which meant that just as I left ISE for the last time, before getting on the metro to the airport, I spent a minute just standing, basking in the sunshine.

It's funny how you don't notice how much you miss it until the sunshine is back.

#4: "And the Mountains Echoed", by Khaled Hosseini (the current candidate for book of the year, though I'd be surprised if it stays there. It's very good, but not quite as good, though also not as desperately sad, as "A Thousand Splendid Suns")

Experimental Cookery 2026: Malaysian Chicken

Our first Experimental Cookery of the year comes from the Hairy Bikers "Great Curries" - a book I love in theory but have made depressingly little actual use of. This one has a lengthy ingredient list, almost all of which then get chopped up and turned into the curry paste before the others are added.

Some years ago, I took a cookery class (with work!) which led to me purchasing a small food processor that I use only for curry pastes. Or, at least, I do in theory - I've used it on a total of two days for a total of three things (with this representing the second day of use). So it was good to have a pretext for making use of this again.

Anyway, the meal was quick and easy to prepare: gather the ingredients, chop and then blend the ones for the paste, then cook that along with some spices to make the base of the curry. Add the chicken, then the vegetables, and simmer.

The results were very nice, but extremely hot (that will be the 10 chillis in the sauce). But the potatoes were a nice touch, and I'm sure we'll have this again.

One thing I think I would do differently would be to use either chicken thighs or chicken drumsticks, rather that getting chicken legs and breaking them up - I'm far from convinced the mixture added anything to the overall meal and I didn't enjoy that bit of the task.

The other thing that I'm inclined to do, time permitting, is to start making up some of these curry pastes in advance and freezing them - that then should make a lot of future meal prep a lot easier when the time comes. Of course, that "time permitting" is always a big question...

To the Moon!

A couple of days ago I learned that NASA are in the process of putting together a crewed mission back to the Moon - the intent this time is simply to orbit and then come back, rather than landing, but presumably that's a next step towards returning there.

I'm rather surprised by the lack of media attention on this one, and equally glad that America has brought their space programme back online in a big way. And, much as I don't like giving him credit, that it one of the definite good things of Trump's presidency - returning to the Moon, with a view to setting up an actual Moonbase, and longer term looking to Mars is the sort of big, bold strategy that we just haven't had for some decades.

It's also worth noting that all of this, especially Mars, is one of Elon Musk's particular obsessions as well. And it's easy to mock, but he is actually right - on a universal scale human life is incredibly vulnerable. It's only a matter of time before something happens to render the Earth uninhabitable (for us), so for the species to survive long-term we really do have to become first multi-planetary and then multi-stellar.

Of course, that "matter of time" may well be measured in centuries or millennia, so perhaps it's not the most urgent thing. But given the other things they're working on, it may be no bad thing to keep Trump and Musk focused on the skies...