Last weekend we headed over to Andrew’s place where he was hosting a Thanksgiving party. There was much food. It was all delicious. And NFL. Would attend again.
Donegal Table: Delicious Everyday Cooking is a cookbook by Brian McDermott. I cannot recommend it enough. It’s down to earth and the food is delicious. I tend to measure cookbooks but how often I reuse them. River Cottage is at the top, Mary Berry is close behind and others rank somewhere below that. Donegal Table isn’t quite River Cottage, but it’s not far off, either. I’ll be using some of these recipes again and again.
My photos don’t do it justice. But here they are anyway.
Surf and turf sliders.
Eggy bread with bacon.
Mammy’s Irish stew.
Sausage and pasta bake.
Honey roasted vegetables.
Lemon and black pepper chicken.
About five months ago I decided to motiate myself by underaking a virtual run around Transylvania. I figured it would take me about three months based on running 30k or so a week. Then I got ill in September and October and it ended up taking more like five. But I’ve finally crossed the finish line!
The medal can stand up by itself and acts as a door knocker.
More parkrun touristing this week. I felt pretty ill on the morning but I forced myself to go anyway and once I got there I felt okay. Better than okay as it turns out: I went out taking it easy and backing off when I was really hurting and yet I managed to run my fastest parkrun of the year. Not bad for November.
23:46
The course was a brand new course due to building work so there is a chance it was a little short. But I’m taking it as a good sign that I’m on the road back to my old self.
The park itself is very pretty. It’s urban and under the flight path but the forst on the grass and the duck pond in the centre were beautiful.
Last night was Patrick Kielty’s first Late Late Toy Show. He can clearly interact well with children. That’s not how it is supposed to be.
I’ve been really down recently and I needed something to pick me out of it so I decided, on 31 October, that I would do NaNoWriMo: the national novel writing month challenge where you have to try and write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.
I did it in 2015 which produced my first novel Summer on the Horizon. I’m on track to finish this one, too, which is a fantasy adventure set on the Luas.
What has really made this year special is that we have been having a Sunday meetup where other people doing the challenge come together. We do 30 minutes of socialising then 30 minutes of writing and repeat all of that to make a two-hour session. It has been a lovely opportunity to meet new people, encourage each other and have some nice cake.
Today, Holbeck College is proudly launching our fourth diploma path: Life Coaching.
Our pathways allow students to combine courses they are studying, and a final exam, to achieve a more in-depth qualification. In our new pathway, students will study a range of approaches to life coaching, deep dive into positive psychology coaching and motivational interviewing, consider ethical issues and understand the behaviours and attitudes of high achievers.
Learn more about it on the Holbeck College website.
Hartstown is on the outside of Blanchardstown and has a small parkrun in the community park that is also alive with football on Saturday mornings. The parkrun is easy enough: two laps and very flat but it is just running around a field. Luckily, I was there on their 9th birthday and scored two pieces of delicious homemade lemon drizzle cake.
The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph is a nonfiction book by Ryan Holiday. I really enjoyed his book Ego si the Enemy so I had been meaning to reard this one for quite a while.
In the book, he puts forward the case for stoicism. In particular, living our lives in the philosophy of perseverance and acceptance. Expect the worst while trying to achieve the best and almost never give up. When things do go wrong, accept that it happened and be determined to rebuild.
In some ways, this is one of those books when, once you have the title, you really have the book. The text itself is just an elaboration, and part sales pitch, on why you should do what the cover says: see obstacles as your path to success rather than something to be avoided.
The book is broken down into many mini lessons. Many of them useful, although some difficult to see how I would integrate them into my personal development work. For example, Holiday urges us to buil resilience by training our physical bodies. I’m currently trying to figure out whether running is a useful tool for maintaining my mental health, or I’m literally running away from my problems. Most likely it is both.
He also puts forward the idea of the pre-mortem. Before you even launch your project, imagine how it has gone wrong and why, so you can troubleshoot problems before they even begin. This sounds like a really useful tool in business. But also dangerous when used in our personal lives for those of us who are high in trait neuroticism.
Some bits are both depressing and inspiring. The more successful you are, the more obstacles you encounter. Behind mountains are more mountains. This reminded me of that meme that suggests being an adult is just a series of “I’ll get just through this and then I’ll have a break and recover” endlessly for the rest of our lives.
I did really enjoy the idea that beyond acceptance, there is feeling great about something because it was meant to happen. The idea that when a relationship breaks down, we don’t get the job we want, or something else unfortunate happens, we reframe it as something that will ultimately turn out to be a positive force in our lives.
Wim Hof wants us to tracend our limits and push ourselves outside of our comfort zone. He is known as the ice man and held several records for running on and swimming under ice.
I tried to push beyond my limits and finish the book. But I failed. I did however test The Wim Hof Method which says that if you take a cold shower of 1-2 minutes per day for 10 days, your heart rate will drop 15-30 bpm. It did not work.
I’m now hack having warm showers because they are much nicer. But I don’t dispute that they can be a useful tool in acclimitiing to cold water.
