Of Interest

The posts on this blog have been quite un-tranquil lately. Not lately, actually - there haven't been any posts at all from me for a long while!

I won't thank you for your patience, since I'm sure you all lost patience a long time ago. Understandably.

Interesting things are happening in my life. Due to my negligence, I daresay my crowd of readers are quite uninterested. But I'm more than happy to monologue away...

I'm a real, honest-to-goodness University of Canterbury student now! I'm doing an arts degree in political science. This semester I'm doing a history paper on Revolutions, one on writing Academic Essays (to brush up my skills from Correspondence, and *hopefully* get better marks) and a Public Policy paper.

It's amazing to be paying to study. I really enjoy it - you can learn everything you want to, study as hard as you like, soak in the Uni atmosphere, catch up with friends around campus, and sit under huge old trees to study.. so good. Do you guys enjoy studying, or is it a bothersome nuisance to you? I'm curious.

I appreciate (while I'm listing the good things about Uni) the fact that when you're paying for your own tuition you have to force yourself to work hard. I like the challenge of handing in an assignment on time; all the components of the work that you have to think through yourself and present in a coherent, logical way.

I feel Pollyanna-ish.

While I'm noting things about me that might, or might not catch your interest, here's one that is big in my life right now: I went gluten-free a couple of months ago.

Please feel free to shed a sympathetic tear at this juncture.

It's actually not all that bad surprisingly. A Gluten-Freeite does have to forgo those amazing sandwiches that have their filling encased between thick layers of light, springy-textured, seed-embedded bread. Squiggles, Tim-Tams, normal cereal, most lollies, most sausages, most pasta - these things are dead to the person who is a G-Freeite.

But there is hope, due to one's cooking and baking abilities. Really, all you need is a few basic culinary skills, a bit of initiative, a bit of innovation - and you'll be able to adapt normal recipes into g-free ones. Being G-Free doesn't really limit what you can cook/bake - it just makes cooking or baking a little more difficult.
As I write, there is a large tray of Easter Egg slice cooling on the kitchen bench - I made up a recipe for a base, created some marshmallow mixture, poured it in and smoothed it over, waited for it to set then spooned melted dark chocolate over.

It's an interesting life, all up.