Bit of a change of direction.

I have had a bit of a not so fantastic Monday morning so far.

At work, the nice lady one notch up from me, told me that I wouldn’t get the training that I wanted. Well, not until we had moved buildings at least. And we have been just about to move since I first sat down on the job almost a year ago.

Now where I work is convenient. VERY convenient. It’s a short toddle from home; I need not use public transport. It’s so close to home that, even if there is rain, which let’s face is there is a lot of in Ireland, so I don’t get too wet on my way. The people at work are lovely, really, I would be hard pushed to pick a nicer bunch.

So, why am I having a gripe?

Well it’s like this. My last job made me feel important. In my last job, I was actually playing a large part in keeping people alive, and I felt that I was making a difference in people’s lives. Although I had a bunch of arses to deal with, I liked it. Here, I feel that I am of little consequence to anyone really. Not that I felt that I was passionate about the industry that I was in before, I REALLY do not like the consequences that I am working towards now. I answer the phone, I do a little typing, blah blah, and there is little chance of the role growing with my talents and capabilities.

Basically is it time to do something or to get lost in the corporate collective.

So, I will, over the next few days do some research, and then I will take some courses myself, fund myself, owe nobody, hopefully earn more so that I can afford to go part-time.

On the non-work front.

I was grazing the internet this morning and I took a look at an ex-boyfriends website. Now, he treated me fairly badly.

I am not wounded, I am not knife wielding angry, and I am not longing for anything that I don’t have and I am certainly not searching just out of curiosity, let’s just make that clear.

He admitted himself that by the time that I had had enough, he thought that we might just really have something, even though I was the scarlet woman in this scenario. If not to his work, then to the woman living in his house.

Now, I had a secret thought in my head or even a wicked little angel on my shoulder that every so often said “What if??”

Well, I have answered that question! If the “What if??” had happened, I sincerely believe that I would have been treated no better than he had already treated me. I would be much less happy than I am now, I would be taken for granted completely, and who knows, I may still have been that other woman.

It really puts me in the mind of the Tori Amos song “Another Girl’s Paradise”. Indeed, I’m sure that there are a gaggle of women who would adore to have been in the lap of the situation that I was in. But indeed, it wasn’t for me.

Where I am now, I am so completely happy. Happy, in a really holistic way. I am with a sensitive, responsible, intelligent, funny man who both respects and loves me and I love him, lots. It’s a no brainer really.

MEH!

I must admit to this.

Since I have turned vegan, I have really lost enthusiasm for food. I know that there are lots of fantastic vegan and vegetarian blogs to be schmoozsed over. Schmoozse I do, but I don't seem to have the real want that I had for food before.

Totty has been really nice about me cutting out the fish and dairy. In fact he has made sure to cook vegan when we are eating together, which is sweet of him.

I didn't plan well enough for such a big change of lifestyle, and I do find that I am eating food that does feel rather rubbishy. I can't really see how very sugary peanut butter is proper food. Especially when you open the jar and it doesn't really smell like peanuts.

This is a bit of a whine really, and I can't really say that I am complaining. I'm just not doing as well as I would have liked.

Edit: To the blogger spell check Schmoozsed and schmoozse are words because I just wrote them.

Last Okara Ploaf!

It was so nice to be sat at work and know that my little oven womb was working away making me a beautiful loaf, and the thought of coming home to that fantastic smell of baking bread. YUM.

Well, this was the last time that I will use okara in bread. I have tried, and tried, and tried. I have made about 6 loaves of okara ploafs. I will make no more ploafs, or at least of the okara variety.

For whatever reason, substituting some of the flour for okara isn't working. Perhaps it's because the okara isn't milled fine enough, it could be that the substitution is throwing the gluten content out. Most likely, it's because the moisture content is all wrong, to start with my okara is damp. I am far far FAR to lazy to dry it out in the oven. I'm sure that because it doesn't absorb water at the same rate of an equivalent amount of flour thats the problem.

Perhaps finer grinding would help, but oh well. Easy come easy go. I saving money by making soy to start off with, so a little wastage isn't w big deal. No wastage would be fantastic, but thats not going to happen at this point.

So there you have it. If someone tells you that you can make great bread using okara, they are most probably not telling hte truth, or they know something that I don't.

Bread Machine

This morning before I left the house I set the bread machine at it's task.

Although there is enough bread in the house, I thought that it would be nice to come home to that nice bread smell.

Whats even better is this. I am sat at my desk at work knowing full well that any minute now the bread will start baking.

SHORTS!!! You "Fashonista" Feckless Feckers.

I see them everywhere at the moment. And you know what, I don't think that they do anyone any favours.

Once, when me and Totty were walking through Dublin city centre, we saw a woman sporting a pair of tight, knee length shorts. Now this woman, who was other wise stylishly dressed, had a great figure, that she had obviously gone to great lengths to maintain. The shorts she was wearing were doing her the turn of making her legs look shorter and actually rather chubby.

In fact I confess, that I have never seen any woman wearing shorts and looking good in them. There is no length of short, no wonder fabric, no colour that will magically make shorts look good. Even more, there is no "perfect boot" or really thick black tights that you can wear with your shorts, that will improve the overall look.

There is nothing that can make shorts look good.

Just take them off, put on a proper pair of trousers, or if you really feel the need to wear something short, there are some fantastic skirt shapes around this winter season.
It being the depths of winter, and the temperature's infrequently going into double figures, this perhaps isn't the time of year to bear all and freeze for fashion, if the subject matter were something more flattering then that would be another storey.

I'm sure that there will be plenty of time in the summer for the more slight amongst us to wear very little, and look fantastic. So ladies, lets be a little more thoughtful about what we wear, and not let the catwalks dictate what we should wear. I'm sure that there is someone chuckling to himself every time he sees a woman wearing shorts, knowing that they are fantastic for business, as they use about a third less fabric, but of course, retail cost will be roughly the same as a pair of figure flattering trousers.

As a footnote, I will add this. Trousers, or "pants" for those living west of England, should be long enough to reach to at LEAST an inch below the ankle, and probably longer if you will be wearing heals. If you are ever tempted by a "fashion spread" that tells you that the new "black trouser" is seven eights length, I would advise you to do this.

1 Tear out said page.
2 Attach post-it note to page explaining that Tintin would like his trousers back.
3 Send the whole page back to the publisher concerned.

They should indeed know better, and have obviously forgotten that fashion is meant to make us all look fantastic.

I know that this is another fantastically long post with no pictures, but I didn't want to post a pic of a woman who I thought looked bad.

So here is a picture of my cat, and she always looks good.

Okrararara Bread

So. When you make soy milk, you are left with ground up soy beans, otherwise known as okara. Rather than put this to waste, I googled about the internet and found that it can be used for a number of things, one of caught my interest; bread. People who have far more time than I, have listed recipes where they have pounded their work surfaces with hand cared and crafted dough.

So I did this.

1. Find list of ingredients
2. Adapt it to my own successful bread machine recipe
3. Make loaf in the bread womb (otherwise know to you as a bread machine)

The general consensus was to exchange a cup of flour for a cup of okara. Not forgetting to decrease the amount of liquid that you use. No don't forget that.

In fact, when it came to press the start button, I panicked. Not only did I forget that I shoud DECREASE the amount of water, infact I did the total opposite. I was worried that all that okara just might decide to suck up all of the water that I had put in the pan, so I may just have put in two more tablespoons of water "just to be on the safe side"

WHOOPS!

As Totty takes a look into the bread machine window close to the end of baking
Me - "how is that bread looking?"
Totty - "Ermm, you might want to take a look"
Me - "Oh ok"

Not only had the top sunk, but it had really sunk. You know how a brick has an indentation on the top? Well my loaf of protein rich okara bread had that. A big whopping indent on the top, big enough for a medium sized kitten to sleep in.

Even worse, the kitten size indent wasn't quite cooked! So I had to turn on my house womb(oven to the rest of the world) and let the loaf finish off.

Apart from the indent, the loaf didn't look too bad, yes I did forget about it while in the oven. Unlike other bread, it did brown very quickly. Perhaps a tad too brown.

Now this morning, when Totty had left, I sliced myself a couple of slabs to see if the verdict was as bad as the diagnosis.

Remember when I should have reduced the amount of water? Remember that? Well I really should have, this loaf is just too moist. The flavour isn't fantastic, it could use something in the mix. The okara is rather bland, so I should have expected this.

Overall, this is a "not bad" failure. I would really prefer not call this a loaf. Rather a ploaf, because this ploaf is an insult to a good looking loaf, with it's high crusty crust, and it's dense flavoursome innards.

Soy Milk

Not that I was a huge milk drinker, but to ensure that as a proper vegetarian, I feel that I do need to replace milk and dairy in my diet so that I don't feel deprived.

Now I know that Vegans do not live a life feeling deprived of anything, but I still remember when I decided to stop eating meat my Mother and older relatives telling me that I would lac this and that, and that I would wither and waste away. Well neither has happened, I have most certainly not wasted away, in fact the opposite. I have found quite enough non-meat foods to sustain an overweight body. Not that this is at all healthy, especially considering the amount of rubbish that I have shoveled into my mouth over the years. It does prove a point though, vegetarianism isn't unhealthy.

Anyway, now that I know the bad news about milk with respect to cruelty and to health, I made some soy milk.

Yield about 1.3L of very concentrated soy milk.

Ingredients
Soy Beans
Milk
Biggest pan that you have in the house (think about getting a bigger one)

So, after lots of looking on the Internet at various sites, everyone who makes soy milk has their method and their preference. This is what I did. I don't know if it is right or wrong, but it's my method.

I would like to say that I soaked the beans overnight, but it was more like 24 hours by the time that I got to attend them. They came from the Asian market behind the Georges Street arcade. Initially I wanted to get a huge bag, but there wasn't one to be had, so I made do with a few smaller 500g bags. I soaked one 500g bag full.

I measured out 4 cups of soaked beans, and 8 cups of fresh water, I made sure to get rid of the soaking water. Using my stick blender, I ground up the beans. Now I was expecting for this to be too much for my little blender, but it managed perfectly. Some people have fantastic small appliances in their kitchens, I didn't realise that I was one of them until this little tool over performed! I kept an eye on the time, and I spent just over two mintues grinding.

When I was finished grinding, I had a pale yellow liquid with a frothy layer of unxious looking foam.

Then came the messy part! There is an enzyme in soy beans that has to be destroyed to avoid a bitter taste, and may sources advise boiling and stirring until the "dangerous foaming" stops. Now I wouldn't say that the foaming was particularly dangerous, it was messy. I looked away to watch Totty playing x-box and in those few seconds foam carrying ground up soy beans covered the outside of my pan, and a fair percentage of my stove top. MEH!

Overall, I stirred and boiled for about 20 minutes. You will know when the "dangerous foam" stage is passed because the mixture will bubble up like normal milk but won't cover your kitchen.

Then I lined my colander with a double layer of cheesecloth and strained the "milk" from the okara (left over ground beans).

The overall taste wasn't bad, it's not something that I would gulp down, but it's a nice enough taste. I did add a little Splenda, maple syrup would have been better, but there wasn't any in my house, so I couldn't use that.

So an overall thumbs up!

Edit: This did make a very concentrated soy milk. To drink it like milk it did need to be watered down one part soy milk, three parts water. Because I didn't flavour or sweeten the milk, I did add a tinsy bit of Splenda. What I did find very nice was to add a little eccinacia syrup instead of the Splenda. I do have a taste for things like this, and as it's cold season, it can't hurt. Also, do be aware that home made soy milk does not keep long, so drink up or use up!

What was I thinking?

While I was at work yesterday, I was browsing the web.

I found myself looking at Peta's site, which is awe inspiring to say the least. In between calls, I watched their video "Meat your Meat" and I was appalled and sickened.

For a long time I haven't eaten meat, from time to time I have eaten a little fish, and I have worn leather. I had no idea that the choices that I was making on a day to day basis were making monstrosities like this continue.

I remember when I was a teen, I was passionate about environmental issues, animal rights and to a point fairness in life. As I have lived a bit longer, I have taken my eye off the ball, and I have been giving companies my money who just don't give a shit about making anything else but money.

Seeing their site has really made me remember why I chose to be a vegetarian. Someway between choosing vegetarianism and now, I had forgotten the reasons. I've been lazy about who and what I am.

Because of having seen Peta's site, I will be much more careful about my power as a consumer. I will not buy milk, or eggs or cheese. I will not buy leather or suede anything. I will do my hardest to take cruelty to animals out of my diet and way of living. I will stop consuming animal products and I will ensure that anything that I buy from this day onwards is as cruelty free as I can find.

Now, I do own leather goods, and I just refuse to throw them away. Not because I don't feel like it, it's just that I have already done the dead as a consumer, and lets face it, I'm not going to throw away perfectly functional clothes and shoes. As a member of this species I will act more responsibly.

I would like to say thanks for the people at Peta for making me remember about cruelty. Please do go and look at their site. www.goveg.com or www.peta.com.

It really is important that you take a look.

Purdy Burda Coat

So I have been very quiet on the sewing front. Partly because I haven't sewed anything really in ages, also because I am trying not to build up a huge stash of fabrics, part made projects and patterns that I cut out and couldn't find any fabric to fit the bill.

The last thing that I did was precisely that. I decided to make a blouse from one of the Burda World of Fashion Magazines. I did lots of prep work, made pattern adjustments checked them with a muslin which is something that I hadn't done before, but I am very glad that I did. Then when I went to cut out the fabric I figured that the stripes on the fabric that I had weren't really right, seeing as the stripes went width ways and not length ways. The fabric was just too narrow to accommodate cutting out the pattern pieces rotated by 90degrees. So the fabric went back to the stash.

I'm sure it will get use soon enough. Just not in a blousey incarnation. Anyway, here it is, it's got quite a nice sheen to it and a fair bit of body.

I was looking through my stash, seeing what else I had that called out to be made into something. I found 3.5m of deep purple fabric. It's got a bit of stretch to it, and I can remember buying it with a jacket and skirt in mind. But I can't say that I fancy making either now.

The January 2007 Burda dropped through my door on Monday and I have spied a coat pattern which will do nicely for the spring. It's item 101, and it's got a two dot rating, so it should be well within my capabilities. For some reason Blogger didn't want me to upload a photo of the actual Coat, so here is a moderately bad photo of a line drawing!

I have the pattern mostly cut out the pattern, and I am about two thirds of the way through amendments. I am tall above the waist and somewhat larger than the standard B cup that patterns are drafted for.

The patterns in the section for slightly larger women just don't appeal, so I spent some time this evening scaling up the regular size patterns. Perhaps I should take a closer look a the patterns on offer and think less about the often bad choices of fabrics that they use. Well it's my opinion and you are very welcome to it.
I'm a bit sorry about the not very good picture, I have no scanner and no motivation to get one, I just don't have the room in my little house!

I did initially plan to also make the shift dress which is also featured in this month's Burda, but I am about 1m short for making both projects. So I will have to save that other 1.5m for another outing. I know that it's plenty enough for a skirt, but I can't see anything else that I would want to make with it. I will make this up next, probably in a fabric that will work with the jacket that I am working on now.




That is all for tonight. I have done a fair ammount of things, and now I must sleep.

My Green Curry

So, Totty made himself a very nice looking green curry, I thought that I would do the same.

I used:

A little spray oil for frying

Quarter pint of stock

About 3 tablespoons green curry

1 medium onion

3 cloves garlic

3 small green chillies

1 aubergine

1 courgette

1 can of coconut milk

Now because the curry paste was already made, and the vegetables concerned don't take a lot of time to cook. I made this in about 20 minutes.

First I gently fried off the onion, then when is was a little tender, I added the garlic and fried away until that also was soft. Now spray oil doesn't really add a lot of moisture to the pan, so you could either omit this and fry in the stock, or you could use the oil initially and them add stock tablespoon at a time to keep everything from sticking.

When the onion and garlic are a little soft, add in the green curry paste, stir so that covers everything then add other vegetables, and stir over a gentle heat about half a minute, they will absorb all the good flavours at the bottom of the pan. Then add the rest of the stock. I do it this way around because I worry about the coconut milk splitting. Also before you add the coconut milk, be sure to keep the heat under the pan low, there are lot of fragile aromatics in the curry paste, you don't want to destroy them.

Next add in the whole can of coconut milk. Keep stirring at this point, the coconut milk should get to everything in the pan.

You should now have a nice smelling green liquid barely coating the vegetables. Stir will, reduce the heat and leave well enough alone for a few minutes, be sure to put a lid on the pan. In this time the vegetables will absorb flavour.

When you come back to your pan, you should find, that the vegetables have softened, and the whole thing looks fantastic. If the sauce looks a little to thin for your liking, cook for a couple of minutes with the pan lid off. You don't need to add anything to make the sauce thicker, everything that you need is in the pan already.

I had this with some brown rice and naan bread. The curry was indeed very nice, I would in future reduce the amount of chillies and put an a fragrant herb in at the end of cooking something like basil or mint. Also, I thought that this needed something green and a little crunchy, so in the last few minutes of cooking, I would, in future add some fine green beans or some mange tout.

Green Turkey Curry

So last night Totty decided that he would make himself some Green Curry for dinner. He took some of the Curry Paste out of the freezer and away he went.

1 meduim yellow onion
300g Raw turkey Breast
2 medium carrots
1/2 can Coconut milk (about 1 1/4 cups)
1/2 pint stock (from cube)
1/3 cup green Curry paste (see recipe from 7/1/07)

All of the really complicated work was done with the curry paste, so this is a nice and easy dinner, and with rice this would serve two polite people.

Chop the onion roughly. Think chunky here. Fry that off with a little sunflower oil, don't let it get colour, you just need to start the cooking off. Throw in the peeled and chopped carrots, cook for a few minutes.

Put in the stock. Now Totty used half a pint, and later on in the cooking he said that everything was a little watery, so I would guess to use about half, and adjust for taste.

Add the Turkey and the Green Curry Paste at this point. The reason that I say to add now and not to fry it with the onion is this; the turkey that I bought was VERY lean, no bones no skin and I didn't want Totty to have dry turkey. I went out and bought some fresh turkey, you could certainly use leftovers, or a different meat for that matter.

Perhaps it would have been fine fried a little, I don't know. It's been such a long time since I have eaten meat, I've kind of lost an idea of when some things are good.

Add the Coconut milk, turn the heat down and let everything simmer for a while. Totty had a bit of a taste and said that everything was a bit mild for his taste, so he added a couple of small chilies finely chopped. By the time the rice was done, the curry was. So simmer time was about 25 minutes. Just enough time to play a little Runescape.

Verdict from Totty "Bang on". So this Curry paste is worth making.
I'm planning on making myself a vegetarian version this evening, and I am really looking forward to it.

One thing that I really liked about this was that it didn't stick to my stick to everything pans. HUZZAH!

**Bread Recipe Update**

I have made a bit of a tweak to the bread recipe that I have been using. The quantities previously have been a little unreliable. It's surprising how small tweeks can make such a big difference, and that's why accuracy in measuring is so important.

Brown Bread Machine Bread

1 1/2 cups water
2 tbsp + 2 tsp sugar
2 1/4 tsp salt
2 cups white bread flour
2 1/2 cups brown bread flour
1/3 cup rye or oats
1/4 cup + 2 tsp oil (I use plain olive oil sunflower)
1 tbsp + 1/2 tsp yeast

Put everything into the machine in the order listed (unless your bread machine tells you otherwise), so that the yeast is sitting on the top of the ingredients dry. Use the wholemeal cycle and choose dark crust if you have that setting.

As I said before my machine advertises itself as making a 1.5kg loaf.

Green Curry Paste

Now, I got a goo on to make some curry powder. Seeing as I had just gone through my cupboards and checked what spices I have, and that there was a nice bunch of coriander sitting on my counter top. It was only fitting that it turn into a green curry paste.

I have no clue if this is how green curry paste is made. And quite frankly, I don't give a hoot if this isn't the way that it should be made. Experimentation is a fantastic thing. So this curry paste is a bit of a work in progress.

I hope that this tastes OK, because the quantities seem to have got away from me a bit. That's not uncommon though. Often I will start off in the BIG pan because sooner or later I will end up using that one.

So here we go.

Ingredients
2 tbsp Coriander seed
1 tbsp Fenugreek (whole)
1 tbsp Whole Black Pepper
1 tbsp Black Mustard Seeds
1 tbsp Yellow Mustard Seeds
Ginger - Pealed amount about as big as your thumb
4 fat cloves of Garlic
1 Bunch Coriander (use everything, the leaves, the stalks and the roots if you are lucky enough to have them!)
1 Green Finger Chili
2-3 Small chillies (the ones that I have are about an inch long)
Sprig Mint
Oil

I toasted the spices in a dry frying pan, shuffling them around on the heat. I declared them done when I heard them pop. With the mustard seeds I used a splatter guard because the mustard seeds jump out of the pan.

After partially grinding this up in the pestle and mortar, my arms were aching. So, I tried adding a bit of sunflower oil to see if that would help. Which it did a little, but not enough to make much the job to hand much easier. Then I decided to use a much easier method and used my stick blender, to make everything into a pulp.

I think that I must have used about a third of a cup of sunflower oil, I didn't measure it. Instead I kept adding it until there was enough for the blades to make a nice paste.

The aroma was fantastic. My little house was smelling lovely and the nice mellow smell of the spices stuck to my pestle and mortar. Yum.

The only thing that I can't give you is a good photo of the end product. I tried, and, tried and tried. I just couldn't get a dark green paste to look appetising at all. Here it is anyway!

Seeing as me and the lovely Totty had already had dinner this went straight into two small freezer bags, all ready to pull out and use as and when.

Properly Back and on Track

Hello, and I wish you all the happiest of a new year. I hope that you all get rid of the extra padding that you have aquired over the festivities, unless you got a boob job, then I hope that they stay pointing the way that you paid for them to point.

So back to business, back to food!

My laziness over the Christmas and New Year meant that I took photos of people and not food. Ahh well, I'm sure that you don't all want to see the pictures of comedy Christmas presents, and comedic pictures of Christmas drinking. Needless to say, I am still making small trips to the bottle bank. Next year I WILL buy cans because Dublin City Council has a recycling scheme that will pick up cans, but not glass, or plastics for that matter.

Anyway! Cooking thought the book.

I made Polenta, Page 278 in Fields of Greens.

Now Polenta is new to me, I've always been a bit aware of it, but I've never eaten it, and never really seen it, so I am flying blind here.

I spoke to an Italian friend of mine about what to do with Polenta. Her advice was that it is very demanding visually, meaning that you shouldn't take your eye off it. And to put something really tatsy with it, because it is quite bland.

Now the recipe goes as such:-
6 cups water
1 and a half teaspoons salt
1 and a half cups coarse cornmeal
Quarter teaspoon pepper
2 Tablespoons butter
Half a cup Grated Parmesan

Now what you do is this.

Boil the water, until it is at a nice rolling boil, and whisk in the cornmeal. Add salt and keep on a low boil for 20-25 minutes stirring frequently until the grains are open and the Polenta is smooth.

It is at this point that I was pleased that I had not really thought much when I was buying the cornmeal and luckily I had bought the quick cook variant that advertised itself as ready after 3 minutes. Phew, that means a lot less stirring and less scrubbing because I am not the proud owner of nice pans. My pans are NOT to be trusted unattended and in charge of small children.

Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the cheese and pepper.

Anyway, here is the resulting goop.


So that wasn't bad, about 6 minutes whisking, yes I did it a bit longer than the pack recommends. I then left it to cool covered in cling film.


Now when it came to eat, yes it was just to bland to contemplate, and I couldn't put something that dull into my mouth. So I put a bit of uncommon sense into action and ground up some black pepper and garlic in my pestle and mortar with some fairly nice olive oil, put that on top of the Polenta in a fairly hot oven and cooked it until it was a little crispy round the edges.


Now I can kind of see what the fuss is about with Polenta. I will admit to more additions to this dish.

With the worry about it being just too bland, I made a quick tomato sauce, and had that and a bit of aubergine antipasti.

All in all, not a bad dinner and a recipe ticked off.

A tiny bit of a PS. I really didn't follow the recipe too well. Now that I have finished cooking and now that I have eaten, I distinclty remember not putting in the butter or cheese. Next time I will try hard to put lots of good stuff in the actual mix.

Long Time Not Blog

Yes indeed. A long time and not a word from me.

Were my fingers cut off? Did I get indoctrinated by a strange cult? Perhaps my mouse (cordless as it is) ran off the desk.

In fact none of the above. I just didn't blog, in fact I didn't do much at all. So regular reader (ahem can I say that as a new blogger??), I have been silent due to apathy. And that is one of the things that is wrong with society.

We are just so used to the concept of "vegging out" and "relaxing" that we have all just got to comfortable with sitting on our backsides and doing basically nothing. Yes indeed, I'm sure that my Nan (rest her soul in a peaceful place) would be shocked at my lounging about the house doing "nothing much", watching oodles of rubbish daytime TV and spending hours and hours in chat rooms.

Now after an enormous 11 day break from work. I would like to thank the powers that be for making the break so long and I am getting back in the swing of doing things every day. In fact, I am getting back into the swing of getting dressed before midday. To be more honest, I am getting used to getting dressed. Yes frequently I am lazy enough to prefer not to get dressed. Isn't laziness a self feeding ailment?