Extended Mind

One of my favourite web comics ever, XKCD, did a strip called Extended Mind that I can really relate to.

Since I got an iPhone, I am always connected to the web in some shape or form. I’m at a PC all day, and when I get home I’m surrounded by technology – right now we’re running at two smartphones, two tablets, two kindles, two laptops, two desktops, and most recently, a Raspberry Pi computer that acts as media centre for our TV, and looks like this:

In case you’re wondering, that’s Ben’s oystercard holder it’s sitting on top of. It’s that tiny.

Anyways, I’m digressing (and maybe also showing off a bit). The point is: technology, all the time, and more importantly, the internet.

Remember a time when a question popped into your head, and you couldn’t look up the answer immediately? Or you wanted to remember the name of that red-head chick who was in all the teen movies in the 80s (Molly Ringwald, by the by). I do, but only because I spent a month in the Himalayas with no internet access…

I love the internet, not just for the facts I want to check and the information I want to find, but for the awesome ideas I hadn’t considered, the ones that pop up in somebody else’s Pinterest, or that you wind up at after a couple of hours of following the links from your favourite blogs.

I’ve already told you about one experiment in enacting advice and tutorials from the internet this week. These are the other tips I’ve been trying out:

Creating a DIY fly trap

This trick is really effective. I’d post a picture of my DIY trap, but it is not as blog-beautiful as this one! Possibly because it’s made out of brown tape, a torn up bank statement, and a bright orange gloopy mix of mandarins, curry sauce and red jelly. But hey, the flies go nuts for that shit!

Making fettucine out of zucchini

I have no food in the house. I didn’t want to have pasta two nights in a row, but all I had in the fridge was a zucchini. I’d read before that you can replace pasta in dishes with strips of zucchini. So I picked up my vegetable peeler, boiled some water, cooked it for exactly a minute as suggested, and voila!

A soggy-looking lump of boiled zucchini. (Again, too ugly to bother photographing for the blog. Also, messy kitchen syndrome).

It tasted pretty good (although that may have been the aubergine pesto), but it definitely needed less water. Perhaps next time I will follow the suggestions to fry it, or wring it out in some kitchen towel. Or maybe I’ll just use real pasta.

More importantly, I’m still hungry! Maybe it’s time to give this a whirl…

12 steps

“Listen, Ben, there’s something I have to explain”

“…OK”

“I bought some jeans on ebay a couple of weeks ago, and a top, but the seller was on holiday. And then I bought some more things this week. So… when two pairs of jeans, three hoodies, two t-shirts, a pair of shoes a new dress arrive, I just want you to understand that I didn’t buy them all in one go”

I think I may have a bit of a problem with ebay. But it’s cool you know, I can handle it. I can stop any time.

Chalk it up to experience

Photo credit: Sirisa Clark 2012

Do not adjust your visual apparatus. I have blue hair.

I’ve fantasised about having dip-dyed pink hair since I first saw the video for New by No Doubt, waaay back when in 1999 [sidebar: I also want the eye make up. How freaking hot is Gwen Stefani? She is high on my girl crush list].

So I got really excited when I found this tutorial on Oh So Pretty The Diaries. But being the big ol’ wuss that I am, I am too scared to bleach my hair. Also, it would take a whole bucketful of bleach.

And then, joy of joys, I discovered they also had this tutorial, to basically temporarily colour in your hair with chalk! You can buy special little pots of coloured chalk for your hair, but more than one tutorial I found suggested using regular pastels.

So I took myself off to the college shop at lunchtime (working in an art college can be super-handy) and bought myself two sticks of pastel: one cobalt blue and one hot pink. I couldn’t wait to try it out, to the point that I actually ended up colouring in my colleague Jess’s hair in the afternoon. When I got home I set to work, colouring in random hunks of hair.

Here is what I discovered:

Photo credit: Sirisa Clark 2012

1) This shit works much better on fair hair. Jess’s was perfect in fact: long, golden brown beachy waves that showed up the streaks of colour amazingly.

2) This look is very subtle on dark hair. Like, Ben-talked-to-me-for-fully-five-minutes-before-noticing subtle, and he may have been helped by some full force ‘I’ve done something different’ significant looks.

3) Once he noticed, he loved it.

4) Hot pink comes up deep purple on dark hair. Boo hiss.

5) This gives your hair a very dry, matted texture. This may seem obvious to the point of idiocy to you (um, you put chalk in your hair. You were expecting a VO5 Hot Oil moment?), but I don’t tend to style my hair very much (I refer you to the wussage above) and was a bit surprised by the instant change in texture.

6) The surprise wasn’t necessarily bad. This is essentially a grunge kind of look, and the matted texture suited that. I think the next time I do this, I will play up to the grungey look, and use the added texture to style my hair.

7) I am now blue all over. My hands are blue, my bathroom is blue, my chest and shoulders are blue. I even have blue eyelids (I had a lot of excess chalk on my fingers… thought it might make good eyeshadow…). This stuff does not wash off easily.

So, that my friends, was my experiment in hair-chalking. I think I will be trying it again, and at 80p a stick, I will be testing out some more colours to see what works best on dark hair. And maybe one day soon, I will pluck up the courage to do some permanent dying.

Fortnight of Pain

Periodically, Ben and I challenge each other to give up something close to our hearts. Ostensibly the idea is to improve our health by cutting back on our vices.

I invariably suggest he tries going tee-total for a month, and he counters with some horrible punishment masquerading as being ‘good for me’. His preferred method of torture is insisting on a prescribed number of visits to the gym each week.

We’ve debated at some length which takes more willpower – abstaining from something, or forcing yourself to do physical activity – and come to the conclusion that these challenges are fair not because they match each other, but because they match our personal weaknesses. For every drunken Ben story, there is an equally embarrassing “Siri fell asleep at a rock concert/nightclub/at work” story.

This time around the challenge is for two weeks, which Ben has dubbed the Fortnight of Pain, and in my case it is quite literally true: people at work keep asking me if I’ve hurt my back because of the stilted, broken way I am walking.

Ben on the other hand seems totally unperturbed, but the experience has given him some useful insights…

Ben: You know what this week has made me realise? Being around somebody drunk when you’re stone cold sober can be pretty annoying.

Siri [slurring slightly]: You see?! YOU SEE MY POINT AND WILL NOW DRINK LESS???

Ben: No, I think the answer is for you to get drunk more often.

climbing back on the horse

So, I’ve been a not very good blogger eh? Dear Reader, please forgive me, for it has been more than a year since my last post. In fact I doubt I have any readers yet to beg forgiveness of…

BUT, so much has happened in that year!

– I got a new job, at Central Saint Martins

– We moved to Brixton (I know, crossed the fiery line that bisects London right along the Thames)

– I took up knitting

– I travelled to Italy and Morocco (again)

– Ben and I got engaged…

– Ben and I got married!

See? Busy times in the Clark/Jones household (and yes, it is still a two-named household, because that is how I roll). But I miss writing – oh heavens how I do, and I’ve been inspired by my friend Nick to get back on the horse. His blog – Excited, Inspired and Grateful – has reminded me that you have to write to write.

What does that even mean??

It means that when you put words down on paper, more words rush in and fill your head. Ideas are a bit like bunny rabbits – you get two of those bad boys in your head, and they will start filling the place up with their adorable fluffy kin. I’ve felt that way before with poetry (and by god, I hope I do again), I really want to feel that way about writing stories. But right now, I feel that way about blogging.

So, my new challenge to myself is to blog 3 times a week. Today is number 1.