Hello my lovelies!

Welcome to this week’s Weekend Coffee Share! How are you?

We’d just have a quick coffee today, there’s loads I need to get done this weekend. But I do have a few minutes to enjoy the autumn sunshine with you.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that I have just returned from a wedding. A school friend got married today in a lovely church service here in Solingen.

To be honest, I was surprised to have been invited. We used to be close, but hadn’t seen each other in years except for bumping into one another in the checkout line a while back. Another surprise was the church wedding, as I remember my Tamil friend talk about going to temple when we were growing up.

Another school friend ended up sitting next to me in the pew, and I hadn’t seen her since we graduated in 2006. She now lives down south, so her attendance was a complete surprise for the bride as well! My childhood best friend was there as well, but we are no longer talking, loss of trust, respect and loyalty does that to you. Turns out something happened between her and the friend I sat next to as well, so we ignored her for the most part.

If we were having coffee today I’d ask you for a favour. Could you please head over to Inkitt via this link and give my fanfic story The Bravery of the Soldier a LIKE in the Fandom Writing Contest? Voting ends on October 21. I’d appreciate your support as I’m new to Inkitt and its Contests. I’ll make you an extra large cup of whatever you’d like to drink in return! 🙂

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I have finally decided on a fitness tracker. I wanted one with heart rate monitor, and one that ideally counts steps, calories burned and also tracks your sleep so I can maybe pinpoint the cause of my sleep deficiency. I settled on the Fitbit Charge HR, as I prefer wristbands over chest straps. The only problem was: according to the online product info, the wristband might be too tight for my wrist (there’s a larger option available online, but the regular ones are S & L). But I found a local sports equipment store and they stock Fitbits, so I went there and asked whether I could try on the demo version of size L. Turns out, the product info is wrong. I can easily get it in the fourth or fifth hole of the band when, according to product info, I should be barely able to close it.

So I ordered one. In orange. Via Amazon. Why, you ask? Because I still had Amazon vouchers (and FitBits are expensive), and you can’t get the orange one in regular shops.

If we were having coffee, I’d also tell you that I designed a Fitness & Food Journal for myself with 60 days’ worth of space in there for workouts, routines, targets and food intake, plus progress trackers for measurements and weight, and space for a before & after picture. But making them I ran into a problem. My trusty QuarkXpress stopped working, it kept crashing with C++ Runtime Errors. I did everything I could think of to fix it, but no luck. So I switched to InDesign, which I’ve had installed for ages but never used as I had Quark and was familiar with it. It took a bit of getting used to, but in the end I was faster designing in InDesign than I ever was in Quark. And I worked out you can use Quark keyboard combinations in InDesign too, so  once I changed that setting I was on a roll.

If we were having coffee today, I’d tell you that next to uni work I have not been able to do much else. My focus is well and truly shot, and I’m desperately trying everything I can to get it back. I’m already trying to limit distractions, but if your study space is your living room (and there isn’t any more space available) it’s hard not to get distracted. How did I cope in my one-room student accommodation in England? Easy. I only had an uncomfortable bed, no TV, only one shelf full of binders and textbooks and not much else. Now I’m in my own flat, with a couch, TV, hundreds of books – everything I own.

Ah well, back to it.

Thank you for having coffee with me! I’m sure the other Weekend Coffee Sharers would love to see you too!

Same time, next week?