I'm exercising a bit of LTU tonight – Leaving Things Undone. I really think it's beneficial – perhaps even necessary – to spend time deliberately relaxing. Last week i had such a busy time at work, and i had commitments every evening, and at the weekend too. I think i really overdid it, and it has been taking its toll on me the last few days.

So long as i have recorded somewhere what still needs to be done, i don't need to worry about it. It's incredibly reassuring to think, "There is nothing i have to do right now." There are plenty of things that i could do, but i am not obliged to do any of them. With any luck, i'll be in bed soon!

Perhaps i could write a best-selling book about this! Heh!

We had some lovely pancakes tonight and i have had my last chocolate until Easter. Last year it was absolute torture for about 4 weeks until i got over the chocolate cravings. In the end i found that i no longer wanted chocolate, even when the fast was over. Unfortunately i am now addicted to chocolate again, so i want to give it up again. Just to prove that i can!

Two nice things about today being Valentines day.
1. It is a Saturday
2. It is not in Lent!

This time last year Lent had already started and i had given up chocolate. No chocolate on Valentines Day is no fun at all! This year i both gave and received chocolate as a gift! :)

My just-happens-to-be-on-valentines-day gift to myself is a new phone! Haha! My other phone is definitely broken, so i got a nice cheap and cheerful Nokia 2600 from Argos. Plug in my SIM card, ready to go. Yep, much easier to go to Argos. We went in all the phone shops and it's all like, "£15 a month, £9 a month, £45 a month, 100 free texts, 500 free minutes, Skype, Facebook, unlimited internet, £10 top-up, free handset, latest latest …!!!" You go into Argos, pick the phone in the catalogue, it just works. Okay, it's not the latest and greatest, but it has a camera and plays music, and lets you record your own ring tones. The user experience is almost exactly the same as my previous phone, although i notice a few minor improvements.

Right now i'm having a little lie down, geek about on my netbook in bed, read a bit of the "Getting Things Done" book, just cloned the source code of ykyat.com so i might even code up a few improvements! My beloved is making something nice for me … it's a surprise! :)

The weirdest thing is happening to me! Even though i could allow myself chocolate again today, i find i genuinely don't want any!! I am looking forward to our 'eggs' which are made of German Printen and beautifully decorated:

There is absolutely no chocolate in them. I expect we will have them with a cup of tea in an hour or so! :)

We are not making the Chocolate mousse cake today because we don't have enough butter.

I'd just like to say how wonderful 43things has been for me during Lent. I have got to know some people attempting the same goal as me within the same period of time, we encouraged each other during the difficult first 4 weeks, shared our feelings and experiences, and now we are discussing how our attitudes towards chocolate have changed as a result. This is 43things at its best! :)

My manager has today brought in a huge box of Terry's All Gold and placed it right next to me! ARRRGGHH!!! This is a huge test of my chocolate resisting for Lent.

To encourage myself i have made a ticker that shows that i have been without chocolate for 22 days! :)

I am mostly tracking my progress on 43things. At somebody's suggestion, i am going for 43 days rather than the traditional 40 days of Lent. This should avoid a dangerous chocolate overdose on Easter Day! :)

I have given up chocolate for Lent. I've tried it before and not succeeded, but i am determined to give it a good go this year.

Last year i just gave up milk chocolate and only ate dark chocolate instead. That was a great success, and i actually went off milk chocolate altogether! For the rest of the year i continued to eat mainly dark chocolate.

I am seriously addicted to chocolate – i have had two cravings already today! Luckily we get free fruit provided at work, so i will make myself eat fruit instead whenever i get the cravings. I can beat this – day by day, craving by craving! It's a really big deal for me, so i will not be giving up anything else in addition.

There are two conditions under which i will break my goal to eat no chocolate during Lent:

1) if i get dreadfully moody and irritable, when a square of dark chocolate would fix everything!
2) if i end up stuffing myself with crisps, sweets or other junk food in replacement. Hopefully the fruit plan will ensure this does not happen!

We are taking Suzie to the vet tonight … i hope everything goes well and we soon get Suzie nursed back to full health and happiness.

We are also (hopefully) picking up a bookcase that my partner has found on Freecycle! We are much in need of another bookcase, and it sounds as if it's a really nice one. Fingers crossed that we get it! :)

Something has completely just made my day!! I went to Morrisons at lunch time and guess what i found: WISPA BARS!!! They were at the front, near the cigarette counter, a whole big display of them, with the slogan: "Some things are better left in the 80s. Other things aren't!"

So of course i bought one! I had to! This must be as a result of that petition to bring it back. But you know what, if they can bring back Wispa, surely they can bring back Fuse! That was the most delicious Cadbury's chocolate bar evarrrr!

Ooooh, here's a news article! :)

Just finishing up configuring the computer … i have managed to enable sound – hooray! Strange it didn't just happen automatically when all i needed to do was run alsaconf and it figured it all out for me. Also playing with Samba and network sharing … at the moment i can see my partner's computer, but it's not working the other way around, or at least, i don't know what authentication details my partner is supposed to supply. No worries, we don't really need it right now. I am also finally figuring out symbolic links and how to use them effectively.

OH MY GOSH!! I have just found this Rhythmbox music management package which has managed to connect to my iPod and play stuff from it – annnnnnd connected to MuggleCast and is currently playing me the latest episode!! This is the greatest!!

This computer is such a great birthday present to myself! :)

Here are my other presents and cards that i had this morning:

Now we're looking into Songbird – as a cross-platform alternative to iTunes. Exciting!

I just heard on XFM that Cadbury's are going to be re-launching Wispa, after a long, hard campaign to bring back the chocolate bar of which Dairy Milk Bubbly is an extremely poor substitute.

What i want to know is … when are they going to bring back the Fuse bar?!??!! I really miss that lovely chocolate bar!

In other news …

It's Caturday!!!!!!!

I was absolutely delighted today to discover there is a Co-op in Woking! For a while i have been getting my dark chocolate from Alldays, which sold Co-op chocolate until it went and turned into a Budgens, which sells no fairtrade chocolate whatsoever. But a quick look on the website turned up a Co-op just 15 minutes walk from my office, on a road i had never been to before. And they sell these:

YAY!! The dark chocolate is my very favourite chocolate in the whole entire world! For the taste, the texture, even the size of the chunks – not too big like Bournville – just absolutely perfect!

I really got into this when i decided to give up milk chocolate for Lent this year. I knew i couldn't give up chocolate altogether (chocolate is my middle name!!) but i limited myself to dark chocolate. I also discovered that it was much more economical to buy a bar of this for 99p which would last me for a week, rather than buy a 50p chocolate bar every day. Now i very rarely eat milk chocolate anymore – i much prefer dark!

Yum yum yum yum yum yum!!!!! :D