In Hil's Head

Hey guys! So I’ve moved my blog to my own domain and I’d love to have you come over and check it out! I am now blogging at http://www.inhilshead.co.za I have awesome plans for the new blog and you definitely want to come along for the ride. See you there! Lots of love, Hil  

The Hanging Gardens of Walkerville

I haven’t been in the most chipper of moods lately. To be honest, I’ve been feeling quite cynical and disillusioned. But the cloud is lifting – it always does – and there have been been a few rays of sunshine this week. The biggest was a little bit of CSI work I got involved with, through the company I work for. We have this campaign on the go at the moment about “sustainable growth” and how we…

I don’t know if this makes me super-geeky, but one of my favourite ways to pass the time, especially when I’m looking for a bit of a pick-me-up-slash-kick-my-ass-into-gear, is to head into the black hole that is YouTube and watch a TED talk or four.  They also make for pretty cool podcasts to listen to while driving and the nice people who curate my podcasts on my iPhone have made sure that the…

If only social media were a bit more… social!

I’m a social media junkie – I’m not going to even try and pretend I’m not. Any attempts at “detoxing” from the constant stream of information that I allow myself to constantly be exposed to, has failed dismally. But then again, I’m not very good at detoxes from sugar, wheat or caffeine either. Judge away.  Back to social media though… I’ve noticed a trend in the last few years about how much less…

Forgive me friends, it’s been much more than a month since my last spillage of words onto a page.  Crazy, last minute, deadline driven attempts to focus on exams has taken precedence over normal life. In fact, if you ask anyone in my house… it’s pretty much been each person for themselves, while I’ve been camped out at the dining room table, nose in books/laptop, drinking copious mugs of tea for…

Forgive me friends, it’s been more than a month since my last spillage of words onto a page.  Crazy, last minute, deadline driven focus on my upcoming exams has taken precedence over life. In fact, if you ask anyone in my house… it’s pretty much been each person for themselves, while I’ve been camped out at the dining room table, nose in books, drinking copious mugs of tea for sustenance. In fact…

On a very good day, I spend about 90 minutes in traffic on my commute to and from work. That’s an hour and a half of my waking hours staring at cars in front of me and dodging taxis. Last year, I decided to make a conscious decision about what to do with my ears during that time. I’ve always preferred talk radio to music radio. And as much as I enjoy music, I am not much of a music listener in my…

One of the modules I need to take as part of the degree I’m working on is Business Statistics. I avoided it last year but I couldn’t avoid it any further because it’s necessary for some of the second and third year subjects I’m taking.  So here’s the thing. I don’t have a numbers brain. My head works in words and pictures, designs and colours. I passed matric math, but it certainly wasn’t my…

If you’re a friend or a regular reader you’ll know that this was the year that Ewan started high school. I posted a long while back about choosing a high school. In the end, we chose the all boys traditional public school.  It’s been a few weeks since the new school year started. We’ve dealt with so many changes in the last few weeks! Looking back, I can’t really believe that it’s only been just…

It’s been a big, hard week for my big kid! So much change, so much to get used to! While I have no doubt that in time, we will all find our way in this new teenage world we’re navigating, it doesn’t make the right now the easiest place to be.  Which got me thinking about all the times in life I’ve been through the same thing. There were those five schools I went to. Oh and the move from Jozi to…

I loved the feedback I got from my Banting Granola post the other day so I thought I share another of my favourite low carb basics with you. Nick always teases me and says the Banting community would find a way to make chocolate (or something equally impossible) out of cauliflower if they could. He also blames the high price of things like butter and cauliflower on us low-carbers – supply and…

We’re trying to eat healthily in this house… well the adult contingent is, at least. You know, start the new year right and all.  I’m trying to eat clean and follow a low carb, sugar free diet, as close to the letter as possible! I absolutely have to get serious about eating well because my weight has been moving steadily,  completely in the wrong direction for the last eight or so months.  Nick…

Matric results day: My 2 cents worth

Congrats to all of the 2016 matriculants who got happy results today! When I was in highschool there used to be a TV ad about a bunch of kids getting their matric results by hanging out in front of a newspaper office at dawn in a beat up old volksie and cracking open bottles of coke (?) in celebration. I seem to think it was coke? I was always quite disappointed that I didn’t do that. I wonder if…

Back to School Sanity-Savers

Geez – this back to school stuff is expensive! This year particularly , what with the teen entering high school and needing an entire new uniform! By uniform, I’m not talking white shirt, grey pants and black shoes. I haven’t even done that shopping yet! I’m talking blazer, a straw basher (umm – what century are we in again?), PT kit, house shirt, rugby shirt, rugby boots, tracksuit… the list is…

Bringing 2017 “into Focus”

Tomorrow I go back to work – my official start to 2017! We’ve had a lovely few weeks as a break, and now it’s time to face the real world again. That means it’s also time to consider what I want out of the year ahead!  Sharon over at http://www.theblessedbarreness.com posted her word for the year and it got me thinking about mine. What immediately sprang to mind was the word “FOCUS”. It’s time to…

Hey hey – it’s the first day of 2017!  I kept planning to write a goodbye 2016 post – but holiday chill got the better of me and I didn’t get round to it before the clock struck 12 last night! Social media has been all abuzz about how nasty 2016 was. Honestly though – I see people saying that every year. It was just a year. It had good moments and bad moments. I reckon for us, more good than bad.…

The Foot Chronicles… or my (chronic) left foot 

I’ve mentioned the foot/ankle/leg thing a few times. If you’re a regular reader (and yay for you!) you’ll know that it’s been the reason for my extended absence from my running club for a few months now.  I started off with a self diagnosis with the help of Dr Google. It doesn’t take brain (or even foot) surgery to look up “pain on inside of ankle after running” and find a diagnosis that ticked…