Rosalia Rambles

Tag: relaxation

  • Redundancy Review: Day 101-103, “It Feels Weird To Rest”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)

    Good morning slackers and underachievers, welcome to Days 101 to 103 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Yeah, I have been resting.

    Crazy.

    A schedule slip that has come from deliberate, intentional, and honestly, needed rest.

    And it has felt weird honestly, to wake up on a weekend to find myself sleeping in on Saturday rather than rushing out the door to do errands or start working on something around the flat. Instead I chilled in bed for almost three hours past when I woke up, letting myself feel relaxed and trying not to worry about things.

    Even when I did head out with my partner when he was going to work, I only went to do minor things, such as having some lunch and buying a small amount of food to do dinner that night.

    Today has been no different… minus getting woken up by another false alarm fire alarm going off, that was not a fun start to today – though once my day had started I found myself taking things incredibly easy still. I hung out with a friend and all we really did was sit on the sofa for near three hours before heading out to a simple lunch combined with some shopping.

    It feels weird, to be willingly relaxing to this degree, for two main reasons:

    1. A good portion of my mind still feels I am not entitled to relax, that I still need to be pushing myself in every moment
    2. Outside of the usual paranoia issues that persist in my brain, I have not felt the resting anxiety that is present in my mind particularly hard

    Organising my time still feels difficult though, as there is a lot I want to do during my downtime but the most rewarding thing right is just doing not a whole lot of anything. 

    I think that might be the key to letting myself heal here, in that I can spend my future time to do various other activities, but right now my weekends need to be lowkey affairs where I do very little, so that when I enter my usual winter hibernation time around Christmas; my time can be used to enjoy what I want to do, and not solely on recovering my energy.

    The one downside to this is that I feel some social time will fall by the wayside because as much as I love all my friends, in-person socialisation can take a lot more of my energy than I often anticipate. Simultaneously though I can find energy by hanging out with people, so it depends on my mood on the day…

    …in short I am a fustercluck of mental contradictions, which makes it hard to figure out where I need to direct myself sometimes.

    That said, there is one constant in my life: good food. Oh yeah, we are back in action, a long-time coming next edition of:

    Rosa Eats Her Way Around Shrewsbury!

    God it has been a while I have got to type that title, and it makes me so happy to write it out again.

    As part of my hangout today, my friend and I went to a venue called Floro Lounge on Shrewsbury High Street. “Lounges” is actually a chain of casual dining venues across the UK, being a bit more upmarket/expensive than somewhere like Wetherspoons but offering more esoteric options in exchange.

    Specifically, I did not want something heavy from Floro today. Usually when I go in I get myself a bacon cheeseburger which I then add an egg on top of to make a sort-of breakfast burger – this normally fills me up for an entire day and was my traditional pre-D&D meal for the longest time.

    So instead of going for a burger, I instead went for a tapas board, where three small plates could be ordered as part of an offer, which netted me:

    • Louisiana Chicken with Chipotle Mayo
    • Korean King Prawns
    • Guacamole with tortilla chips

    The king prawns were the only thing I had ordered before, loving the flavour of the ssamjang-based marinade with a squeeze of the lime bringing a perfect savoury bite with a hit of acid.

    The guacamole was good as well, but at the same time it did not hit the spot I was looking for. It was perfectly creamy and not overly stiff like supermarket guacamole can be like, but I think part of my brain is craving a giant plate of nachos from somewhere right now. No complaints though, was a nice lighter bite compared to what I might have been craving.

    My main highlight though would be the Louisiana Chicken though, two thick chicken breast tenders in a lightly spiced batter served with an incredibly smooth chipotle mayo. It was absolutely fantastic, and I feel I could have devoured an entire board of the chicken with the other dips that were available (Maple BBQ and Sriracha with honey) easily.  

    For the price of £13.50 for the combined offer of the three plates, it makes for a perfectly passable lunch, especially if you are wanting to try new things.

    Anyway, that will cover it for today, I want to get back to relaxing. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review, wherever you are I hope you are also able to relax and that the Monday blues are not approaching you too hard. I appreciate you being here.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 76, “A Good Day”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia’s Rambles)

    Good morning painters and lovers, welcome to Day 76 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Today was a good day for me. It is a bank holiday in the UK, and even though I am a freelance contractor who would not normally get public holidays, I decided to take it off anyway. Partially because of appreciating keeping some semblance of my old schedule as a tech worker, and partially because the events of the weekend left me thoroughly demoralised.

    Thankfully though, two of my closest friends (who coincidentally live upstairs from me) had the day off today, which made it a good time to play Magic: the Gathering together especially considering it is very rare we get the chance to start playing in the early afternoon rather than early evening due to mine and my partner’s work schedule.

    And despite the fact I was not the victor in either game, it was exactly what I needed today. Hanging out with good company, playing a game we all love, and ending it off by sharing a home cooked meal together. 

    Cooking is definitely how I show love to others, being stronger than actual physical affection in my eyes at least. Making a meal is one of the best things I can do for someone, and it is something I massively enjoy in trying to hone my skills in the kitchen and infinitely trying to get better with what I am making.

    Which y’know, ties into how often food reviews feature on the website. Whether I am making it or whether I am eating out, good food with good people is a cornerstone of my life, leading us very nicely into…

    Rosa Eats Her Way Around Shrewsbury!

    I mentioned in yesterday’s review that I had got another one prepared ready for today, partially out of feeling intensely on Sunday and wanting to find somewhere to have a treat lunch, realising I could make another food review out of it and capitalise on how easy they come to me.

    And when it comes to comfort food, pizza is the be-all and end-all for me, with myself having a soft spot for a local joint known as “Dough & Oil”.

    Dough & Oil is definitely more… hipster than other pizza places would be. WIth a small menu of pizzas along with minimal sides, the focus is more on quality ingredients and pillowy crusts than anything else. My pizza of choice? One known as “The Philipo”.

    The Philipo is the standard tomato sauce and mozzarella base, topped with spicy nduja salami and piquante peppers before being sprinkled with fresh pieces of rocket. The price point of this pizza is where the hipster element of the venue comes in, with this lovely pizza pie clocking in at a steep £15.

    On one hand, I can recognise this is extremely unaffordable, especially when it comes to pizza – the same amount of money can pay for a larger takeaway pizza that can become multiple meals or pay for several supermarket pizzas that can be stored for longer and make even more meals beyond that.

    But on the other hand, as a very infrequent treat, this pizza hit the exact spot I was looking for. Spicy toppings, an incredibly soft and flavorful dough, and hitting the craving for a slightly more luxury pizza. Specifically the nduja salami on this one hit my usual craving for spicy food perfectly, warming my mouth perfectly and waking me up sufficiently for the rest of the day.

    Somewhat related, I really wish there were more places to buy pizza-by-the-slice in the UK. When it comes to craving the comfort of a pizza at lunchtime, I find myself very thin on the ground for options. I am either committing to something like I did yesterday, sitting down for a proper lunch and a large-sized pizza, or I am scrolling the menu of the local Dominos to get a small personal pizza that hits the spot, but feels a little overkill for a lunch.

    And before anyone chimes in: no, Greggs does not count as pizza by the slice. It barely counts as pizza if you ask me.

    A venue like Dough and Oil I think would be ripe for such a business venture, serving delicious slices of specialty pizzas for a reasonable price to anyone who might be walking by.

    Side tangent over, finishing things off.

    Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. If you are in the UK I hope you have been able to enjoy your bank holiday, and if you are someone who has been working today, I hope things have not been too difficult for you.

    For more information on Dough & Oil, visit their website here: Dough & Oil

  • Redundancy ‘Review’: Day 55, “Titles Are Hard”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia’s Rambles)

    Good morning placeholders and seat fillers, welcome to Day 55 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Being fully honest, I have not had the headspace to write today.

    So I am going to share a picture of the rad Stardew Valley farm my friend and I are working on as a regular gaming sesh.

    It is a Meadowlands farm type, and the infrastructure is slowly coming together. There is a fair bit I want to refactor in here but I am excited to finish this all off.

    Have a good day slash evening slash night everyone.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 40, “Sleeping In”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia’s Rambles)

    Good morning sleepers and dreamers, welcome to Day 40 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    So what was an early start yesterday has been counteracted by waking up at quarter-past ten this morning. To be honest, not bad going for a lazy start on a Sunday, but I always feel bad sleeping in on days off when I am in work… yes I know that seems like an oxymoron but let me explain.

    When it comes to having days off when I am in work, either weekends or when I have booked leave, I want to get up early to try maximise the amount of time spent not working, and sleeping in feels like that time is not being utilised to do non-work things – even if sleeping in is a very good thing to recover from work-related stress.

    Ended up playing a lot of chilled out games yesterday to help relax, after a round of Helldivers 2 had so many issues that it made me not want to play it for the day, and I was surprised at how much I got into them. During my unemployment I gravitated towards higher stress games as my pastime of choice, but now that I am back in work I feel a connection to the chiller side of my library.

    Chill gaming does lead us nicely into the review topic for today, something I have been alluding to over the past couple days, which I have now concluded my testing on and so I can talk about it properly.

    For a bit of backstory, there used to be a CBD cafe in Shrewsbury that offered any range of standard coffees and milkshakes with the option to have a shot of CBD in them, alongside a range of specials that had a higher concentration of the good kush. For context, CBD is an extract of cannabis that aims to induce the relaxation effects of the drug without inducing a proper “high” in the user.

    It closed down a while back, and I had always been meaning to try out other options of taking in CBD, as it does wonders for my anxiety and extremely frequent stress headaches. 

    One night as I was just scrolling around, as is my wont, I decided to check out SupremeCBD and see what they had on offer – which led to me seeing they had an “Ultimate Starter Pack” available for £70 which included a jar of CBD gummies and a bottle of CBD oil. Being the amazing deal that it was, I clicked order and in two days time, I had the product in my hands.

    I knew I wanted to review it from the moment I got it, but for something like this I also knew that experimentation would be needed to see the effects on me. So for weekdays I decided to imbibe two gummies alongside my morning medication with the plan to take a higher dose on the weekend.

    The gummies themselves are… passable. As a connoisseur of gelatinous fruit sweets myself, these ones are alright but nothing spectacular. They are vegan though, due to the binding agent being pectin rather than gelatin, a nice plus to make them more accessible but at the cost of being not very chewy.

    My weekday dose helped out a fair bit, keeping my stress headaches in check whilst letting me feel a bit more relaxed at my situation. In hindsight I should have taken some extra on Friday due to a very stressful situation cropping up that made me rather wired, but now I know for the future.

    But then the weekend came around. And I decided to take the maximum recommended dose of four gummies which comes to approximately 68mg of CBD – not spread out across a short time either, all in one go.

    The amount of zen and relaxation I experienced afterwards was not only something I had never felt before, but it was even audible in my voice to my friends as we jumped on a call to play Settlers of Catan. For the entire game I was relaxed as hell and every bit of my competitive instinct had vanished, not feeling annoyance at when my road got cut off and just enjoying being silly in the game.

    It was a transcendent experience in a way, I had no idea I could feel that relaxed, and now knowing that I have the tools to be able to experience something like that on demand; my weekends are going to be far more chilled out than they have ever been.

    Next up, I am going to be mixing the oil into a milkshake to see if I can get a similar effect to the gummies. Will report back with a follow-up review when I finally get around to that.

    But that covers everything for today, thank you for reading this Redundancy Review about relaxation. I hope you can enjoy the rest of your Sunday and that the looming spectre of Monday does not bring down your mood too much.

    For more information on SupremeCBD’s products, visit their website here: https://supremecbd.uk/