Rest and Relaxation

Today....was fantastically lazy. In bed until 10, skyped with family for a while, seeing as its Father's Day weekend. Got all my laundry done, cleaned, exercised, shopped, swam and tanned at the beach. But the only thing I will remember from this night is making pan-fried hamburgers that taste identical to my grandmothers'. I've been here for just under two months, and the first time I feel homesick is from eating a crappy burned hamburger. The taste brings back memories spanning decades. The only weakness of the burgers was that they kept falling apart. Part of the problem is that my chunks of onion and tomato that went into the ground beef were too large. However, I spent a few minutes reading up on the problem, and the advice is as follows: use fresh, unfrozen, cool (not cold) meat with a higher fat content (max 80% lean),  firming the edges with your fingers, only flipping the burger once, and not pressing the meat while its cooking. Also recommended was having a dimple on the inner sides, such that the burger resembles a red blood cell, allowing for more even cooking. Sadly, I'm bound by what little IGA stocks, so if the next few trials don't turn out fantastic, I may end up using breadcrumbs, eggs, or even ground pork as binding material.

The mashed sweet potato was ok. It did not bring back any memories.

The Sriracha Chili Sauce, on the other hand, is so mind-blowing it may actually replace ketchup in my life. It is the magical rooster of flavour.

I headed back to the library at 8:30pm, because I'd feel too guilty at having a day of total relaxation. Not that there's anything left to do besides going to a bar, but I've gotten pretty bored of drinking. Moreso, I wanted to think about ways of killing my next biggest time waster.

For years, my greatest problem was focus, being able to stick to one task for any period of time exceeding 30 seconds. I'm glad to say I've found ways to get past this by finally being in a field I am passionate about, but the new bully on the block is inertia. Starting work in the morning can be a drag, especially if you ever take a look at my schedule and the work that needs to be done. Its easier to just reading some news, check emails....and poof, an hour has flown by. To defeat morning inertia, I tend to spend 30 minutes at home just browsing the net and finish up all my time-wasting there. That way, when I get to the library, I can focus straight on the work.

However, its the breaks that kill me. I can focus for a good 30 minutes without a problem, but I haven't been putting the brakes on my breaks (terrible pun) after the mandatory 5 minutes I institute for myself. Over the day, the breaks that become 10, even 20 minutes long can easily combine to form a significant fraction of a day. In any library setting, having a beeping alarm is a hassle, as it needs to be configured, or i need to wear headphones to hear it, so the optimal solution has not quite fallen in my lap yet. Soon, though, soon.

The next biggest problem is "post-prandial somnolence" (feeling sleepy after a meal). Trying to study soon after a meal tends to give headaches, and while a short 10 minute nap at home can alleviate this, I would be hard-pressed to spend the +25 minutes walking there and back. I have no clue how to tackle this either. I've changed up the diet to include more salad, but this just leaves me feeling a chronic lethargy instead of a headache. Anyways, back to the drawing board.

EDIT:
While laying in bed, it occured to me that the meals causing the greatest degree of post-meal sleepyness contained a good deal of salt. After the current batch of burgers run out, I'll give a whack at