Veganism - Day one

I've been vegetarian for thirteen years now, and have always wanted to become vegan - that is, removing all products that come from animals from my diet - but have never had the willpower. After reading another article on the way animals are treated for eggs/milk etc, I decided yesterday to take the plunge - and so today is my first day as a vegan!

I'm starting the process slowly, as it will take a while to get used to checking all food packaging for any animal products, but I'm hoping I'll be able to stick to it - even though my friends are quite cynical! Today I've eaten completely vegan, and have bought some vegan 'butter', vegan pate, vegan 'mozarella' and vegan ice cream - which I'm going to go and try now! I think the hardest part will be going out and going to friends' houses, and so I may end up being a flexi-vegan at those times - it's quite difficult, I would imagine, to be vegan outside your own home.

Anyway, just a quick update! In other news, Snap Sho - the sequel to 'Family Portrait' - is nearing 20,000 words, which I'm very pleased with!

A lot of reading

Lately I seem to have been having less and less time to read, chill out and blog. Unfortunately, I have completely lost my revision drive this weekend, andhave done nothing. I worked all day today, but have found that I'm caring less and less about revision, which is really quite worrying. My last exam's on Monday, and I really need to revise, but I just can't find the motivation to. I'm really exhausted all the time at the minute, and not really sleeping, and feeling quite down about going back to school. I'm not sure why, but I'm dreading it. So, I've been reading quite a lot, and taking advantage of the nice weather to sunbathe.

So, my reading list this week has been: The Other Boleyn Girl, The Luxe, The Manny, and Cradle Snatcher. I loved The Other Boleyn Girl - I'm really interested in the Tudor period, and found the book fascinating; I'd definitley recommend it. The Luxe was also interesting - it's all about high-class society in New York in the 19th century, and whilst it was quite predictable, I enjoyed it. The Manny was a light chick-lit book, but I was quite disappointed with it. I tend to feel I have to finish books as I always want to know what happens at the end, but the writing style really annoyed me. I've always bene quite critical, and since I've been writing and criticising my own work, I'm even worse. The use of '!!!!' and '??!!' really bugged me, as did the constant use of caps lock - "YOU! SUCK!" is an example of one sentence in it. Another thing was having to use repeated vowels all the time - "Pleeeease!" and "Noooooo". I just feel that if you need to use things like that (little bit of English Language showing off here - it is called replacing prosodic features) then it means your writing can't show the way it's being said without it.

Anyway, enough moaning :) I'm off to watch ER!