Socialising

In the past few weeks, I have had something approaching a social life. I spent a lovely day with Rosemary Riveter and her parents, and we went to the current exhibition in the Queen's Gallery (The Conversation Piece: Scenes of Fashionable Life. It was good, especially as Rosie looks at pictures for about as long as I do.)

Then later in the week, I went to the knit night at K1 Yarns, which was very pleasant. I met lots of lovely people, including Wendy aka Tartanqueen, who I know from Ravelry. I also got quite a lot of sock knitted simply because I could knit uninterrupted for a couple of hours. I wasn't able to go back last week because I had to collect my bike (it was in the workshop - I managed to break the axle!) but I'm sure I will return. And I'll bring my crocheted guinea pig as requested.

Last weekend my parents-in-law made a flying visit. J took Friday off work to entertain them, which was just as well since somehow I failed to realise in advance that they were leaving on Sunday morning. (Whenever I think I'm getting better at knowing what's going on and organising myself accordingly, I do something like this.)

Despite this, we had a nice time, I think, if somewhat low-key.

All this socialising is very nice, but it is causing me to think that I am on holiday. Which I'm not. Soon I will have to get seriously going on my thesis (I'm still in the writing-vague-plans stage) and this is making me a bit nervous.

However, this week I will genuinely be on holiday at least some of the time. We are going up to Crieff for a few days. Crieff has the advantage of perfect, perfect familiarity; there is plenty to do if you want it, or you could just go for walks. Or sit and read books. No pressure.

We are taking the guinea pigs with us. I'll let you know how that goes...

So that was January

Oh, I didn't post much, did I?

One reason is that I haven't been doing anything for my course, so I haven't had the computer on nearly as much. The other is that I've been unusually tired, and haven't really done much to blog about or felt like blogging. I have been twittering a bit, and if you read them you might have noticed that notable events this month have mostly involved falling off my bike.

Right. New month, new resolutions to blog properly and get on with things. I successfully did NaBloPoMo last November (one post per day for the whole month). Let's see if I can do it again. February is a short month, anyway.

In months that aren't November, NaBloPoMo does themes. This month's is WANT. So here goes. In February, I want to blog daily and I don't want to fall off my bike again.

Nothingy kind of day

Today was blissfully free from incidents, but it hasn't left me a lot to write about. J is still cheerful. I went to work, and nothing much happened there either. I knitted a small Christmas tree ornament (that's what I'm using it for, anyway) in my lunch hour.

On the way back from work, I got very very wet. And cold. This is the first day I've got caught in seriously wintry weather. Fortunately for me, I had changed (I don't always on the way home) and had my hi-vis waterproof jacket on, so the wetness restricted itself to my trousers, which I then changed when I got in.

I'm not feeling under the weather any more. See, I have a superior immune system. Or I'm just lucky. Or my body knows I'm too busy to be ill. Or something.

Bike path

I'm lucky enough to have a bike path* that runs almost from my house to my workplace. I don't mind cycling on the road, but it's more restful not to have to deal with the traffic at 8.30 in the morning, and the journey is definitely quicker if you don't have to wait at traffic lights.

It's almost a year since I started this job, and while I didn't tumble to the advantages of the bike path straight away, I've now cycled on it in every season. And I do appreciate it.

The lack of traffic (apart from a few other bikes, and occasionally someone walking a dog) gives me a quiet space to think. I may be pistoning along, but I don't have to worry about shooting under the wheels of a lorry. Often I've set out feeling stressed (either about J or about work, especially at the end of the day) and when I reach the other end, I've calmed down a lot.

By now, I have used the path in every season, and watched the trees bud in spring, and the verges burgeon over the edges of the path. I've seen ragwort and rosebay willowherb blooming (and pondered about why so many wild flowers seem to be yellow or purple). I've zigzagged to avoid running over snails on rainy summer days. More recently I've seen students gathering brambles and watched the trees change colour and the leaves drop.

I've also seen animals: mostly the usual birds you might see in your garden, but also pheasants, a wren, ducks, herons, and what may have been an owl (it was a summer evening, and SOMETHING biggish and tawny flew over the wall). There's a loch not far away. I've also seen a dormouse, not sleeping but running across the path early in the morning.

It gets dark about half past four here at the moment, so I'll only be using the path in the mornings for the next while. I'm still glad to have the chance to escape the traffic, even if it's only one way.

* I used to refer to this as a cycle path, but after more than one occasion when the person I was talking to has misheard it as "psychopath", I've stopped. I definitely do not use a psychopath to get to work in the morning.

Back on the bike

I have indeed been back on the bike and zooming all over the place. It's been hot this week (by British standards, anyway) and I'd no doubt have been very sticky were it not that I now have a cycling top.

I've had it for a while. It came from a shop called Mountain Warehouse, and was reduced to about tuppence in the sales, possibly because it says it's a size 18 but fits me (generally a size 14 or 16 on top) pretty well. It's grey and a darkish fuchsia pink; possibly not the colourway I'd have chosen first, but it makes me nicely visible to traffic, and (as I said), it was cheap. I've also acquired gloves, and I've been wearing knee-length baggy shorts this week and feeling almost like a proper cyclist.

I've noticed that I seem to be a lot more noticeable than usual when I'm wearing the "proper cyclist" kit. Over the last few days:

• Several waves and smiles from other cyclists, mostly togged up in much more impressive cycling gear
• Happy hen-nighters leaning out of the windows of a pink limo at one in the afternoon, calling "Keep pedalling darling!"
• Smiley young man at traffic lights with Afro hairstyle and American accent: "Live strong, lady!" (This is really not the sort of thing people tend to say to each other on the streets of Edinburgh.)
• Wolf-whistle from guy in van.

This is all rather a mystery to me, especially the last two. It's not as though the cycling kit is remotely revealing or anything. It must be the fuchsia. Or maybe it's the warm weather making everyone uninhibited.

I haven't been feeling all that attractive lately. Over the last few weeks, I've had to accept that the numbers on the scale have gone up a bit, and it isn't just a random fluctuation which will go down again next time. It's not very encouraging.

I know that some of it could be muscle from all the cycling - my bodyfat percentage has stayed much the same, and my thighs and core seem to have firmed up a bit. But my eating hasn't been fantastic, and there is definitely squidge on top of the muscle. Things have been a bit stressful* and busy lately, and there's been chocolate at work, and that's not a very good combination. I need to take in grapes or something to nibble instead, but I keep forgetting because I am pathetic sometimes.

On the other hand, I have now had my last podiatry appointment for a while, and my feet seem to be working well with the orthotics. Unless I develop another problem, I don't have to go back for four to six years - and I don't have to go through my GP again if I do. I can just phone the clinic and make an appointment directly.

In preparation for the Last Podiatry Appointment, I got myself to Run and Become and bought myself some new running shoes so I could get the podiatrist to take a look at them. Unlike the last pair, these were properly fitted; they have a neutral footbed (not one designed to correct pronation) but the insole lifts up and the orthotic fits underneath. As with the ordinary shoes I've bought, it was a bit tricky to find shoes that were both deep enough to take the orthotic and wide enough for my duck-like feet, but I'm fairly confident.

I have yet to take them for their first run, partly because it's got to be a trial run on the treadmill just in case they aren't right and I have to swap them. The plan is to pay for a single session at my old gym and see how I do, and then join the beginners' group in the running club I used to belong to at work. That's if I haven't lost my ability to do this in the year I've been off. Wish me luck.

*The stress probably deserves a post of its own, but the short version is that J is still having problems with depression and OCD, not sleeping well, and finding it very hard to leave the house to go to work in the mornings. Not good. I am pretty busy with work and coursework, and I'm not able to provide as much support as I want to. No doubt this too will pass...

A multitude of things that have happened since last I posted

We went down to the in-laws’ and spent a pleasant Christmas despite my horrible cold. Although I had assurance from the doctor that it was just an upper respiratory infection, not a chest infection (which my little brother tells me is doctors’ less-alarming-speak for pneumonia, so I'm quite glad it wasn't), I was ill enough to get sent home from work the day before we flew down. Which is not like me. So I spent quite a bit of the festive period lying on sofas and coughing.

As a result, I spent a quiet New Year’s Eve with my family. Though I’m not sure we’d have gone and partied on Princes Street even if I’d been feeling better. I have done that while running a temperature in my student days, but – sigh – am probably getting a bit old for that sort of carry-on.

After that, I sank into work for an end-of-unit assignment for my degree, which sort of ate the first week of January. It was supposed to be handed in on the fourth, but I got a few days’ extension because of the aforementioned cold. I really hate getting extensions for things, because the extension starts to eat into the time for the next thing. It was only three days, but I feel I’m still trying to catch up, even now. Which partly explains my blog silence. I have still not completely caught up with everyone else’s blogs, either. Sorry.

Once the Assignment of Doom was finished, J and I spring cleaned, and I had a blissful week of no homework, in which I finished a variety of craft projects that have been lying partly-done in plastic boxes in my spare room. See in my sidebar where it says I do crafty things? I really do! Or I do when I have time to. Pictures on Flickr, details on the LJ if you’re interested in that sort of thing…

However. What of my fitness and so forth? On the third of January, J and I ventured to the Edinburgh Bicycle Cooperative and, at long last, bought my new bike, a Revolution Streetfinder. Although I’ve been pretty sure this was the one I wanted since about September, I’ve been dragging my heels on actually buying the thing. We were helped in our decision-making process by the bike shop guy telling us that this was the last bike in this model and frame-size anywhere.

Why did I spend so long vacillating, given that I had been given the money for my birthday by my loving parents, and that I haven’t had a new bike since 1992? Partly it was sentimentality: my trusty old purple-and-lilac Raleigh Cassis has carried me faithfully through my teenage years, university, and through my twenties thus far. Partly it was a sort of sense of environmental frugality. OK, cycling is pretty green in itself, but there is an environmental cost inherent in manufacturing and transporting a new bike, even if it’s fairly carbon-neutral once it’s been bought. Did I really need a new one?

And partly I wondered whether the new bike’s light frame and 21 gears would turn me soft. I mean, I CAN get up the hill on my old bike. Just not very quickly. And it certainly gives my leg muscles a good workout. (Also… how am I ever going to learn to work 21 gears? My old bike has 5!)

However, the bullet has been bitten, and I’ve ridden the new bike to work on every possible day, sun, rain or hail* (not the ones with 70mph winds, though) and over to my parents’. I can confirm that it was a good buy, and am now wondering what all the dithering was for. I can now, for example, go up the hill without wanting to die halfway. And I can change gears without suddenly losing all momentum, because the intervals between the changes are much smaller. If I want to work harder, I can always change up.

The only snag about the new bike, as far as I can see… Well. The old bike, as I mentioned, is purple (Cassis is French for blackcurrant). Which is not exactly my favourite colour, unless it is a very dark purple verging on midnight blue. I made many comments in the run-up to buying the new one that I’d finally get a colour I like. Red or blue or silver. The catalogue lists the Streetfinder as matt silver, which is what it looks like in the photo.

Well, it’s actually silvery lilac. Or as J says, lilac-y silver. Probably more silver than purple, but still!

But it’s got every feature I want, so I decided it was petty to quibble over the colour. Maybe if I’m still riding it in 2024 I can have it repainted. (Another thing: I have a snazzy new pannier too! The old one was bought when I went to university in 1998, had had hard use, and was held together by duct tape and prayer.)

I still have my old bike in the shed, and have given it a good clean and going-over in preparation for finding it a new home. Yes, it's old, but it's been well-cared-for and I hope there's a student or someone out there who could make good use of it. (And if you are she, do leave a comment, obviously.)

Meanwhile, I keep forgetting to weigh myself. I wish I could say this is part of some grand psychological plan, like PastaQueen's. What I need is more awareness of the numbers and patterns, not less. I just keep forgetting. Back in the summer, I was trying to get into the habit of weighing myself first thing on Monday mornings, so it would be easy to remember. Trouble is that I did it without my clothes on. Now that it's winter, I jump out of bed and instantly throw clothes on, and it's only as I'm wandering downstairs that I think "Oh no! didn't weigh myself!" But by then it seems foolish (and chilly) to get undressed again just for that.

However, I did manage to weigh myself last Saturday. I was 183 pounds, which is exactly what I was last time I did it. It was immediately pre-period, though, so I'm hoping for something better when next I do it. Apart from a brief visit to 179 during the summer of 2006, I have been stuck in the 180s for... more than two years, probably. It is time to move on.

*Not on purpose. It wasn’t hailing when I left the house, but by the time it started, it would have taken longer to go back than carry on. And I am claiming full points for hardcore-ness anyway. Hail stings when it’s coming right at your naked face!

The cycling and chocolate regimen

I have lost four pounds (I won't say "this week" because I forgot to weigh myself on Monday, and quite probably it would only be one or two since then). This is good. The current number is 182 (35% bf).

It's something of a surprise since I rather thought this had been an unhealthy week - they have chocolate biscuits at work, and I've been eating them. On the other hand, there's the cycling, and three flights of stairs to climb to get to my office - but would you have thought that was enough to make a difference? I only work three days a week.

I didn't get to bike in on Wednesday, indeed, because it was so windy that J was worried I'd be blown under a lorry. The wind is the main disadvantage on my route - the traffic isn't actually too bad, especially in the morning. Oh, and the Big Hill. That's fairly disadvantageous. It takes me about ten minutes longer to cycle up it than to go down it.

The weather's been fairly kind to me so far, but it doesn't really matter if I get wet. I wear aged tracksuit trousers and a T-shirt under my obnoxious fluorescent jacket, and then execute a quick change in the ladies' once I get to work. It's a slight pain, but probably better than getting one's respectable clothes damp/sweaty.

I never used to worry about that when I was at college. Almost everybody biked everywhere and we never gave a thought to whether we smelled sweaty in tutorials. Maybe everyone does, and they just don't notice because they're used to it...

I am about to head out into the dark to do some Christmas shopping (yeah, it's 3pm and the sun doesn't appear to have risen today). Meanwhile, here is a picture of Pumpkin sitting on my sister. Because it wouldn't do to have a post with no guinea pig content, would it?

The new job

In answer to your questions: everything seems to be going OK so far. Yes, I can see out of a window with a beautiful view over Edinburgh and down to the sea. My chair is all right, though it has no arms. I keep trying to rest my elbows on thin air.

I used to work in this place a few years ago, so I know many of the names already, and the staff fridge is near-empty, so plenty of room for my cottage cheese. Nobody but me seems to drink coffee, but I have supplied myself with some of my preferred brand (and some herbal tea). One of my favourite coffee shops is also just over the road. Other comments (about guinea pigs etc) have been responded to below!

The job is in the records field. I'm not going to tell you where it is, except that it is about 30 minutes by bike from my house, all uphill. Despite this, I have now cycled in twice, and intend to keep at it - it wakes me up a bit (I'm not at all a morning person) and it's a lot less frustrating than waiting for a bus. I'm really good at just missing buses.

The great advantage of it being uphill on the way out, of course, is that it's downhill all the way back. And I hope once I get my new whizzy bike, I'll be able to get up the hill a bit quicker.

I'm currently riding a purple hybrid mountain bike which I've had since I was thirteen. Yes, fifteen years. It carried me well through several years of university, but Oxford was a lot flatter than Edinburgh, and I'm beginning to feel the weight of the chunky steel frame and the limitations of the gears (five) as I toil up that hill. The road bike I have my eye on is nice and light and has 21 gears. I will try to find my old faithful a new home, though.

I haven't yet joined the gym, partly because I haven't got my staff card yet (which I'd need) and partly because... am I really going to have the stamina to cycle AND gym? Theoretically, of course, I could go to the gym on any of the four days out of seven that I'm not at work. But would I? I'm not exactly overburdened with spare time at the moment. I think I'll give it a week of biking and see how it goes. I'm pretty tired at the moment, but that happened last time I started working after a break, too, so it may pass.


But now, the news I'm sure you've been aching to hear: the guinea pigs have names!
On the left, Pumpkin; Cupcake in the middle; then Brownie. I suppose we really ought to have called Pumpkin "Gingerbread" or something. Excuse the fuzzy picture: it was taken on J's phone!

I did probably iron that top at some point, too.

The guinea pigs are already making their personalities felt. Pumpkin is the cheekiest (and obsessed with burrowing under and into things. Such as the gap between one's body and arm, which isn't always convenient.) Cupcake is the most docile with us - she'd let herself be picked up straightaway without running away, which the others didn't. She's also fallen asleep on someone at least once so far. However, she's quite assertive with the others. Brownie isn't bossy - she does definitely still have the loudest squeak, though!

They all like carrots, cabbage, hay, and running around like mad things.

At the moment, Pumpkin weighs one pound three ounces, Cupcake one pound four, and Brownie one pound four and a half. Which is a lot less than me (186 still on Wednesday, but that was almost certainly hormone-influenced). I will update next Monday with the current number.

Waiting for things to start

My new job starts in two weeks exactly (yes, on a Tuesday). I have a feeling rather like being on hold on the telephone: I'm waiting impatiently for something to happen, and yet fear that when it does happen, I will be slightly startled by it because I'll have stopped paying attention and gone off into a dream...

As regards the feet: again, waiting. I can't "go get" the orthotic inserts because (according to my brother, who is a medical student) it will probably be a few months before I have an appointment to get my feet looked at. Everyone is supposed to be "dealt with" within 18 weeks on the NHS, but apparently that might just mean that I get a letter telling me when the appointment is. (As you can tell, I've never had to see a specialist about anything, or not for the past 15 years or so, so this comes as a surprise. It really shouldn't, considering what J's experiences have been.)

I'm not terribly impressed, but since I've been failing to notice there was a problem for the past 28 years... I suppose it's not that big a deal.

Question, though: will the orthotics affect the way my shoes fit? And if so, do I wait to buy new winter boots* until after I get them, or will there be no winter left to wear them in by then?

My brother says his orthotics don't affect the fit of his shoes at all; my sister says hers do.

In other non-feet news: yesterday, the scales said 185 (+1 since last week). Grump. However, this was a week which involved going out for an evening meal twice and to the pub once, so grumping is entirely unmerited. Also, J and my sister said, independently, that I was looking "skinny", and my sister thought I was thinner than at the wedding.

That isn't true, by about five pounds, but it demonstrates nicely how subjective body-image is. Because I was feeling distinctly lumpy all weekend (although one pound's fluctuation isn't likely to affect the degree of lumpiness to any visible extent) and then, after she said that, I felt perfectly fine.

Back in the summer, I decided that I wanted to make my bike my major means of transport. And then, when I'd proved I would get value out of it, buy a new one. But I didn't really go anywhere much in August or the early part of September... so I didn't ride the existing bike much. I'm doing better on this now: I've ridden it into town quite a few times and over to my parents' house a couple of times, which is about six miles each way. It's not a massive distance, but does include a fairly big hill on the way out. Which is good, because you get to coast for the last part on the way back. It doesn't actually seem that far any more.

As for NaNo... the less said, the better. I either have plenty of time, or I really, really don't. I don't think I'll be a winner this year, somehow.

*I like these ones, but they're... quite a financial commitment. So if I get them, they had better fit properly!

Further ups. Further downs.

Well, this has been a very full week, one way and another. Lots of academic work, job applications, and J had a bit of a crisis on Thursday (he'd held it off until I'd handed my work in...) There was talk of his going into hospital, and it was all rather frightening for a while.

I know that going into hospital might not necessarily be a terrible thing, if it actually did some good, but given that J generally only wants me when he's feeling down, the idea of him being somewhere else daunts me. Not that it would be a bad thing if he had more people to support him, but... it's not that there is nobody else offering support; it's just that I'm always his first choice.

However, it doesn't now look as though he will go into hospital (he's not a danger to himself, so if he did go, it would be voluntary). His therapy is being changed a bit, and the doctors are considering whether to try medication again.

I'm kind of hoping they decide not to, because this would be something like the fifteenth different antidepressant J's been on, and none of them has had any visible positive effect. (Negative effects have been present and correct.) However, J seems to think it might be a good idea, and it's his decision.

Things improved a good deal on Friday, and the weekend's been not too bad; we went for a long bike ride, played with the kittens, and saw a good deal of my family. And he seems OK today, if a little panicky. I now have another job application to do and a five-minute presentation to write on the importance of local-authority archives...

On the other hand, it's been a good week for weightloss.

On Monday (possibly because it was also the first of the month) I decided to sign up for a SparkPeople account and do some food tracking. I've tried to do the tracking before while keeping this blog, but although I have written things down, I never get around to looking up the nutritional info. I do tend to lose while I'm doing it, however. This week, my intention was just to document what I was eating, rather than try to change it particularly.

Once, in a time long ago before I had a blog, I used to have a FitDay account and track EVERYTHING. Rigorously. This came directly after a period of more or less no exercise and fairly poor eating habits, otherwise known as the beginning of my first postgraduate degree. At that point I was living on my own, and that made it fairly easy to weigh everything I ate and so forth. The snag was that I didn't have any scales, so couldn't tell either what my start weight was or whether I was losing any, and that also made estimating my recommended level of food intake a bit hit-and-miss. I still have no idea whether I actually lost any weight during this period or not. Photographic evidence suggests I might have lost a bit.

When I moved back home, I stopped tracking everything because I was no longer cooking for myself, so I didn't really know what I was eating and it became too much of a faff. FitDay was/is somewhat cumbersome to use, and entering all the foods took quite a lot of time.

I got the impression that SparkPeople was better; it's actually not that different in that respect, although I'm being less obsessive this time around (I'm prepared to choose an equivalent if the food I want isn't already entered, and I'm not weighing every carrot). I've been at it for a week, and so far have not missed any days, although Sunday - salad buffet lunch at Mum and Dad's - was probably a bit approximate.

Things I like about it: it gives you an upper and lower calorie limit, not just a target to hit; it allows you to save "food groupings" (such as cereal and milk: handy if, like me, you eat the same things repeatedly). This feature also comes in handy for saving recipes you make from scratch.

What I don't like is the same problem that I had with FitDay: it's very US-centric. Often I've had to be a bit creative to find what I was looking for in the food database. For example, "peppers" didn't bring up anything, and nor did "capsicums" (my next guess). But "bell peppers" does. And there's a lot - a LOT - of pre-prepared US items, but not many UK ones, although there are some.

I suspect this is what you get with a database into which users can enter their own items: someone's found it worthwhile to put in Flora Light (a margarine) and Hellman's Light Mayonnaise, but not UK-style baked beans, for instance. (It matters a bit. US tinned beans have a lot more sugar in them.)

What surprises me most, so far, is that for the first couple of days of tracking, I actually fell UNDER the recommended calorie level, and well under the recommended intake of fat, although my protein levels (which I'd expected to be low) are about what they should be. I suppose that being vegetarian, I know I need to make sure to get protein, but maybe don't pay such attention to the proportion of carbs to fat. Although I'd said I was just going to record this week, and not change what I was eating, I seem to have self-corrected a bit: I notice that by the end of the week, I was more in the middle of the recommended levels, and that the proportion of carbs had gone down a bit. (This despite eating ice cream twice.)

But I've lost two pounds this week without apparently trying. I am not making any promises to myself that I'll track for X number of weeks, but if I can just keep doing it one day at a time...

Paragraphs that start with "I"

I am now feeling a lot better everywhere but my foot. Thanks for the comments (which I've answered within the thread).

I have been out on my bike again, and am beginning to get back into the swing of cycling. After a break, it's so hard, and you feel like you're never going to get up the hills, and afterwards you have sore places; once you've been out a few times it's fine. I would really love to get back to the point where the bike is my main means of transport, which I've never managed to do in Edinburgh before.

I have a job interview on Thursday - wish me luck! And I've come to the decision that if I get this job, which is part-time, I will join the gym again, because I would just about have enough spare time to go (and also to spend time with my husband, who is in a bit of a fragile state and who needs me around).

I would like one of these. But I have far too many T-shirts already.