Resolution time

Happy New Year, everybody (only 8 days late!)

I got back to Edinburgh on Sunday and rather hit the ground running - Monday and Tuesday were spent frantically springcleaning the house (or removing the pall of very fine sawdust that the guinea pigs generate) and since yesterday I've been back at work. I had a very nice restful time over Christmas and New Year, but the restorative effect has worn off rather quickly.

I have an awful lot of New Year's resolutions. It's more like a to-do list. This is probably bad.

* Finish my degree
* Redecorate parts of the house (paint the hall, get rid of the awful dirty-beige living room carpet)
* Sort out all the stuff in the cupboard in the study, ditto the spare room, and rationalise it
* Go on holiday somewhere that is not Britain
* Spend more time making things
* Revamp this blog so it looks less 2001 (it didn't even exist in 2001...)
* Read more widely
* Eat more healthily, avoiding chocolate biscuits
* GET BACK INTO THE GYM THREE TIMES A WEEK

Yes, the last one is deserving of those capitals. 2008 was not a good year for fitness in the slightest. I spent the first half of it with sore feet, and once I got my insoles I went running twice. Not stellar. I hardly did any weights and basically depended on cycling to remind me that I like to move, and it wasn't enough.

That, combined with spending three days a week in a room with a constantly replenished tin of chocolate biscuits, has not been good for the body. Weight-wise, I'm about back where I started back in 2005 - slightly fitter, perhaps, but still. It may not be a coincidence that at this point I had not long finished a postgraduate degree, and that during my university career I had depended largely on cycling as my exercise. I am somewhat frustrated to be right back wher eI started. (Maybe I should have called this blog something indicating that I intended to learn from the past?)

Anyway. This period of my life is over. The biscuit tin at work officially no longer exists. (That red thing over there? Just an optical illusion.)

As for the exercise... well, I managed to hurt myself on Monday in an incident involving a fully loaded drawer. I pulled it out too far and then leant in and grabbed it, preventing it from squashing my feet and kneecapping me on the way, but wrenching something in my lower back. Not my finest moment. However, it's feeling a lot better now and if all goes well, I'm hoping to get back on a treadmill by next week.

Busy busy busy

I have two assignments to hand in on Saturday, so have not had a lot of time to blog. Or a lot of time to do things that are blogworthy. Or to do any Christmas shopping.

There's always time to cuddle the guinea pigs.


On the other hand, I got an early Christmas present yesterday when my Bookbloggers' Christmas Swap parcel arrived from Mariel of Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops. Thank you very much, Mariel!

(You may contend that I am not a bookblogger. However, if you look to your right, there's a link to something called Bibliomane, and I do sometimes blog about books there. I'm hoping to have more time and brain to write proper reviews when I'm finished with all this studying.)

As you can see, my parcel contained a copy of The Gift by Alison Croggon - an Australian writer and poet I haven't heard of before, but the book sounds like my sort of thing.

It also contained these fabulous digital socks.

I have something of a sock addiction which goes beyond a desire to have warm feet. In the winter I particularly like knee socks, which these are (moreover, they're knee socks which stay up). So I'm very pleased with these indeed. They are also so very loud and cheery that I smile every time I look down.

My last day of work is tomorrow, but from then until the weekend, I will be determinedly writing essays about Scottish Local Government. I'll see you on the other side. I can do it, with the help of my new socks -


- and my lovely assistant.

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...