Daylight has been in rather short supply up here. It's been raining for much of the past week and at the time of year when it starts to get dark in mid-afternoon, it's a bit discouraging when noon is obscured by dark clouds as well.

However, it has been sunny today. The sunniest spot in our house is the kitchen table (above). I have made a little space among the potted-up cuttings and sprouting beans and lentils to put my laptop and do some work.

We have been having an unusually social time for us. The weekend before last was my father-in-law's 60th birthday and we went down south to spend a few days with them. We usually go by train, but this time we had trouble finding tickets at a reasonable price so we borrowed my parents' car (thank you, parents) and drove. Or rather, J drove. He has never driven that far without another experienced driver in the car, but I think it was good for him - now he knows he can, if he has to. However, despite the attractions of the ducks at Tenby services, we'll be getting the train next time.

We had a lovely peaceful weekend with the family, and FIL's party went well. I finished the second sock of this pair:


They've taken me a while, mostly because the pattern wasn't that easy to memorise, but I'm really pleased with them. They're my first solid-colour socks. (My granny thinks it is silly to put this much effort into socks, and that I should knit the pattern as panels for a cardigan or something, but then I don't really wear cardigans.)

As I was off from Thursday to Monday, I had the equivalent of an entire week off work. Which was very restful.

On Saturday I had another busy day - I went up to see my brother and his girlfriend in the town where they work as doctors. It was an enjoyable trip, but I wish we could have stayed longer and maybe done something together, other than go out to lunch. And we missed my sister, who has moved to London, possibly permanently. (Oh dear! I sound like my mum. Must learn to relax and enjoy the moment.)

On the other hand, it is hard to do anything very vigorous with my granny in tow - she is 88 and although she walks OK, she doesn't go fast and she gets tired. And we could have stayed longer except that I needed to get back to go to a party with J.

This was a friend's 30th birthday and it was a lovely party - we had a meal together and then everyone went to the Dominion Cinema for a private screening of Amelie. They have a room with a big screen, a bar and comfortable chairs and sofas - more informal and comfortable than the usual cinema set-up, but it feels more special than watching a DVD in your living room (shades of pre-teenage sleepover parties!) We like the idea and maybe we'll do it ourselves if we hold a party... if we can agree on a film.

Happy November

So the last anybody heard from me, I was in America, having fun at WisCon. Which I did. I don't have many photographs of the actual con - too busy having fun - but Madison looks like this:



While I was there I tried the local delicacy (tastes nicer than it looks), had my hair plaited up like this, met up with Mum and Dad's old friends J and B and their grownup children (who were lovely) and my internet friend Cabell, among others, and had many, many conversations about Doctor Who and Lois McMaster Bujold books. I did a lot of live-tweeting of panels and felt, for once, as if I was at the cutting edge. I also managed to win a book token and come home with all of these.

And then I came home and was reunited with J and my piggies.



In August I went to the Edinburgh Ravelry meetup and rubbed shoulders with lots of famous-to-me knitters, and some genuinely famous ones. I have been knitting lots of shawls, and a few socks.

Then in September, I went with my lovely in-laws on what has become our traditional British holiday. We were based in Bamburgh in the north of England, where we went for walks and I took lots of wannabe-arty photos.

We also went to Lindisfarne:


and to the Alnwick Garden, which I really liked.



A good time was had in general.


When I haven't been on holiday, much of my life has been spent at work. For various complicated reasons, work has been very busy this summer and rather more time-consuming than normal. I have been finding that I haven't had a lot of brain left to blog with, hence the silence. I am thinking about what I can do about this.

In the meantime I have mustered enough braincells to make a boyfriend for our sock monkey:


to knit some ghosts:


and to make a pumpkin lantern for Hallowe'en.


So maybe I'm back. Hello.

No longer in the air

Later on Tuesday, Madison -

Once I was on the plane and we were up and away, I remembered how much I like flying. I mean it. I think it’s one of the most magical experiences a person can have. I always look out of the windows and it always makes me feel that I live in a wonderful and diverse world, and wonder about the people living below in these places that I’m flying over.

It helped that it was a clear day for much of the journey. We started out by flying more or less directly north up Scotland – I remember last time we flew across the Atlantic, the Highlands astonished me by their apparent emptiness. Presumably the settlements are just too small to see from that height, but the mountains and forests look completely uninhabited. There is still some snow on the higher mountains. As we passed over the north coast I saw some amazing sandy beaches lit up by brilliant sunshine.

Then it was largely empty sea for a bit, with more cloud cover, and I had a bit of a nap until we passed the south coast of Greenland. We also passed slightly south of Iceland, but I didn’t see it (cloud cover plus being asleep) and presumably we were not within range of the volcano. Greenland was deeply impressive – knife-edged peaks with snow clinging to the creases and grey-green vegetation, sloping down to bays that were full of fractured ice, looking like roughly-ground rock salt.

Then it was nothing but sea (with a few icebergs) for a while more, during which time I watched Up In The Air. I won’t write a critique, but I thought it was pretty good – the story seemed to avoid the clichés I thought it might fall into. (It is also a reassuring film to watch if you are in the middle of a complicated air journey, because it is about people who do this all the time and does not show them missing any connections or having any serious travel-related frustration. And there are no plane crashes. It did strike me as a little odd to watch a film about air travel on a plane, but when else am I going to get the opportunity?)

Film over, we were over Canada and I watched the rocky bits of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia give way to an amazingly human-created landscape that seemed to have created to be viewed from the air. Lots and lots of long, narrow, pale yellow or green fields, running exactly east to west. I suppose that the land boundaries must have been determined by someone in a surveyor’s office with a map and a ruler, and then they worked out where the field boundaries were. I think it must look a lot different from the ground.

Once we got over the American border, fields were squarer (though still equally rectilinear) and the ground wasn’t quite so flat. I had thought of New England as being relatively crowded (as American landscapes go) but there were still huge swathes of what appeared to be untouched woodland, especially on the hills. Occasionally you could see what must be a ski slope in winter, but currently just a few stripes of grass leading down a mountainside. There are also a lot of lakes, all of which looked brilliantly blue as they reflected the sky.

As we started to descend I could see more detail of American towns – the most prominent landmarks from that high were athletic grounds. I could often see several running tracks per town, golf courses, and parks with fan-shaped orange areas which I think must be baseball diamonds (I’ll find out). As we started to descend towards Newark I could sometimes read the words on the local football field, such as “Go Wildcats”.

Newark itself looks remarkably like the town you used to get playing the computer game “Transport Tycoon” – rows of similar-looking buildings side by side on streets in a grid, with shallow pyramidal roofs. I’m sure the effect was heightened by seeing it from above, but it was quite striking. As we came in, I could see the towers of Manhattan off to the left, including the Empire State Building, and that arch-shaped bridge that you see in films with all the girders.

The airport experience wasn’t exactly as magical as the flight. I was a bit anxious about making my connection, but I had no problems going through immigration or customs, apart from slow-moving queues and a long wait at the baggage carousel. In fact I think I got the cheeriest immigration guy ever – he was young and jolly and made jokes, not at all like the stereotype!

There wasn’t quite such a good view on the flight to Madison – the weather had turned a bit cloudier – but I did get to see the Great Lakes and discover why they call them that. Imagine if you were exploring and came across a lake that size! I wonder if early explorers thought they’d reached another coast.

When I got off the plane it was extremely hot – even hotter than in Newark, where I had melted more than slightly as I was jogging through the airport. But I managed to find the bus stop without too much trouble and made conversation with a very pleasant PhD student who was also catching the bus back into town. Various people on the bus complained that it was slow and roundabout, but it seemed perfectly efficient to me.

The only flaw in my plan to walk from the bus stop to my hostel is that as soon as I got off the bus, it began to rain. First just a few drops, and then about as hard as I have ever seen it rain (with the exception of the notorious Oxford Punt Incident, maybe). So I dived into a Starbucks, which is where I’m typing this. The menu in American Starbucks is not the same, and iced, unsweetened green tea costs $1.55 – bargain! (This may not sound awfully palatable to those who do not like either green tea or iced tea, but I was desperate for something cold but not sweet, so it fitted the bill very nicely.)

The rain seems to have abated. Off to find the hostel!

(Later still)

I had no trouble finding the hostel, and have now called J by Skype to let him know I'm OK. I haven't used Skype over long distances before, but it seems to work!

And now I'm going to sleep. Madison is six hours behind the UK, so the 25th of May has been going on for rather a long time as far as I'm concerned. Night night!

Zoom

I’m sitting typing this on my laptop in the departure lounge of Edinburgh airport, about to go on a holiday I haven’t told you about because frankly, I had difficulty believing it was really going to happen. This has been a very busy month, one way or another, not least because of the last-minute nature of this trip.

I’m going to WisCon, which is a speculative fiction convention with a feminist slant in Madison in the USA. I have various Livejournal friends who have been to the con on a regular basis, and I was hoping to go last year, but I was involved in a project at work which clashed with it. However, this year I am really going. I’ve never been to a con before, but as they go, this one is meant to be small(ish) and friendly.

Anyway I can just about count on having enjoyable conversations about the minutiae of books that I like but which the general public have probably not heard of. Once you get me started, I can talk about books for hours, but unless the other person is at least interested in the same genre, it quickly becomes self-indulgent.
J and I have several interests in common – music, visual arts, languages – but our taste in books, film and TV doesn’t overlap all that much. J has nobly read various books by Neil Gaiman, and even came to see him read once, but otherwise he maintains a fairly strict “no spaceships, no pointy ears” policy. He prefers comedy to drama and non-fiction to fiction, and I go the other way. My family are all readers, but are not particularly drawn to fantasy or SF – the word “piffle” has occasionally been bandied about. This is fine. There are genres in which I have no interest (straight romance, the kind of crime novel that has lots of information about different types of ammunition, horror). But it will be nice to meet some people in real life who know what an ansible is or how to get a dragon to do what you want (it seems you need his true name, and nerves of steel...)

It will also be lovely finally to meet the LJ friends in real life. As it happens, some old friends of my parents live in Madison (total coincidence) and I’ll be meeting up with them too.

This month has been a bit of a rollercoaster of stress, followed by relief, followed by stress. One of our guinea pigs is still not completely better, which has been taking a lot out of both of us (although she seems to be responding to treatment). And it is such a long time since I have been away that I’m totally out of practice (also, last time there wasn’t a volcano). I think next time I go abroad I’ll go somewhere within the EU – much easier!

Happy Advent!

Or, if you're not contemplating the advent of anything in particular, Happy December.

Sorry. NaBloPoMo was a resounding Fail this year. I don't know quite what happened, but I lost the rhythm somewhere there.

Still, new month, new attempt to blog a bit. Two weeks ago, rather to my surprise, I managed to sort out my annual leave for the year. Because of various events beyond my (or anyone's) control, I had a lot left - more than I had working days left this year, in fact.

And they're letting me take them. I don't have to work again in 2009 :)



This is something of a boon as I have this thesis to finish. The original plan was to have a first draft in by Christmas. I don't know whether I'll manage that, but it's looking a lot more likely than it was.

In addition to which, I have had time to do things like dig up our homegrown potatoes (see above) and make chocolate-cherry cupcakes.



The cupcakes are very good indeed. Possibly not health food. Oh well, chocolate has antioxidants in it...

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...

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.

Sunny day

Not that I've been out in it much. We were at a marriage blessing and party yesterday evening, and although we were in bed by one a. m., we were both pretty tired today. We've been doing exciting things like dusting and hoovering the sitting room, and trimming the guinea pigs' toenails. What an exciting life we lead.

When I'm tired, I find it very easy to rationalise eating junk, because it seems logical that I need an energy boost. However, we don't have any. We don't have any exciting food at all, with the exception of the leftover sweeties from Hallowe'en. There was a very low turn-out of guisers this year - we bought four bags of assorted sweeties and lollies and only emptied one. Fortunately for me, I don't find Love Hearts and Fruity Pops particularly tempting, or not in large quantities.

At work on Friday, one of my colleagues had the local radio station on, and it was already broadcasting Christmas adverts. I know that IKEA has had Christmas stuff in for a while already, but I just can't quite get my head around it yet. It seems like ages - and yet, I have eight days of leave to take before the end of the year, and I can't quite think how I'm going to fit them in, since I only work three days a week. Take two weeks off completely, and go home at lunchtime on four Fridays? Take one day off every day? I have no pressing reason to take time off at a particular date, so I'll have to see what suits everyone else.

Where did September go? Never mind August...

The answer to this question, short version:

I had a lot of work to do for my course, and then I collapsed in a heap for a while.

Actually, I wasn't totally collapsed. I seem to have done a few things in the past month or so:

* I knitted a pair of fingerless gloves
* My friend C came to stay for a few days and we visited castles
* I learned to make pastry from scratch (it's easy: what was I afraid of?)
* I bathed the guinea pigs on three occasions (they had a skin problem, poor little crumbs)
* I found a pair of comfy shoes I can wear with skirts
* I read a lot of books
* I ate tomatoes and peas that I grew myself
* I planted a lot of bulbs
* I watched several episodes of Firefly, and - only three months late - the series finale of Doctor Who
* I had my 29th birthday

What's that you say? None of these have anything to do with fitness? Oh.

I have to be honest (or what is this blog for?) The fitness isn't going well at the moment. I've been working hard, and am tired, and there's also been worry about J's health (nothing new, but no clear improvement in sight, either). Although I know I need to get back into the swing of eating healthily and exercising harder, the will has not been there. I went out running twice with my new trainers back in July, and that was it. I'm still cycling, but that's about it.

The tiredness is something of a concern to me because I know it's probably because I haven't been exercising enough or eating the right things. On the days when I'm at home, it's not too bad, but work tends to have Bad Foods sitting around the office. I don't even really want to eat them; it's just... they're freely available, and it's an excuse to get up from my desk, I suppose.* And I have no self-control, especially when I'm a bit stressed. I haven't quite got to the stage where I ask my workmates to put the biscuits somewhere I can't see them, but nearly.

My weight is a good bit higher than I'd like at the moment, but again... I know what I need to do, but the will isn't there. The next module for my course has just started, so I feel that if I start anything now, I'll soon become so busy that it'll be hard to stick to it. Which is rather silly, because you could use that excuse for not starting things in almost any situation.

There are two minor bright sides to the situation. Firstly, this is my last module (assuming I passed the previous one, that is), so I'll have a bit more flexibility from late November onwards. The end is almost in sight.

Secondly, although the numbers look bad, I'm clearly in better physical shape than the last time I was at this weight. My bodyfat percentage is lower by 7%, and I can still get into my jeans, although the Annoying Jeans are slightly more annoying than usual. And my thighs still look a lot more toned than they were last time. I've never been terribly convinced that cycling makes a huge difference to my physical fitness, or not at the level of intensity I usually manage; but I think it has had some damage-limitation effects, for which I'm duly grateful.

Despite the lack of any new content for almost two months, Sitemeter tells me there were 60 visits to this blog last week. Again, I'm grateful if anyone is still reading! It's a bit late to answer individual comments on the last entry, but I do read them and appreciate them.

We are going away for a few days tomorrow. I'm planning to go for walks (if it doesn't rain all the time - and it might not) and catch up on my sleep. And do some reading for my course, naturally. See you when I get back.

*I've tried going to the watercooler more often instead, but it only works up to a point.

I'm back

We returned from our holiday yesterday - we spent a week in a holiday house near Rydal, not far from Windermere, with my parents, uncle, aunt and grandmother. (The siblings were at home, working and looking after my parents' cats and our guinea pigs.)

It was very restful, but rather wet. We had one day when it was sunny in the morning, and several days when it rained torrentially for most of the day. These stepping stones* were just along the road from the house. This is what they looked like when we got here**. By midweek, they were completely underwater.

The weather rather put a damper on my plan to go for lots and lots of healthful walks - we did manage three walks, but none was longer than a couple of miles. It was long enough to discover that I will really need to get some better walking shoes. I spent most of the week wearing these, which are perfectly comfy, but since I wear them to work I had better get something a bit more mud-resistant.

We did go to Blackwell (very pretty Arts and Crafts house, highly recommended), Brantwood (the home of John Ruskin), Hawkshead village, Hawkshead Brewery (which is not in fact in Hawkshead at all, and which would probably have been more interesting if we'd managed to be there on a Saturday), and Dove Cottage.

We also took a trip on the Eskdale and Ravenglass steam railway, took a boat trip on Lake Windermere and had a wander round various villages. Which all sounds quite busy, but on the other hand there was also rather a lot of lying around on sofas reading books or doing the crossword. And, as J puts it, "eating two meals a day", by which he means going out somewhere for lunch and then eating a cooked meal in the evening as well. Which we did.

So although I feel rested, I also feel that the past week has contained more food and less physical activity than might be entirely optimal...

Time for another system-reboot, I think. And time to get back on the bike.

*My camera is not working and J was taking film photos which have not yet been developed, so the pictures in this post were found on Google Images.

** Except that it wasn't so sunny and the trees had a lot more leaves.

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!

Radio silence warning

Just a quick post to say that we're going to the in-laws' for Christmas, and I don't expect I'll be posting while I'm away (though you never know). I also have an end-of-module assignment for my course to write when I come back, so I definitely shouldn't be posting then...

A rundown:

J has put lots of pictures of our piggies up at this Flickr site. Cuteness abounds: comments welcome!



I have a rather anti-social cold/sore throat/cough. I am really disgusting. I feel my in-laws will recoil from me muttering "unclean!". Of course they're far too nice to do this really; also, their boy has it too.

Although I cycled about six miles (on two occasions twelve) every day from Wednesday until Monday, I managed to gain three pounds from somewhere. (And the body fat monitor on the scales doesn't think it's muscle). However, since I got the cold, I have not felt much like eating, and am hoping that they will be gone next time I weigh myself.

No, I haven't given up food altogether, but my throat is sore enough to rebel at the thought of eating anything vaguely cornery, acidic, or strongly flavoured. Which cuts out quite a lot of my normal diet. If only rice pudding was a health food, I'd be fine...

However, all my Christmas presents are wrapped.

And I'm going to have a hot bath to soothe my aches.

Happy Christmas, people!

I hurt myself

I had a busy time in London. We got off the train at King's Cross and then caught a bus to South Kensington and went to the Science Museum and then got a tube to Islington and went to our friend Dan's 30th birthday party and then got a taxi to Vauxhall and spent the night with Tom and then got a tube and a train to Hertford to have lunch with Dave, Becca and Freddie and then got the train back and another tube to Balham where we met Jon and Jonny in a pub and then got a train to Mortlake with Jonny to spend the night and then got a train and a bus and a tube to King's Cross and got on the train to come home.

So we basically spent the entire trip whizzing from north to south London and back again. We were a little exhausted by Sunday. But it was lovely to see everybody.

On Monday, running downstairs in my usual fashion, I stubbed my bare left foot very hard against the doorframe of the sitting room. I couldn't actually scream and fall on the floor - however much I might have liked to - as the flooring men were here to put vinyl on the floors of the bathroom and downstairs loo, and I didn't want to startle anyone who might be wielding a sharp blade. So I settled for silently hopping and clutching my foot like someone in a cartoon.

I stub my toes quite frequently, being a clumsy person, but usually the pain wears off fairly quickly. This time, it didn't. By the evening, my fourth toe was extremely purple and bruised-looking, and I began to worry that it might be broken.

However, it was less sore in the morning and I managed to walk and cycle with it (inasmuchas you cycle with your toes. You know what I mean). And the bruising is now less purple and it hurts only a little, so I don't think it is broken. My sister tells me they don't do much for broken toes anyway.

That was a non-story, wasn't it? Maybe if it feels better tomorrow I'll go for a run.

Back in the saddle

I had a lovely time with my family in sunny Crieff. Here's the score:

Badminton - two sessions; got beaten by J a lot.
Tennis - one session*;beat Mum, got beaten by J.
Swimming - went every day; swam 1km on my best day.
Gym - went with L**; we ran for 10 minutes, stationary-biked for 20 (I think) and did some weights.
Dancing - one evening. Very energetic.
Climbed one hill (see pic).

So I'm feeling a bit better about fitness-type things. Witness that in the photo above, I am wearing my Great Winter Run t-shirt, which requires a bit of optimism and not feeling ridiculous.

Probably the thing I enjoyed most was the swimming, which must mean I have conquered my feelings of squidginess, especially as I was adding to my general unattractiveness in a swimsuit by voluntarily wearing a swimming cap. These were compulsory when I was at school, and I'd have thought then that it would require very large sums of money to get me ever to put one on again. They were ugly, they were uncomfortable, they didn't stay on, and they left corrugated welts in your forehead. Yuck.

But last time I went to Crieff, my hair got so chloriney I couldn't comb it. And I was assured (by various people in the know) that modern silicone caps are much better. Well... they are. Though still not exactly alluring.

J also likes to swim***, and we're investigating the possibility of making regular trips to a local pool. There was a time (when I lived five minutes from a pool) when I used to get up early to go swimming. I'm not sure I'm going to do that regularly, but there's no good reason why we should only swim at Crieff.

The other thing that happened while I was away: I found a scale (in the gym) and weighed myself. And if the scales were accurate, I am in fact only four pounds over my lowest recorded weight last summer. I must have a very forgiving metabolism or something.

I am pretty sure that I've swapped some muscle for fat, but nonetheless it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd been imagining, and it gives me hope. I've been doing a fair bit of walking and trotting this week. Weights next week. (Decorating this weekend.)

Molly - thanks for the comment! Casting my mind back to 1986, I'm sure I never mastered proper Hula-hooping (though I spent a lot of time rotating it round my wrists and elbows). I do have a skipping rope which I use from time to time...

RG - It's Friday... it's not like it's a school night... (And I'm afraid most of my blogreading gets done around this time of night. I'm just not sleepy this early!)

And Mum, what are you doing asking if I regained my motivation? You were on holiday with me!

*It was rainy the other days. Tennis balls do slow down a bit when saturated.
** My sister, who also took the photo.
*** Although he did somehow manage to strike his chin on the bottom of the pool while doing so. As you can see in the photo.

Good news, bad news

Good: J went to work for some of last week, and seems to be feeling better.

Bad: But that’s still only four days he’s been feeling better. Fingers crossed.

Good: We are going away for a short break for a few days later this week.

Bad: I feel fat. The holiday will involve wearing a swimsuit.

Good: I have decided to buy a bathroom scale, so that if I am actually getting fatter, I can find out and take decisive action (though not before I go on holiday).

Bad: I have not actually bought one, or taken any action other than looking at pictures online and saying to J, “Look! The ones with body fat monitors aren’t that expensive.” J (if he has a fault, it’s a certain unwillingness to spend money) makes non-committal noises.

Good: I’ve nearly made up my mind that I’m going to do this 10K.

Bad: But I haven’t actually been running AT ALL this week. Or any other activity which involves moving faster than a walk.

Good: I ate fewer biscuits and less cake this week than I did the week before.

Bad: You don’t want to know about the week before.

And so it goes on.

If you have seen my motivation, could you tell me where I left it?

I can make excuses for myself. I have been busy, and work has been rather full-on lately, and there’s been stress about J. It’s too easy. None of those things is really to blame. I’m not unhappy; I just seem to have fallen back into a mindset I thought I’d left behind a long time ago. It goes “Nothing I do will make that much difference and I can’t be bothered right now.”

However. My plan is that the holiday’s going to get me back on track. This is not going to be a sitting-down-reading holiday. There will be some of that (I’ve got five new books! Five) but there’s also going to be tennis, badminton, swimming at least once a day, and – I hope – country dancing. I know it’s supposed to take 28 days to make a habit, but how about four to reset the system and remind me that I actually like exercise?

Zoom

Just a quickie - we're going away on a short holiday, and I wanted to post before I went.

I've just had a very busy week - I had to submit the final essays for the module I was doing for my course, and then I kind of collapsed in a heap. Exercise (and, alas, healthy eating) went out of the window ever so slightly.

However. We are now going for a nice restful few days by the seaside, and are going to go on lots of walks. I will post properly when I get back!