this was a particularly excellent cheese

This is where I really wish I had written down that list of things I had in my mind to post about.

As it is I think I will sleep. That Cold is still hovering on the fringes, but I am still determined to ward it off with my Mind Powers.

I will leave you to ponder this piece of excellence (I swear this is not going to be all Nicole Antoinette, all the time): 

We have built a culture of productivity addicts who therefore suffer from productivity anxiety … in a social environment that glorifies one’s output. She who creates/does/gives the most, wins.

Eeeeep! I have so bought into this idea, I feel terribly uncomfortable if I’m not crossing things off a lengthy Action Items list. So this weekend I am planning to have no plan – which is all kinds of confronting.

Thanks to the plane trip to Melbourne, I’m now 64% through War and Peace. According to the kindle I have 7 hours and 3 minutes remaining – a fact I view with suspicion because about 114 hours ago it told me I had 9 hours remaining.

I’m delighting in the very lengthy chapter titles which would be really maddening if you’re into suspense.

I’m still book-marking the occasional delightful phrase, which I should really get out of the device. I lost dozens of glorious Miss Silver quotations and all fabulously unusual words I’d flagged from PD James novels when the old kindle died his sad death. Digital is definitely my preferred reading medium, but I’m definitely all about the paper for note-taking and retaining for reference.

I’m using my not inconsiderable stubbornness and positive thinking to ward off what feels like it could be a cold. Really I could do with 7+ hours snuggled up in bed to wrap up this project!

In Melbourne after lunch on Sunday, we went for a wee stroll around the fitzroy gardens. While strolling I stepped on one of those bumpy “non-slip” tiles embedded in the foothpath (apparently properly called tactile ground surface indicators), which contrary to its purpose was as slippery … as a very slippery thing. My left foot slid out from under me and I elegantly did the splits. Well this is how I remember it, Don may have other ideas.

I ended up with quite the souvenier:

Ouch!

All of this brusing prevented me from doing the knees part of my 100 pushups, so I have just been going ahead with the regular kind and today I hit the halfway point!

Who would ever have thought I could do 50 pushups? Woo hoo!

Sharp-eyed people may note that I’ve missed a few days here and there. This particularly happens if I have a ride or a run (or am having a mini-holiday). I’m really making an effort to stop skipping days because with this sort of volume, it gets harder to pick up where I left off.

I also let my mental mini-holiday mode last longer than it should have, so was drinking wine after work on the non-fast days last week and snacking way too much last week. I didn’t notice any difference until I realised I was slacking off on the morning exercise, but it really hit home on the Saturday morning bike ride. I wasn’t hung over in the least, but I definitely didn’t have the boundless energy I usually do – it was tough!

I think my fitness goals are not at all compatible with regular boozing. So it was quickly back on the wagon.

Also challenging on Saturday’s ride was the temperature. It was around 13-15oC when we left, so I wore my normal riding clothes and the jacket I wear for running when it is cold. This is what I’d normally wear to run in similar conditions. Holy!Goodness! It was absolutely freezing! My hands were so, so cold – they were red and icy and I could barely move them.

The InformationSuperhighway is now delivering me some more appropriate cycling attire.

I’m still wildly enamoured of the ipad mini. I really hadn’t fully appreciated quite how bad the nexus 7 had become – really sluggish and unresponsive, no amount of restoring to factory settings &etc did anything much to help.

One of the more fabulous things I’ve done with the mini was to download the kindle app and open war and peace on the both kindle and the ipad. And they sync to the same place!

Truly, we are in the future.

Not that I would choose to read a book on the ipad of course, but good to know I could if I wanted to! And nice to be able to snatch a bit here and there if the kindle is not within reach.

And on the subject of reading devices … while in the throes of decluttering a couple of weeks ago, I took out the iliad and told myself I’d just crack the case to check on the replacment battery I’d need to source. I took it as a Sign when I didn’t have a torx screw driver small enough that I should add it to one of the bags destined for the charity shop.

I did love it so, hopefully someone can actually get some use from it. I felt a bit relieved afterward, all this discarding stuff is good for the soul.

xxx

This afternoon I spent a wee bit of time en-smallening the enormous pix on the past couple of weeks of posts. While I enjoy the convenience of uploading straight from the phone, the results on anything larger than a small tablet are pretty dreadful.

Back to editing photos we go.

I am going to have to make some hard decisions about blog photo storage anyway. Currently I’m using the “personal webspace” provided by my ISP (how very 2006 of me), but after the less than stellar experience during our outage, we’re looking elsewhere and our preferred provider doesn’t do the webspace thing.

The prospect of moving and relinking over 10 years of posts is, shall we say, just a little unnerving!

After developing a quite horrible mouldy ooze, which thankfully disappeared after a while, my figs have sprouted tiny sprouts!

This is very exciting!

I didn’t expect anything to actually happen at all, rather like my cherry seed experience which resulted in … nothing. I’ll be very happy if one survives beyond the sprout phase, but already it’s exceeding expectations.

Yay! Experiments! Yay! Nature!

Yay! I crossed my first fun run outside Sydney off the list on Sunday in the Mother’s Day Classic.

I was really tempted to enter last year when we were in Melbourne, but decided against it and was really pleased that I did, because it was absolutely bucketing with rain.

Saturday in Melbourne was glorious and warm and sparkling. On Sunday we awoke to pouring rain – like, torrential rain. We were staying pretty close to the route so I was undeterred and found myself completely drenched to the undies within about 5 minutes after leaving the hotel room. It seemed rather pointless to wear rain gear, which was good as I didn’t actually have any with me.

There were lots of participants in the 4km run, but the atmosphere was a little flat – most probably because of the rain. Seriously – so. much. rain.

I’d brought along a protein ball for brekkie to take with my anti-inflammatory, but didn’t have time to grab a coffee before I left the hotel. I felt like I was struggling quite a bit – I hadn’t realised how the lack of coffee would impact me (a lot). I’d expected the route to be very flat, so was surprised to be confronted by a steepish hill quite early on. I usually try to pick people to catch and pass, but this time I just concentrated on trying to keep a pace of 6:30 or under.

No coffee and being drenched to the skin are not ideal combinations! So I was really, really thrilled to beat my goal time and my stretch! And I finished in the top 21% of all participants and the top 15% of my age group (pleasing because I am at the VERY old end of my group).

Also surprising and pleasing was that my cadence was all green – normally I have many orange dots – which is not good. Maybe I need less coffee more often.

And I am chuffed to have another photo of myself smiling while running – I still can’t quite believe that those are my arms. All the muscles!

I have no idea where run #2 will be. I think at this point Japan is probably a bit of a stretch. Most likely I’ll be seeking out something in the Nation’s Capital.

Sharing a couple more of those fabulous questions which are so great to ponder on – from the Real Talk Radio podcast. I’ve been relistening and taking notes.

What’s one lesson that keeps coming up for you?

What’s one thing people might assume about you that’s not actually true?

What’s the biggest challenge happening for you right now and what are you doing about it?

What is something you do better than anyone else you know?

I don’t know the answers to these any more than I did the previous lot, but I do enjoy the thinking process.

i think this is allegedly captain cook’s house, though the reason it is located in melbourne escapes me

This evening I spent way too long trying to recover my charitable donation receipts for the 2014-15 financial year from a dead email account. 

I thought I’d backed everything up before it died, but clearly not.

Yet another reason to print a physical copy of Important Things. I’m now trying to scout around for other evidence of payment. Tedious!

Right now it feels like I’m incredibly behind with everything in the workly and palacely realms. 

Despite finally rejoining the current century, I did not access the InformationSuperhighway at all this evening (well up to this point). This is pretty much unprecedented. 

I did manage to complete about 1/8 of the ironing, which made me feel slightly Achievery. I think by mid-August I will finally have caught up to mid-May’s activities.

It wouldn’t do to have idle hands!

You know how it is when you get back from a lovely weekend away. All you want to do is maintain that holiday feeling, but harsh reality intrudes pretty gosh-darn quick. Stupid work.

September (and our proper holiday) seems very far away indeed.