This time next week

I’ll be somewhere, not sure now where exactly, but Friday next week we’ll be travelling to the Nelson Lake District to our holiday home accommodation.

We’ll leave sometime in the morning I suspect.  But not until Mark and I have cast our Advance Vote for the election.

Louise and Simon will also be coming but finer details about departure times etc are still to be worked out.  I would imagine we’ll take separate cars as I’m unsure if Simon has to return to work for Monday.  I also expect I’ll have a ton of stuff to lug around for the bike.

So the cats will find themselves once again at the cattery.

I’m starting to think about what to take, what we need in the way of food.  We’ll be staying in Charleston (which is just outside of Westport) Saturday and Sunday nights.  Apparently there’s a few things in the tiny township including a restaurant and a pizza place (from memory).

Oh, and in the holiday home details they mentioned a beach.  I wonder if I should consider packing the wetsuit to take a dip.  What do you think Louise?

I hate packing.  I have pretty much everything sorted for the actual event, but organising all the extra stuff like bedding and clothes and food stuff is just not spinning my wheels right now.

Come 10pm next Friday I better be in bed.

If I go by the Hammer website I wont be eating breakfast unless it’s 3 hours prior to the start time.  I don’t even know what the start time is off the top of my head.

I guess the plus side to this is that I get a wee sleep in.  Though our accommodation is about 20 minutes out of St Arnaud.

Anyway, I’m just looking forward to another two short weeks.  It’ll be quite nice to have a day or two to unwind and see a different part of the country.  I hope the beds are comfortable.

Go with the flow

Tonight Mark decided it was time to update our spreadsheet listing all the DVDs we have.

The fact we have a spreadsheet tells you we’ve got more than we can count on one hand.

All up we’ve got 179 movie DVDs.  There’s TV shows and Music DVDs as well.  But of the movies, 179.

Before DVDs, back in the dim dark ages when Videos were all the rave we only hired movies. Technology has advanced and so have we.  But what made us decide to purchase DVDs when we never bought a Video?

Perhaps it’s the quality of DVDs.  Most likely it’s that simple.  I still can’t believe we’ve got so many.  We’ve completely run out of space to store them in the DVD stands.  Hence my search on TradeMe looking for something bigger to house them all.

The DVDs are Mark’s hobby really.  He’s got movies there that I’m not sure I’d watch again.

I think I have a couple of DVDs that are my own.  One I can recall is The Last of the Mohicans.  Oh, Little Miss Sunshine is mine too, and The Devil Wears Prada.  Of the Music variety I’ve got Evanescence.  If we’re being really generous then Philadelphia, Bridget Jones Diary, Love Actually (box set) Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, The Secret Window, Sweeny Todd – Ok, so Johnny Depp is a GREAT actor, so versatile – could also be mine.

Wow, I’ve contributed so much to the 179+ DVDs.  Probably a little better than I thought.

The funniest thing about this exercise is that it’s the first time Mark has used Excel on our laptop.  We’ve got Office 2007 and it’s a whole lotta different to Office 2003 and I doubt the bank is even that advanced.

Next it was to synchronise the Excel spreadsheet to Mark’s phone.  He was a bit nervous about this but it’s easy peasy.  So it seems while we’ve (read Mark) advanced quickly to some technology, Mark’s still finding his feet with others.

People are silly

I’m passing some time (not sure why I haven’t yet gone to bed) looking at TradeMe.  I’ve got a pair of “new” shoes on my watchlist.  Now I can’t figure out if I want them or not.  They close in 9 minutes.

Anyway, with clothing/shoes you have many sub categories.

It goes like this:

Clothing > Womenswear > Footwear > Size 7 – 7.5 > Heels

I’m stunned at the number of actions with the heading “High Heels”.  Duh!  You’ve already told us that by selecting the category.

And another thing.  People who say their shoes are brand new showing us a photo of someone wearing/modelling them – with bare feet!

Yeah, I’m sold.

Now, just a few minutes to make up my mind if I want these brand new pair of black heels.  Hmmm.

 

*****

I just went back to my watchlist and the shoes aren’t there.  I said “holy crap” as I saw them on the Items I lost tab.  I got the time wrong by 7 minutes.  I guess I didn’t want them after all {shrug}

*****

Miss me?

Nah, didn’t think so

After speaking with Richard Tuesday night we agreed that Wednesday would be another rest day.  Better to be safe than sorry.  And Richard didn’t want me to still have my cold lingering around on Sunday.

So nothing, nada, zilch for yesterday.

As for today, Richard said to make it an easy day *if* I felt like training at all.

So how do I feel health wise?  Not too bad.  I’m feeling better each day, and by the afternoons I’m feeling almost normal. Come the mornings I sound like I ought to have a dedicated 0900 number.

Might be able to make some money so I can keep buying stuff! 

Today was my first swim session where I had a swimming programme.  I spent a few minutes last night trying to commit to memory what it was I needed to do.  I had the bulk of the time sorted out then lay in bed trying to remember what I was supposed to do with the 200m warm-up.

I really enjoyed the swim.  It wasn’t easy.  I found the gasping made my throat a bit more irritated and my w.15 (15 second rest) at the end of my sets became more like w.20.  But I loved having a plan.  I wasn’t clock watching like I usually do wondering how much more I had to do before I could get out.  I had sets to do.  I had new purpose with my swimming.

And it was possibly the longest distance I’ve swum.  Ok, it was just 800m but I don’t recall ever having calculated swimming that far in one session.

At one point I was at the end of the pool having just passed a guy taking a few breaths.  He knows I’m faster at freestyle than he is with breaststroke and asked if I wanted to go ahead of him.  So I launched into the “I’ve got a cold and I’m finding this a bit hard”.  What was wrong with “no, you go ahead”.  Why did I feel the need to explain the reason for my rest.

It was really nice that Richard sent me an email this morning asking how I got on Wednesday, did I go to work, and how was I feeling.

I let him know I would be going for my run after work.  I was meant to be a 30 minute A3 intensity run.  Richard had already told me to take it easy and just go for 20 minutes.

I was liking the run and didn’t feel like it was too laboured.  I went for 30 minutes.  It wasn’t A3, I wouldn’t even say it was A2.  Just checked my avg HR, 159 so it’s between A1 and A2. 

After sorting out the cats and greeting Mark I got into a little coughing fit and it hurt my chest.  All seems to be perfectly fine right now.

Tomorrow is a rest day.  I’ve definitely earnt that

Magpie season

Rachel could have done this

Anyway there’s been talk about the magpies that are out about guarding their territory or whatever.  Rachel provided this video link in a newsgroup – Ontri – and I reckon it’s the same magpie that’s got me before.

Right down to the number of times it’s attacks the cyclists helmet.  NINE times!

Maybe that’s all it has time for from it’s point A (danger area) to point B (out of the firing line).  I guess if that were the case i.e. there’s a point A and a point B, and within that area you’re fair game, the moral of the story would be to pedal faster

Thanks for the link Rachel, now see, you could have embedded the video in your blog too!