Alcohol Free

April 22nd, 2007

It was a rather quiet weekend due to being able to hardly walk from my gym session on Friday. We went to Mikes daughters birthday lunch today at a chinese buffet which was really nice. All you can eat for £7.50. We totally stuffed our faces. We were supposed to go out to a gay bar with them last night but decided on a night in watching a movie. how boring are we?

Anyway this is day 3 without drinking. I am going to try and give up for the whole month just for a laugh. Hopefully this nice weather will keep up and we can go out for cycle rides and walks in the evenings instead of frequenting waterfront cafes and drinking wine. We’ll see how long it lasts….  

 

Gym Guinea Pig

April 21st, 2007

I started back at the gym yesterday with my trainer. She has just done a course on new techniques and I am her guinea pig. I can hardly walk today. I think it was due to the one legged squats she had me do. Man that was hard. And it wasnt just a straight squat. I had to go down for 3 seconds, hold for 2 seconds then come back up. That was repeated 12 times all on one leg. then I swapped over and did the other leg. Each set was repeated 3 times. It was agony. My glutes are really feeling it today.

Other things she had me do were just standard weights on the stress ball things, working a lot on the core. We used slightly heavier weight and only 12 reps rather that the usual 15. I also did some squats on the cable machine which also worked the back. I’ll have buns of steel on no time!   

 

Irish Joke

April 20th, 2007

Flynn staggered home very late after St Patricks day drinking with his buddy, Paddy. He took off his shoes to avoid waking his wife, Mary.He tiptoed as quietly as he could toward the stairs leading to their upstairs bedroom, but misjudged the bottom step. As he caught himself by grabbing the banister, his body swung around and he landed heavily on his rump. A whiskey bottle in each back pocket broke and made the landing especially painful.

Managing not to yell, Flynn sprung up, pulled down his pants, and looked in the hall mirror to see that his butt cheeks were cut and bleeding.

He managed to quietly find a full box of Band-Aids and began putting a Band-Aid as best he could on each place he saw blood.

He then hid the now almost empty Band-Aid box and shuffled and stumbled his way to bed.

In the morning, Flynn woke up with searing pain in both his head and butt and Mary staring at him from across the room.

She said, “You were drunk again last night weren’t you?”

Flynn said, “Why do you say such a mean thing?”

“Well,” Mary said, “it could be the open front door, it could be the broken glass at the bottom of the stairs, it could be the drops of blood trailing through the house, it could be your bloodshot eyes, but mostly……………………………………….it’s all those Band-Aids stuck on the hall mirror.

Celebrity Lookalike

April 17th, 2007
This facial recognition site is a bit of a laugh. It tells you what celebrities you look like. I was quite chuffed that I look 75% like Kristen Davis from Sex and the City even tho I look nothing like her. I’m not telling anyone that I also looked 67% like Gene Hackman. The cheek of it!

http://www.myheritage.com/

Brownsea Island

April 15th, 2007

Today we took a ferry across to Brownsea Island to find a couple of caches hidden over there.  It was a beautiful day in the mid 20s. lovely and hot. Brownsea Island is home to the last of the native red squirrels. We looked really hard but alas, no red squirrels for us today. We did however see these pretty peacocks who insisted on posing for us.

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We found the two caches hidden on the island and placed Bacon in one of them to start his world trip. Ollie was supposed to go but I couldn’t bear to part with him.  Bacon is a pink pig similar to Ollie but pig shaped rather than elephant shaped

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Brownsea Island was really pleasant to walk around. It was great to get away from the hustle and bustle of the Quay. I even dipped my feet in the water, but it caused lamentations of the swearing kind. It was freezing.
 
Here’s some pictures of the day:
 Departing Poole Quay View out the other side of Brownsea Island.

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View back towards Poole

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The Diet

April 15th, 2007

I am starting back on my diet tomorrow. I wanna fit into my bikini this summer! My aim is to lose 3 kgs by the end of May. This is about 500g per week, so should be achievable I hope.

To lose this weight I need to burn an extra 500 calories per day or reduce my calorie intake by this amount.  I am always better at sticking to exercise than eating less so will focus more on exercise.

I burn about 500 cals by doing each of the following according to my polar heart rate monitor.

  • 2 hour walk
  • 1 hour gym
  • 1.5 hours cycling

Lets see how long it lasts this time.

You know you live in London when …

April 12th, 2007

I found this on the internet and thought it was pretty funny/accurate. 

1 . You say “the City” and expect everyone to know which one.

2. You have never been to The Tower of London or Madame Tussauds but love Brighton

3. You can get into a four-hour argument about how to get from Shepherds Bush to Elephant & Castle at 3:30 on the Friday before a long weekend, but can’t find Dorset on a map.

4. Hookers and the homeless are invisible.

5. You step over people who collapse on the Tube.

6. You believe that being able to swear at people in their own language makes you multilingual.

7. You’ve considered stabbing someone.

8. Your door has more than three locks.

9. You consider eye contact an act of overt aggression.

10. You call an 8′ x 10′ plot of patchy grass a garden.

11. You consider Essex the “countryside”.

12. You think Hyde Park is “nature”.

13. You’re paying £1,200 a month for a studio the size of a walk-in wardrobe and you think it’s a “bargain”.

14. Shopping in suburban supermarkets and shopping malls gives you a severe attack of agoraphobia.

15. You pay more each month to park your car than most people in the UK pay in rent.

16. You pay £3 without blinking for a beer that cost the bar 28p.

17. You actually take fashion seriously.

18. You have 27 different take-away menus next to your telephone.

19. The UK west of Heathrow is still theoretical to you.

20. You’re suspicious of strangers who are actually nice to you.

21. Your idea of personal space is no one actually physically standing on you.

22. £50 worth of groceries fit in one plastic bag.

23. You have a minimum of five “worst cab ride ever” stories.

24. You don’t hear sirens anymore.

25. You’ve mentally blocked out all thoughts of the city’s air/water quality and what it’s doing to your insides.

26. You live in a building with a larger population than most towns.

27. Your cleaner is Portuguese, your grocer is Somali, your butcher is Halal, your deli man is Israeli, your landlord is Italian, your laundry guy is Philippino, your bartender is Australian, your favourite diner owner is Greek, the watch seller on your corner is Senegalese, your last cabbie was African, your newsagent is Indian and your local English chippie owner is Turkish.

28. You wouldn’t want to live anywhere else until you get married.

29. You roll your eyes and say ‘tsk’ at the news that someone has thrown themselves under a tube train.

30. Your day is ruined if you don’t get a copy of Metro on the way to work.

Kite Land Boarding

April 11th, 2007

I’ve booked a kite land boarding lesson for next wednesday evening. It looks like a lot of fun and there is a great spot for it just around the corner from here. Its basically flying a parachute type kite while riding a skate board type thing. If I find I can handle it ok, I may even try kite surfing on the water.

Anyway I will get Mike to come down too and snap some photos of me. 

Wish me luck!

 

The Office

April 10th, 2007

Today I had to go into the office. This meant getting up before the sparrowfart at the ungodly hour of 5.30am. It’s a bit of a novelty going to the office these days. Everyone gives that shock/horror look wondering why I made the effort of a 3 hour commute when there are no drinks planned for the evening.
 
Then there was the drama with my bottom drawer in my desk.  I made the mistake of leaving some cereal in my draw the last time I was in the office about a month ago, and a mouse/rat had got into it.  There is muesli and mouse droppings all over the place. It stinks! I’ll get someone from premises to deal with that tomorrow when I am not there.
 
Then the trains lived up to their reputation by being affected by major engineering work. What is normally a 2 hour train journey now turned into a 3 hour journey. I could get to goddamned Paris quicker! The problem with these long train journeys is they have a bar onboard. Normally I get plastered on the 2 hour journey, so I thought it best to catch the train to mikes work and get a lift home with him. This was a good move as we also got home in time for Home and Away and bike night down the quay.

I am sooo looking forward to a sleep in tomorrow morning.

 

 

Eggcellent Day

April 9th, 2007

The Easter bunny came. I kicked Mike out of bed to make a cup of tea and he found easter eggs in the tea bags and sugar. We will need to throw it all out now and get the exterminators in. Gawd knows where that dirty bunny has been.

It was the most glorious sunny day and Matt joined us for a less optimistic bike ride today. We rode only 15 miles (about 26kms). We cycled down the ferry at Sandbanks and crossed over to Studland. Studland has an amazing sandy beach, very unusual for England. There is no promenade, houses, shops or anything touristy. Its about a 2km uninterrupted stretch of sand and dunes, very similar to NZ beaches.

Here comes the ferry to fetch us.

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Its a chain ferry. I’m always paranoid the chains will snap and we will drift out of control out to sea.

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Mike and Matt and Ollie enjoying the brief crossing

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A beachy shot

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Then we continued on the road a bit to a pub called the Banks Arms. .

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The pub had a large outdoor area with sea view but I didnt think to get a photo of it. We had some lunch there. Matt had the ploughmans lunch and Mike had a brie and cranberry baguette. I ate my healthy lunch I had packed.

We finished off the day with a few beers down the quay, then a lovely meal at Oriel. Their garlic prawns are really large, really garlicky, and really yummy.