Back after taking the weekend off

Let's start positive with today. After a ropey night's sleep (hmm, not very positive) I rolled out of bed, weighed myself (a little over at 68.3kg if I remember correctly) and did knocked out 100 pushups; my arms typically have somewhere between 80 and 100 in them first thing in the morning, and as I'm close to my marathon this is pretty much all the upper body work I do.

I packed my bag, looked in on the sleeping kids and headed to work on the 05:30 bus. That meant I was a coffee to the good and ready to meditate by the beach by 6am. I'd also knocked out a good deed for the day, handing a found wallet into the police station. No cash, but cards and a driver's licence so it should find its way back to the owner. On the meditation thing - I've not gone all hippy, it is something I've been doing for a while to try and lower the anxiety I often feel at work. Mixed results, and recently I've sort of made it mediatation-lite-with-a-side-of-deep-controlled-breathing. Anyway, it feels like a good thing and therefore is.

It was really rather nice this morning. A little fresh but hardly any wind, and although the sunrise was not a real stunner it was quite lovely.

I started in the Manly office, showing my face and catching up wiht a few things before heading over to Surry Hills on the ferry. Unusually for me I did some work, but the work was catching up on my Potential Life  program so it is a work thing but at the moment a lot more of a working on me thing. Pretty sure I mentioned it a few posts back. Anyway, mentioned it again. On that, one of my strengths is apparently an appreciation of beauty and excellence. Which I think is right, and as evidence of that, here is another picture from this morning.

It's in Surry Hills, in a small garden bed that gets used as an ashtray and is outside of an office. There is a small Giant Bird of Paradise, and it has a small shoot, and on that small shoot was some dew. And it was also quite lovely. So although I was sort of hurrying to work I could not resist stopping to take a picture.

It often drives Sal mad, my stopping to take a picture of a rock, or a spider, or some rust on a pole. Or a whale or a sunrise or a sunset. You'll have to take my word for it that the sunset was also quite cracking today. But as one of my other strengths is honesty...you can trust me.

I ran the 13km home form the Surry Hills office and stopped at the lights at the top of Awaba Street in Mosman. From there I got a view of the sunlit clouds as the sun went down. Any other day I may not have noticed as I'll usually run across on a red man, but this evening there was a guy with his daughter waiting at the lights, and I like to set a good example when parents are setting a good example.

And to complete today's set of lovely things: As I ran across the Harbour Bridge I was looking out at the pastel pinky-grey clouds over the harbour, and peeking out from a gap in those clouds, hanging just over the harbour - a near full moon. Yep, the run home tonight was quite special.

Far more special than Sunday and Saturday's run, both of which came late on in the day when still nursing a hangover. Saturday was particularly bad after quite a decent Friday night in the 4 Pines on the company dollar. The three pints of Brekkie Porter plus another pint had me wobbling - not as much as others, but I had a wobble on. And although I did go to the Old Manly Boatshed I realised early that this was not a good idea and bailed after a single ale and a game of pool. A younger me would have been far more stupid. I did spend a couple of hours on a drunken wander through YouTube before going to bed, so it was kinda inevitable that I'd wake up feeling rotten.

But hey, Saturday is fairly low key, and I did the kid stuff and I enjoyed it because I was mostly hanging with just little 'un so there was no bickering to deal with. I grabbed an hour on the sofa before grudgingly heading out for a bare-minimum run (which was still a respectable 10k distance.)

Saturday night was a dinner party at the house in Alexandria of a colleague of Sal's. The guest list included Sal's boss and his boss, so I thought I needed to be on best behaviour. And I was, though I probably didn't need to fret about that  as it was a very nice evening that i thoroughly enjoyed. Weird eh? not like me at all. A couple of glasses of bubbles chased away the remaining cobwebs and started weaving Sunday's.

It bugs me that I can't/won't/don't give up drinking. I like a poncy beer, or a half decent wine, I like my gin...and although I don't hit it hard like I used to I can be a little immoderate. So what? Well, I know it hurts me. Not just the wooly head the next day, but my ankle swells and if I have a bit of a session it can stay larger-than-normal for a couple of days. It is the curse of paying attention to your weight and fitness. Am I likely to stop? Well, for the odd month here and there in the run up to a race, but stop-stop - probably not.

I could write more, but this is going on a bit, so I'll draw to a close. Ate too much food - but really good food. Didn't drink too much but was topping up, so I woke up Sunday feeling rather average. I went into the office for a few hours, dropped H at a birthday party then went for another average run before collecting her again. Didn't feel much like hanging with the other parents (or anyone else for that matter.)

And there you go, I think we're pretty much back up to date. A diary list of a post really, but a decent work dump. I'm happy with that.