Showing posts with label HM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HM. Show all posts

Sunday, August 14, 2016

Sunday lovely sunday

Quick run through of the day before I go to bed. Early nigtt because I'm on a week of early starts.

Up at 7am, a bit later than usual because I stayed up last night to watch the opening game of the English Premier League, this despite Garmin having told me earlier in the day that I slept less than 86% of people like me and I should really try and get some more sleep. They're probably right. Anyway, hull won 2-1 - surprising just about everyone. Alas AFC Wimbledon had lot by a similar score by the time I woke up.

Anyway, 5km dog walk to the Harbour wiht a large cappuccino. Back for some breakfast (big brekky and another large cap) and then I took the girls to Rockhouse for some rock climbing, AJ at a friend's birthday partner and me wiht the H bomb. Both of them were up to the top in no time - loved it. We will be going back.

After that I dropped the girls back home and then drove to Chatswood to drop the car off for its annual service. I always use Chatswood Auto Repairs because they were recommended to me by JCJ and have never let me down. The walk back was another 13km and another large cappuccino. Nnot a quick walk - blame the camera I had taken along for company.

Quick aside - I walked past our old house, the one we sold along wiht the plans to extend it to a lovely 4-bedder. Looks like the new owners are getting near to completing our vision for the place. Glad the old cottage wasn't bulldozed, but kinda sad that it isn't us that got it done. Lovely house, super-quiet street too...ah well, not exactly slumming it over on the beaches.



Got home and had a cheeky couple of cheese slices - basically pre-sliced cheese, not that plastic shite - to get me through to dinner. Dinner was a bit of a roast; some pork (lovely) and broccoli. The spuds and pumpkin had been kinda cremated so I passed on them. I did finish off the greek yoghurt wiht a bit of muesli.

And that is a quick run through of the moving and eating for the day - probably a zero-sum game. Seriously considering the Garmin Index smart scales because well why not. Geeky fun.

Quick aside #2. It was the City2Surf today. Didn't run it. Sad face. Bloody achilles. But surely if I can spend 6.5 of my first 10 wakeful hours on my feet, walking almost 20km in there, then I should be able to run again. Surely...

Saturday, August 13, 2016

A typical Saturday

Up at a little after 06:30 to walk the dog - 5km easy stroll, large cappuccino and a small biscuit (because fuck the diet!)

Back home and load the girls into the car; drop H at gymnastics and head to a new cafe - Fuel Espresso in Brookvale - for breakfast with AJ. Mum does the weekly chores in peace and quiet. Fuel is a recommendation from a guy at work. It is run by a friend of his and he mentioned it when I said I fancied trying shakshuka. As it happens I still fancy trying it because I had a second large cap and a tub of yoghurt, muesli and rhubarb. I do like my rhubarb. The coffee was good, the place comfortably crowded and busy with takeout trade. Refuelled AJ and I caught up on some olympic action, including heat 2 of the women's 1500m. Sifan Hassan ran a bonkers race, hanging at the back until the last lap and then overtaking the pack to win it - looked awesome. Then back to collect H and head to the pool for the kids' swimming lesson.

Had to take a picture of this up near the gymnastics place

A photo posted by @auswomble on

The girls' lessons are at the same time (it was water safety week this week, so clothed and learning not to die and what to do if someone else looks like they might) and I jump in and do a few laps. I swim like a brick. Haven't done a lot of work on my swimming since leaving school. I had a few technique lessons when I was back in the London over a decade ago, but apart from that I'm mainly run for exercise and sunk wiht or without a tank when in the water. Swimming - it's not as easy as some people make it look.

It occured to me today that I could let my Garmin Vivoactive know I was swimming. I did 100m and then switched to 50m their-and-backs with a rest between each for 500m in 11min 29sec. You'll have to take my work for it or hope this link works because when I tried to embed the code form Strava it said it was 19minutes on a stationary bike. Dur?

Back home and did some stuff, then had a cheese and pickle sarnie (because fuck the diet!) on wholemeal with butter.

Right, off to make dinner for the girls. Will update later with whatever I have for dinner. At the moment I have NFI.

Back again....I may have snuck two cheese slices and a slim slice of hame before dinner. Dinner was broccoli, baramundi and some sweet potato, then  had a bowl of yoghurt and muesli.

Friday, April 22, 2016

cheese free cheese dream

I had a series of weird dreams last night despite consuming neither cheese nor booze before bed.

I recall bits of a dream. The dream either woke me up or had me in a follow up dream in which I had woken up from the previous dream. Either way I was thinking the original dream was a bit horrible but was the bones of a good short ghost story.

The brief synopsis. And yes, it is not particularly original, and yes I used to watch Tales of the Unexpected a lot.

Man has young daughter. Daughter is probably 4years old. It's my dream so man is probably me and daughter is probably H. Daughter is actually a ghost of the recently deceased daughter. Only the father can see, hear and talk to her. She is real to him. Not a nice dream but it stopped well short of a nightmare.

So I started thinking about my ghost story.

This father is so consumed with grief, his denial so absolute, that he believes the daughter is still alive. He speaks to her, behaves as if she is still there. The only difference is that he now makes endless excuses about why she can't leave the house. His relationship with the daughter plays out in the home while the he manages - just - to keep functioning in his day-to-day life.

His wife is torn. She knows the truth but cannot bring herself to tell her husband and risk destroying him. She plays along. The couple grow old but his ghost daughter is frozen in time, always a 4 year old. It is all rather sad, but the wife has her husband - or enough of the husband he was - and he has his daughter.

Then one day, an old man, the father dies.

After the funeral the mother returns home.

She opens the door. Her 4 year daughter rushes up and hugs her. "Mummy, where have you been?"

A slightly confused look on her face she asks "where's daddy?"

Sunday, January 18, 2015

the wobbles

A bit of a Janathon wobble today. One of those "why am I doing this?" days. Of course one of the reasons I'm doing it is as training for this year's Six Foot Track. My rough training plan is a ton of base in January, go long once in February and hope for the best on the second Sunday of March. That seemed to work for me last year, and I figure it is the least I can get away with. Said it before and I'll say it again; old guys need to train smarter, not harder.

But I can do a reasonable base-load in January with a couple of days off...I blame Paul Lewis. On the one hand I don't want to get involved in a Janathon race, but on the other I don't want to open up too much of a lead and allow the wobbles to creep in, that devil on the shoulder saying "go on, have a rest, you'll be fine..." I know he can thrown down some big runs in exactly the same way that I can't. So that leaves me in a bit of a rut; I churn out (the equivalent of) a half each day, running mostly the same routes (or variations on a theme to make sure I go via enough bubblers to prevent dehydration getting on top of me.) It can get a bit dull. I've got a 10k on the last day of the month, so I know I need to keep on top of things in the mid-section in order to have a bit of a rest before Saturday 31st. After all, I'd like to do a respectable time in The Sun Run.

Once again choice was a bit limited. I try to run at times that have the lowest possible impact on the rest of the family and fit around the things I need to do. The dogs needs a walk, and in the summer it has to be early. He's a big hairy lump and struggles in the heat of the day. Hence a lot of my posts starting with something like "So I walked Rowlf..."

So I walked Rowlf down to the Spit and he had a swim and an early breakfast of dead fish. He spotted the fish first but I managed to keep him away from it and distracted while working on fetching from the Harbour. But then I got a bit distracted and he nailed it.

Back home and it was off to Darling Harbour so the kids could play in some fountains and on some
swings and slides and wot-not in the play park. It was a warm morning and I was sweating with the effort of just standing there, which was a little concerning. But it was nowhere near as hot as yesterday; it was about 27 in the shade, so still pretty warm, but I can do that. I set off at ten past midday.

The girls had had a good time, mum had loaded them into the car while I changed - unenthusiastically - into my running gear and set off. Mad dog at home, Englishman out running in the midday sun. Nothing new there. The plan was to bimble about in the city for a while, clock up a few km then head over the bridge and home via a bike route. The plan changed a little as it went along. I thought I might do 23km to get to 400 for the month, then I thought I'd do a half and eventually I thought sod it and headed home a little shorter than that. I did run a few yards past home and back to clock up 20km for the day. I was in credit from yesterday so still managed a marathon distance for the weekend, and given the weather I figure that's OK. Happy to do a single run.

Janathoned out
I had a bit of housework to do when I got home, then the girls woke from their lunchtime snoozes Sal headed out. Fortunately the girls have some sort of bead-craft-plaything that a more engaged father would probably know a bit more about. I'm not him. They entertained themselves and I fell asleep on the deck, under the ceiling fan. AJ took a picture of me - Janathoned out - wearing my Janathon T-shirt. Represent!

Janathon total 397km

Edit: Six Foot is the second Saturday in March. I nearly added 24hours to my personal worst. Glad I looked...

Friday, January 09, 2015

don't mess with the leopard seal

Not my best night's sleep last night with the girls tag-teaming to make sure I didn't get more than a couple of hours of uninterrupted sleep. AJ came in to tell me she was coughing, which I knew because I'd heard her coughing. Then H came in for some reason or other, then I think AJ came in again, possibly en-route to the en-suite, before H came in a second time with her Pillow-Pet. It was wet she said. Because she'd spilled a bit of water on it. Not happy to simply put it on the floor next to her bed she handed it to me and I put it on the floor next to my bed.

H seems able to get by on interrupted sleep, maybe because she got used to it when she was very young and suffered with some breathing difficulties. She's fine now, but does like to go to bed as late as possible and can often pop up next to the bed, arms outstretched like a female, midget Christo Redentor* wanting nothing more than a hug from dad before toddling back off to bed with the gait of an Ewok. I can, usually, fall back to sleep as well as she does; we've both had plenty of practice.

*Christ the Redeemer, that sodding great hilltop statue of Big J in Brazil. I was just trying to sound all traveled and interesting and probably ended up sounding like a bit of a try-hard twat.

Somewhere in between last night's awakenings I had a dream. I was walking or running along a bush track next to a body of water that looked a bit like a lake but couldn't have been because a fisherman, who lost the fish he had hooked, hauled in an enormous leopard seal. I stopped, and was part way through telling the fisherman that the animal he'd landed was probably quite dangerous when it scooped him up in its mouth and took him into the water. The seal had a large pink tongue but none of the impressive teeth you would expect to see. I don't recall any screaming from the fisherman, nor seeing any blood. Maybe because the seal was toothless. The seal dragged the fisherman underwater while I fumbled for my phone and a spear fisherman took off in pursuit. I have absolutely no idea where the spearo came from. The next thing I remember is being puzzled when the returned spearo told me he was going to kill the seal while typing a knot in its "tail." The Ewok probably woke me up at that point, denying me the chance to tell the spearo that he'd come back with the wrong animal. Far too small. And it had a tail.

Leopard SealI'm not sure where all of the elements of the dream came from, but this may account for the leopard seal. A couple of months ago I was with Rowlf at the Spit when a ranger approached. I expected him to tell me I couldn't let the dog swim and I should move on. But no, he advised me to throw the stick to the south and not north because at the northern end of the little not-really-a-beach was a leopard seal. If a leopard seal and dog were to have a bit of a tussle it is extremely unlikely that it would have a happy ending for the dog. As it was, the seal was far less interested in swimming than Rowlf was. The animal, young and little underweight but otherwise healthy, hung around for a couple of days. It didn't seem to mind the procession of kayakers - it parked itself right outside of a kayak rental store- and photographers who came to take a look. The running bit of the dream is fairly obvious, I'd been talking to my father -in-law about spear fishing recently. Dreams - the brain doing a tidy up while you're offline. I suspect we're not really supposed to see them.

So I woke up this morning tired, confused and dehydrated but at least I could chill out while Sal was taking Rowlf for his Friday morning walk. It gave me the opportunity to get some fluids onboard while not sweating them out too early.

Once Sal and the dog returned - both knackered by the humidity - I ran to work, knackering myself in the humidity. Then I cheered myself up no-end by having a read of Paul Lewis's blog and finding he'd thrown down a 28mile day. Hmmm, miles. More miles than I'd done kilometres.. I'm starting to go off him.

The run to work was a typically sweaty affair. humid - tick. Not a breath of wind - tick. Sunny - tick. But I've done the run to work that many times that I sort of just churn it out. As I sit here after lunch the thought of running home has very little appeal. Temperature will probably creep above 30 and I'll have a warm headwind. Yuk. I'd rather the unlikely thunderstorm give me a soaking. The work beer-fridge opens in a couple of hours, I'll see what I feel like then.As it stands, 11km for the day.

Of course I ran home. The weather gods really don't like me this month. Having spent all day rehydrating, and just about making it by the time I went to get changed, I was hoping for a nice cooling storm to run through. It had clouded over and the bureau of meteorology were showing some storms out west; I might be in luck. Overcast and sticky outside. A few km in and a few spots of rain, but no storm. Then a few more spots of rain that, if anything, seemed to just add to the humidity and certainly didn't have any cooling effect. There were brief pockets of slightly cooler air, but then patches of warm treacle. It really was quite an unpleasant end to the week. Thanks weather. No really, THANKS.

Janathon km total - (Peugeot) 205 (GTi)


Ageing hooligan
My second 205GTi. I do miss them.


Wednesday, October 02, 2013

meanwhile, upstairs and in the nation's capital...

Just a quick post to let the blog know I still care but not enough to stay up too much later this evening after a rotten sleep last night.

Downstairs is mostly done. It needs paint and carpet, a couple of doors, a new new toilet to replace the first new toilet that didn't flush properly. It has been undercoated and this weekend coming it gets a topcoat. Stuart has moved upstairs and as paint is added to one end of the house plenty of the other end is ending up in a skip in the garden.

The former sunroom and master bedrooms and Harrie's old bedroom are now a single open space with no ceiling but some impressively large steel beams strategically placed to stop the roof from falling. The back wall of the house is gone, replaced by a large hole that is almost exactly the same size as the bifold door that has been leaning for some time against the silky oak tree in the garden.

Wires criss cross the roof rafters waiting for lights to be attached. I got home this afternoon to see our toilet and bath in the garden, so it is now the shower and WC in the laundry or nothing. Yes, things are coming on apace. I doubt we'll be having Xmas on the deck, but soon after. Already the hole on the left-hand corner in the picture above has been bricked, apart from a gap for the splashback window.

In other, related news, I took the girls to Canberra last weekend. Alex the painter was here on Saturday and Sunday just-gone so Saturday at home was paint fumes to the north, brick dust to the south, not great for the ladies. I really should go into more details as the little ladies had a great weekend. We left at Saturday lunchtime and they slept while I drove to Marulan, a truck stop with a little history that is about 30km north of Goulburn. Dinner was Chinese and complaints about don't-like-it until the ice cream arrived. Sunday morning we drove to Canberra and the Floriade flower show, which occupied our morning before a drive to spend the night with Derek and Jo in Berry on Sunday night. Good to catch up, more fun for the kids an then an early start on Monday to drive the kids to daycare and then head to work. Sal meanwhile house and dog sat in the dust and fumes and relative peace of a kid-free weekend while we did our 660km+ road trip.

Yes, a simple list of we did this then that then this. Not especially inspiring and I should do better. But we're up to date.