My God, It's Raining

Awful session at the gym tonight; not sure what that was about.  Perhaps I’m not quite over my cold yet, or maybe I just went a bit too hard at the start.  Either way, I think the most apt and quantitative description of my efforts this evening is crappy crappy crap crap.

On the subject of lyrical and masterful use of the English language, I had an idea for a short story this morning, which I may write up for the Bridport Prize.  Hell, I’m going to write it anyway, and I should probably think closely about what sort of market I should be pitching it too.  I’ve been submitting willy and, indeed, nilly all over the place and it has done me no good whatsoever aside from filling up my email inbox with rejection notices (which, surprisingly, aren’t quite as damaging as I expected them to be – I fully imagined the sensation would be akin to being crushed in a press with every fresh rejection but thankfully it’s just kind of “meh”).

So, I’m not going to go too deeply into what the story is, except to give you the high concept movie pitch version of it (as suggested by my friend Mark – credit where credit is due).

Ready?

Think The Good Life meets The Wicker Man.

Already I’m conjuring up images of an old Felicity Kendal entering a taurobolium, being showered with the blood of a sacrificial beast, and emerging…renewed.  I think that’s a fantastic reason to harness the dark blood magicks – increasing the world’s Hot Felicity Kendal Quotient is a prime motivator for any (and all!) budding darke wyzardes.

I’ve also got another story in mind, a much shorter one, about a Kelpie.  As the Wiki notes, the Each Uisge is probably the more apt for a tale set in the Scottish Highlands, but I remember reading about Kelpies, dammit, and Kelpie it’s going to be!

Anyway, roll on the weekend.  I’ve got lots of writing to do (and cleaning!)

Lisa doesn’t like prudishness.  Self-imposed embarrassment for sheer embarrassment’s sake has no place to her, and thus the general behaviour of Brits in changing rooms, saunas, and suchlike annoys the bejesus out of her.

Personally I have no problem with it.  There are only five showerheads in the communal shower area at the local leisure centre, but no matter how busy it gets in there, I never have to wait for a shower.  More often than not, people will go home still in their workout clothes and get showered and changed there.  When there are actual, other people present in the changing room/shower area, they will wait until you’re finished in the showers before going in.

Seriously.  I have no idea how these people would cope with an onsen.

We went to London today to sort out Lisa’s passport renewal.  Leaving the embassy, I offered to help a woman who was trying to control her infant son plus manouevre a two-child stroller (filled to capacity with additional daughters) by helping her lift the stroller down the stairs.

Nice story?  Nice story.

Then we happened to walk along the same street behind her, and then into the very same shop she went into (which Lisa also wanted to visit).  I’m going to have to sotp helping people out before I end up facing a restraining order.

On a side note, I still hate London.  I hate the prevailing attitude of “oh it’s such a busy place there’s no time for courtesy” that means I regularly end up having to dodge people who are simply too important to move a step to one side to avoid running into their fellow pedestrians.  Got elbowed in the spine a couple of times as people “brushed” past, enough for me to start sticking out a foot every time it happened.  Petty? Yes.  Satisfying?  Hell, yes.

Finally – CSI season 9.

Yes, I know we’re well behind the CSI curve, but there’s been so much else to watch and, to be honest, we don’t watch things with any regularity.

Got to give it to Grissom, he knows how to leave the show.  Stricken with ennui, losing his focus, no longer sure about his future and desperately missing his gap-toothed self-righteous nightmare girlfriend, he decides to leave the lab…right after doing that dominatrix one last time.

Laurence Fishburne is great, simply by dint of being Laurence Fishburne.

So despite this whole marathon thing, I still really like cross-training.  I know I should be out on the road more working on that actual running thing (first 10K race is on the 9th!) but I’m still not back up to a level of fitness that I’m happy with and the gym gives me a bit of a helping hand.

For starters, it means I can work on incline running.  This place is pancake flat, and although there’s a reasonable swell heading out the west side of the town, it’s a path next to one of the main roads and I fancy training without having an asthma attack into the bargain.

Following that, I know what I’m like with regards to overtraining.  I’ve injured myself several times in the past doing completely avoidable things, like injuring my left calf muscle – I wasn’t drinking enough water (I guess) and it seized up on me while I was on a rowing machine maybe eight or nine years ago, now I have to spend five minutes stretching it before every workout to make sure it doesn’t try to leap up under my knee again.

Between that and the rest of the twinges and aches that remind me of the bloody-minded stupidity with which I previously approached fitness, I’m taking the long view with regards to building things up.  Lots of low-impact interval work on the bike and stepper and the ever-joyful 900 calories per hour painfest that is the rowing machine gives me the range to keep building up my general fitness without pounding all my joints to dust.

I will do more road miles.  Just not right at this minute.

On a side note, I made spaghetti carbonara for dinner.  It’s the first time I’ve ever made it and I considered looking up a recipe until my brain kicked in and said “it’s eggs and cream, dumbass, just cook the damn thing“.

I still don’t understand the instructions on the dried spaghetti you get in the UK, though.  It suggests boiling the spaghetti for 11-12 mins, when 6-7 is more than enough.  I can’t imagine what it must look, feel and taste like with an extra five minutes in it.

So, Alistair and I are going to run a half-marathon in September, followed by a full marathon in October.

While we’re at it, we’ll try and raise some money for kidney research.

Training updates and whatnot to follow!

Yesterday I printed out 102 pages of text, which was dull but nevertheless had to be done.

I also fell while going upstairs far faster than I should have been going, which resulted in me landing heavily on my right arm, which is now making gristly crispy noises every time I rotate my wrist (Joy!).

Additionally, I bought some ribbon!  Lovely, blue ribbon.

Oh, and while I was standing at the level crossing waiting for the train to go past, an old man with a swastika tattooed on his forearm asked me what time it was.  I would like to say I shamed him with an articulate deconstruction of his choice of political associations, but instead I just went “A half past a nazi!” really loudly and then marched off up to the train station to avoid having to deal with confrontation.

I also had a pannini!  It had feta cheese and peppers and olives in.  Tasty!

Later on, I was looking for printer cartridges in Tesco, and while I was doing that I ran into two women who were looking for the same type of cartridge.  Now, normally this isn’t an unusual thing, since people buy printer cartridges all the time, but one of them was wearing a t-shirt that was a missing person advert.  It turned out that one of their friends had gone missing on the tenth of April, and they had been searching like mad for him ever since.  It was pretty obvious where all the printer ink had been going, essentially.

So Tesco didn’t have the type either they or I needed (we were all looking for the same type), and I decided I would go to the WH Smiths down the road instead.  They did have them in stock, and it was a buy one, get one half price deal so I ended up buying two.

You can see where I’m going here.  On my way back to the car, I ran into the two women again and (as any decent person would do) offered them one of my cartridges.  They gladly accepted and off I went.  Nice story?  Nice story.

But then I got into my car and drove out of the car park, turned right and stopped at the lights only to discover that I had pulled up right behind their car and although I was quite innocently just driving home, I felt incredibly awkward.

“Hey, is that the guy that just gave us some printer ink?  Is he following us?”

Then, at the next junction, they turned the way I wanted to go.  I had to take a longer route home.

He’s the Goddamn Batman.

I love The Mask of Zorro.  I know that it’s an incredibly cheesy film, and I should really know better, but still it manages to satisfy my cravings for a bit of dumb adventure.

Certainly it provided a suitable antidote after watching Babylon A.D., which we added to our LoveFilm list out of a egalitarian desire to give it as good a chance as every other movie that we list.

Big mistake. While it was pretty easy to work out what the story was, the clumsy writing and direction meant that I spent the entire film trying not to snap my remote control in two.  I don’t know if they meant it to be a twist, or some sort of astonishing reveal when they explain the girl’s backstory, but it was just horribly mishandled.  The ending was terrible, and Vin Diesel’s glib one-liner to camera that closes things up feels almost ad-libbed; like he’s sick of the movie too, and wants the viewer to know how ridiculous he’s finding it.

Anyway.

I bought a hand-driven lawnmower at the weekend, and spent an afternoon pushing it round the lawn in a parody of actual gardening.  While I was out there, I made a new friend.

Lisa was overjoyed, as she adores frogs, and a happy ten minutes was spent staring at him before I decided it was probably in his best interests to be chased back into the shade.  Oddly enough, ten minutes was long enough for him to stop being petrified of the insanely massive giants, and getting him to go away from where I was mowing was tasking work.

I didn’t dare tell Lisa how many spiders there are in our garden.  She’d never set foot out there if she knew.

Getting back into exercise has been fun.  To be straight about it, I’d hardly done anything fitness-oriented since I collapsed last year, and I was starting to feel a bit depressed about it.  Was I avoiding working out because I had been ill, or was it just an excuse?

Well, looks like we’ve sorted out the answer to that.  I’m having cards printed up with “Workshy Bastard” on them as we speak.  I type, even.  Whatever.

So on the other side of that particular wall, I’ve been tempted by the urge to get my tech on, particularly the idea of getting a Nike+ monitor to go with my iPod Touch.

The only problem is in the title.  Batteries not rechargable.  Batteries cannot be replaced. I remember once upon a time there was a guy who railed against the very same thing in the iPod (in early-generation models, the rechargable battery had an effective life of 18 months, less with heavy use, and replacing the battery cost more than a new iPod).  He even went to the point of mocking up some iPod posters with this information on them and sticking them up wherever he could.  I thought it was a good point, but sadly one that most people wouldn’t really have the motivation to take issue with.  At the time, the life-span of the iPod was about the same time as it took the next generation of iPod to turn up.

Still, it annoys me that the Nike+ sensors have the same problem.  They are entirely self-contained, with no option to replace or recharge the battery inside.  1000 hours, depending on use, and as far as I can see there is a small but nevertheless significant number of people reporting that their sensors are getting nowhere near that target.

It annoys me because my heart rate monitor is the absolute opposite.  The strap can be opened with a coin to replace the battery; the watch needs a bit more work because of the water-proof seal inside but nevertheless it’s still a fairly simple operation that can be carried out cheaply at any repair shop.  I’ve had to replace both batteries once, after four years of regular use.  Having something that can’t have it’s back end screwed off and a new battery put in seems like a retrograde step to me.  It feels like a consumable rather than an asset, if you know what I mean.

So, for the moment, I’ll have to stick with the Tracker function on my mobile phone.  It seems to work OK, but is fiddly to set up and I need to wander back and forward for 5 minutes before it gets my location right.  It’s not perfect, but it’s fine for a free application, and  at least I can recharge the damn thing when I want to.

On a side note, I saw the iPad launched to much joy and happiness in the US.  Good for Apple.  I will admit that when my brother came to visit I was extremely jealous of his Macbook Pro but the iPad doesn’t hold the same draw.  It feels like something you’d buy and then sorely regret when version 2.0 comes out two years down the line.  Again, something you can open up and customise would be a welcome improvement.  There’s an obvious line of argument against that – that quite a large amount of customers prefer sleek lines and don’t want to pry their shit open – but that seems specious ground for arguing that we should deny them the option.