7000 Miles

So today I happened to mark off hitting the 7,000 mile mark in my car. I've not been tracking this particularly per se, but as I accidentally hit the reset trip computer button on the first day I bought it, and have had no reason to track a new trip since, it's been effectively counting my miles since I've owned the car.

Of course, the annoyance (that I noted to Chrissi yesterday evening) is that this counts for absolutely nothing. My insurance premiums and general competence of a driver are both judged on the amount of experience I have in years driving (i.e. what is now around nine months) and not on the actual amount I've covered. Were I to drive barely a mile - or not at all - over the course of the year, this would be rubber-stamped as a year's driving experience under my belt safely negotiated. As I'm driving slightly above-average this is more vexing.

There is of course a balance - a reason why insurance premiums are calculated on an annual mileage basis - which is that the more miles you do, the more you are on the road and so the more liable you are to be in an accident or incident. However, the point where more miles increase as opposed to decrease the risk is a lot further along the road than where I've gotten to so far!

Daily Achievements

Today was a good day if only because it marked the halfway point of the week - this happening on the first day is very pleasing! As previously mentioned, we're away for the tail end of the week and with the bank holiday yesterday both Chrissi and I have only today and tomorrow in work.

In work isn't wholly accurate either - I have the morning working from home tomorrow awaiting the landlord who is coming round to inspect the various issues with the property. After a hiatus of around four months on his part it's about time - so I'll be tidying a little and preparing to demonstrate the various issues.

This evening's acheivement was that Chrissi and I again went swimming, which is almost becoming a regular Tuesday routine now. It was odd as I started to recognise fellow Tuesday evening swimmers in my lane - although as I obviously don't wear my glasses in the pool and am so incredibly short-sighted, I only know them by internal nicknames such as 'woman with pink swimming cap'. It could be someone entirely different with a matching pink swimming cap for all I know!

Playlist Challenge II: Roads

This week's efforts in playlist composition (I'm thinking about making this a regular event, as long as I can think of enough options) comes from the more mundane theme of roads and road types. I'm not quite sure what made me settle on this theme, but noticing a common theme in 'things that are travelled along' used in song titles, I wanted to see how far I could get. I came up with the following, again sticking with my approach not to repeat a theme item across multiple songs:

U2 - Where The Streets Have No Name
Foo Fighters - Long Road to Ruin
Green Day - Boulevard of Broken Dreams
AC/DC - Highway to Hell
Goo Goo Dolls - Broadway
Tom Robinson - 2 4 6 8 Motorway
Eddy Grant - Electric Avenue
Chuck Berry - Route 66

There are likely many bands whose name matches the theme - one that comes to mind from recently is The Streets - but the so-glaringly-obvious-it'd-be-a-crime-not-to-mention-it candidate for the album on the same topic is Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited.

I slightly cheated on this one by looking up the artists for a couple of the songs which I could remember but didn't know who they were by. I doubt anyone cares.

Long-Delayed Recap

In late May, the week before Chrissi and I saw Green Day play a stadium gig at the Emirates, I suggested that my busy routine would prevent me from blogging about it at the time and I also unerringly forecasted that my promises to return to the subject and recap later would all come to naught.

However, last night / early this morning I was watching some of the highlights from the Reading festival (courtesy of the BBC iPlayer which I cannot commend enough for this service) which featured Green Day's main stage set from the opening night. This reminded me that I had intended at some point to post some detail myself on when we saw them live back in June. So today's blog was born.

The Support While we just caught the tail end of All Time Low (sounded decent, haven't heard anything else of them besides this to judge them on) the great thing about the stadium gig is that you had a much better calibre of support acts. The main support act was Kaiser Chiefs, who were excellent in (1) going to their most well-known back catalogue and (2) despite being a major band themselves, being fully aware they were in a support capacity and not thanking the crowd for coming to see them!

The Lead-in As opposed to the typical long (im)patient build-up and sudden appearance, we were treated to two songs played through the PA - the first being Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody (and the sight of a crowd of 60-80,000 all singing along is quite amazing - not sure many other songs could get that reaction either), and the second being The Ramones' Blitzkrieg Bop. This is a song that they often will use themselves when playing live, and watching a pink rabbit costumed person stumble around the stage to the song was the focus for the entry of the main act.

The Opening Song Inspired by conversations with Ollie and Chris the previous week at the Muse gig, Chrissi and I had been trying to do our best to predict the opening and closing songs, with minimal success. While we both got half points as I plumped for American Idiot (used as first song in the encore) and Chrissi opted for Know Your Enemy (second song), we both entirely missed the obvious choice - the tour being called the 99 Revolutions tour should have been a clue that the song of the same name would be the first track played. There were enough clues around us in merchandise and clothing to this as well!

The Setlist As you'd expect for a band with their impressive back catalogue, and with a near-on-three hour set to fill, they pulled out all the stops and near all the classics. If you cheat slightly and count Welcome to Paradise (which appears on both the Kerplunk! and Dookie albums) for the former, then you had at least one song from each of their 11 albums - including plucking the excellent Going to Pasalaqua from their 39/Smooth LP. They didn't dwell on the new albums too much, nor ignore them entirely - striking a nice balance between the two.

Lesser-played songs that made an appearance included Sassafras Roots, which has always been a favourite of mine (and sounds superb live), and King For A Day which true to form featured all three members of the band donning drag. The iconic American Idiot track Jesus of Suburbia was played and is definitely even better live - the separate solos really stand out. One song - the only one that I really missed - notable by its absence was Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life), but enough of the great tracks were played to make it worthwhile.

The Show One thing about watching Green Day - and it was particularly in contrast having seen Muse the previous week - was the sheer element of showmanship about this gig. Billy Joe Armstrong is a great frontman with huge energy, and you felt a participant rather than a spectator, there was constant interaction and conversation with the crowd. You were at a concert rather than watching a live play-through. While the repeated hey-hos did get a little wearing, the times they just paused songs midway through to do something different or have a bit of a chat, then carry on from where they'd left off was great.

I'm not sure if it was the best gig I've been to - it's harder to compare to some of those I saw many years ago when I first started to see bands live - but it's definitely got to be up there as a strong contender.

Source Of Easy Amusement

This week I've had a source of constant amusement at work with a mondegreen that I picked up on Monday and have entertained myself with by repeating whenever it still fits.

On Monday, while showing around a new person our receptionist - who while being very nice is grounded in a different reality to this one - was right behind me asking about the location of the new starter's manager with the question "Where's Si gone?" My immediate response (and one I'm rather proud of on a mere three hours sleep) was "Vietnam". This exchange in itself, besides highlighting my on-the-ball wit, was not particularly worth highlighting - but her reaction, to ask in puzzlement "Why is Si in Vietnam?" with a baffled face as the Si gone / Saigon reference completely missed her was wonderful.

This being done, the phrase was repeated a few times during the week, with multiple chuckles. I think even today she still was utterly unaware of the double meaning of what she was saying and why people found it funny.

Well, you've got to find some way to entertain yourself at work, haven't you?

When Does Unusual But Regular Become Routine?

Tonight was another successful gym trip - it's almost to the point that this is routine and mundane and not worth commenting on, but for novelty alone I'll keep bringing it up. I managed to get home quicker from work, so Chrissi and I ignored this entirely and still managed to leave for the gym at the same time. This week I repeated and slightly extended the same routine that I did last week, yet found myself struggling considerably less by the finish. I suspect that on the achievement level this only proves that I was starting from such a low base that all I've done is drag my fitness out of the trench where it was skulking and bring it up to somewhere approaching ground level. At best.

In today's songs that I thought of that were blindingly obvious that I forgot to include on Monday's playlist: Pink by Aerosmith and Yellow by Coldplay. It's not as if I needed to do much more than think of the colour for either!

Mysterious Missive

I noted on Friday that I'd received a surprise letter the previous day, which required a signature and therefore required me to go and collect it. While this had initially surprised me, by the time I got to the Saturday and headed down to the local delivery office I had figured out what it was.

Contained within the envelope were our tickets to the Live at Jodrell Bank show in just over a week - I had been starting to wonder how we got or where we got the tickets. It is quite sensible though that as we had booked in February they would only start sending out the tickets a couple of weeks in advance to avoid people losing tickets!

I could try and explain what the Jodrell Bank Live event is, but I'm not entirely sure! It features music and science at an all-day festival housed at the giant Jodrell Bank telescope. The headliners of the event we are going to are the immense Icelandic band Sigur Ros who I find fantastic. It should be something to look forward to, and the weather forecast itself is even good! That in itself is worth celebrating - as we'll be outside most of the evening at least.

I'll definitely add a couple of blogs at the end of the month about this, and may even include a couple of pictures to help provide context. I usually roll my eyes aggressively at people who feel the need to photograph their gig-going, but this is a bit different so I may want to take a couple of shots myself. More at the end of next week!

Unheralded Success

Despite not announcing and foreshadowing it on yesterday's blog, nevertheless Chrissi and I managed to go swimming this evening. We'd half planned this yesterday but it still took a fair bit of effort to turn this into an actual trip! As opposed to doing this when we got home, with the 6-8pm session at the leisure centre dedicated to an 'all welcome' concept, we opted for the 8-10pm 'lane swimming' instead which was obviously a little more in line with our intentions.

So we ate, relaxed and despite being comfortable and at home we managed to head out to the leisure centre, get a good 30-40 minute swim under our belt and return. I feel quite tired and should definitely sleep well tonight! Or so I hope ...

The annoying thing with theme blogs like yesterday is that even once written, I still mull the theme over in my head and think of items that I missed. In this case, the obvious omission that sprung to my mind not long ago was the not-at-all obscure Van Morrison's Brown Eyed Girl. Not at all obvious!

Playlist Challenge I: Colours

So after last week's post and after a conversation at the weekend, I've been tempted to start a new theme of a playlist challenge. I enjoy trying to come up with songs linked around a similar theme and a common link. My challenge is to be to try and present a convincing playlist of at least five songs while trying not to 'repeat' on links - forcing myself to at least be original.

The opening theme I randomly selected was colours. Playlist as follows:

New Order - Blue Monday
Jimi Hendrix - Purple Haze
AC/DC - Back in Black
The Beatles - Yellow Submarine
The Clash - (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais
Nena - 99 Red Balloons (a narrow winner over UB40's Red Red Wine which was a strong contender for the repetition alone)
Dropkick Murphys - Green Fields of France

For bands you can have Green Day or if you want to be poppy about it, you can also include Pink. The obvious album choice to conclude the theme is Foo Fighter's The Colour And The Shape.

It was fun trying to restrict myself to a certain theme and still try and come up with a collection of good songs to include. I may try and make this a regular event!

Best of Intentions

I had meant to blog yesterday. These meants don't add up to much, however, but the thought was there. I'd planned on doing this at many different times throughout the day - in the morning, before we went to the gym; after we went to the gym and before we went out, when we got home - but in the end simply didn't make it.

The gym was good but hard work - we were really pushed again this session, which was probably good but left us feeling really sore afterwards! Both yesterday and today were a struggle as a result of this lingering soreness, of protesting muscles. I was surprised - I didn't realise I had muscles there, or if they are they've never done anything which which could explain why they're protesting having had it easy for so long.

I'm not sure either of us are going to incorporate this particular session of pain into a regular routine. It felt effective but the lack of breaks between exercises really hurt. We would have to take it pretty slow to start with at least! I've been up to this point debating with myself as to whether this feeling a day and a half later is good, because I worked that hard - or bad, because I clearly never work hard enough for that to hurt that much! Jury is still out on that one, but the longer it goes on the more it leans towards the latter!

Target Hit

So this morning I managed to surprise everyone, including myself, by getting up in time to go for a swim. This was closer than planned - after waking at 6am and turning over, it was only the accident of setting my alarm onto snooze rather than switching it off entirely that caused it to prompt me a second time with an audible nudge-to-the-ribs at 6:15.

Having managed to force myself up, from there it was more straightforward - remember to collect change of clothes, head to car, from there go to the leisure centre and commence with the changing and the swimming. All of which were accomplished with a minimum of hassle, and I got to work slightly earlier than necessary (reduced summer traffic can claim an assist there, I think).

This coming weekend I'm actually moderately busy - on the Saturday at least. I need to fit in a haircut, we have a gym session scheduled, I want to swing by the post office to collect a mysterious letter that came for me midweek and requires a signature, and we're at a friend's housewarming party in the evening. All in all, enough to keep us busy!

Thwarted Plans

My main non-achievement today was going for a swim after work (or before work if I was up particularly early). I wasn't up particularly early, so I decided to do it in the evening instead. Except ... my plans were foiled by the inconvenience of the leisure centre not having open swimming sessions on a Thursday evening (and the same for Friday - at least I checked a day ahead this time).

So instead I came home and watched the baseball. That still counts as "sport-themed activity", right? Although by that token, so does checking my Battrick scores on my phone ... no, I'm going to have difficulty getting that argument to hold its weight.

Check back tomorrow for more feeble excuses as to why I didn't manage to go for a swim again - the goal is to get up and do it in the morning before work, so there's a certain onus on getting to bed at a certain time to get up at a certain time and get all this done!

I Spend More Time Explaining My Absences Than Actually Being Present

After a recent good run [read: not abysmal] of blogging, I lapsed again yesterday by not bothering to blog once again, leaving the day devoid of content, wit and insight. The main reason for this was that I didn't head on the computer at all last night - on arriving home Chrissi and I immediately went straight out again and headed to the gym, and afterwards I was showering and resting and again not particularly inclined to come onto the computer.

I know, headed to the gym! The casual indifference with which I wrote that and then moved on without fuss is marked, as if this routine is so ingrained that to even draw attention to it is unnecessary. Particularly now with a single gym session under my belt, it's all so mundane. Run-of-the-mill. Old hat.

It wasn't, of course. It was a lot of effort (which it should have been) and I felt shattered afterwards (which I should have done) as I simply wasn't used to pushing myself that hard for that long. That my warm-up of a 6 minute jog on the treadmill is not far off half of my rarely occurring 'run' exercise - that should have said enough with regards to how unusual this burst of exercise was. I followed that with a 1000m row (target: under 4:30, achieved comfortably on the clock but not without effort), 10 minutes on the ever-baffling crosstrainer (where after a helpful comment from Chrissi I spent most of the time trying to work out whether I was running forward or backwards), some time spent on various machines which work various muscles I don't think I have and then 12 minutes on the bike at the end.

I was pleased that I went, however. I didn't even feel huge after-effects today from it, although the occasional twinge and tiredness did confirm my decision to make today a rest day and postpone my half-considered swim after work. Perhaps tomorrow I'll do a swim, and then with Friday a second rest day this sets us up nicely for the personal training session on Saturday.

Hopefully.

Playlist Challenge

A couple of months ago I posted on the traditional theme of "Songs Named After Girls", and today after a discussion with Chrissi this evening I was working on composing a new playlist of songs with numbers in them. This was in part inspired by a radio show this morning which was asking for inspiration on songs with numbers in them, although they did go with some rather traditional options too (Bryan Adams' Summer of '69, The Proclaimers' 500 Miles).

Suitably inspired, this evening I set out to create a playlist with all the songs containing numbers that I have in my collection. This included some surprising and entertaining entries - Green Day manage to rack up 13 entries including four from my favourite album, Kerplunk!, Feeder's Sweet16 and Seven Days In The Sun was a strong showing, The Clash's The Magnificent Seven is a superb entry and you have 5:15 by The Who to top the list off (as well as a clear tribute effort of 8:18 by Feeder also making the list).

Credit goes to the double-entries of Lost Prophets' Five Is A Four Letter Word and The Ataris' Eight Of Nine. You can also mix genres - songs with girls' / boys' names or placenames also get hypothetical bonus points, so The Stereophonics' Vegas Two Times is worth a useful number of points - although whether the permenently-referenced 867-5309 (Jenny) technically counts as eight themes as each number is said independently as well as a girl's name I'm not sure.

Final playlist reckoning was 68 tracks with 3.3 hours worth of music. A good effort.

Weekend Recap

After a good run, I've had two days without blogs mainly due to different excuses - the first because we were out on Friday, the second because I was simply lazy / inept / etc yesterday.

Friday night we were out in Wimbledon to commemorate / celebrate Myles' moving next week with a farewell-to-the-area drinks. As there were several of us who used to work together (in addition to other friends of his) it was nice to catch up with others who I hadn't seen recently. It was an enjoyable evening if a rather bizarre choice of venue - the only pub / similar venue in Wimbledon where you could book a table was also hosting a blues band. Supposedly atmospheric but mainly just a little annoying.

Yesterday's laziness also happened either side of the visit to the gym for our second training session. This included playing on different machinery - mostly with names I forget but prompted you to chest press or stretch or something similar. It was a 40-50 minute workout which was tiring but good; and we returned home feeling both tired and well exercised as a result. There was little else achieved yesterday either - mainly some relaxation.

Today I managed to wake up with a really bad pain in my neck - the result of falling asleep on the couch last night while watching the baseball. I've aimed to do little and achieved less, and as there's another baseball game on at an opportune time to watch I may end up migrating over to the couch and watching that instead!

Impromptu Naps

The last few days at work have been rather stressful, which has been somewhat annoying. Nothing particular - just lots of rather divisive arguments and aggressive 'discussions'. A couple of projects are taking a lot more time, effort and work than they should do, resulting in a somewhat tense feel for everyone involved. As a result, I'm looking forward to the weekend a lot more keenly than usual.

This evening following poker I came in, lay down on the sofa and fell asleep. Lay down is an inaccuracy - I sat down lying back at an odd angle, with my shoes still on so my body was part-suspended in midair and part-reclining. The main result was that I awoke a couple of hours later feeling the effects of dozing in such an odd position! I'm not quite sure why I dozed off - it's not as if poker itself was that tiring - I suspect it's the after effects of a long and busy week catching up with me! This will now obviously result in a strange bedtime tonight and stumbling through tomorrow until I can properly sort my sleeping out at the weekend!

Unusual Achievements

While arguably today I should be celebrating the fact that I managed to go to the gym in the evening for a swim - which was both relaxing and good for me - but I have what is arguably a more impressive achievement up my sleeve.

Both today and yesterday, I was wearing a t-shirt that was basically white. On both of these days I was boldly eating summer fruit, which I really enjoy but has a tendancy to be juicy and therefore dripping or explosive. I managed to eat several cherries and plums over the last couple of days without a single drop of red getting onto my pristine white t-shirts. After all, anyone can go swimming - but this is truly a feat.

The YOLO of Fantasy

I'm sure I wasn't the first to notice this connection*, but one thing I couldn't helped be amused by the occasional visits to / references to Braavos in the Game of Thrones series was the repeated use of the phrase 'valar morghulis' which bordered on a greeting or similar. As it translates into the common speech, 'all men must die'. The worrying point is that I suddenly realised that this is no more than the Westeros equivalent of YOLO. All men must die vs you only live once? Sounds about the same to me. I have suddenly lost a lot of respect for the Braavosi.

Now I need to get myself a twitter or something else mundane so that I can tag all my daredevil-like tweets about daring things with #vm or #valarmorghulis instead of the #yolo trend so I am hip and interesting. If only I either did such events or bothered with twitter, this would be a great insight.

* A quick search proves oh how right I am on this and reminds me that I'm not the only source of original insight, particularly when I'm several years late to the source material.
 

Absence Explained

The best reason I can think of for my lack of writing over the past month - despite having several subjects I wanted to cover - is to simply blame the heat. Well, primarily the heat and secondarily that I've been doing other things.

The heatwave has been problematic for me because I don't deal well with high temperatures - I need to be kept cool and well watered or I have a tendency to wilt. However, the problem is that not only is the house entirely south-facing but it also retains the heat very well. Most houses in the UK do - they're more designed to deal with the winter cold than the summer heat. My tendency when I have come home recently has been to collapse on the bed with the fan on, and have typically read or played on my phone instead of sitting at the computer.

The other reason is in part down to the reading - since my last update at the beginning of June I've now caught up entirely with the Game of Thrones books. I've managed to finish the ones Chrissi owned - she had four, the first two books and then the third book's two halves. I have got through these and then added to them with the fourth book and then the two halves of the fifth book. I'm now waiting for the sixth (and last) book, which has the drawback of having not been written - although there was a teaser of a chapter at the end of the fifth book, which didn't help at all! Nothing is resolved and more of the characters I liked are dead, and there seems to be endless amounts of wandering around going on - hopefully this will all lead to something at the end, but I have to wait a while to find out.

Small Things That Irritate II

There's no specific prompt for this from an event today, but one thing that utterly baffles me is how people who wear t-shirts bearing a slogan or writing on them seem to be utterly offended if you try and read said writing. While this is might be more predictable for females, who might perhaps interpret your reading of their garment as mere cover to closely peer at their chest, it's also surprisingly true for males who regard you attempting to read their clothing as a personal affront.

I do wonder what puzzles these people - is it the fact that people are reading the writing? Were they unaware that the t-shirt they were wearing had writing on it? It's a mystery.

The other day I - while wearing the classic descending-evolution t-shirt showing the ascent of man and then the descent of man into a chair before a computer - politely stopped as someone took a step back while staring at my t-shirt and then explained he was reading it. As he slowly read it out loud, he then asked of the slogan (somewhere, something went wrong) "what does that mean?". I fear the wit was wasted on him.

Unexpected Places To Be

So after a long absence almost entirely based around laziness and heat-prompted demotivation, I thought I might pick up my metaphorical pen and write another blog entry.

Today the main achievement was that Chrissi and I went for our gym induction. Yes, I too find this hard to believe - I am now a member of a gym. We joined last week - there was a special offer on and with a joint membership not only is it ridiculously cheap for the first month and a bit, but it also will hopefully help in allowing us to motivate each other.

As well as this we also had our first of five half-hour individual sessions, which are included as part of the deal. It meant that I actually got to play on some of the gym equipment (rowing machine: decent, crosstrainer: incomprehensible), which considering that as a 28 year old I've never properly been to a gym was rather novel.

The membership covers both pool-and-gym so means that I [should] have much better prompting for early-morning swims as I am already paying for it! It's still not too hard to get from there to work - although it wouldn't be as easy as the early-morning drive to near work and then the journey from there to work that I have done of late. However, the gym near to work doesn't have a special offer there!