Notes From Planet Leesti

Last night, before going to bed, I had this idea that, since it was only about 5 weeks until my half-marathon, and that I hadn't done any training for a while, that it was about time I started, and that I should do a long run today, say, a 12.5 mile trek from my house to the centre of Nottingham.

When I woke up this morning, it wasn't raining, so after pottering on the computer for a bit, I headed out at about 8.40am and started jogging. I had the route sorted - the way I go to work, then keep going on the main road along the road the bus takes to the city centre. I even had 'checkpoints' every 2.5 miles so I could check how well I was doing compared to what I felt I ought to be doing (25 minutes per 2.5 miles - giving me a plan of doing the journey in about 2 hours). I actually expected to collapse in a heap and die at 7.5miles (Moor Bridge), but I still made a mental note of the 10mile point. Partly my expectations were drawn from my lack of fitness, and partly cos the last 5 miles are 'hilly'.

In the event I actually ended up jogging to 10.5miles before I decided the upcoming hill was too much! I did it in 1hr 43min 7secs, which was actually slightly ahead of my target time. I'm not sure what I'm more impressed with - the fact I made it to over 10 miles without any problems, or the fact that I did it without running too quickly at the start. I felt pretty comfortable with my pace and my body's reaction to the running, so that was good.

The weather ... it rained on me quite hard between 5 and 7.5 miles, but other than that it was pretty dry. (It was quite a bizarre day for weather in all actually; with alternate dry/overcast, heavy rain, bright/sunny, and hail patches)!

However, as I type this, I can barely walk, or, in fact, move my legs at all, due to my thighs going 'you bastard, I hate you', plus, in addition, while running, the inside of my thighs keep rubbing together but today they did so with a vengeance so it hurts when i put my legs together too. No blisters though (hail to the new running shoes!).

Tomorrow, I intend to do very little. Yeh, right ... :) :p

While at work today, one of my colleagues was given a couple of dried chili peppers. His aim is to grow them. However, he gave one to me. Crumbs were broken off by my colleague, and passed around the department.

This is no ordinary chili however. Even the crumbs were strong enough to cause much gasping and choking. So now at home I have one solitary dried 'Bhut Jolokia' chili pepper, which I will endeavour to use in my cooking. I just have to remember not to put it all in at once, as I am prone to do with chilis usually ... :)

Things I have learned this weekend:

* I need new walking sandals.
* It is not as far to Sheffield from my house as it seems.
* Just because I'm walking rather than running doesn't mean I should forego the warm-up exercises.
* I dance.
* Many problems with a mobile phone can be solved by whacking it against the side of a sofa.

Today, my legs and stomach muscles ache. It was only about 13½ miles from Sutton-in-Ashfield to Renishaw, but I guess I may have overexerted myself? I left Sutton around 10.40am and arrived in Renishaw roughly 2.30pm; since I generally feel I walk half as fast as I run (on average), that means that I could do the half-marathon at the end of May in about 1hr 55min; since I was *aiming* to do it in under 2 hours, this is On Target.

In addition of course, I won't be running it in walking sandals. I have a blister under my left foot the size of Barnsley, my heels feel like they've been pummelled with a sledge-hammer, and I can barely walk straight. The rest of my body feels fine, which gives me confidence. The sandals themselves are losing both grip and part of the material on the undersides; they're well used, bless them!

When I started my walk, I didn't even have a destination in mind, simply that I needed to be somewhere closer to Sheffield. I stopped at Renishaw as it had a bus stop in a convenient place (although inconveniently without bus times; I hung around for about 20 mins and a bus turned up!); had I not passed a bus stop I'd have walked to Eckington (where in a previous existence, a prior pair of walking sandals failed after an epic walk from Tibshelf). Looking on a map today however reveals had I gone just two miles further, I would have actually been in Sheffield boundaries, and that Mansfield is only 16 miles from the nearby-to-where-I-stopped-yesterday Halfway Tram Stop. Also note that the bus I picked up was the 53 from Mansfield, and the ticket cost £3.70. Effectively I'd walked nearly four hours and saves myself about £2 ...

Not that the journey was easy, mind; apart from the first three miles to Pleasley down dead-railway-line-turned-into-country-park, most of it was on roads without pavements (apart from a couple of mile stretch either side of Bolsover). Fortunately not much traffic was in evidence ... and it didn't rain much - a bit of drizzle near Bolsover, and a short sudden rainstorm at Mastin Moor.

Why was I going to Sheffield anyway? That's for another entry, and it involves dancing!

Stayed overnight at my friend Debbie's house in Sheffield, then headed back home this afternoon. Got stuck in Sheffield slightly longer than expected as the usually-twice-an-hour train service to Alfreton misses out the train just after 2pm ... interestingly there was engineering work dear Dronfield so the train went along the diversionary route past Renishaw ... personally circuituitous.

On the way, the speaker on my phone stopped working; ringtones etc still worked but I couldn't hear anyone at the other end of a line, nor could I hear ringing if I called anyone. Speakerphone worked, but thats an awkward way to have a conversation. Following a suggestion from Sarah, I whacked it against the side of my sofa when I got in, and next time I tested it out, it worked again ... silly phone!

That was a jolly successful and unhurried day.

Did some clothes washing, walked Bobo, hung washing outside to dry, walked to the supermarket in Sutton to buy a couple of things (fruit juice drink stuff, mainly), bussed back, swept/vacuumed/mopped the living room, swept/vacuumed the kitchen (gosh, anyone would think I had visitors coming...), wasted time online, made bolognaise-type-stuff to the sound of 1990s dance music, ate, and then relaxed. Not that I hadn't been relaxing for most of the day cos I had.

The question is, do I trust myself to lay laminate flooring on my own ... B&Q make it sound so easy ... lol.

Things discovered today: the bed that I never built, that lies in pieces in the kitchen and the spare room, is an unusual size - 'large single' or 'Prince'. It'd be a bugger to get upstairs and a bugger to find a mattress for it, but no other bugger'd want it lol.

I have a cold that's not shifting, so not been training for my half-marathon. Which I got the bumpf for on Saturday, incidentally, so I have a number and a racing chip. I also have a pair of shiney-white new trainers to run in. They won't be shiney-white by the time I do it, mind ... ;)

Also received recently was my ticket to the Cropredy Folk Festival in early August. Guess at some point I need to check the validity of my old tent, and buy a new one if necessary ... it's not the only festival-type-event I'm going to this summer, but the first one (the Camden Crawl) at the start of May is, well, in Camden and involves pubs and venues and stuff. And a hotel. Once I get round to booking one.

And then there's Belgium ... busy busy bee!

While the second bedroom has been only slightly recovered with orange (I went over the two worst of yesterday's painting of the four walls), the bathroom has now been painted blue-green. Well, again, only two walls (the third wall is behind the bath and I really can't be mythered with something that very soon will be tiled over anyway - probably - and plus it didn't have dead mould on it. The other wall is very small and partly occupied with a washing machine/tumble drier combo in an enclosed unit, a radiator, a coatrack, and is hidden by two doors anyway!) but it needed doing and the room looks a lot better for it.

I am contemplating a holiday in February, probably to South-East Asia, and my brain is exploding as I try to align all the various places to go and the how-to-get-there-ness of them. In actual fact, it's the first few days of the trip that are proving the most problematic - most of it should be a breeze (in logistic terms) with only the minutiae to calculate. Will go into more detail once I, er, have more detail, but suffice to say that while the Laos-Vietnam border has many crossing points, very few of them are easy to get to *on both sides*.
But flying is cheap ... :o

A couple of hours was spent this afternoon applying the first coat of paint to the walls of the second bedroom. Light orange. Well, I *think* the paintpots said 'warm peach' but ... Anyhoo. The light in that room isn't really that great, so it's hard to see just how badly I've painted it, but it appears that one wall is much better painted than the other. Maybe I was getting bored? The fourth wall (not the one I'm talking to you through!), the one with the damp problem, merely required sandpapering off the old bubbling paintwork first. So we'll see how that goes ...

... next job will be flooring; this will involve me doing some DIY so best be prepared for the worst. Which in this case is probably sawing off my own leg. But that's next week's job.

This evening I ate 'linguini bolognaise-ish'. Without tomato puree; a substance I didn't realise I didn't have until I started cooking. And it adds a lot of richness so today's meal was slightly dull. That is if you dont count the fennel seeds or the worcestershire sauce.

Took Bobo for a walk just before lunchtime -lots of dogwalkers out on the footpaths! I almost had to 'queue' to get down one particular pathway! But it's been a mild day - compared with last year's epic snow adventures!

I may have said it before, but there are times when I rather like the Foreign Office website's travel advice pages. And there are times when what they say ... isn't really 'applicable'.

On most 'safe' countries, it says the following: "There is a low threat from terrorism. But you should be aware of the global risk of indiscriminate terrorist attacks which could be in public areas, including those frequented by expatriates and foreign travellers." Which is fair enough - even the safest countries (Liechtenstein) could see the occasiona bomb.

However, on one particular country it says the above but then goes on to talk about crime, by saying the following: "There is no evidence of crime or disorder in South Georgia & South Sandwich Islands.". The reason for this is ... quite self-evident and means that in some cases, even the standard paragraph above isn't relevant.

There are no 'public areas' on South Georgia & South Sandwich Islands. There are no *people* there. It's a research station and wildlife area. The only access is by sea on specially-chartered cruise/tour ships. The threat of terrorism is low even on a Planck scale ...

Anyhoo. In related news, I'm looking at going away on holiday, probably to SE Asia, probably in February. Will post more as I contemplate it more.

And in other news, have bought paint (a sort of light orange), amongst other things, so might well repaint the second bedroom this holiday period. Did spend this afternoon, while not exactly tidying-up, rearranging things upstairs and moving things about to clear the second bedroom - this was after clearing the top of the unit in my bedroom of junk so I could move the old television from the third bedroom onto it and set up the video, DVD, and playstation 2 that were in the living room, so if I ever *want* to watch a DVD, I can now do so. The two spare rooms have also now had their radiators turned on for the first time in about four years!

One final point - it being a Saturday, and also Christmas Eve, one might have expected a busy day for shopping. At midday in Mansfield, it was less busy than a normal Saturday even, which was surprising ... yesterday, however, *was* presumably busy, based on the lateness of a few of the buses when I was getting home ...

My house no longer leaks. This is Good. And the fact that the roof was repaired the day *before* a big raincloud passed by [that I ended up getting stuck in!] makes it Even Better. Course, it's just a patch-up job - my roof itself is getting near to the end of its life expectancy anyway, but a rough estimate of £3,000 is something I can more easily afford in a couple of years rather than right now!

Now all I have to do is wait several months for the walls/plaster to dry out, hope the leaks don't come back, and then I can redecorate ... and then maybe I'll actually have a spare bedroom that I wouldn't be embarrassed for people to sleep in!

The Stone Roses have reformed. And another part of my faith in human integrity has slipped away. A band one of whose members later became an artist and made this, having also said things like this. And then there's the small matter that Ian Brown, regardless of the fact he's had a 'vaguely notable' solo career, cannot sing. Even the journalists fawning over the reunion gigs say more-or-less that, but in a nicer way ...

This week has been a very busy week at work: segmentation, or, the act of finding different ways to group up UK households into a handful of easy-to-explain segments that will enable us to market to them better. In principle quite interesting, but the minutiae of writing code, waiting for it to run for 4 minutes, copying the output to excel, calculating proportions of each concept, filling them in a template, changing the code, waiting for it to run for 4 minutes, copying the output to excel, calcul....oh you get the idea! - that bit is the boring bit. The legwork! [The final problem is naming the segments; apparently 'Mature QuirkyAlones' doesn't quite cut the mustard!]

There's a beer festival tomorrow in Gainsborough; I went there either last year or the year before but I don't appear to have made a note about it. I thought I had cos I'm sure I remember writing something about Gainsborough Central railway station. Meh.

My house is cold. This is primarily due to draughts caused apparently by an ill-fitted window. This has always been the case. You'd have thought I'd have done something about it by now ... but like everything in my house I'm hoping that it gets better with magic fairy dust over time. :)

so, right, one of my friends saw a couple of my video-poems yesterday and her comment was 'you need a haircut'. Sarah, you are *not* my mother :p [ooh that reminds me, i ought to give my mother the links. She I don't think has ever ready my poems; she has read some of my stories though!].

Today was another bright and sunny day. Again I put washing out on the line but got back too late from being out (9.20pm) so it was affected by encroaching darkness. But hey ho, I can't be in *all* the time ...

Had a very nice day, actually, in the company of a new net-friend called Debbie, who lives in Sheffield - what is it with me and that place?! For those of you who will think these things, no she isn't a potential future partner. She will have *some* uses however ..................... [or rather in fact, I will be of some use to her!]. Over the course of the afternoon I did have 8 halves of beer, but it was widely spaced over several hours, with walks and a mint chocolate milkshake in between so it didn't feel that much. Plus the conversation flowed quite well so it was a much slower drinking experience.

My new jeans are indeed quite ... 'liberal' in terms of space; my "dominatrix" belt being quite heavy doesn't really help. But hey ho, at least I don't feel like I'm being squashed!!