Fabric

One other little post today. I received (thanks to Flâneur going down to the sorting office for me), a little bundle of fabric that I bought last week from Quilter's Cloth. It's 8 half meters (Lily Pond by Wendy Slotboom) and I just had to share as it's just fab (images not best quality, but hopefully you get the idea!):

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet, but I do love it, it's so cute! I can't wait to come up with a project to use it for!

Manchester

For those who read this (is there anybody there?) who don't know, and let's face it, you all do, my dear lovely clever Flâneur has gone and got himself a new job. This is superb news on so many levels, not least because it means he can relax a bit to the end of his contract without worrying what he's going to be doing in January and how we are going to afford life without him having a job... It is also superb news because it's such a brilliant job. At last someone in the academic world has recognised his genius and that him being interesting is a good thing (not, you're really interesting, but we're giving the job to someone else). And the best bit: it's a tenured Senior Lectureship! Hurrah! No more short term research contracts and constant job hunting. All fantastic stuff.

The only downside is that this fantastic job is in Manchester. That in itself is not a bad thing - it's a great young vibrant department that he will fit in to well and the city's not bad either. However, my job is not in Manchester. My job is in Edinburgh. And I do not have a career that is easily transferred - I need to wait for a job opportunity to arise in Manchester in a suitable organisation (the uni or a business like Co-op, who I know do have an archive based in Manchester) that will pay me on some kind of equivalent level to what the Scottish Government pay me. Perhaps the problem of being a well paid archivist... Rules out the local authority as they are skinflints.

Anyway... I had never been to Manchester and we thought we should probably go down and have a poke about, so we did, for three days last week. The streets were hilariously familiar as they are currently doing works to the tram tracks, so there are road works and fences up everywhere, reminiscent of Edinburgh at the moment... We stayed in Malmaison, so as to make sure we had somewhere nice to stay while we were down there (it was our first holiday together for some time). We had a nice room (with a fantastic shower. I want that shower) and right in the city center - handy for walking everywhere. Which is what we always do when we are away! We had a nice weekend, exploring the city center and what it has to offer. We found a great little bar that serves good Japanese food and great cocktails (Walrus), a fab fab Japanese restaurant where we ate far too much but enjoyed every mouthful (New Samsi), but that also has a little Japanese supermarket in the basement, which will be handy for when Flâneur is in Manchester. I got very jealous of the fantastic looking fish monger in the Arndale Markets, and the butcher opposite, and we fell in love with Selfridges. (Or at least Flâneur did and a Paul Smith suit he spotted there! ;o) ). I also walked the length and breadth of the Trafford Center while Flâneur went to chat to some of his future colleagues. Quite exhausting!

And yet I managed to lose no weight while I was away - the discovery of Hotel Chocolat in the Arndale Centre probably didn't help... and thus my plan to lose five pounds is not going well. At all. But the shopping does look good. Similar to Glasgow but a little bit less spread out, which is good!! I'm quite looking forward to my weekends down there. For yes, we will be living between Manchester and Edinburgh, at least to begin with while my job remains up here. No ideal, but we're sure we'll cope.

Catch up

After a two week exercise drought due to my non-cold, I have been back at it with avengeance this week.  A fairly cultural weekend, reasonable weather (with the odd down pour to keep us on our toes), and our general propensity to walk everywhere in this fair city, saw me walking around 6 miles on Saturday and a further 2.6 miles on Sunday.  Then on Monday I was at the gym after work (the usual 12 1/2 mins run on the treadmill, with some walking either side, then the cross trainer), and on Tuesday I was finally back in the pool.  Very happy about this.  Having not been since 20 July (eek!) I was expecting terrible things.  While I was not doing my under 32 minutes that I had been in July, I did do my 40 lengths (1km) in 33 minutes, which I was pretty pleased with.  Yay!  This is not to mention walking to and from work (all but twice).

As for the culture at the weekend, this was great.  On Friday night we went to see the new dance production from Michael Clark (who I shall pretend I have heard of!) that was on as part of the Edinburgh International Festival (proper culture like).  Flâneur was quite keen to go as it was a mix of ballet and contemporary dance to Bowie, Iggy and Lou Reed tracks, all of which he is interested in.  I must say it was really really good.  In fact, as someone who is generally not interested in seeing ballet etc, I really liked it!  I think the contemporary mixed with the ballet helped here (not to mention the music).  Some of it seemed very yogic to me - a flow of strong movements - and it was quite hypnotic.  

Saturday saw us at the cinema in the afternoon to see 'Broken Embraces', the new film from Pedro Almodovar with Penelope Cruise.  It was also very good.  Almodovar's films really give Penelope Cruise a chance to show the world that she can actually act, or at least I think so, and I like them for that.  It was also an engaging story.  I am no film critic, so all I can say was I enjoyed it and would recommend it. 

After the cinema we were out at the book festival (festival season!) to see Raymond Blanc talk about his life and his passion for food and cooking.  I think it was supposed to be questions and answers with the guy chairing it, but Raymond was just too enthusiastic to talk and talk, so we'd get a question and then a massive long answer that was rambling, engaging and making some serious points all at the same time.  He couldn't sit in his seat, he was itching to get up and talk and gesticulate and show us his passion.  I loved it and could have listened to him talk for much longer than the hour we were given.  The three audience members who got a chance to ask questions all asked sensible ones (inlcuding: is there any food you don't like?  Mostly the answer was: well in Japan I had... this made me giggle).  Obviously he was there to promote his autobiography and on the strength of his talk, I really look forward to reading it sometime!  :o)

So, fairly cultural all in all.  But that's the festivals over for another year, the nights are drawing in again, the weather is turning and we're getting our city back from all the thousands of tourists.  Hurrah, I will be able to walk home again without getting stuck behind the meandering visitors.  Don't get me wrong, they are good for the economy and what do I expect living in a prime tourist destination, but during August it gets a bit much when you can't go about your usual business without wading through them.  But I shan't rant about this, I shall go back to the gym, back to the pool and hopefully, hopefully get fitter and healthier, and maybe even a little bit slimmer...  

Week One

Well, this week has not gone very well at all. I stood on the scales this morning and they declared:

X-1 stone 0 lb 3/8 oz.

I believe that is a total of having put on 1 lb, not lost one. Boo hiss. I thought I was doing quite well with the eating this week, but clearly not. Yes, I had a few lapses (the entire bag of microwave popcorn on Tuesday night was not exactly necessary), but generally I thought I did alright. God damn this is difficult…

Ok, so I pretty much did no exercise this week, except walk home from work a few times (which we must remember is 1.9 miles and does take about 35 mins). Oh, and I did a massive 5.5 mile hike to Waitrose and back last Saturday with Flâneur, which actually really only meant that we didn’t put on anything from the lovely dinner he made that night…*

Even so, it’s still pretty depressing to have not even lost a measly ounce or two and to have put on instead. Harumph. I will now have to work doubly hard in this coming week to lose 2lb to make up for having put one on and not lost anything. Damn, actually to catch up I need to lose 3 don’t I?

Crap.

*My excuse on the exercise front is that I have been feeling pretty rubbish all this week. Really tired and a bit coldy. I haven’t actually got a cold, but from time to time I suffer from these really annoying cold like symptoms – stuffy head, exhaustion, slight blocking of the nose. Never really come to anything and never bad enough to stay off work (more’s the pity), but annoying and a bit disruptive none-the-less.

A New Challenge

I’m going to be a bit more realistic this time. I think I set myself unrealistic goals by setting the bar too high! Basically I have an appointment with a dress maker on 21st September (very very exciting!). While I will not have to be at my slim point for the dress at this initial meeting, I figured it will give me a nice goal to work towards. By my calculations, that is exactly 1 month from today (that’s the sort of maths I like). Just over 4 weeks. I had initially thought it was 5 weeks, but that’s just stupid, so had initially been thinking, I’ll aim to lose 5lb. So a nice round 1lb per week, which really shouldn’t be so challenging, (but clearly is or I’d be a waif by now!). While it’s not actually 5 weeks, I’ll still aim to lose just over a pound a week as I like the idea of losing 5 of them.

I weighed myself this morning and came in at:

X-2 stone 13lb and 3/8.

Really, that was quite a relief because for some unknown* reason I had been back up in the early X-1 stone bracket for a good couple of weeks. Finally it’s gone back down (I don’t care if that’s only by a few ounces, those ounces are important!). So by 21st September I will attempt to reach the heady heights of X-2 stones and 8 pounds. A mere 5 pounds off my 2 stone point, 2 pound below the 1 ½ stone point, and a bloody good kick start.



*Not really that unknown, I spent one weekend pretty much doing nothing but eating…. I am a glutton, a greedy person and a lover of food. I am very sure that it’s only gone back down again because I have been pushing myself quite hard on the exercise front. This I intend to keep up. Last night I went out with Flâneur for a run, and we upped our run walk ratio to 2.30 : 1 (ish), which was ok. Actually it was pretty hard for me as I feel like my chest has been constricting all week and I was wheezing something rotten on some parts. Poor Flâneur can easily run at a quicker pace that me and probably could have kept up walking! So long as I don’t have some sort of chest infection or other malady, we will go out again at the weekend. The pool re-opens on Monday and I am rather taken with the gym. So hopefully I might exceed my target. That or use it all as an excuse to eat more. ;o)

Gym Bunny

With the pool closed (boo!), I have been hitting the gym instead. Well, I say hitting - does three times count?? I went twice last week (once early in the morning, which was great as there were only 4 other people there, and then again on a day off, which was great because 10:30 is a good time to go to the gym for me, if I didn't work...). I mostly just wanted to use the cross-trainer because I like the low impact cardio element, but when I went on the Monday I couldn't work out how to make it work at first! So I had to try the treadmill, which was more obvious. I was very very pleased with myself that I managed to run on the treadmill for 10 minutes straight. Go me! This was just at 7km per hour (super slow) on the first go, but I got it up to 12 1/2 mins at 7.5km today. :o) And it didn't cripple me the next day...

I did eventually work out the cross-trainer (when it looks like it's off, it's not obvious that it will come on when you start moving your feet) and did the 'weight loss' programme. It was good and I enjoyed it. 4 minutes of a low resistance, 4 minutes of a higher resistance, etcetc for 28 mins. The whole gym experience was actually great and I felt great. I think it helps that it's a really nice gym with tonnes of equipment, so even this evening, when I was there around 5, it didn't feel too busy. I may even keep going after the pool re-opens, to supplement my swimming! And seeing as I've put a few pounds on lately and am trying to get an appointment with a dress maker I think that's no bad thing!

Update!

Have been neglecting the blog for a bit too long... And as always I am prompted by recording the efforts of some exercise!

Since the last post I have spent a week in Perthshire looking after two of my favourite pooches, who were absolutely adorable the whole week (despite a bit of whinging from Baff...). We walked quite a bit and read and it was generally very relaxing. The only annoying thing being Flâneur having to work the whole week. His boss is the most annoying man I have ever come across, he really is... When we got back from Perth though we had approximately four hours before being descended upon by my parents and two of their friends (who I've known forever, not just random friends of my parents). I had a nice week with them too, but was grateful that their stay was only til the Thursday so I could prepare myself for going back to work!

On the exercise front I managed to go swimming twice when I was on my holidays, on both Mondays, and again had great swims. In fact on the second Monday it was my fastest swim ever clocking in at about 31:15 (can't remember the exact figure now). I have subsequently not been swimming, partly because I was just knackered last week... I'd been working over the weekend and suffered two very annoying migraines, so I was left pretty tired during the week. I did try to go this week, but was scuppered by the pool being closed! Which is the most annoying thing when you've made the effort to get up and are quite psyched about going for a swim. I stood there for ages trying all the doors, perplexed about why I couldn't get in. There were no notices anywhere, and I didn't remember having seen any when I was last there, admittedly two weeks before, but even so. I had no choice but to just head to work and grab a shower there and start my day an hour earlier than intended. I was pretty cross by this point. When I got to my desk I immediately went online to see what was going on and found their website declaring the pool shut from August 3-23. They are apparently improving the reception area to make it more accessible, which is a good thing, but it's annoying that that causes the whole pool to be closed! Gah! So that's it, no swimming until the end of August... I'm not sure what I'm going to do... And I know I could go to the local council pool, but it's just annoying and expensive, particularly when I've already paid for a gym membership! It works out at about £6 a go, once you take into account the bus fare to get there...

So I might try out their gym, try the cross trainer first thing. I don't think it will compare at all favourably with swimming, but it's worth a shot. Can't do no exercise just because the pool is closed. 

And in this vein, I went for a run today. To be fair, I only went because Flâneur made me. He'd just had the all clear from the physio to do any type of exercise, provided he started off slowly, and so decided that he might try this running malarky, if it made me go out... He ruptured his achilles many years ago, which had always put him off most exercise, but having just, finally got some physio and being good at actually doing his exercises he can now give it a go. I must say it was a great thing for me (let alone him!). It was lovely to have someone to go out with, to motivate me, and to keep me going!! We did my usual route and my usual 2:1 jog to walk ratio, and did really well! Despite not having been out since June (really, this is just the third time this year that I've been out 'running'), we did the 2.4ish mile route in 31 minutes 14 seconds. I think that the fastest I've ever done it. God, I love that man.