The Duck Pond
Friday, February 28, 2003
After yesterday's little rant I am feeling much better and happier and am actually in a good (although a tad strange) mood. We have a nice big night out planned tonight although this week I promise to behave myself as I've managed to do really naughty things on nights out the past two weeks.
I have a real itch to go skiing. This is annoying as I have absolutely noone to go with *violins* as skiing is expensive and all the people I know to go on holiday with are skint students. I have never had the opportunity to go skiing up until now so it's really annoying. One of my friends has sent me pictures of this place where he's been skiing and it looks really amazing. Gah it's so unfair *stamp foot*.
I have discovered that the Wildhearts are playing in Manchester on the 24th of April which could certainly be worth a shufty if I can drag anyone else along. I haven't seen a decent band since levellers and Manchester is fairly easy as I know lots of people who live round there and I know the area reasonably well as I grew up there innit madferit are kid.
Thursday, February 27, 2003
RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE? RANT RANT RAGE RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT IMBECILES RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT INDECISIVE WESLEYS RANT RANT RANT RANT DESTROY RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT SELFISH, MANIPULATIVE RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT MUTTER MUTTER RANT ANGER RAGE RANT RANT RANT WEAK RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT STUPIDITY RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT UNFAIR RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT WHY ME? RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT ARROGANCE RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT BIG MISTAKE
and that's all I have to say on the matter really.
Monday, February 24, 2003
Just heard something rather amusing so I thought I'd post it.
Try walking one mile in another man's shoes. Even if you don't understand him you can at least nick his shoes because he's a mile away and barefoot.
Thursday, February 20, 2003
Bleurgh. I've come down with a rotten stinking cold. I'm so fed up of being ill - roll on summer because I'm barely ever ill then.
I woke up this morning utterly convinced it was Friday too. Bah.
I went to bodyfit for the second time last night by some miracle. If I didn't manage to cop a lift up the hill I probably wouldn't have gone. I'm glad I did though because I've already improved drastically since last week where I was constantly having to rest. I even think that in one or two weeks, I'll be able to raise my weights a bit wich is really good going. I also don't ache a quarter of as much as I did this time last week. I am now pondering whether to go to aerobics tonight. I probably shouldn't in my condition (I'm dying, me) but I didn't go last week either because I could barely move from bodyfit the previous day and I don't want to fall too far behind. I suppose I could go but just work at a slower pace and make sure I'm by the door in case I want to give up and sneak away.
Right I was going to write some more stuff but I'm too ill so I won't. Ner.
Tuesday, February 18, 2003
Which OS are You?
Brrr it's coathangers this morning.
Hmm I haven't blogged for ages because 1) I haven't done anything of note really since last blogging and 2) I really couldn't be arsed anyway.
I got hideously drunk after Friday's moroseness (is that a word?) which was probably a bad idea but I was practically dragged out. I ended up saying a lot of stuff that has been preying on my mind lately. Probably not the best idea in the world to do it while pissed but I'm kind of glad I did, good to get it off my chest and all that and now I can see things as they really are, instead of being messed around by certain people (although I probably still will be). I also made a bit of a fool of myself in the Bay by trying to introduce two of my friends to each other and then finding that I couldn't remember one of their names mid way through.
"and this is..erm..um..er" *wave hands frantically* "um"
"You don't know my name, do you?"
"I do"(and I did) "I just don't remember it at this precise moment in time..um, sorry"
I have a terrible memory when I get drunk. Thing is, I could remember his first name, which he really hates, but couldn't remember his surname which is what people call him by and what he was introduced to me as. I don't think he was too offended as he was pretty drunk too and I haven't actually known him for all that long.
I completely failed to go to live roleplay as I was too grouchy and hungover.
** FAT CAMP HORROR **
Well I attended camp of fat last night to find that I'd put on half a bloody pound. How depressing. I know I said before that I was more bothered by how I looked than numbers on a scale and I am, but I look bloody awful too and I have seen no improvement lately. It's also really disheartening to appear such a failure, especially so early on, in front of all those people.
Friday, February 14, 2003
** FAT CAMP RELATED STUFF AND GENERALLY FEELING SORRY FOR MYSELF **
Well I've just spent a joyful hour and a half at yoga class where I got to feel like a useless, graceless, huge whale, falling over the place and not being able to do any of it amongst the other trim, lean, lithe supple people who have clearly been doing it for a while. Well that has made me feel good about myself. I want to spend the weekend drowning my sorrows in drink but that's just going to make me even more of an uncoordinated lump.
Wednesday, February 12, 2003
Wow I left the house to uberfog this morning. I half expected to dissolve the moment I stepped out of the building. It looks pretty cool but is bloody freezing which I suppose is partly a good thing as it woke me up a bit (not much).
Yes I'm most certainly doing the zombie thing this morning since I didn't get to bed until very, very late and even then I couldn't sleep and I'll tell you why, I was in the most bizarre, dejected, incensed, fuming, evil-tempered mood at about 1.30 this morning and couldn't calm down for ages. I went to rocsoc and was talking to a few people I haven't seen in a while so it was actually quite good fun which seems completely contradictory to my mood when I got back.
For some unexplained reason I have agreed to go to live roleplay on Saturday, which involves a lot of running around woods and trying to hit people with fake swords as far as I can gather. I think it sounds like a larf and I'm quite looking forward to it although admittedly I am rather nervous too. I dabbled with static roleplay in my first and second year and really enjoyed it. It was a good opportunity to stretch my imagination to its limits and be a short, dumpy, bearded, hard-as-rocks, warrior dwarf which was the character I tended to play except in my game of Werewolf where I played a bad-ass, evil, charmless, hard-as-nails, bite-your-head-off-soon-as-look-at-you, warrior werewolf. Now that was a character and a half to play *grin*. Now I understand live roleplay is pretty different so I'm not sure what to expect really. I guess I'll find out on Saturday.
Today I am in a rather indifferent, lethargic mood. just don't give a shit about anything right now although I'm sure this will change eventually. It's probably more to do with being half asleep than anything else.
Tuesday, February 11, 2003
My first day of bodyfit tomorrow *chafe* no idea what it's going to be like.
Well I've had a mixed weekend but the good outweighs the bad so that's ok. I had Friday off because I wanted to get a bit of time to myself to get organised, plus it was a housemate's 21st and I didn't want to miss out on any of the proceedings by being stuck in a dusty old office. We were having a house party. I bought a bottle of kahlua (basically tia maria under another name) and a bottle of tequila for strategic cocktail purposes. The rest all wanted to play a ludicrous drinking game that I refused to join in on and it goes as follows:
Round the Clock:
Get a shot glass. Fill it with your poison. ** HEALTH TIP - anything stronger than an average beer is SUICIDE. I repeat, choking, chundering SUICIDE. You have been warned. ** Designate a time to start and a length of time to play e.g. 9 o'clock for an hour. Every minute you must drink your shot and refill your glass. If you leave the room for more than a minute, your drink carries over so for 2 minutes gone you must drink 2 shots etc. Repeat until time finished.
Some of my flatmates played this for an hour and by 40 minutes into it I think all except one had thrown up, making me very glad I hadn't played. By the end of the hour only 3 were left in it and 2 of those really shouldn't have been. Later on a few of us buggered off to go to the bay and I was fairly tipsy by this point because of all the cocktails so I was running around trying to talk at people drunkenly as I tend to do. An interesting development was that a bloke that I asked out 3 years ago (he said no) was blatantly trying to get into my pants but I wasn't interested in him anymore so I refused. Made me feel pretty good to get the opportunity to turn him down and it just shows how things can change. Oddly when we got back everyone had gone to bed, obviouly I'm living with a bunch of big fairy lightweights.
Saturday morning I was up really early and in a tremendously good mood so I cleaned the kitchen of the previous night's debris and then walked to Clarach and back. It's rare I'm in such a mood to get things done like that so I thought I'd make the most of it. The afternoon things started to go a bit pearshaped. I noticed that I had a pain in my kidney. This was very worrying. Probably the fact that I'd drunk so much alcohol the night before didn't help but it turned out eventually to be an infection again.
Sunday I was recovering after the excrutiating agony of last night's kidney pain, or so I thought so I went with a friend to Ynyslas for much running up and down sand dunes crazily in my high-heeled shoes, admittedly not the most suitable footwear for beach combing. I was shocked that I didn't break them. We then decided spontaneously to go to Aberdyfi to go to the chippy. Now let me explain that there are much nearer chippies to Ynyslas than the one in Aberdyfi, we just wanted to go and that was the excuse; "Well it has a nice chippy". I'm glad we did as we got to see an amazing sunset over the sea and estuary and eat our fish and chip type produce in the freezing cold while enjoying a change of scenery. It was a top day until my kidney started really playing up again like the little bastard it is.
Monday I stayed off work and sulked because I was still in pain.Today I am in marginaly less pain but I went into work as I want to have my social life back again and one can't really go out guilt free when one isn't in work.
Wednesday, February 05, 2003
Oh I found out that apparently I won the drinking competition as Matt surrendered and went home but I don't remember this at all. Apparently he looked very rough in lectures yesterday.
*** KIND OF FATCAMP NEWS AND BANGING ON IN AN OPINIONATED WAY ***
Right well I signed up to yoga, dance aerobics and bodyfit last night. I decided not to do another one because I don't want to push myself too hard, only to give up and waste my money. I can always go swimming, play badminton and whatnot on other days. Of course when I announced my fitness plan, everyone became the expert, telling me what I should and shouldn't do. Mostly the gist was "nonono, you don't want to do any weights because you won't lose any weight. Muscle is heavier than fat" etc. I was stunned by this stupid comment. Firstly they assume that the sole reason I exercise is to lose weight which is incorrect. I simply eat less and move more generally to do that. My main aims with this are to improve my fitness in the areas of strength, flexibility and endurance and to raise my metabolism. Basically to be healthy. If I'm going to try for being thin I might as well try for health while I'm at it and I think the classes I have chosen encompass the three areas very well. Secondly I am well aware that muscle is heavier than fat but so what? This is what bugs me, that people can't see beyond weight on a scale. I don't mind putting weight on initially if it's muscle because I want to have muscle - muscle good. My aim here is to look better by getting rid of excess fat, not merely to "lose weight". I don't mean I want to have as much muscle as Arnie and that's impossible anyway for me unless I have testosterone injections, I just mean that I want a healthy amount of muscle and to be strong etc and I'm not going to be too devastated if I put a bit of weight on if it means I look better, feel healthier and can do more things. Weight loss is, after all, just a tool for measuring fat loss, not a goal in itself although I agree that measuring myself would be a much more accurate way of judging fat loss if I'm going to be weight training. Doing weights also raises metabolism for up to 24 hours afterwards due to the muscles tearing and then repairing themselves and the more muscle someone has, the more they burn calories which seems like a bloody good deal to me.
I know that training at a certain heart rate (I can't remember off-hand - use the google, Luke) is supposed to be the optimum for fat burning and I shall be doing this when I swim/walk etc. but again weight loss, or even fat loss, is not my main motivation for this - I want to improve my cardiovascular fitness. As a result I shall be training at above this heart rate at least twice a week. More metabolism raising you see. Plus I kind of have an idea in the back of my mind that I want to try for the London Marathon 2004 which I know will take hell of a lot of training and fitness so best to get as fit as I can, as early as I can so I can make an educated decision whether I'm in any state to undergo the gruelling training program when the relevant time comes around.
Finally - any exercise burns calories and if I use more calories than I take in I will lose weight. Simple.
Tuesday, February 04, 2003
*** FATCAMP NEWS ***
I did well this week, losing 3.5 lbs. I still goggled at the woman who is huge but has lost quite a few stone. I think more than anything that this is motivation for me to never ever get so big. Bloody hell I can't even begin to imagine. I probably countered all the good work with last night's shennanigans but if I behave like a little angel (har - don't I always?) for the rest of the week I should get away with it. I'm going to be incredibly healthy and sign up for lots of classes (1 aerobics, 1 weights and 1 yoga plus a random other one, not decided yet) at the sports centre today and I'm going to damn well make sure I go to them. Last time I didn't manage it as I bought an aerobics pass and then was hospitalised and ill for about 3 months. Grr.
Eurgh the terrible hangover. Don't expect this blog to make much sense.
I've had a super weekend. Had a bit too much alcohol (I failed again with the not drinking but I'm back on the wagon again now) but I don't feel guilty or anything as it was great and if you're going to fail you might as well do it properly I say. Friday night was cool - I went out with some friends for a post exam piss up and met lots of new people who were really cool. We ended up in the Pier which I slag off regularly but I must admit, the last few times I've been there I've had a splendid time. I started off in wetherspoons for a bit of food, then on to the Ship and Castle which is a cool pub that I hadn't been to for ages. Then they all went to the Gog in Llanbadarn while I joined a different group of friends in Scholars. I had a cocktail when we moved on to the Cambrian and it all went downhill from there. It was there where I was persuaded (a guy offered to pay my entrance fee plus buy me 5 drinks) to go to the pier. It was terribly entertaining as we were all pretty much hammered by this time. One guy had this girl chasing him and got her phone number so she was sitting with us for a while until another friend actually sat on her, not seeing that she was there. I didn't actually see this event, my friend told me but it was possibly the most amusing thing I've heard for quite some time. When we left we went round to a mates for coffee but I didn't stay long. I'd offered that a guy who lives out of town could sleep on our couch so we went back to find a couple of people in the lounge watching a film. When I'm pissed and in the company of sober people I get terribly self conscious and try my best to pretend I'm sober and I've heard it's rather comical when I do this. Anyway I was doing this with the people in the lounge as we joined them to watch the film although I found out the next day that they were wasted too.
Saturday was cool too. Went for breakfast in the Upper Limit (the local greasy spoon) which wasn't too impressive although I think they did give me a whole can of beans and then spent the afternoon playing pool very badly as I couldn't focus or coordinate anything. I then tried to go out again but failed miserably as I kept falling asleep.
Sunday was cool. Just chilled out and recovered. Last night I went to 'compsoc' but it ended up just me and a guy I met on Friday night's drinking debauchery, having a little drinking competition although I really don't know who won. We possibly both lost. I must pump various people for info later although I'm a little scared to. We bumped into some of my housemates in the bay. They were pretty trashed too by the looks of them (this was at the point where I can still remember). Hmm even though I'm hungover I'm still surprisingly spritely considering how much tequila and malibu I drank.
