domdavis.com

OK, so first visit which meant I was taking it easy as I get back into the whole exercise thing. I also need to strengthen my fingers. I have a very powerful breaststroke stroke (I am actually a bloody good swimmer, even if I do say so myself) so my fingers are facing a lot of resistance against the water. It was only 150 meters before they started to ache. You’d think they’d be stronger with the amount of typing I do. Plan is to increase the amount done by half a kilometer/5 lengths per week (well, 4 then 6 so I can get out the side the changing room is on ). Not sure what I’ll stop at, depends on time, but possibly something like 2km on the cross trainer, 10km on the bike and 100 lengths in the pool, or whatever I can fit into about 2 hours. So, currently we stand at:

Cross Trainer: 0.5km
Bike: 3km
Pool: 30 lengths (540m)

And, just to prove this is doing me good:

Weight: 85.9Kg
Body Fat: 23%
Body Water: 56.2%
Basal Metabolic Rate: 1938 Calories
Muscle Mass: 41%

Hopefully these numbers will move in the relevant directions (and no, I don’t know why I’m 120.2% fat, water and muscle ).

So having been to my new gym to workout I can say I was spoiled at my last one (but I did pay a hell of a lot for the privilege) . The machines in the gym aren’t quite as good as I am used to with the displays being slightly more simplistic and cycling through the relevant information instead of being able to show it all at once, there are also less choices of resistance level and they don’t seem to have the number of programs available. There are also far fewer machines which will make life difficult when it gets busy. Still, it’ll do.

The pool itself is OK, if a bit short (again, used to a 25 meter pool) but the whirlpool spa thingy is a bit pants. Its not very warm and it actually sprays cold water in through small jets round your legs which is really weird. Does mean that the lack of a plunge pool is less of an issue (I used to love sitting in the seriously hot whirlpool spa for 5 minutes then jump in the ice cold plunge pool, lather, rince repeat).

The showers suck. They are not very powerful and they are the sort where you push the button and get 20 seconds of water. Those will long hair especially will appreciate that this is a bitch when you are half way through shampooing/rinsing your hair as when the water stops there is much groping to find the button to start the water again.

Anyway, enough of the moaning, its going to cost me less than £1/day to go for the year (assuming I go at least twice a week in the first month) which would work out at £3.50ish per visit (again assuming twice a week) which is cheaper than most pools.

To ensure I actually go I’m going to post my progress (as in when I go and how much I do) here. The reasons [read excuses] why I didn’t go to my last gym as much no longer apply so hopefully I’ll keep this up. Feel free to take the piss if I don’t go enough

Just noticed there is a complete lack of blogroll. Not sure if this is a function of the theme not supporting it or me forgetting to re-add it when I changed everything about. Won’t be able to do much about it tonight as I’m going to the gym but I’ll try and rectify that tomorrow

This weekend was going to be a quiet weekend. I’d deliberately kept it free to just relax and not have to worry about doing anything. Turned out to be a rather full one Friday night I went for, what was supposed to be, a quick drink in Quilters with my neighbour. It turned into a 6 pint sesh (bearing in mind we were only there for 3 hours this isn’t bad and if you think 6 pints of lager is a lot, try drinking 6 pints of lemonade in that space of time, it’s not as easy as you might think), most of which was spent talking to some women that Marcus has managed to make friends with that night. I also spent 5 minutes having my hair played with by another girl who was quite obviously off her face on something, but who likes playing with hair (hell, I’m not going to complain). The night was topped off with a kebab in front of the telly. You can’t ask for much more than that

Despite protestations that I was going to stay in bed until gone 10 my body decided that I’d had enough sleep at 7:30 and I finally gave up and got up at 8, headed out to get some food in for the parents (who came for lunch and took away the old mattress, my old office chair and a whole load of boxes - wooo, I have space again!) and join a gym. Yup, you read that last bit correctly. I discovered on Friday night that the LA Fitness Gym (which is quite close to my house) has a pool (ok, its 18 meters long, but its a pool) so I thought I’d go investigate. It may surprise you to learn that I was already a member of a gym, but this was near the ex’s house. My new gym is about a third the size and doesn’t quite have all the facilities my old one did but it’s also a third the price to be a member and doesn’t require an hours journey on the train to get there.

Saturday night I went out with my neighbour again, along with one of his mates and two of his colleagues. We were later joined by some more of his friends, one of the bar tenders from Quilters (who are, incidentally, all very attractive, including one who, if I discover she is single, may need to be invited out to dinner), her cousin and her cousins breasts (these do need mentioning in their own right as they were very large, very nice and very much on display with a combination of pushup bra and low cut top which ensured a steady stream of men trying to talk to her [she didn't speak a word of English] and attracted the gaze of any men within eyeshot). I went clubbing for the first time in god knows how long (since I quit drinking in fact), actually got onto the dance floor, despite the crap music, and spoke to some more women (I seem to be picking up the nickname of Long Haired Guy) and had my hair stroked some more (beginning to think this ‘we don’t like long hair’ rubbish from the online dating sites is a bit of a fallacy).

Given I didn’t get to sleep until 6am and I woke up at 9:30 Sunday was a complete write off which involved me watching Lost (in glorious HD), Hot Fuzz (again, HD ) and going to bed early.

So there you go, two nights out on the lash and the liberal application of about sixty quid had netted me new friends, and has seen me talking to more random women than I’ve managed on both dating sites I use. Got a mate coming up next weekend. Given what my quiet weekend turned into God alone knows what a planned pissup is going to be like

I’ve never really found a way of putting together image galleries that I was happy with. The software doesn’t quite do what I want it to do, or the integration with my workflow applications isn’t there, or a whole host of other reasons. I was, at one point, going to use this site to showcase my photos (I may well still do that), but in the mean time I wanted somewhere random to put up a few images. If you’re interested it’s here.

I never thought I’d ever find myself saying this but I hate my ironing board. And not just because I detest ironing (a task that, due to my old wardrobe, was something I have been mercifully spared for most of my life), no, I hate it because it sucketh beyond belief. It’s badly constructed, the cover rips if you look at it the wrong way and the whole thing goes ‘bang’ as it expands and contracts when I use the steam on my uber iron. I think I shall be looking on the internet web for an uber board to go with my uber iron (assuming such a thing exists). Does anyone know who makes the best ironing boards?

I got home last night at gone 9 after a hectic weekend and was absolutely shattered. There was no way I was going to get up for work on time so I made the executive decision that I’d go in late and work late (still woke up tired, but less so than I would have been at 5). Looking at my diary for this week I think this will be happening every single day (apart from tonight where I need to iron and do housework and Friday which will no doubt get filled). Perhaps I should leave next weekend free to reacquaint myself with my bed.

I am feeling so poor. Went out to Norwich today to buy ‘gorgeous things sweetie, gorgeous things‘ (and, ideally, pillows, a new bag, new shoes). Oh, and bog brushes because, apparently, my cleaners don’t like my disposable toilet duck bog brush thing and want old skool ones. There were also a few other bits and bobs I was going to buy which we can throw into the category of ‘mundane crap’.

Well, we failed miserably on the pillows front (too bulky, needed 4, will probably get them from Dunelm down the road from me at a later date). We did, however, get two new bog brushes. We didn’t even see any bags we liked, let alone try to buy one. Got a bath mat and a second dressing gown for guests though . Shoes were a washout (why is it that M&S never have your bloody size in?) but we got coat hangers, and hey, we all need coat hangers (well, I do, I seem to have more shirts than hangers now) What else was bought… oh yes, few DVD’s (my long term ex gained custody of The Fifth Element and Gladiator so I finally got round to replacing those. Only took me 15 months ), two new games for the Pee Ess Three (’cos I’m a sad geek and… well, there is no further justification), game guide for one of my XBox 360 games (see previous comment about being a geek), two 2lb bread tins for someone’s birthday pressie (maybe one day she’ll log on and comment, claims she doesn’t want to look like my groupie. I want goupies dammit! ). Er… fizzy wine stopper (ironically for non alcoholic bottles of fizzy grape juice dressed to look like Champagne), Cereal container so I can buy Alpen for work and have a proper filling breakfast (Don’t ask. My life fell to pieces, I started eat Alpen by the bucket load. I’m old. Leave me alone ) instead of overpriced mango from M&S or (as its been more recently) a Mars Bar. Oh yes, and I spanked £500 on glass.

Now, those who know me well will be wondering why I bought such a cheap lens, so prepare to be a bit shocked (c’mon guys, you know the lenses I want cost well over a grand [in some cases well over many grand], are absolutely hayuge and require ordering from specialist shops, not walking into Jessops and asking [ "300mm L series....yes....the white one? Stonking great big thing.....Look, can I speak to someone who has actually seen a camera before please?"]). No, when I say glass I don’t mean finely ground highly accurate low dispersion fluorite elements in a metal casing with various electronics and motors, I mean bits of glass, albeit very pretty glass, but bits of glass nonetheless. There are 3 bits for my Japanese Table (yeah, I know, but I do live in what you’d expect the showroom for the bastard child of John Lewis and Ikea to look like, and yes, it is actually always that tidy, and no rogersdb, I’m not a serial killer, I just like being neat and tidy ), plus a bowl type thing which may also live on there an two bits for my bedroom. I traded a holiday to America and/or Barbados for that lot (yes, they are that nice, yes I am that crazy). I may well even take proper studio shots of the bits of glass and get them printed onto large canvases and hang them on the wall (look, you go try spending that amount on what amounts to ornaments if you’re not that excited about them. Won’t happen, so let me be excited cos, well, I am .

So there you have it. The Toys Account will need to be raided to pay for it all (currently most of it is residing on my Partnership Card which is still smoking through overuse).

So, being a bit of a geek (ok, a LOT of a geek) I generally fail to remember that all this computery stuff doesn’t come naturally to people so here’s a few handy pointers for readers. I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to work out who asked what question

If you click on the pictures on the post it’ll take you to a bigger picture. You can then look at the bigger picture in all its glory without having to go get your glasses and squinting.

Comments are not open to everyone because I don’t want to be hung like a bull elephant, I don’t have toenail fungus, don’t want to buy OEM software at low, low prices or any of the other wondrous thinks that comment spammers want to sell us and I am going to make the assumption that you guys don’t want any of that either(wondercum anyone?). You can, however, register and then you’ll be allowed to comment. First couple of times I need to approve it (again, stops the spammers but do feel free to mock, scorn, hurl abuse or otherwise deride me, I won’t block comments for that ) then you’ll be able to comment to your little hearts content.

Comments take limited amounts of HTML (for the real luddites, HTML is not programming, if anything it’s typesetting, anyone calling it programming will be beaten to death by the Giant Foam Cluebat I posses). Italics are done by surrounding the word with <i>word</i> or <em>word</em>, bold with <b>bold</b> or <strong>word</strong>, and yes it is hassle, but now you have a handy little cheat page to crib off of

Smileys are your usual faire (colon bracket, colon D, colon P, that kind of thing - make sure there is a space after the smiley for it to get converted into an icon) breasticons such as (oYo) don’t work unfortunately.

A comments RSS feed can be found here. I you don’t know what RSS is I’ll need to show you in person. If I know you already or if you are an incredibly cute single female, 24-35, N/S, GSOH then give me a shout and I’ll arrange to meet up and explain

And yes, I am brutally aware that the lack of a next and previous type navigation doohicky on the post pages is a real pain in the bottom and will, at some point that has yet to be determined, be rectified. For now think of it as Schrodinger’s feature (you can know that is going to be fixed or when its going to be fixed, but not both).

Crap camera and I really couldn’t be arsed getting my camera bag out, assembling the camera, putting on the required filters (not that I have the filters I probably would have wanted anyway), dicking about getting the correct exposure before finally taking the shot, analysing it at 100% on my hayuge monitor and deciding that it probably wouldn’t win the National Geographic Photographer Of The Year competition so I may as well bin it (with big cameras comes massive pretentiousness). Besides, I was watching House at the time. Anyway, been getting some rather good sunsets of late