Yesterday was my first night back at King Fu after having my legs destroyed by my loving fiance. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting, but still, ouch!
I'm now on Easter holiday from uni though so far I haven't had a day off as I've had overtime at work since Friday. That'll teach me to whinge about being bored! At least I have a day off tomorrow. I doubt I'll be out of bed much before 11am!

Its fun until someone gets hurt...

Gareth and Willow enjoy winding each other up in our garden. They initially start by playing with a 'ball' (or rather ex-ball as it's more a flappy bit of plastic now) which soon progresses into Willow running manically around the garden and Gareth pretending to catch her. It become more interesting with two trying to catch her though!

It doesn't always go well as this picture illustrates. The ground was quite muddy and Gareth fell over. Still, Willow was good sport and consoled him; either that or she's gloating.

St Patricks update.

Well, the meal went without issue, and was the first St Patricks that we all got together for and nothing went wrong (possibly because we met the day before St Patricks instead of risking the actual day!). It was a really nice catching up with everyone as we hadn't really seen each other much recently. Two of my friends are in their fourth year and highly stressed, and another works very hard 6 days a week, so spare time when everyone isn't stressed or asleep is quite rare!

The curse of St Patrick...

Tonight I'm meeting my friends for a meal as it's St Patricks Day. At least that's the plan. So far, since coming to university, all our past plans of doing something on St Patrick's have ended less than successfully. Last year, for instance, resulted in us waiting at casualty with a friend. Still, it was entertaining playing spot the ailment and creating a story behind the people waiting to be seen. Though the guy waiting with his finger in a plastic bag was too fascinating to bother with anything made up anyway!

So, I'm looking foward to tonight, but would not be surprised if something were to go wrong. Why break a tradition!

Spare time

I have now started both my courses for the second half of the semester (the second one only started today) and I seem to have a lot of spare time. Most of my zoology courses leave me with very little time outside uni except for sleeping and eating, but it doesn't seem so with these courses. I should probably be pleased, but I'm more confused than anything. I don't really know what to do with no extra work. Ho-hum.

Man's best friend?

Willow recently decided that the bin would be better as an open topped free-for-all. To make her point, everytime Gareth and I have left her on her own the last couple of weeks she's taken it upon herself to systematically empty the bin's contents throughout the flat. It brought to mind a quoate my mum cited to me (source unknown, unfortunately):

'If you do not employ a border collie, he will soon become self-employed'

All very well if your dog isn't worked or anything, but Willow is trained and run reguarly (though this does highlight a further problem with having an intelligent breed - she's now learnt how to open the kitchen door to get to the bin). So we've now upped the stakes in her training and trying some more complex tricks and pushing her a bit more with her obedience work. Whether this will deter her from amusing herself by spattering fish tins and old meat wrapping is yet to be seen. Like people, sometimes temptation is just too much.

On an unconnected note, it looks like I will have to miss Kung Fu tomorrow as my legs are still sore from the fatigue session last Thursday. Unfortunately, most of the stances in Kung Fu involved maintaining low positions that hurt like hell even when you aren't already aching!

Read the small print

A while ago I volunteered to be a subject for Gareth's dissertation project on fatigued muscles and performance. Yesterday was the third and final session and where the 'fatigue' became more apparent. After spending over half an hour doing 100 plyometric jumps from a small platform in order to basically kill any will to live in my leg muscles, I was allowed a half hour rest before running on a treadmill at various paces. Ok, my legs felt a little sorry for themselves after, but not quite as bad as I was expecting. After this, Gareth and I returned home, threw some food down ourselves before heading out to do our fortnight shop. As you can imagine, two weeks worth of food is pretty heavy; even if you are catching the bus. By now, my arms and back were beginning to have more sympathy for my legs, instead of the smug mocking they had adopted throughout the fatigue session.
Well, that was nothing compared to the burning ache of today! After melodramatically climbing the stairs from our basement flat and walking straight-legged to university, I was then faced with the depressing fact that you never realise how many stairs and inclines there are dotted about unless every muscle bites you.

Somehow I don't think I'll be running home from work tomorrow.



I was watching Draco watching me a couple of days ago and found it amazing how a three-foot snake can manage to fit himself under an egg box with relative comfort;

He's always had eggboxes as a hide, trouble is he's getting too big for the largest ones available! He's a bit more alert now as he shed recently and is sporting his new shiny skin. Just a relief he's not grumpy as he gets tetchy when he's about to shed. Fair enough I guess, as snakes' eyes go cloudy before they shed and I think I'd be irritable too if I couldn't see properly and my skin was too tight!

The source of all headaches...

Well, having suffered from severe headaches and migraines for the past year or so, I think I've finally worked out whats causing them.
I'd always put them down to being overtired and staring at computer screens for too long (studying for uni, of course!), but they still seemed to persist despite trying to get more sleep and reduce time on the computers (and the reduction in work that entailed. Oh well) . I've noticed a correlation between eating and my headaches/migraines. If I don't eat for a while then I get the start of a migraine that continues to develop the longer I don't eat, I also get a bit heady and feel like I'm passing out. Well, after trialling eating regulary for a couple of weeks my headaches are lessening and I don't feel quite so naff all the time. It seems highly ironic considering my past history with food. It probably isn't helped by doing kung fu and the amount of running I do which means I burn energy faster than I used to. In short, I think a fast metabolism is to blame. It's not all it's cracked up to be actually, as it's pretty inconvienient having to eat frequently.

This is the most recent photo I can find just now that

doesn't involve me dressed up as Medusa for Hallowe'en.

It was taken in March 2006. I've put it in its own

post as I can't for the life of me work out how to put it

in my profile - the university computers retaliate against

any attempt at downloading useful software!

I don't think Willow was too happy about staying still

in the snow. Can't say I blame her - it was pretty windy too.