Bedding in my new shoes by wearing them round the house; testing my new pack by chucking stuff in it and jumping up and down; and staring out the window at the mirror calm sea mroofing because I had to go to the dentist today — again — and if this patch fails the tooth is coming out, so I have to mollycoddle it and can’t go swimming.

So that’s my dull day, enlivened only by that special feeling you only ever get the first Monday of a two-week break from work.

Going shopping for dinner the way it should be done, by bike and trailer (the fish is called Benji, and that’s a very long story):

Drinking stuff made from fruit and clouds:

Easily pleased, me.

The Clubhouse is back up after our host borked like the Swedish Chef in the middle of a chicken shortage. Again. I had to console myself by re-reading old episodes of the Chronicles. I’d forgotten how much fun some of them are.

Not only that but Frood got free hodilay gin and there’s a cool story about clever crows on the Beeb!

What a grand start to my hodilay!

Bought these socks in Run4it today. Just so I could bring them home and take a picture to share with the world. Check that first bullet point.

Engineered to help athletes go faster by reducing aerodynamic drag on the ankle

Yeah, cos that aerodynamic drag on my ankle is adding whole nanoseconds to my run time. I’m sure that I’ll really feel the benefit of that special aerodynamic engineering in my next race.

I laughed so much I nearly peed.

Has led to me being sent home. They had to give me as much anaesthetic as they would for a full extraction, as it was a partial extraction of a broken cusp. As I’m resistant to anaesthetics I still felt it. Even so, that’s a lot of chemical to have injected into your head. I’m still suffering the effects so it was decided all round I’d be better off at home this afternoon.

Anyway. Just thought I’d catch up on the rounds and cadged this from Dooj (who still hasn’t put me on his friends list, the bastard).

I disagree with the naturalist being an intelligence by the way. Of course I notice that shit. I get paid to.

I’ve been tagged by Planet Mike, the bugger. I’ve known him since… er… oh… um… for twelve freakin’ years and this is what I get.

Apparently I now have to think up five facts that you probably didn’t know about me. As he’s tagged this rather than any other online persona of mine, it’ll have to tread the delicate line between being informative and being work safe. Good one, Mike.

1. I really, really, really wanted to be a fighter pilot when I was little. I wrote to the RAF and everything. They told me that I couldn’t join because I was a gurl and I only had the one eye. Chiz chiz.

2. Speaking of eyes, it pisses me off inordinately that I have to use an eye that looks ‘normal’ for everyday. It doesn’t bloody look normal. It stares, it doesn’t blink, it’s glassy (well, duh) and has a fixed, empty expression. Just the same, people look at that one rather than my actual functioning eye because right-handed people tend to look at other peoples’ right eyes. You hadn’t noticed that, had you? The black one may look freakish and bizarre but it’s not mistaken for anything other than a malfunctioning, weird-ass crazy thing; it provokes conversation; and it induces people to look me in the eye properly when talking to me instead of wondering why I’m apparently not paying attention despite looking straight at them. I’m not normal. No one bloody is. Why should I pretend to be just to suit narrow-minded conservatives?

3. I still have invisible friends. I don’t see why this should be a problem. Some people never grow out of spaghetti hoops: I didn’t ever grow out of my invisible friends. I don’t foist them on others or expect a place at table for them (what with them being invisible and lacking in physical substance), so that should be just fine with everyone.

4. I have 5 bikes. They argue. No, like seriously dude. They fight. It’s a right pain. Bar tape gets pulled and paint gets scratched. Sometimes I have to swap them round just so I can change which one is in the naughty corner.

5. Also when pretty young I applied to study under the Koestler Chair of Parapsychology at Edinburgh University. The Chair had only just been established that year and they told me they weren’t taking students. I’d have to get a degree in psychology first.

So there you go. Hope that satisfies. Do I have to tag someone else now or can I let this die?

So much hype and all I can think is:

I know it has been said before by writers far more talented than me, but…

Why is it that the first superpower any female ever bloody gets is the one that makes her look HOT at all times?

We can have the short, dumpy ‘porter Hiro and the thickset, ordinary teep cop; but the girls so far are blonde and gorgeous. What’s with that?

I hope it gets better soon, and starts getting meatier, otherwise I’m going to be pissed off about this for the rest of the series. It’s supposed to be a realistic look at supers: well I can assure the seething biomass that female supers are just as likely to have a fat arse, spots, squinty eyes, frizzy hair, crooked teeth, wobbly thighs, excessive body hair, and/or unremarkable bone structure as any other female human.

Thundercats the Movie.

Don’t you wish it were so?

Don’t you?

Oh gods. I can see it now.

Do follow the links to the articles and other reading. It’s well worth it.

PS. Liking my new TekTek!

Damn you, Munky. For infecting me with lolcats.

Viked from n-decisive.

Your Score: SurpriseAdoption Cat

42 % Affection, 53 % Excitability , 39 % Hunger

Calloused. Heartless. Exuberant. You carry the heavy burden of informing children that they are adopted by jumping out of their birthday cake. A difficult task, but somebody must break the news.

Just a brief report for the Loch Lomond Triathlon — it was a short race and I have no photos. Frood was manning the digicam, so I’ve pulled a few stills off that. They’re not very good quality, though I’ve stuck a few below for the sake of completion.

We had intended to camp on the Friday night but Munky Am An Rane God and it bloody tipped it down. So we drove over on the Saturday morning, by which time my Mum’s counter-magic had beaten that of the Munky and the sun had come out.

It was a very small field — all of 30 — which was nice. The Loch Lomond Tri is one of the few events left that’s done purely for fun and it shows. Long may it stay that way. It was my first open water race and only my second ever open water swim (I’ve been snorkelling and swimming in the sea since I was about 4, but that doesn’t count cos it wasn’t serious swimming), so I was a bit nervous. My suit still felt rather tight as well.

The swim was bloody hard. The loch was broken by chaotic chop, and it was very shallow. There were moments where I was touching the bed while stroking. I found myself getting tired, which felt like the suit being too tight across the shoulders and making me have to work on the recovery stroke. Mentally there’s a huge difference between having to do another 25m x n as opposed to having to swim all the way to that big buoy over there and back again. Seeing the distance laid out like that makes it seem a very long way. The swim was only 300m there and 300m back, and I regularly do 1500 – 2000m in training (750m in racing), but that felt like the longest swim of my life.

It was slow, too. In my last training session before the race I did 600m in 13 minutes. This swim took me 16.

Then it was onto the bike. There was the usual fumbling of fingers trying to get my gloves on. I seriously was not leaving them behind knowing it was an off-road course. T1 headed into a grass section then onto the park roads, almost immediately into a WALL OF DOOM. I managed to get up it on the bike, unlike the girlie ahead of me who was walking, despite having completed the Etape 2 weeks previously.

I lost it on the steep offroad descents. I’ve yet to discover whether I simply lack offroad skills, or whether offroad will turn out to be another thing to add to the short list of things I can’t do because I have no 3D vision. I just couldn’t identify the hazards in time. Every time I tried to let loose the bike skittered dangerously out of control and with Aberfeldy coming up in a couple of weeks I couldn’t afford to take the risk of an injury. Munky came skooshing past me at a rate of knots on this section, although I didn’t recognise him at the time.

The run was two laps of a steep, grassy loop with the last lap feeding into a lap of the main arena. I didn’t start to feel good until the last kilometre, having spent the whole of the race until that point feeling sick and with bad stomach cramps. It would seem that the Taut energy drink I had been using, despite being clean and fine when not racing, just isn’t suitable for my digestive system while working hard. The finish was solid and I crossed the line feeling fit and like I could do the whole thing again. This probably means I didn’t push as hard as I should have done. I didn’t make up any of the time Munky gained on me in the bike leg: that’s grudge match territory, that is.

Not happy with my performance in this race. Fourth from last, with some pretty shoddy times to show for it. I was grumpy about it for the next two days. Not only that but we discovered my wetsuit has split along the seam, which means a warranty replacement and I can’t get to the shop until Saturday. I want to enter the Portobello OW sprint, but I’m not sure I can until I know I’ll get my suit sorted before then. That’s annoying, because it’s in only 3 weeks and I have to get my entry in pretty soon or it’ll fill up. I’m also not sure whether the Orca is too tight and I should try a different model; or if it’s just a matter of not being used to swimming in neoprene.

Still. Aberfeldy in two weeks. We’ll see how that goes.