Thanks to Estara for pointing me at Tek Tek for the new avatar you can see to the left. It’s not as good as the UGO one to the right, or my little Stortrooper, which is residing on the hard drive of my PC (yet to be reassembled since moving up here), but it is very cute. It reflects the more girly aspects of my nature that I have been playing with since I moved. Although I still had to choose male eyes because the female ones were all just too much.

She has manga hair, just as I do these days.

It’s not enough to cheer me up after the disappointment that was X3 last night, or the dawning understanding of just how much trouble it’s possible to get into when playing drinking games with Tricksters (although I swear I have no recollection of doing so, and I can’t believe I’d be so stupid as to agree in the first place, so I suspect they just decided to do this and that’s an excuse to make it seem like my fault).

Review of X3 to come, but I need coffee and I have some urgent work to attend to.

Snaffled from Ythy.

You scored as 3rd doctor. A man of science, a Gadget king, you can put up a good fight. You are just what the doctor ordered 10th Doctor 100% 4th Doctor 100% 3rd doctor 100% a Dalek 83% 8th Doctor 67% Davros 67% 1st Doctor 67% 5th Doctor 50% 2nd doctor 33% 7th Doctor 33% 9th Doctor 33% 6th doctor 33%

What Doctor Who character are You?
created with QuizFarm.com

This week the fitness planning has been like this:

• Sunday – bike ride with Frood
• Monday – rest day owing to a creamed knee caused by bunny-hopping on bike ride with Frood (otherwise it would be a running night)
• Tuesday – swimming because knee is better but probably shouldn’t run on it yet nevertheless (otherwise it would be a running night because I missed Monday’s run, otherwise a cycling night)
• Wednesday – running because going to see X3 Thursday night so won’t be able to do it then and need to get at least one run in before the weekend
• Thursday – swimming because going to see X3 and so has to be a lunchtime training session
• Friday – generally my one night off a week but I had Monday night off so I’ll probably go for a run because that doesn’t take as long as cycling and Frood’s bike is knacked.

As you can tell, I have a very methodical approach to planning my training.

A while back, with a view to ramping up the swimming part of my training, I got myself a pair of what Frood insists on calling ‘fish fingers’.

Owing to various factors, including being very busy and not being able to find the pool for a while, I had not got around to giving them a go. Today being a swim day (see above) I grabbed them from the drawer on the way out.

At the start of today’s session the guys were back and I had a serious chat with them, aided and abetted by Bob. We made it quite clear that I can’t go and play with them until I have got my minimum 30 lengths. So after that’s done, then I can come and play. They were very interested in my fish fingers, which they declared tasted nasty, to which I could only respond that they shouldn’t be trying to eat them.

Dear gods those things add a significant amount of work to swimming. I could really feel it in my triceps. The extra buoyancy makes it harder too, as does the fact that suddenly your hands are twice as big as they should be but you still have to drag them through the recovery section of your stroke.

Even so, when you’ve got that pair harassing you to get a move on so you can come play, it’s actually quite easy just to plough up and down the pool for your thirty lengths without stopping. I’m currently alternating 100m breastroke and 50m freestyle, and I’m planning gradually to increase the freestyle and decrease the breastroke.

Having said that, impatience on their part does lead to the occasional episode of:

BOFF!

gurgle cough choke splutter “What?”

“LOOK! TREASURE!”

Today’s “treasure” was an ancient elastic hair band (not even one of the fluffy ones) and a rusty hairpin.

Bless.

The score I get on this quiz depends on whether or not I ask Ben what he thinks…

Owing to a recent spate of folks emailing me with the whole “Yo Sis!” thing, I have decided that there is to be a Ravenfamily FAQ.

I’m still working on my personal one. I’ll probably have some entries in the two of them that are the same.

To this end I am inviting suggestions from regular readers and those who are familiar with our merry gang of deviants and freaks, having been forced to tolerate them for probably far too long.

Five minutes is too long for some people.

I’ll tackle that old cultural misappropriation bugbear there too. Again. For the umpteenth time. Although I can’t be arsed right now.

Email or comment, either is fine by me. LJ readers should note that syndicated entries are only held by LJ for 2 weeks.

I was muttering recently about dietary restrictions and limitations and how the PG want me to start incorporating GI principles into my usual Hay diet. Not best pleased about the entire arrangement, am I.

But Frood just called to ask how the job interview went and while he was on the phone he asked whether I wanted baked spuds or chilli for tea tonight. We had risotto yesterday so I said chilli. It’s a proper meat chilli.

“Ah,” says he. “Are you all right with just leaves with that?”

“Eh?”

“Well, to make it Hays.” Bless him.

“Oh I usually have it with flat bread. That seems to work okay.”

I can’t eat meat chilli with rice. It makes me ill. Then it occurred to me to check the GI of the flat bread that I have resorted to as an accompaniment to chilli.

29. As opposed to around 69 for rice.

As they used to say on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In: “Very interestingk.”

They’re just dangling rope for me to hang myself with now. I can tell.

So for today’s pool session we’ll be joined by our old chums Seal and Dolphin.

Yay!

It has been simply years since I had much to do with those two. And it’s nice seeing them again. Really it is.

But guys, I only have a very limited amount of time to swim in my lunch break and if you want me to get in my thirty lengths (33 today, actually) then you’re going to have to stop distracting me.

“Ooooh! What’s that shiny thing on the bottom right down there by the drain? There’s only a small chance the pressure on your goggles at 4m will pop your eye out. It might be interesting. It could be… TREASURE! Ooooh! Treasure! I like treasure! Quick! Let’s go see! Let’s go get the TREASURE!”

It wasn’t until today that I noticed the similarities between the Old Man and my prime puppy trainers, particularly Dolphin, at least in terms of being easily distracted by shiny things.

Dolphin isn’t really very camp. Neither is Seal. They’re just both very easily excited by stupid crap on the bottom of the pool. Like elastoplasts. And clumps of hair. They are especially excited by all things shiny, like lost earrings. I used to find loads of them when I was a kid.

It’s difficult to maintain your freestyle rhythm when one of them suddenly blats you round the side of the head (water in mouth, lots of coughing) to yell “LOOK! TREASURE!” because there’s some piece of green shite stuck to the drain. As far as they’re concerned it might be one of those hair band things and they’re great because they almost float so they’re just right for pushing around and sticking on the end of your nose and pretending they’re jellyfish or seaweed.

I really did miss those two.

Hints and tips on how to recognise over-training.

Took Frood out to break his fixie virginity yesterday, as Blackbird is about the right size. I was on Shackleton. He loved it. I think I’ve found the ideal solution to our pacing issues and I haven’t had to go near an argument machine. We both just need to be riding similarly geared fixies!

However, I creamed my right knee bunny-hopping over one of the ridges in the road down at the harbour in Elie. It’s doing the ‘wince if you’re going up or down stairs’ routine today — especially down stairs. Got it strapped up, but I think I should have used the big knee support rather than the neoprene tubigrip.

Guess I won’t be running tonight, then.

Go Finland! Go Finland! Go Finland!

It was always going to be them or Lithuania. Lithuania was the Fat Les of Eurovision. But they had a Harry Hill look-a-like, not a bunch of Orcs.

If you haven’t seen today’s Scotsman, get it and read the Robert McNeil page. You have to subscribe to get it on the website, sadly. That article about pants is hysterical.