The witch is dead
Mood:  lazy
Now Playing: England v Portugal on the telly
Had a nice day yesterday. The Isle of Wight was fun! We got the ferry over, drove to Yarmouth for a wander round and a coffee, and then headed off to the Needles. Had a bit of an uphill walk to get to the viewpoint but it was worth the effort:

After that it was off to buy some souvenirs and then a nice pub lunch followed by a drive round the island. Fun fun fun fizzing along nice empty roads by the sea with the top down and the wind in our hair :-)

And just to make the day complete, as we rolled off the ferry back into Southampton the news came on the radio that Rupert Lowe had resigned!!! Yes that was the happy happy rumour from Thursday. Having heard nothing all day on Friday we were starting to think it wasn't happening, so the last minute news was extra sweet. We came home and cracked open the bottle of bubbly which has been sitting in the fridge since my birthday in February - even Dave (practically teetotal) had a swig :-))

So that is the end of our week off and time to get back to reality I suppose....we are enjoying a last nice lazy day today though. Got up at 7 to walk the dogs before it got too hot, then came home and went back to bed with coffee and toast :-) Spending the afternoon blogging, watching the football, eating popcorn and reading. Yes, I'm a multi tasker. Dave just went for a pee and the Neo crept up and stole his space on the sofa. Now he is on the floor and the two dogs are up here with me :-)

The foot is still a bit sore so I think I am going to go for a swim tomorrow instead of TKD. Nowhere near as much fun but seems sensible to make sure it's completely better before I start kicking things again. Will get back to sensible diet and my normal exercise routine on Monday....honest :-)

Happy happy
Mood:  celebratory
Now Playing: Kaiser Chiefs
There are happy happy rumours going around Southampton tonight. Don't want to say what yet in case I jinx it and it turns out to all be not true. Hopefully all will be revealed tomorrow!

Had more nice walkies yesterday. Went to Old Winchester Hill in the morning. Wow when they say hill they're not kidding. We walked down, we walked up. And up. We collapsed in small heaps :-) Nice views though. And I took this cool picture with Dave's macro lens. I'm starting to enjoy this photography malarkey. Still on idiot setting, obviously :-)

Then after a picnic lunch it was off to the forest so dogs could run around off the lead for a bit.

Think I might have overdone all the walking though, cos the sore foot was more sore again today. Had to go on a course today anyway, so that gave it a bit of a rest. Had to give TKD a miss tonight though :-( Amazing how much I miss it when I don't go! I need my weekly does of hitting things!

Tomorrow my mum is coming to dog sit as she is in Southampton, so we are supposed to be going over to the Isle of Wight. In our usual organised fashion, we still haven't actually decided what we're going to do. We'll probably spend the whole day moping around wondering how the dogs are and wishing they were with us. We're stupid :-)

Cowpats, cameras and cuteness
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: Spain v France on the telly
Nice day off today. Had a go on Dave's SLR camera so I have lots of pictures to put on here! I enjoyed using the camera a lot, but still can't decide whether I'd be better off with a compact one. I guess I will play with Dave's a bit more and then decide. Obviously I had it on the "complete idiot" setting with auto-everything :-)

We went out to the New Forest and did a really nice 6 mile walk.

Eddie has found an exciting new diversion on his walks. He likes to roll in horse manure. Or cow pats, he's not fussy. And when he's bored of that he likes to eat them :-) So by the time we got back to the car he was one extremely stinky dog.

Mmmmm - horse poo - yummy!!

As for Neo, as long as he can find a stream to wallow in and some grass to roll around on, he is a happy dog.

As well as the stinky wet dogs we met lots of New Forest ponies today. New Forest ponies are mental. They are used to being around traffic all the time and are not scared of cars at all. So they wander round wherever they feel like and the motorists just have to stop and wait for them. Dave and I once got stuck behind two of them on a road and they just weren't for moving, despite plenty of honking and shouting. Eventually they moved over a little bit and we managed to squeeze past.

Anyway today it is still foal season and we saw these little cuties on our walk:

This evening (after hosing off the stinky dogs, obviously) we went out for a meal and then popped round to a mates to talk footie. I love holidays :-)

I am warrior woman
Mood:  silly
Now Playing: Kill Bill soundtrack
I just took the "Which Firefly character are you?" quiz. Apparently I am Zoe, closely followed by Simon. Hmm, so I am kick-ass warrior mixed with stuffy doctor type. OK then! :-)

"You scored as Zoe. You're tough and not one to mess with. Only your spouse sees your softer side. You're extremely loyal to your friends and deadly to your enemies."

Zoe 83% Simon Tam 83% Kaylee Frye 67% Captain Mal Reynolds 67% Wash 67% River Tam 50% Jayne Cobb 50% Shepard Book 17% Inara Serra 17%

Yesterday afternoon all through the footie Dave forced me to alternate an ice pack with a hot wheat bag on my sore foot. Loved the hot wheat bag, HATED the ice pack. I hate to be cold. It seemed to do the trick though, cos it's much better today. Would have been better enough to go for the nice long walk we had planned, had it not poured with rain all day. We've had about 4 solid weeks of beautiful sunshine, and now we have time off work it's grey, wet and cold. Typical!

Battered
Mood:  accident prone
Now Playing: Lily Allen - Alfie
Ouch, ouch, ouch. Got kicked a lot in TKD this morning. I can't BELIEVE my husband. He's spent the last 6 months worrying over me going to TKD in case I get kicked, punched, or otherwise bashed about. Now he's coming too, it's a different matter! Today we paired up to practice some kicking combos and somehow graduated from "no contact at all" to "gentle contact" to "what the hell, lets just kick the crap out of each other"!

I'm not sure what this says about our marriage :-))

So after months of me coming home from TKD entirely unharmed, and him flapping over me, today I have massive bruises....all from him!!! I have a bruise on my wrist from blocking one of his kicks, and a bruise on my hip where he kicked me. I also have an interesting looking lump on the top of my foot where one of my kicks caught his elbow. Ouch, that one is the sorest.

Had wicked fun though :-)))

England are playing at 4.00 against Equador so my bruises will get plenty of resting on the couch time this afternoon. I'm contemplating a trip to Blockbusters to buy some popcorn for football-watching-munchies. My diet has gone all to hell this weekend. Had bacon, eggs and toast after TKD. Aah well, I'm sure I need the extra calories for healing :-)

The Birds
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: Heather Nova
Today on our dog walk a crow dive-bombed Eddie. It's the second time that's happened this week. What is up with that? It's like something out of a Hitchcock film. Are the crows trying to take over Southampton Common?

Also today on our dog walk, I threw a treat to Neo. He missed, it bounced off his nose, and Eddie caught it. It was extremely cute and highly unlikely to ever happen again. Neo looked quite put out :-)

After dog walking it was off to the gym. Upper body weights workout followed by Combat today. Dave ran 10k on the treadmill !!!! Nutter :-) I take back my moan yesterday; this combat has grown on me. Although I still think the jump kick track is shite. But the rest of it is ok.

Saw a girl at the gym today who hasn't been for ages. We were chatting and I told her I'd started doing TKD and she said she might come along. I have to stop telling people about it! Otherwise our nice small friendly class will get overrun with too many people. How selfish is that??!! But I like it when it's just the regulars. Plus it makes it easier to have a good class and learn a lot, as we're all at about the same level.

We're having some holiday next week!! Woo hoo!! We were going to take the whole week off, but I have to go on a course on Thursday (yawn) so we are just going to have days out. So far we're planning some nice long dog walks and picnics and a trip to the Isle of Wight on Friday.

There are not enough pictures in this blog. I think I might need to invest in a camera. Dave suggested I get a digital SLR like his. Only thing is, he's good at this photography stuff and I'm not. He starts talking about depth of field, and exposure, and something in my brain just decides to shut down. He must have explained these things to be about 10 times and I still can't remember them. Maybe I will just get a decent quality point and shoot one. Anyway for the moment I'll just have to keep ripping off his photos to brighten up the blog. Here is a cute little robin he snapped this week.

Gravity
Mood:  lazy
Now Playing: The bird and the bee
Yawn. I can't seem to get going today. Last night I went to Body Combat, followed by TKD, which might explain it, I suppose. The weird thing was, I had myself all psyched up for the mad double cardio workout and it actually didn't seem that hard. Maybe it just didn't catch up with me until today :-)

Anyway, Combat was ok, although I'm still really not convinced by the new routine. We're doing Combat 28 and it seems very repetitive. I miss the old style combos we used to do with 3 or 4 moves put together. This one seems much more like 8 jabs, 8 jump kicks, a bit boring and not so nicely choreographed. Still, maybe it will grow on me.

TKD was great as usual. We did a lot of jumping kicks. I am really, really bad at them :-) I think I must have extra gravity or something. I just can't seem to get off the ground! You know that thing where you jump in the air and bring your knees up to your chest? Can't do that either. The knees barely make it up to 90 degrees. I'd love to get better at this stuff, cos it would be really cool to be able to do proper spinning jump kicks - ones that actually make it more than 2 inches off the ground would be progress - but I'm not sure how you work on that kind of thing. Is it cos I lack muscles, or is it just technique? I shall have to ask Mike & Andy (the TKD teachers) on Sunday.

Dave is out today with a client. I'm hopeless at working when he's not here. Which is probably why I'm blogging at 3.30 in the afternoon :-)

This seems to be quite a boring blog entry; must be due to my complete lack of energy today. Here's a joke to brighten it up:

A man goes to the zoo and there is nothing there except for one small dog.

It was a Shih Tzu.

:-)))))))

Duke
Mood:  sad
Now Playing: Kelly Willis
I've added Donald "Duke" Palmer's blog to the links here. He is an inmate on Death Row in Ohio. Be warned, it will make you cry. If you're reading this blog and you're in favour of the death penalty, please read the entries for April 24 and 28.

Target practice
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: Jack Johnson - In between dreams
I've had too much caffeine today. 3 coffees and a tea and now I have a headache. Bleargh.

The caffeine was needed though...spent the day sorting out a complete mess of a client's accounts. Got there in the end after much banging of heads off desks. I was working with my friend who does their bookkeeping, so that made it a lot more fun, and we managed to squeeze in time to go for lunch :-)

This is the same friend who has the poltergeist. Can't say I noticed any weird cold feelings in her house or anything. She says it has got worse though - last night the bathroom door mysteriously closed - ok, that could have been the wind I suppose - but then the bedroom door mysteriously OPENED and it was properly closed, not just ajar! She is obviously braver than me cos despite being a little freaked she then went to bed. I would probably have run out of the house in a panic and gone to stay in a hotel. Smart TKD wrist snappy moves are no use against ghosts :-)

Speaking of moves Dave is still enjoying the TKD and no ill effects on the knees so that's cool. Yesterday we hung a football in a carrier bag from the washing line and kicked it for target practice. Unsurprisingly, the washing line fell down :-) So I got on ebay and bought some focus pads. Now we can practice our moves in the garden with slightly more professional equipment!

What I would really love is a punch bag or a slam man. But with no room in the house, it would have to live in the garden, and be a freestanding one. So if anyone reads this and knows of a waterproof one you can just leave outside all the time, please let me know. I like the idea of sticking Rupert Lowe's head on there and punching away :-) Especially since they took him off Punch a Celeb. You click on his name and there's no-one there! Seriously, it's very upsetting :-)

Cottage cheese please Gromit
Mood:  cheeky
Now Playing: Annoying laptop squeak
Wow, I actually did quite a lot of work today. The last week or so it's just been too hot and I seem to have spent most of my time flopping around doing bugger all. But today the sun disappeared and I had quite a productive day. Got a few sets of accounts finished off, made some phone calls, and generally acted like I worked for a living. Mind you, I still surfed a lot and went to the gym for an hour in the middle of the day :-) My idea of a productive day probably only works out at about 4 hours of actual work. If you put me back in an office for a 40 hour week I think I would die of shock. And boredom :-)

Today a momentous event happened. I did something I have never done in my entire life. I ate some cottage cheese!!!! It is one of those things I have always avoided cos it looks so totally hideous and it's supposed to be one of those horrid "diet" foods that you eat with nothing but lettuce and hate every mouthful of. But I have been spurred into action by the likes of Skwigg and Krista - if I want muscles, apparently I need to eat the stuff!! So I had the following concoction:

50g cottage cheese
40g strawberries
40g blueberries
1 tsp sugar.

Swirled the whole lot up together and it looked like roadkill. BUT, it tasted remarkably good! At 98 cals, a chunky portion of fruit & veg, and 7g of protein, you can sign me up as a convert. I shall have to try some of the other ideas from Krista's cottage cheese page.

The cottage cheesey goodness definitely helped my "food pie" today: 1426 cals, 82g protein. Not too bad :-)