Rupert the punch bag
Mood:  spacey
Now Playing: Jools Holland
The punch bag is up and running! We have affectionately named it Rupert after our dearly beloved, sadly departed chairman. I will think of his smiley gammon face every time I beat it up :-)

I'm completely knackered. Today I got up, walked the dogs, dashed to the gym to squeeze in 40 minutes of upper body weights followed by Combat. Then home, had some lunch, and this afternoon spent about 3 hours getting the punch bag sorted. First we had to make a cover for it out of the largest tarpaulin you've ever seen. You know what a pain it is trying to wrap up a bottle of wine? Well imagine replacing the wine bottle with a 6-foot punch bag and trying to wrap it with a huge tarp in such a way that the water will keep off it. It involved staples, duct tape, and much scratching of heads. However in the end we had concocted this rather fetching blue thing which I think you will agree, to the uneducated eye, looks like a particularly tasteful piece of garden art :-)

Once that was done it was case of filling the base with 5 whole bags of builders sand. By the time that was done we were almost too exhausted to actually have a go on it, but of course we had to have a bit of a play.

So all in all I'm pretty happy with Rupert, I think he will becomes a well loved member of the family :-)

As I write this Jools Holland is playing on the common. It's very loud. The weird thing is last night UB40 played and we didn't hear them at all. There's fireworks after the concert and our office is just in the right place to see them out of the window, last night we got a great view. I'm trying to write this with a tripod on my desk and as soon as the concert finishes I'm going to get bundled off by Dave so he can take pictures them. I'm suffering for his art.

push me, pull me
Mood:  loud
Now Playing: Skankt again. My current fave band!
The punch bag arrived yesterday! It is a thing of beauty! Dave bought sand for the base and a tarp to keep it dry but it's been raining most of the day so we haven't got it set up yet, it's stashed in the shed. Hopefully if it stays dry tomorrow we will get it in place and weighed down properly and have a proper go on it!

TKD was fun last night. Andy's new form of torture for us is to pair up and do push ups facing each other, high fiving your partner in the "up" part of the move. My shoulders are not thanking him today :-)

I have decided in addition to my pull up quest I am starting a push up quest to do 10 proper, full, not-girlie-wimpy-on-the-knees push ups. Again I am using the fabulous Krista's handy guide. Today I did 15 at home on the third from bottom stair. I think this quest will probably be easier than the pull up. I suspect the pull up is going to be a holy grail kind of quest :-)

Aiding me on my quest, the helpful knights of Southampton Council have set up a kind of mini assault course on the common which means I can do half arsed pull up attempts on our dog walks. Today I tried a negative pull up. Hmmmmm. Think I need to do more of the assisted ones before I move onto that just yet :-) There is also a handy ankle height bar for doing push ups on, so might try that on tomorrow's walkie.

Check out the psycho duck :-)

Random wafflings
Mood:  chatty
Now Playing: Skankt
Ouch! Sore arms today. Actually sore arms, chest, shoulders and upper body generally! Can't decide if it's down to Dave's extra motivation (!) or the pathetic pull-up attempts. Either way, I'm not complaining - at least I know those muscles were working hard!

No gym today as I was on a course all day. It was actually not too bad, the lecturer was really good. It's no mean feat to make 3 hours on "personal and company tax losses" entertaining and even occasionally amusing, but she somehow managed it. I take my hat off to her!

Been texting one of my friends tonight, I am godmum to her baby. He is just the cutest thing.

It's weird cos I'm really loved up with him, but (much to Dave's extreme relief) I still have absolutely no maternal urges of my own. Anyway, she is down because she went in to her work today - she is due back at the end of August after her year's maternity leave. She says she is really upset at the thought of leaving the little one. I feel so bad for her. I wish I could win the lottery and pay her to stay home with him.

On a completely unrelated note, I found this cool video of some guy doing a flying kick over 10, yes ten, kids. That is soooooo cool. And that's exactly why I'm not cut out to be a mum :-)

No more running!!!
Mood:  bright
Back to the gym today and really enjoyed it. I did 45 minutes of upper body weights. Dave came and did weights with me (usually he just runs). He's an excellent personal trainer - amazing what a difference it makes with someone there to motivate (or rather, harrass!) you to do just one more rep.

Inspired by Skwigg and Tiffani I have decided to start my own pull-up quest. The quest at the moment is to do *just one* pull up. I really want to improve my upper body strength, which is pretty crap just now. Today I started the quest as follows:
1) I hung from the bars monkey-style for a few seconds. Now this might not sound like much but honestly, I am that pathetic. That was an achievement.
2) I had a go at an assisted pull up as advised by Krista in her excellent pull up guide. I wouldn't say it was a roaring success, but it certainly kept Dave amused watching me try and haul myself up. Why is it that you are compelled to pull all sorts of weird facial expressions when doing pull ups? Anyway, I've gone right off Dave, good personal trainer or not, as having watched my pathetic struggles with the assisted pull ups he then raised the bar and did full ones. Bastard :-)

After the weights I attempted the treadmill. I managed a whole 5 minutes before I lost the will to live. I've decided enough is enough. I've had it with running. I hate it, it's boring, and I'm rubbish at it. I've been running a couple of times a week just because I can't think of a better way to get my cardio in between TKD and Combat classes. But I've decided I'd be better off concentrating on the things I actually enjoy. With the punch bag installed in the back garden I would much rather get a good cardio workout on that a couple of times a week than go for a run. Also - happy news! - my gym is bringing back its Monday morning Combat class. Always used to go to this, but then they ditched it for Body Pump instead. Grrr. But apparently no-one has been going to Pump, so they're bringing back Combat - yay! If I do that, Combat on a Saturday and TKD on a Thursday that's 3 high intensity cardio workouts each week even before I include TKD on a Sunday and some punch bag fun in the garden. So I say - sucks to running! I'm ditching it! I feel free! Woo hoo!

It's really, really hot today. Dave has filled a paddling pool in the back garden for the dogs. Neo took one look at it and jumped straight in. Think we might have to book another session of dog swimming for later in the week :-)

Eats, punchbags and bikinis
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: Fun lovin criminals
Woo hoo - I finally managed a good day of eating. And you know what - it wasn't that hard! I even had ice cream! So why can't I do it every day? Of course I know one reason I don't manage it every day - going out. If I had no social life, I would be much slimmer :-) Tomorrow I am having lunch with my ex-boss and going out to in-laws for dinner, so the chances of repeating today's good eats are slim.

Anyway here's what I had today:

Breakfast: Cottage cheese, strawberries, blueberries, 1 tsp sugar, macadamia nuts

Morning snack: Weight watchers fromage frais with peach.

Lunch: wrap with mexican chicken, salsa, salad and 25g tortilla chips. Yum.

Afternoon snack: Milkshake with extra skimmed milk powder to up the protein.

Dinner: Chicken in tomato sauce, potatoes, carrots. Mars bar ice cream.

See, when I write it all down like that it doesn't sound that great, but it came out as 1385 cals, 49.4% carbs, 26.6% protein, 24% fat. That's pretty close to my target of 50/25/25 so I'm a happie bunnie :-)

Sadly I didn't make it to the gym today as there was a slight backlog of phone calls to return, emails to read and general catching up to do after our week off. I'm going to go tomorrow morning and do upper body weights and either lower body weights or a run - depends how the foot is feeling. It's more or less completely better now, but still giving me some twinges.

Exciting news - I have ordered a punch bag!!!!! After much searching we decided the whole waterproof thing wasn't really going to happen, so we just went for a freestanding and reasonably solid one. The plan is to keep it in the garden in summer, covered with a tarpaulin to keep the wet off, and store in the shed in winter. Hopefully that will work. Can't wait to get it set up and start pounding away. We have a really annoying kid next door who is forever playing in the garden and banging his football off the fence. Just wait till I get out there beating up my new bag with my heavy rock gym mix on full blast. That will drown his noise out :-)

Also today, I went slightly insane and signed up for a "bikini challenge" on Weight Loss Resources. Someone posted on the message boards that she would pledge to take a photo in a bikini on August 31 and asked others to join in. I rashly signed up. There's absolutely no good reason I can't shift the half stone I want to by then and hopefully the idea of putting photos of myself in a bikini ON THE INTERNET will be good motivation! Today I got Dave to take a few pics of me so I can compare them to the "after" ones. Hopefully the "after" ones will be much less flabby and with much better arm dents :-) And no, there's absolutely no chance of today's photos making it onto this blog :-)

Mad woman in supermarket
Mood:  on fire
It's tooooooooo hot today to do anything. Apparently it is going to be like this all week, weather forecast says it will be 33 degrees! The downside of having an office in your loft is that it is freezing in winter and like an oven in summer. We've just come upstairs to get on the PCs and turned on the air conditioner which is telling me it's 29 degrees in here. Yuk.

Went shopping this morning to stock up on some healthy food for this week (and to enjoy the supermarket air conditioning!). Before we left I promised Neo I would get him and Eddie a nice cold ice lolly cos they were so hot after their walk. So we're in Tesco, looking in the freezer section for those milky lolly things, which of course are not there.

Me (to Dave): "Oh no, they haven't got any mini milks and I promised Neo I would being him one back".

Helpful shop worker, overhearing: "Aah, how old is he? Would he like these strawberry sundaes, they're on special?"

Me: "Errr, actually he's a dog."

Helpful shop worker: beats a hasty retreat from the crazy lady.

:-)

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!