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 :-)

Twisty wristies
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: Eric Clapton - Layla
No lost dogs this morning, just a nice mellow walkie. Dave took his new camera lens and snapped a rather cool pic of a dragonfly which you can see here.

After walkies it was time for TKD. Great class today, we learned how to block a strike, twist the attacker's wrist behind his back and overpower him. Cool! Dave came along again (yay!) so we partnered up and made each other's wrists hurt alot. That's what most married couples do on a Sunday morning, right?

I really hope he keeps coming to the classes. It's cool having him there, plus it would be nice having someone to practice with at home. Especially the self defence moves like we learned today - need to practice them and get them to flow naturally. After all, when someone comes at you with a knife, you don't want to have to say "hey, just hold that pose a minute while I remember which hand to block with and which way to twist your arm". LOL.

Action Heroes
Mood:  cool
Now Playing: Shawn Colvin
Dave and I just took the Action Hero Quiz.

Turns out he is Batman and I am James Bond.

Coooool!

Doggie adventures
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: Mansun - Attack of the grey lantern
Had a lovely Friday yesterday. Took the afternoon off, cycled into town and bought some martial arts shoes for TKD. Dave invested in a pair too, which I'm taking as a hopeful sign that he will be coming back with me again this week - yay!

Afterwards we took the boys to Paddles doggies swimming pool. Vic who owns it lets you go in with your doggies if you want, which we don't usually indulge in, but it was such a hot day we took the plunge and it was lovely. The pool is colder than most human pools and has salt in instead of chlorine. Eddie and Neo thoroughly enjoyed themselves as did I. Quite good exercise too - I was trying to race them up and down the pool and considering they're only doing doggie paddle they were pretty damn quick!

Here's a piccie of them enjoying the water:

More doggie fun this morning on our walk: we met a greyhound cross who appeared to be lost. He followed us round for a while until we realised there was no owner in sight and he didn't have a collar on. Neo started getting a bit sniffy with him - he doesn't really like other dogs being around us for any length of time - so we had to put him and Eddie on leads and wander round the common looking for the owner. Eventually after about half an hour we came across him looking for his dog. Turned out the dog was called Jake, is 16, and is starting to go a bit senile - hence the running off. Poor Jake. Just as well we found the owner as we were starting to think we would have to bring him home with us. And that would have ended in tears and dog fights :-)

Anyway with all the excitement we didn't get back till gone 10, so no time for weights today before combat. Probably just as well, as I was feeling kind of wiped. Still dragged myself to combat though - new routine this week, I'm not too convinced by it to be honest, have to see what I think next week.

Rant of the day: Saw this article in the Independent today. The guards at Buckingham Palace, you know the ones who wear those stupid black furry hats, have abandoned their trial of synthetic fur. Apparently it got too waterlogged on rainy days, and lacked "bounce". So they're going to carry on buying Canadian black bear pelts. Well, never mind about the senseless killing of bears then, just as long as we have sufficient bounce in our hats for our archaic and completely pointless ceremony. Gosh, it just makes me proud to be British. Grrrrr.

Punches, Pianos and Poltergeists
Mood:  lyrical
Now Playing: Nickleback
Excellent TKD class tonight. The sore foot held up ok, I took it a bit easy in the warm up and did less mad jumping around than usual. We did some nice punching/kicking combos today. Spinning back fists are cool!! Mags (my usual partner) reckons I'm getting stronger and my kicks and punches are much harder than they used to be. That's what I like to hear :-))

Played the piano today for the first time in months. Had so much fun I ended up playing for about an hour instead of going to the gym to do my weights before TKD. Ah well, my fingers got a good workout :-) I worked out the chords to a couple of Lily Allen songs and sang along at a shocking volume. Just as well our next door neighbour is in his ninety's and nearly deaf :-)

In other news, one of my friends has a poltergeist. Now I don't believe in any of this stuff, but she's someone I consider a really good friend, and she is neither mad nor prone to making stuff up. Things in her house have disappeared from their usual places and then reappeared weeks later. Plus she hears noises like people moving furniture around. She seemed remarkably calm about the whole thing....if I was living in a house with just me and a ghost, I think I would be a tad more freaked. Anyway, this happened before and she had a priest come round and do his exorcism or whatever and the poltergeist went away. Apparently it has now come back though. Maybe the holy water passed its expiry date or something.