No great shakes...

Can you believe it? Last summer I travelled thousands of miles including a couple of nights in California where despite it being the earthquake capital of the world, I managed to sleep through the best it had on offer.

If I'd only been patient and waited a few months, I would have been stirred from my slumbers and had the fillings shaken from my teeth under my very own roof.

But then I would also have been denied my recent opportunity of watching the red carpet arrivals at the Oscars and knowing what a dump lies [not very far] beneath the glitz on the surface.

And of course, I would have missed out on the scenery, the weather, the food, the warm welcome. Yes, I'm afraid there are plenty of times where our little part of the world doesn't quite measure up...

Mist the point...

It was inevitable that the thick fog this week would bring out the worst of our local motorists. On one extreme I had people screaming past me at over 70mph when visibility was just beyond my bonnet; on the other there were people trundling along A roads at 40mph when there was little more than a slight haze in the air.

Then I heard a comment on the radio that suddenly made sense of it all.

"Have you ever noticed that everyone who drives slower than you is an idiot, and everyone who drives faster than you is a maniac?"

Ahem...

Plus ca change...

There's no denying that I obviously have some kind of addictive personality.

It's not that long ago that I would have been on here sharing all sorts of sad and sorry tales of a weekend on the piss, but it's just occurred to me this evening that I've spent the best part of this weekend on the Wii...

Blast from the past...

I've not been out on a Saturday night for a while now, but last night I had an invitation to a retirement party for Pete who was the sales manager at the last company I worked for.

It was of course good to be part of Pete's send off, but also to catch up with a lot of old faces I've not seen for 12 years or more. I say "old faces" although everyone is pretty much exactly how I remembered them so perhaps we've all aged reasonably gracefully. I had to smile when I spotted the M.D. and went across to say hello. He looked genuinely surprised, smiled, shook my hand then sad to the guy next to him "Hey look who's here - you remember who this is don't you?". I took that as a clear indication that he actually didn't, but to his credit he came across later in the evening and admitted the fact once the penny had dropped.

Entertainment was courtesy of Pete's son's band although I'm guessing the people dancing hadn't eaten as much hog roast as I had. After a couple of hours, I decided to shuffle off quietly and it turned out that the taxi I took was intended for someone else. I thought he'd arrived quickly, but what are the chances of two Seanys calling for a taxi at the same time from the same venue?

So, today I ought to be thinking about how I can burn off last nights excesses but at least I have the choice now of bowling, tennis, baseball, golf or boxing...

And this little piggy went...

After weeks of scouring the internet and setting up email alerts left, right and centre, I've finally managed to get my hands on the latest must have gadget - a Nintendo Wii.

Having reserved it on line Thursday, I picked it up last night on the way home and quite predictably had to set it up and "test it" before I went out for the evening. Although I've never been tempted to buy a games console before, this one really does live up to the hype and the interactivity does make it much more fun than just sat in front of the telly twitching your thumbs.

So, if you'll excuse me, I'm off now for a round of golf...

Hmmm, Fast Food...

No need to worry, I haven't crumbled under the pressure of pizza and kebab abstinence. Well not yet anyway.

While shopping the other weekend I spotted a microwave egg poacher and couldn't resist flambouyantly throwing a quid away to see if they were any good or not. It seems they are, turning out firm whites and runny yolks just as I like them every time. So now I can turn out poached eggs on toast in literally a couple of minutes which aside from being quite handy when I get home late (as happens more than I'd like), is also reasonably healthy I guess.

Hardly revolutionary cuisine I know, although I suppose it does go round inside the microwave...

No news is good news...

There was a time when I thought the above saying meant that you could assume that if you hadn't heard from someone, everything is probably still ok. More recently, I've learnt to interpret it to mean that for every silver lining you stumble upon, rest assured there's a filthy great black cloud somewhere nearby ready to surround it.

My week so far could be summarised in "good news/bad news" format:

Good news: (me) "Well that's another Monday almost out of the way"
Bad news: "Seany, we've spotted a problem out on one of the lines"
Good news: "OK, we've sorted it before the order finished"
Bad news: "The same error could apply to 129 other products"
Good news: "I've checked and it only applies to 4"
Bad news: "We may have made and delivered some already this year"
Good news: "I've checked that too, only 6 deliveries"
Bad news: "Problem is, that equates to over half a million units"
Good news: "I wouldn't want to be the guy who approved this specification"
Bad news: Three guesses who that guy is

Reflecting back to a recent post, it must be times like this that the word "bollocks" was invented for...

Give it up...

OK so I was late leaving work as usual and I'm supposed to be watching what I'm eating but neither of those were good enough excuses to miss out on pancake day. To be fair, I did watch what I was eating for the few seconds between three of them leaving the pan, being drenched in lemon, sprinkled with sugar then disappearing from my plate.

Thoughts then turned to lent and what I should be giving up for forty days from tomorrow. No problem. Then I stopped and thought about giving up something I enjoy for forty days which was a good deal tougher. I've said before I'm already down to one night out a week and that is not up for negotiation.

But I've finally decided on something to compliment the current health kick and I'm going to give up junk food. To be honest, my home prepared cuisine is usually of a pretty healthy nature, but I'll not deny I enjoy ringing out for the occasional pizza & garlic bread and it's a rare Friday night that I don't share a taxi home with a large mixed kebab.

Now, I wonder what time they're open until on Tuesdays...

One down...

It's hard to believe that January has been and gone already, although surprisingly, I've managed to maintain my new healthy (well, healthier) regime despite all of the temptations otherwise.

I think the main difference this year is that I've accepted that there's no way I'm going to say I'll give up my Friday nights out and stick to it. Equally, there is little point shedding loads of pounds one month, only to let it all creep back on later.

So, my target has been to try and lose one pound a week, every week, which sounds pretty lame but it does seem to have had a more lasting effect. In fact I'm now only one pound short of shedding a stone since my bathroom scale horror towards the end of last year.

A useful motivational tip I picked up was to get weighed every day, but rather than getting excited or depressed about movements either way on a daily basis, keep track of a moving average over a few days. That way, you may have put a couple of pounds on one particular day, but the moving average tells you you're still on the right track.

If things aren't really going quite to plan at first, just work out your average over a longer period of time, so as long as you've lost anything at all, the average still goes down. The added bonus for me was that it provided an excuse to indulge my geeky spreadsheet obsession, plotting the daily results and using them to calculate moving average weights, target heart rates, lean body mass, BMI, etc. then creating some groovy little graphs.

I guess it would also be prudent to check the battery on the bathroom scales again...