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peterbirksBack in the office today, which was, perhaps predictably, presaged by my standard "week after getting back jet lag" syndrome. I fell asleep at 5pm yesterday, imagining that I would nap for an hour, and failed to wake up until 11pm. And I'm still awake now, sitting in the office. In the interim I have managed to lose $60 at $1-$2 on UB (not sure how, actually), win it back in a couple of hands of $5-$10 on Pokerstars, chalk up a $32 win at $2-$4 on Empire (a win there! hooray!), and burn the new Hard-Fi album and Arctic Monkeys demo.
I had to burn the latter twice because, it being a demo, the volume varied dramatically from track to track. Nero has a number of cool features that most people don't know about and, even if they did, they wouldn't use. One of these is "normalize volume" (on the same menu is a "karaoke" option that mixes down the vocals to virtually nothing, plus "echo" and "dehiss" and "declick". Cool stuff, eh?), which I put into effect, and burnt it again.
As it happens, the album is less exciting than the Arctic Monkeys are live. Hard-Fi, on the other hand, have come out with a cracker of a debut. Already played it three times in 12 hours, including a run-through at the gym.
Not having been to the gym for four weeks, I gave myself an easy time, only 15 minutes at level 11 on the bike (prior to the holiday I was doing 18 minutes at level 13) and 15 minutes on the rower at about 2:20 per 500 metres (prior to holiday, 18 minutes at 2:14 or thereabouts). I also eased up on the weights. But it was a good feeling going there again. I'm a lot fitter than I was this time last year, and I hope to continue with the progress. I've got the body-fat percentage down from 25 (overweight) to 19 (not overweight) and I'm targeting a rather ambitious 14 to 15 by the end of this year. It's likely that this will mean that I won't lose that much weight, because 14 to 15 is, for a man of my age, rather low. You can only really attain it (without getting ill) by building up the muscle side, rather than reducing the fat side.
Anyway, we shall see.
I excelled myself at lunchtime. Most people go shopping with the idea of leaving the store with more clothes than when they went in. I entered John lewis, bought a suit, and left a scarf behind. Have you ever tried to find a discarded scarf at sale time in a department store? Hopeless. So now I have to go into another store to buy a scarf. I hope that I don't leave the suit behind.
I had to burn the latter twice because, it being a demo, the volume varied dramatically from track to track. Nero has a number of cool features that most people don't know about and, even if they did, they wouldn't use. One of these is "normalize volume" (on the same menu is a "karaoke" option that mixes down the vocals to virtually nothing, plus "echo" and "dehiss" and "declick". Cool stuff, eh?), which I put into effect, and burnt it again.
As it happens, the album is less exciting than the Arctic Monkeys are live. Hard-Fi, on the other hand, have come out with a cracker of a debut. Already played it three times in 12 hours, including a run-through at the gym.
Not having been to the gym for four weeks, I gave myself an easy time, only 15 minutes at level 11 on the bike (prior to the holiday I was doing 18 minutes at level 13) and 15 minutes on the rower at about 2:20 per 500 metres (prior to holiday, 18 minutes at 2:14 or thereabouts). I also eased up on the weights. But it was a good feeling going there again. I'm a lot fitter than I was this time last year, and I hope to continue with the progress. I've got the body-fat percentage down from 25 (overweight) to 19 (not overweight) and I'm targeting a rather ambitious 14 to 15 by the end of this year. It's likely that this will mean that I won't lose that much weight, because 14 to 15 is, for a man of my age, rather low. You can only really attain it (without getting ill) by building up the muscle side, rather than reducing the fat side.
Anyway, we shall see.
I excelled myself at lunchtime. Most people go shopping with the idea of leaving the store with more clothes than when they went in. I entered John lewis, bought a suit, and left a scarf behind. Have you ever tried to find a discarded scarf at sale time in a department store? Hopeless. So now I have to go into another store to buy a scarf. I hope that I don't leave the suit behind.
