Compounded

Today was the last day of the archery beginner's course. It was good fun as always, starting out by putting the bows together and doing some practice shots before doing an actual scored round. This was then followed by a kind of free for all where people could carry on with the recurves or have a go on a compound bow or a longbow. I was really looking forward to trying out the compound, and it lived up to my expectations. It's very weird to draw but that moment of sheer power when releasing it was amazing. The longbow was such a contrast, and while I liked the simplicity of it, I found it very tricky to shoot.

I was a little late coming home for the house viewing today, so as they were coming up the track I was rushing around doing last second tidying. They seemed to like it, although they wanted to have a wander around the land, and managed to time it so they set off just as a massive rain and hailstorm happened. Oh dear.

The rest of the day has been a bit lazy, just watching some old stuff and sitting around.

Running, running, people, people.

This week has been OK. Two days in work after the bank holiday and then two days off work. on Thursday I took my Mum to her writing group thing. She comes back on Tuesday.

I've been out for a run twice his week after being inspired by the 5k on Saturday. I went out on Tuesday evening with Rob, but he had to turn back almost immediately with his foot. I did three miles that day but without anyone to pace me I went too fast again and there was some walking involved. I went out again yesterday and did 4.4 miles, which was mostly OK but again some walking. Pleasingly I've managed to lose 2.5kg since I last weighed myself, which is pretty surprising given that my diet has been shite for a while now.

Yesterday afternoon, Em came up and helped me do some tidying. We tackled the utility room, which for a relatively small room, was absolutely full of shit. There were countless tins and pots of knackered paint and varnish and things like that, ancient cleaning stuff, and various tins of food that had been forgotten. There were some from 2005 but the worst horror was a jar of anchovies from 2002. The amount of stuff that went back into the room was surprisingly small.

Today I took all the rubbish that wasn't burnable to the tip. They are pretty helpful there and took all the old paint and stuff without any problems. After that it was a last minute tidy up for three viewings on the house.

The first one was a guy by himself who seemed like a decent guy and raved about the view, but he didn't stay all that long. Sensibly he walked up rather than risk his car, although I don't know what he was driving After that was a couple who came up in Audi convertible. They stayed much longer and were very interested in the house and seemed to be interested in the possibilities of modernising it rather than anything else. They left just as the next people arrived. They were a local couple who farm sheep and wanted a bigger bit of land for it. They sensibly arrived in an ex-military Land Rover. The house was interesting to them but they spent quite some time having a look at the land. They already live in a similar but smaller house, so they knew what to expect.

There's another viewing on the house tomorrow after the last archery class, and then another one on Monday. That's seven in two and a half weeks. It's encouraging but it's brought it home to me rather that I'll miss this place once we have to move from it. It's also a bit weird to have strangers coming into your house, especially when it's still somewhat untidy and cluttered, despite all the tidying I've been doing.

Not much else to report really. The Hyundai annoyingly went into limp mode yesterday when I went into town for my run. There weren't any warning lights, but it was clearly low on power and the shifts were jerky. I hooked up the engine diagnostic tool and it reported a crankshaft position sensor error. I cleared it and it started up perfectly and has been fine ever since. That thing was a good buy at £12.

It's been far too long since I shaved my head, so I did it tonight. Unfortunately my hair got long enough to stop my head tanning with the rest of my head so it looks a bit daft at the moment. Bah.

Recurved

Last week was a bit meh. Work was OK until the Thursday. Typically a server decided to have a hardware fault and needed a call logged. Fun fun.

Thursday evening was the badminton club night out in the pub, which I went along for. It was a good evening but I didn't stay out too late due to the hassle in work and generally feeling tired. Andy did however tell me about the Easter Dash 5k in Llandudno and said we should do it.

Friday was a fairly quiet day. I had been planning to go for a run but decided not to with the 5k yesterday. I didn't do very much apart from do some tidying for the house viewing on Saturday and finish South Park season 13.

The 5k on Saturday morning was an odd one. It was the first real run I'd done in nearly two weeks at that point, and I thought I'd done terribly as it felt like I'd had to walk half the bloody thing. The course was from the middle of the promenade, up to the pier, back down and then back to the middle again. The middle part was into a strong headwind, which was a nightmare. But when we got the results I was astonished to find I'd only done about 30 seconds slower than my PB at the Marsh Tracks. Andy did very well, coming in under 27 minutes.

The viewing in the afternoon was not a success. The people had been expecting the land to be much flatter, so it wasn't right for their requirements at all. Also the woman was very tall and found the low ceilings a problem. However there is another viewing on Wednesday.

Today was off to the second lesson in the Wrexham archery club beginner course. It was good fun again, but I was feeling it quite a lot from the run yesterday so my body was already aching by the time we got there. We got shown how to assemble the bows this time, which was oddly satisfying, and then did some shooting from further away and learnt how to adjust the sights. Good fun indeed.

This afternoon I wasn't in the mood to do anything useful so I just spent the remainder of the day watching the Dark Knight trilogy. I got it for my birthday last year but never quite got around to it. It's really goood but I forgot how long the second and third films are.

A few strange days

Last week was not good. I spent Wednesday and Thursday working until 9pm with system updates that were being done by a less than competent external company. They got done eventually but neither day was good. There was a repeat of the 5k I did recently on Friday evening and I had planned to do it, but by the time it came around I was not in the mood, although I wish I had done it now.

The weekend was OK. Sunday morning was the first session in a beginner's archery course run by the club that Rob and Em have joined. I thought I'd give it a try to see how it was. There are 9 people on the course and there's an interesting mix. I did enjoy it although it's surprising how many muscles it uses, and that was with a fairly low poundage bow.

Yesterday evening I didn't go to the run for fun session, which I now bitterly regret. I went to the gym instead, but wish I'd done the run as it was a nice evening. After that it was time to watch Game of Thrones, which was fucking great, and it's only the 2nd episode of season 4!

My diet has been poor again and I'm worried that my running motivation is failing me, I really need to crack down on it and do some more training.

The Hyundai is still going OK but guzzling fuel as expected. It does seem to have an annoying tendency for the fuel gauge to plummet for a bit and then drop more slowly. My old Vectra did that. On Thursday it's going to have the new ignition barrel installed, and will also be checked out because there's a recall open for it on the rear suspension.

Tonight was spent watching a couple of episodes of South Park and firing up Skyrim. I'm still enjoying it, although it's getting a little quest-overloady at the moment, and I'm not quite sure I'm doing the skills and things right yet.

One slightly interesting thing was that I found my old Amstrad NC100. It's been lying around for years since I got it in around 1995, and it's very rarely had batteries in it. What blew my mind was that when I put batteries in, it fired up with the correct date and it STILL has documents in the memory from nearly 20 years ago! It uses a coin cell battery to keep the RAM going while there's no batteries in it, so I don't think it's ever been fully reset since I got it! That's quite impressive. It's a surprisingly capable little device underneath the 'User-Friendly' branding. It's just a pain that the only way to transfer data on and off it is through the serial port.

Rim of Sky

Sunday was basically more tidying and throwing stuff. It's actually pretty liberating how much stuff I've got rid of, and the difference it has made is quite striking. There is still lots of stuff to go though, but it's definitely a start.

It was the first day back in work yesterday. I had 186 e-mails when I logged into Notes which caused a mild panic attack, but fortunately the majority of them were automatic system e-mails and things like that and it wasn't too bad in the end. It took a while to remember what the hell was supposed to be going on this week with various system updates and hardware moves, but I think I've got the grip of it now. I also had my annual appraisal today, which went well. Can't believe it's been a year already since I started the new job.

I went for a run last night with the informal group that's carried on after the class. It had been two weeks since I went for a run and I somewhat ambitiously went with the group that were going up the top of town. I did have to walk a bit once at the top of town, but I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to run all that way without stopping. My body does seem to be more adapted to running now but a 10k still seems a bit of a long way.

Had a quiet lazy evening tonight. I watched some more South Park (up to season 12) and played some Skyrim. After my failed previous attempt to play it about a year ago, I'm really liking it now. It still feels quite overwhelming at times with all the ways you can build up skills and all sorts of stuff, but the quests and things like that are making more sense. I did a couple more minor quests and then went off to the frozen north to learn magic in the college of Winterhold. I managed to find the proper path this time and not end up in the middle of nowhere being eaten by wolves, which was one thing that put me off last time.

While tidying up I found the shells for my 3DS XL, which have been lying around drying for months after I painted them in that flip paint. I gave them a polish and put them back on and it looks OK. It's not as smooth as it should be, but it looks nicer than the scratched up blue paint that was on it before.

Berlin and tidying

Berlin was great. It definitely ranks as one of the best trips I've ever had out there.

The flight out on Friday was fine, no problems at all. After the food poisoning I was still a bit tired and headachy and didn't have much of an appetite, but by Saturday I was fine. We got to the apartment for about 5pm, and didn't do too much that evening apart from find something to eat. We ended up going to a place on Frankurter Allee called Reichard's that Rob and I had been to before. It was proper German food and it was really good. I had gorgonzola gnocchi, which was great but Rob had probably a third of it as I didn't feel up to eating it all. Em played menu lottery and got the biggest ham shank I think I've ever seen.

The apartment was great in some ways, weird in others. The bedrooms and kitchen were OK but the bathrooms were very weird. The main bathroom was huge and looked great, but was fundamentally flawed in that it had two sinks and no toilet, and no blinds or frosted windows, so making it difficult to not expose yourself to the neighbours. The other bathroom was built into a really narrow space and laid out very oddly. It worked OK though, and the shower was awesome.

On Saturday we headed down to the Tempelhof expo for Rob and Andy to sign up for the race and get their numbers. It was a warm day, and it was incredibly busy - far busier than any of the times I've been to it before. The throngs of people and heat in the building itself made it fairly uncomfortable so once the numbers were secure we beat a hasty retreat and went back to the apartment. Rob and Andy spent the afternoon chilling out while Em and I went out for a walk. We ended up getting the train to the Tiergarten S-bahn station and walking back to Alexanderplatz, which was a good long walk. That evening we went to the beloved Fliegender Tisch. It's pretty popular now but the manager let us have a reserved table with the understanding we'd be off it by 20:00, which was fine. We had a good meal there and then went to a slightly crazy corner shop near the hotel we stayed at last time. It has a somewhat eclectic selection of alcohol and sweets.

Sunday was of course the half marathon. Em and I escorted Andy and Rob to the start at Strausberger Platz, and then set off to watch the race elsewhere. We saw the race start and the runners go past from the S-bahn platforms at Alexanderplatz, and then got the train to the Tiergarten. We arrived there just as we saw the leaders of the race go through, which was pretty impressive. Again we saw them from the elevated platform, which was a great view. After that we hung around and saw the field go through and saw Rob and Andy, which was good. Following that we tried to get the train to the Ku'damm but everyone else was doing the same, so we changed plans and went to Checkpoint Charlie. The field was more spread out by that point but we managed to spot Andy and Rob again.

After that we headed back to Strausberger Platz to meet them after the finish. They did it in 2:44, which was mainly down to the heat and conditions. The afternoon was spent resting before heading out to find some food. We'd heard of a steak/meat place in Prenzlauer Berg called Fleischlust, and we went there mainly because of the name. Fortunately it turned out to be very good and we all had really tasty burgers. Dessert consisted of ice cream from a place called Hokey Pokey down the road. I had the pistachio, and it was magnificant, probably the best ice cream I've ever had. It was €1.60 a scoop too, not bad!

Monday was intended to be a quiet day without much walking, but Andy and Rob were feeling better than they thought. We headed up to have a look at the DDR museum, but it looked a bit shit once you actually got there, so we got on a boat instead and had a trip on that. It was something I'd never done before, and it was interesting to see the city from that perspective. We even got a student discount becuase the commentary was only in German. It was done by two people, a woman at the start and then the man. I could follow a fair bit when she was talking but he spoke a lot quicker.

Following that we headed to the Hauptbahnhof and had currywurst for lunch, before heading across the river to find a place we'd spotted from the boat that had deckchairs. It turned out to be a riverside bar and had a good range of drinks and things. The others had beers while I had a non-alcoholic mocktail thing that turned out to be really nice. We spent a pleasant hour or so there before heading back to the apartment, as Rob's foot started to play up. The afternoon was spent chilling before we went out to find some food. We had decided to try and find the bar that we failed to find in 2005, which has a stock exchange system for the beer. The more expensive a beer is, the pricier it is. We got there and had some good food, but the stock exchange took a little getting used to.

On Tuesday we did separate things for much of the day. Rob and Em went to look at art galleries in Potsdamer Platz, while Andy and I went to the Berlin Zoo. I'd never been before, despite hearing good things, so it was good to see it. It had a really good range of exhibits, and one thing I found interesting was that nearly all the enclosures had moats rather than fences, meaning it felt much more open and nice. This lead to a close encounter with an ostrich, which was tall enough to look over the side at us as we sat on a bench. In the evening after a rest, we weren't sure what to do for food. Rob fancied Chinese, so I looked on Google Maps for Chinese restaurants and found a highly rated one called Tang's Kantine. A bit of a gamble but it paid off as the food was excellent.

On Wednesday we tidied up the apartment and left our bags in a locker in Alexanderplatz. We'd booked a visit to the Reichstag dome that day, but over the weekend I got an e-mail to say it had been cancelled. We went and had a look at the TV tower to see if it was busy, and it looked OK, so we got tickets. We had to wait about an hour but got up there fine. The day was pretty nice with only a bit of haze, so the views were pretty good. The restaurant had free tables so we briefly considered going there but the prices are high so we decided to leave that for another time.

At a bit of a loss for something to do in the afternoon, we got some picnicy food and spent an hour or so enjoying the sunshine on the Tempelhofer park, before it was finally time to retrieve the bags and head down to the airport. The flight back was uneventful, although the airport was ridiculously busy which made things a bit tedious. It's about time they sorted out the new airport as Shönefeld really is showing it's age.

Since we got back I've mainly been sorting out the ignition problem on the Santa Fe and tidying the house. I got a new key made up for it after getting the code from Hyundai, but while it did get the ignition to turn eventually, it still doesn't work properly. I've had to leave the new key in the ignition permanantly and use the old key to trigger the immobilier and lock the doors. Having to hold the old key next to the new one is annoying, and took a few goes to get right the first time. This somehow triggered the Check Engine light and threw it into limp mode. Fortunately disconnecting the battery for a few minutes cleared the code and put it back to normal.

On Thursday it's going in for a new ignition barrel. It means it will have separate keys for the doors and ignition but that's not the end of the world. Otherwise it's still going OK although the fuel consumption is absolutely horrendous.

The tidying up of the house is going OK. I've burnt a load of stuff and thrown away a hell of a lot more. It does feel strange though, this house has been my home for so long and to finally be preparing to leave it (if it sells of course) is something of a strange feeling. However it's probably something I should have done a long time ago. If only I hadn't been such a financial idiot for so long. Oh well. I'm in a reasonably positive state of mind about it all though.