Same old

...which is actually quite good. My weight stayed the same this week, which is kind of inexplicable considering I had a week off my efforts to lose weight, and which weren't helped any by a couple of things: going out for a lovely three course dinner on Tuesday night with faithful travellling companion before an equally lovely theatre show, and working late a couple of nights therefore I didn't fit the post-work exercise session in.

Four weeks till Sweden, and normal service will be resumed on Monday with water, walking, Weight Watchers soup, more exercise, and discipline, discipline, discipline.

Off tomorrow for some retail therapy, which should provide some more motivation ha ha :)

Stress, sick computers and Swedish stuff

That kind of sums up my life at the minute.

There are not enough hours in the day: I am, officially, stressed out.

Then there is the small matter of my old geriatric home computer not working properly. The internet is hanging by a thread but a combination of haywire-drivers and a load of little problems all turning into one big problem means only one thing...a reformat could be on the cards. On the plus side, at least I've backed up everything on the external drive - but on the down side it means I'll lose all my updated programs and (sob) iTunes which will need reinstalled.

Bit of deja vu now: as with almost the same time last year, my firstborn blog EuropeCrazy is running on a very limited service at the moment as everything is being concentrated on Planet Salem for the foreseeable future (well, the next 4-5 weeks in any case). Normal service will be resumed at some point, I've got a big backlog of old posts which I'm going to publish at some point, I just don't know when.

And I've now got an Olympics backlog to watch!

Bear with me ;)

Weight-watching update

Another Friday, another weigh-in...and another pound off. Yay!!!!

My "Slim for Sweden" campaign is really getting results now and heading in the right direction as I get closer to my mini-target with five weeks to go. Just one thing though: why is it that the weight still doesn't fall off the bits you want it to, and vice versa? Still, I'm very happy today :))

At least we're spared....

...the annual ludicrous ritual of overpriced bouquets of flowers being delivered to the workplace to very insecure people so that they can boast that they are loved "this much" and you, well, aren't. Little do they know how pathetic it all is :) If Valentine's Day has to exist at all, then Sunday is probably the best day for it I guess.

The unconventional nature of my long-term relationship means that I won't actually see faithful travelling companion today, but we did exchange cards, our one concession to commercialism.

Friday

Seeing a lot less of me: six and a half inches less in the last six weeks to be precise. Weight loss is nice, but this is even nicer. After feeling totally rubbish yesterday (which I can only attribute to Wednesday night's meal, sad to say, as there are no other explanations), I felt good today. And I was off work. And I went to the big city with faithful travelling companion, who annually commemorates his birthday with a few days off work. Nice. Which explains why I'm not hanging out with him tonight, and therefore blogging instead.

Think I may be having a midlife crisis, as my skirts are getting shorter, although still dignified enough not to look completely mutton/lamb ridiculous. (I think)

What if you win, wouldn't it be weird? OK I know this is not the place for it, but I keep reliving last week's Melodifestivalen over and over again, in a Groundhog Day-style repeat. I had a dream last night that you-know-who won Melodifestivalen, and several weeks down the line there are millions of people all over the world watching him destroy the opposition at Eurovision, and in one fell swoop, the job is done, and all my campaigning since 2007 is justified. Voila! The arrival of, potentially, a worldwide star. It can be done.

Tomorrow? Got a free day. Not shopping, not hanging out anywhere with anyone. Will make effort to do some worthwhile stuff at home. But Winter Olympics in Vancouver starting, so may put life on hold for the foreseeable future. Still hate curling though.

We're gonna party like it's your birthday

Well, maybe not quite, but a night out at our favourite local Indian restaurant was a more than agreeable way to spend the evening with faithful travelling companion, to celebrate his birthday today.

Which was rather lovely. What probably won't be lovely for my work colleagues tomorrow will be the lingering aroma of garlic, leaking from every pore of my body :)

Red sky at night / The joy of blogging

It was probably one of those occasions when I should have taken a photo on my all-singing all-dancing new phone, but instead I was too busy rushing down the road on my way home from work. It's a joy to be coming home in daylight (well, almost dusk) instead of darkness. Anyway I looked up at the sky and I was captivated for a moment by the clouds, which looked like grey waves lapping against the shore, and there was a little red border around each one. And no before you ask, I haven't been on the sherry trifles, but sometimes the strangest little freaks of nature just stop you in your tracks and that's what happened early this evening.

Busy but happy times at the moment. I know that blogging is only a hobby and probably shouldn't mean too much in the grand scheme of things, but it has opened up a whole exciting world for me and brought me a lot of happiness. The last week has particularly been wonderful and incredibly surreal: due to Salem's appearance in Melodifestivalen, this resulted in record visiting figures to Planet Salem since Saturday. It's delightful when you realise that other people are reading a blog which you initially started for your own interest - whether it's one person or a thousand. It's not an ego thing, but the joy of realising that other people like the same things that you do, and you're not really alone in your interest after all. Life, once again, is good.

The diet's about to take a hammering this week though, thanks to the double-whammy of faithful travelling companion's birthday tomorrow (and the resulting dinner at our fave local Indian eaterie) and then I'm taking a day off work on Friday and hanging out with him in the big city. Which of course means lunch.

It's only a minor blip though: I'm now into an exercise routine and also walking to and from work again!

So what's been happening in the life thing then???

Sunday: sickness bug. Not good, day ruined :(

Monday: training. Not delivering it this time, but on the receiving end. Very productive.

Tuesday-Friday: Catch-up / major work stress :(

Friday: Weight loss: 1 lb (add to previous week's 2 lb weight loss: it's all going well)

Saturday: Housework / wallpapering / Melodifestivalen = taking relentless happiness to a whole new level and the realisation that this blogging thing truly changes your life after all :)))

In it for the long haul

In "The Virtual Revolution", a documentary about the history of the internet screened on BBC2 in Saturday night, it was claimed that 90% of all the new blogs created since 2002 are now dormant.

I think that's quite sad really, although understandable in a way. It's a very time-consuming hobby(although ultimately rewarding, well for me anyway) but I think it's something you should stick with, life permitting.

Now all I need is the spare time to keep them all going :)