Losing it[1]

The pesky indecisive snow is still annoying me. It snowed last night, and this morning it was cold and snowy enough, with enough of the icky stuff on the ground for me to take the bus to work.

By lunchtime, there was brilliant sunshine, and while it was still cold, most of the snow had melted.

When I left the office, it was snowing again, and yet another layer of snow was appearing. It wasn’t snowing all that heavily, so I decided to walk across the river[1] at the very least. By the time I reached Gateshead, the snow had stopped. In fact, it looked like it hadn’t snowed for quite some time - the pavements were mostly clear. That would be those isolated shower thingies, I suppose.

And, just as I reached the top of my street, it started again. Big flakes of the stuff, coming down with evident enthusiasm.

[1] I should point out that I did make use of a bridge to do this

…must be having some effect. This morning’s weight was down nicely to 205.4 pounds (14 stone 9.4 pounds, 93.2kg). This may well go back up a bit tomorrow as:

1. Had a big lunch today (pizza, etc)
2. Tonight is a rest night (having done three nights in a row, it’s time for a break)
3. It just seems to work that way

First, the weight report. This morning’s figure was down a teeny weeny bit to 206.6 pounds (14 stone 10.6 pounds, 93.7kg). Down is good.

And this evening’s exercise session was another good one - 10km on the bike, the usual 160 crunches, then no less than 13 minutes on the rowing machine[1] plus the usual Bullworker and weights stuff.

Just one more session required this week

[1] Building that up slowly. I’m hoping to get back up to 20 minutes eventually

Should I really talk about the weather? We’ve been having some over the last few days, and I can’t say I’ve been altogether happy about it. I woke up on Sunday to this rather unpleasant sight. Brrrr.

Of course, this being Britain, we don’t get proper snow - the kind that falls, lies there looking like a Christmas card for a while then melts some time later. Oh no. What happens here is this:

1. It snows
2. Snow starts to melt into a nasty slippery slush
3. It then turns colder, so the nasty slippery slush freezes into nasty, hard, very slippery ice
4. Then it snows again

Finally got round to having the new servers installed in the rack at the weekend. We[1] took the opportunity to move the older servers to the top of the rack to make it easier to remove them when we finally shut them down later this year. But for now, I have a very nearly full rack of toys servers. One of them is even a test server - I’ve never had one of those before!

[1] I delegated

Yes, today is the first birthday of Losing it[1]. It’s seen a few changes since I started it:

• Moved from Movable Type to WordPress 1.2, then to WordPress 1.5
• Several changes of design
• Changed from Windows to Linux hosting

I wonder where it will go from here?

This morning’s weight was down a wee bit to 206.8 pounds (14 stone 10.8 pounds, 93.8kg). Oddly enough, that’s only about a pound less than this time last year, but it would seem that the weight has been redistributed somewhat.

My waistline seems to be slowly decreasing and my arms, shoulders and chest are definitely getting bigger and firmer[1]. All good stuff.

And talking of good stuff, I managed another workout this evening. All the usual stuff[2], inluding twelve minutes on the rowing machine. I worked pretty hard this time - my peak heart rate was 153, or 86% of that theoretical maximum thingy. Feeling a slight ache in my shoulders now

[1] Calm down, Twisty!!!
[2] I’m sure you don’t need the details again

With all the changes I’ve been making to the site, I’ve been doing a lot of reading over at the WordPress support forums. Unfortunately, they seem a little broken at the moment. This is never a good message to see.

Well, not the full routine, but a good start to the week. Did the usual 10km on the bike, the ooh oww crunches, the Bullworker and the weights. I did attempt to do a bit of rowing, but that felt like a bit too much, so I stopped.

I just need to do three more sessions between now and Friday.

And to keep doing that every week.

Yes, it’s another Erast Fandorin novel! This was the second to be written, and fits directly between The Winter Queen and Murder on the Leviathan. If you haven’t read the books yet, do yourself a favour and read them in the correct order, not the order the UK publisher seems to think is a good idea.

This time, the story is told from the viewpoint of Varvara Surarova, a progressive young woman who is trying to get to the front of the Russo-Turkish war to join her fiancé. Fandorin is trying to get over the events of The Winter Queen, but becomes involved in events when it becomes apparent that there is a traitor at work.

As Fandorin fans[1] would expect, there are diversions, red herrings, misdirections and a lot of fun along the way. I’m looking forward to the next one in the series.

[1] Sorry. I won’t do that again.