Round 2, and furry things

My plan was to take advantage of being off work to get the gym attendance well kick-started. Oh, didn't I mention? I have 10 days annual leave left from my 2008 allowance which must be taken by the end of January, so I'm off for the first two weeks in January. Aren't you? Shame!

Anyway, back to the point. I had thought that maybe I'd go to the gym and/or swimming pool every day after my good start on Monday. But then for no particular reason I decided to take Tuesday off, and that afternoon I started to get a bit sore in the left leg. The one the achilles tendon got broke on. And yesterday, Wednesday, was pretty much a write off since I was limping around with the feeling of a dead leg in my left thigh. Although yesterday I did get the bus into Glasgow city centre and walked (ie limped) around for an hour or so, meeting RE for lunch when we went to Wagamama. The first time I've been there, but I suspect not the last.

But this morning my leg feels much better, and so at 0930hrs I got to the gym for round 2 of the fight to fitness. Hey, that's not a bad slogan! I didn't do so much this time, but I think I should probably realistically not keep going beyond the time when I initially think "that's enough" otherwise I run the risk of starting to not enjoy it. In all I was there for about 50 minutes.

This time I stayed away from the cross trainer and rowing machine, and spent 15 minutes on an exercise bike, 10 minutes on a hand bike (no idea if that's what it's really called, but it describes it reasonably well), and 20 minutes walking fast on a treadmill. On the treadmill I covered just over 2km at a maximum speed of 6km/h.

I suspect these might become my default machines, at first anyway, until I get a bit fitter and feel able and willing to spread my wings so to speak.

The other difference this time was that I took my MP3 player (note, not iPod, it's an iRiver which when I bought it I considered superior to the iPod albeit it's now a bit, well a lot, dated). This meant that I could ignore the semi-ubiquitous MTV, and instead I exercised to choral music including parts of a William Byrd Mass, the one for four voices, and some Tallis. Turned up REALLY loud!

On an unrelated matter, when I first moved from my hometown of Motherwell into Glasgow in about 1985, I lodged with JC, one of the other members of St Mary's Cathedral Choir in his flat in Hyndland in the fashionable west end. He moved away a while later, including a spell as a doctor in the Antarctic, and over the years I've lost touch, but thanks to Facebook I've just been in contact with him again, which is great. The benefits of modern technology!

On an equally unrelated matter, when I was in the city centre yesterday I decided to buy some new jeans, so went to Slater's Menswear. As I walked in I saw a sign intimating they were selling off ex-hire kilts, so I went for a look and, to cut a long story short, I walked out with a Prince Charlie Jacket, full dress sporran (furry, see right which is pretty much identical to the one I bought!), and dress sgian dhub.

And no jeans.

A total of £158 onto my Slater's account, and perhaps the strangest impulse purchase I've made for a long time! But at least now I have the full dress regalia and can decide whether to wear the kilt with big boots and a tee-shirt, semi formal with the Argyll jacket I bought (and Blogged about) in March last year, or fully formal with the Prince Charlie jacket and waistcoat.

Now, I must get back and buy some jeans!

A year later

It's pretty well a whole year since I completely snapped my Achilles Tendon while playing badminton, on Sunday 18th March 2007.

A couple of months of being in a non-weight-bearing plaster cast, 3 months off work, lots of months of physiotherapy, and a year down the line my left calf is still noticeably smaller than my right one due to muscle wastage when the cast was on, and I still have to concentrate on not limping.

Relatively recently I realised that the reason I keep getting cramp and aches in my left calf is because without having noticed it I now tend to walk with the muscles of my left leg tensed. When I manage to relax it I can walk a lot better and without limping, but I have to think about it as it doesn't come naturally yet. It'll come though, I hope.

So, since my previous post what has happened? I made a fairly rare purchase from Amazon. Rare these days anyway, although I used to buy a lot more from the site. A couple of posts ago I mentioned a few books which had been recommended to me, so that's me bought all three. Additionally I chucked both the Long Way Round and Long Way Down DVDs onto the order because although I've seen various individual episodes I haven't seen either series in its entirety. I really shouldn't place orders online after returning home from the pub, because I also added something off my Amazon Wish List, namely a digital photo frame.

In the flat I rented for a while before buying this house I had my PC in the living room, and quite enjoyed the experience of watching the screen saver of my photos randomly displayed (or rather, displayed in a random order). Since moving however, the PC is in a separate room and I've been missing seeing the photos. No one really ever looks through their photos and I found the screen saver to be a good way of looking at them with no effort involved. So anyway, I have been looking for a digital photo frame for a while, but haven't seen any, apart from pretty expensive ones, that I fancied.

So, I bought an expensive one. On the bright side I saved over £100 on the list price, but it was still well over £100! And it's a 10" one rather than the more usual 7"-8", so although size isn't everything (!) it means I can see it from the other side of the room quite easily.

And it's Wi-Fi enabled so I can just connect to my home network and display all the photos on my PC without having to transfer them to the frame. In theory anyway. I'm having a few teething problems and although I have connected it to the network, it keeps rebooting randomly every so often, so this week I'll have a proper look at it to see if there's something in the settings I need to change. Otherwise it'll go back to Amazon to be replaced.

On Saturday evening a friend, RE, and I were invited to a whisky tasting evening at G&G's house. Could have been messy, but it was actually damned civilised! When we were told about it, in the pub last week, there was some discussion about what the dress code would be, and "dress posh" seemed to be the order of the day, but in the event it didn't end up like that. However in the meanwhile I had decided that this was probably just the right time to splash out on some new accessories for my kilt. I've had the kilt for a number of years, but generally when I wear it it's worn casually with a big jumper and some heavy boots, and when I need the formal look I've always hired the smart jacket and brogues etc.

As an aside, my kilt is the Scottish Rugby Union (SRU) tartan which is rather nice I think (see image).

So I went to Slaters Menswear and bought an Argyll jacket in a lovely charcoal grey colour and with bone buttons rather than silver so it's kind of semi formal, ghillie brogues, black socks, black sock flashes, and a new kiltpin. All for the bargain price of about £200.

As I say, the whisky tasting turned out not to be a posh dress event, but I wore the kilt anyway, and I'm very pleased to have at last got round to buying the stuff I have spent a fortune hiring over the past years! And a good time was had by all while tasting the whisky.

Next weekend will see this year's Motorcycle Action Group Easter Egg Run from the SECC to Yorkhill Children's Hospital in Glasgow, with 3000+ bikers bearing donations and Easter Eggs, and RE has agreed to accompany me by riding pillion on the bike. This morning then was a small scale trial run when we made sure she was OK riding pillion and I was OK with her on the back. Went well, exceptionally well, and we both enjoyed the experience, made better by having a decent intercom so we could speak to each other as we went along. So next Sunday, Easter Day, should be fun. I will, of course, report on it in due course.