Sunday 1st March 2009

A very busy Sunday for me but let me give a quick recap on what happened last night. We watched Let’s Dance for Comic Relief while getting some pizza. I have to say Hollyoaks performance was very good and I am surprised they did not go through to the final. Afterwards we watched Casualty (both my sisters Natalie and Samantha have been fans for as long as I can remember). Then by 10pm it was time to get ready for bed. I went to my room and after several MSN chats I got around to watching the end of the movie I started on Friday night. It was okay but I really think the teen comedy genre has hit the bottom of the barrel. It was around midnight at this point and although I would have liked to have watched Underworld 3, I will save it for when my desktop is back online. I watched episode three of Dollshouse. An excellent episode and the show is growing on me over time. It makes me think I should really bring my Firefly box set (which I bought back in January 2007 and only watched ten minutes of episode one).

Who do you prefer, Britney or Christina? It is a very difficult question to answer. Christina has the better more powerful voice but Britney has had the better material. I was watching the countdown of their videos on TMF this lunchtime. My favourite Britney songs were listed on the Top Ten list page, (although this was lost during the Word Press migration!) When I heard Born To Make You Happy (which was at number thirteen) it brought back memories of 1999. The time at which I was listening to the song. I have mentioned it regularly but 1999 was my favourite year for countless reasons. It has taken me a decade to find that same sense of happiness and well being again. Perhaps this weekend has been a moment to appreciate what I have but also how far I have come since those heady days at college and my second A-Level year. Onwards and upwards as the saying goes.

Been a very productive Sunday. I got up at 7.30am, got ready and headed for the gym and was through the door at 8am sharp. After my weights workout, I went onto the rower and hit 2069 metres in ten minutes. I was shattered. By the time I got back to my flat, Samantha was awake, Julie was getting up. After a shower we had some breakfast and then got ready to head for some food shopping. Before we left, I had to show them both the SNL parody of Single Ladies. Go check it out for yourself. Paul Rudd is fantastic as the music video director and what can I say about JT. Just watch and enjoy! We went to Sainsburys got a big load of shopping done, then came back to the flat to have some food. It was 12:20pm when they left. It had been great to have them here for weekend and the time has gone too quickly.

Finally after over two months I am back on my desktop. Well there are still a few bits of software to install but I am glad to have my machine up and running a after over eight weeks out in the cold and having to spend most of them on my aging laptop. I actually last used my desktop (to backup some files) on Monday 5th January. The following evening I packed everything away. I did not know how long it would be before I would use my beloved desktop again. It is not the same watching Heroes on a 14″ screen with tinny speakers and not having access to your world famous mp3 collection. The laptop is slow, takes an age to boot up and is not happy browsing and watching video at the same time. I have had to update the blog via Notepad (hence the spelling errors) but it is great to finally be back and in my comfort zone.

What have I been up to for the past week? Well a busy week as usual, but similar in content to the previous week. There was football, gym and visits to Albert Square. There have been major discussions with Amarjot AKA Flexsingh about changing my routine for something more advanced and also starting to drink protein shakes. I been sent my programme now but it will be a month or so before I give it a go. I will be trying it for six weeks to see how it goes and then make a decision to stick or switch. We shall see what happens. I have pushed up the cardio a level now, I really push myself hard on the bike and treadmill and by doing the rowing machine too, I am getting right into shape for the 10K run.

Talking of the run, I went for my first run this afternoon just after 2pm with a work colleague. He had organised a route, so we headed through Victoria Park, down the canal, across past Northcroft Leisure Centre and then up to the Old Bath Road. From here we went down to the office, down Strawberry Hill and back to LA Fitness. It was not at a fast pace, I wanted to take it easy. We covered 2.2 miles in around 20 minutes (I thought it would have taken me longer) so just over three kilometres. I think I will keep up the weekly runs and then step it up to running twice a week in as the end of May comes around. I am determined to get within the hour mark if I can.

Did you see the first ever Mexican wave television advert on Saturday evening? Well if you are registered to the Last Minute dot com you would have received an e-mail billing it as a television first. They were going to show their add on ITV1, then Channel 4, then finally Five. There was a question running to, guess the number of thumbs shown on the advert to win some fantastic prizes. So at 9.51pm, I made sure were tuned into watch it. What did you think? It was a bit repetitive but clever none the less, surprised it taken them over ten years to get on television!

So it is now around 11pm, when I am finally back on my desktop and slowly getting to grips with installing all my software and data back onto my machine. The lesson learned on this occasion, as we do on every go, is not to used custom installation discs unless you have built (and tested) them yourself. Pav believes that my system will die before May, and has actually given a 71% chance of that happening. I of course am hoping that a system failure does not occur again, well at least not again this calendar year. However, I am not going to just leave it to chance, I’m going to get a NAS and also rebuild the Toshiba laptop so I have a back up option.

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