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Now
Trying to keep on top of this.
Fellsman recovery is going well. My knee isn't quite as sore as it was last week. I attribute it almost totally to this video from David and Jelena Yoga, which seems to be just about the right balance of stretching vs. not spending an entire evening on it.
I went back to my running club for the first time in like months, yesterday. I chatted briefly with a friend who attempted the Bob Graham Round a few weeks ago, but who was forced to abandon the attempt due to bad weather. She told me that she's not thinking about doing it again: that it's such a massive commitment and it's not just physically but emotionally draining, and that she's just looking forward to getting back to running for the enjoyment of it. A lot of what she said makes sense to me.
We've been out to a couple of shows hosted by Zoe—the first a longer, more traditional gig; the second ostensibly a pub quiz as a pretext as for looser, more improvisational comedy. The gig I enjoyed, but the quiz was a much better platform for the kind of comedy that Zoe excels at: intimate, engaging, tangential. We brought Sam's dad and his partner to the quiz and we had a hoot.
What else? We had a couple days of unbroken sunshine during which I opened up the app for measuring the output of our solar panels and ogled the kilowatt-hours basically ad nauseam. I get a kick out of this stuff. Ghyll spent a couple hours over at his friend's house while we were at one of the gigs and apparently he was totally manageable, which is impressive! He's certainly coming on by leaps and bounds. And if you know Ghyll you know that he can leap and bound with the best of em.
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Ghyll update
I haven't written much lately about Ghyll, the dog who's been living in our house for the past two years or so. He continues to be full of beans, but as he approaches his second birthday, his beans are being directed in somewhat of a more deliberate direction.
Since having most of his tail amputated at the end of the year (and the long recovery process that entailed), he hasn't had any other health trouble. He's eaten some really awful stuff out on walks, but it hasn't had any ill effects on him, either in the short- or long-term.
He's made a fast friend in a golden retriever, Bailey, from down the street, and they hang out a couple times per week and tire each other out. It's very sweet to see how he's made a friend—Bailey clearly likes him as well, and pulls towards our house when his owner walks by our street. Dog friendship is funny.
It's not all just socialisation, either: we can leave him at home for a few hours in the evening, provided he's had enough exercise during the day and we leave sufficiently late that he can plausibly conk out for the night. But we have fewer and fewer reasons to leave him at home in the evening, because he's slowly becoming a well-behaved pub dog. He doesn't truly relax unless he's been out for a nice long run, but he does stay generally out of the way and accepts passing pats from pubgoers with equanimity (i.e.: he doesn't try to chew their sleeves).
I enjoy watching him mature, and I enjoy the extra peace that it brings: Ghyll is slowly changing from a responsibility to a companion. I don't think that I foresaw this coming, but I can tell you that I'm very pleased that it's (and he's!) here.
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Ghyll's shorter tail
Some country fairs have dog shows. Most of the time, these are shows of obedience, or of agility, or of simple breeding. But some fairs have "tail-wagging-est dog" shows, where owners compete to rile their dog up into such a frenzy of excitement that they wag their tail harder and faster than any of their dog peers.
We've long suspected that Ghyll would fare well in one of these competitions. His shot at being a contender, however, has been cut short (this pun is intended but won't make sense until the end of this paragraph) before it even began. This is because Ghyll wagged his tail so hard that he injured the tip of it—so badly, in fact, that he had to have the last 2 inches of it amputated.
It's a ruff life Given that this occurred at the same time as he was castrated, he's taking it surprisingly well! He's still wagging his tail with abandon, much to his owners' (and his veterinarians') chagrin. We've been advised to maintain as quiet and calm an atmosphere as we can. Ghyll oscillates between self-pity and unbridled joy—he's resting more, but he's basically still the same dog. I'm grateful for that.
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Ghyll's favourite album
My dog's favourite album is Octava by Phi-Psonics.
So I don't know why this is. We didn't play it for him when he was young; he hasn't even heard it that many times. It's an unassuming album of quietish jazz. It gives off good vibes, but it doesn't assert itself, or break any musical boundaries or anything. It's nice to listen to in the evening, as we wind down.
Maybe I should explain what I mean by he likes it. When we put it on, he immediately lies down and goes to sleep. It's like his comfort sound. He doesn't do this with any other album; generally speaking he seems ambivalent towards jazz. But he's lights-out by Octava's second track. I suppose I can't even really assert that it's his favourite album—maybe it's just the first couple of songs.
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Weeknotes 26 June 2023
Trying something new this week. Inspired by Phil Gyford's weeknotes, I'm writing some of my own. I got into a good swing of monthnotes last year, but for some reason I've found it hard to build a rhythm in 2023. It feels like each month is too jam-packed with stuff to write about, and so inevitably I waffle and procrastinate until we're two weeks into the following month and the previous has been all but forgotten.
So I'm breaking it down into weeks. We'll see how I get on.
This week was quiet round our end, plenty of time spent with Ghyll in the evenings. We've had an uncommon run of nice weather—great big puffy clouds scattered across vivid blue skies and the thermometer hovering around twenty degrees—so I've taken Ghyll out for a few walks to a nearby field for a run around. He always comes back foaming at the mouth and panting his heart out. And then he sleeps well.
Ghyll's favourite spot's the beach along the North Sea, better even if he can find a dead crab to gnaw on Not to say that we haven't had a bit of rain, though—and all the attendant allergies rainy weather entails. I'm useless on the first (and sometimes second!) sunny day(s) after a spell of rain, wheezing continually into a soggy handkerchief and squinting at the computer screen through itchy eyes. When I try to explain this to people, I feel like I'm astrologising: "No, it was sunny yesterday, and then the rain fell last night, and we've had a bit of wind, and the moon's waning... atchoo." As much as the dust was annoying during a dry spell earlier in the summer, I think this is annoying me more. Good for the plants, though.
Sam prompted me late last week to start training in earnest for my triathlon at the end of July, so this was my first full week of Serious Training. You might say that's a bit late—and I would too!—but I have been doing sort of triathlon-adjacent running and cycling for the past few months now. I think I'm in decent shape. The training plan that Sam has subscribed me to has taken it out of me, though. Only got a single (blessed) day of rest this week; difficulty sleeping has not made it any easier. Here's hoping that it gets easier over the coming weeks; if not, well, pain is temporary etc etc.
Sam spent most of Friday cooking up some goodies (quiches, breads, rolls) to sell at the church fair that St. Luke’s held on Saturday afternoon. The baked goods sold well (thanks in small part to my own zealous cake-eating); Sam’s disappeared almost instantly. I’ve heard tell of people who come to the St. Luke’s fairs exclusively to pick up one of her famous quiches lorraine. It was nice to catch up with folks I hadn’t seen in a few months, too; though when asked how I’d been and what I’d been up to, I struggled to come up with an answer. I don’t want to be the kind of person whose go-to is “work has been busy,” but what have I been doing for the past few months? Going out for runs? I guess I cycled the C2C back in May—and we went to the States. I’ll lead with that next time.
Afterwards, I took my first open-water dip in the UK in the Hartlepool marina. I'd swum in lakes back in Canada before, but almost exclusively on calm days at the end of summer when the lake'd be nice and warm and the sun would heat the top 10 cm of water to bathtub temps. Nothing quite as choppy as the marina turned out to be in a high wind. About halfway across the channel between two docks, a group on a dinghy came sailing up to me and told me that I wasn't permitted to swim in the marina. Strava's Global Heatmap misleading me again!—oh well, I paddled over to one of the ladders and climbed out. I must have been a bit of a sight to the locals in the marinaside beer gardens: some soggy, bearded Canadian crawling up out of the waves and wandering off down the promenade. Defeated, I stripped out of my wetsuit and ran a contrite 6k down to Seaton Carew and back, making good time in defiance of Hartlepudlians giving me the ol' up-down-up in my skintight triathlon suit. A long shower and a couple beers in the evening put me back to rights.
I promise it was a lot wavier than it looks Woke up Sunday to a high wind, regretting a promise I made to a buddy of mine to head up to Newcastle for a bit of running. I struggled to get out of bed and strongly considered being an absolute flake, but with some effort managed to pull together my running gear. Then I grabbed my backpack, my boots, jacket, and helmet, because I was back out on the motorbike for a ride up to the Toon—that's right, I'm back on the YBR after my catastrophic encounter with a roundabout last November. It was easier than I remembered it being! I think that, in some lizard-brain-type way, I'm mentally readier for the speed and the full-body way that you operate a motorbike, after riding my bicycle so far over the wintertime. Bombing down Bargate Bank into Lanchester going 65 kph in the slipstream of some Vauxhall Insignia with nothing but a juddering steel frame under you really girds the loins, it turns out.
Anyway, my friend in Newcastle talked me into an impromptu half-marathon through Gosforth and Heaton and back across the Town Moor, under a sky threatening at times both sunburn and a solid soaking. We did a good job of keeping a steady pace, and Strava reckons that I broke my PB in the half-marathon. Given that we didn't get rained on in the end, I reckon that's a decent result. I never thought I'd be the sort of person able to wake up early and knock out a half-marathon and then get on with the rest of my day, but here I am. Quietly proud of myself.
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2023
April 2023
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April 2023
30Getting back into it.
March 2023
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March 2023
31A long month of nothing, waiting for my hand to fix itself.
2022
September 2022
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September 2022
30The weather's finally turned, so I've got to choose my days out strategically or spend the next 5 months soaked through.
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August 2022
3A month of slow meandering back towards a sense of normalcy, with plenty of two-wheeled conveyance and first steps out in the wide world.
August 2022
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Polyphasic sleep
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July 2022
2July was exhausting and overwhelming—from weather to life events to sheer lack of sleep—and I’m glad that it’s over.
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