Bookishness and phones

I am still reading the hunger games.
I am now on book 3 called the Mockingjay.
So called because the heroin of the trilogy is becoming an icon for the rebellion in her own right and the Mockingjay was her symbol during the first two books as she struggled through the hunger games.
This third book has interesting parallels with Logans Run and Nineteen Eighty Four.

Phone talk

I was reading about James the ecopunk today.
He has a blog named http://www.ecopunk.org.uk/ 
In which he outlines his slavery free life and strategies for living as freely as he can.
He doesn't let anything get in his way,if he needs to relocate abroad,well he just ups and goes!
I have followed his blog for years and his previous blog before that.
An interesting read.

A recent post of his describes his use of his mobile phone.

I thought I would describe my own use of mobiles too in case anyone finds it interesting and if they don't 'meh' !

I have 4 phones. Each one having been passed along to me by my husband when he receives his latest upgrade.

Nokia 3310

The oldest is a Nokia 3310 which is a basic little phone for making calls and texts.
It has a few simple games and runs in Symbian.

The 3310 was a commonly owned phone amongst school children in the UK some years ago and so has a large supply of 'new fascia covers' which are often available for dirt cheap prices in charity shops.

My phone has a customized outer because the plain grey was too dull. I painted mine dark green and it has owls painted on it. I also have a dragons scale desktop screen and Harry Potter theme for the ring tone.

NGage
The next newest is an NGage which looks a bit like a games console.
It can play some very nice games providing you have a large enough memory card installed.
I have played Lara Crofts tomb raider on it and it was impressive.
The NGage can play games against others if you use its blue-tooth connection.

I also have used it to run Route66 gps program along with a GPS receiver which worked very well and started me on the road (literally) to not worrying about getting lost when driving to unknown places.
NGage can also be used as a word processor and there are quite a lot of applications that can be found online running under Java or Symbian to make it work as a

• mini film viewer  
• mp3 player  
• calculator 
• calender
• Radio.

I think it was too bulky for the majority of phone users, they didn't want to carry such a brick around as it wont fit into a pocket easily.

Nokia E61

Next is my very favourite phone, the Nokia E61
This is a smart phone. It can do all that the NGage does but with more style.
The screen is larger and GPS is much easier to find for this as it can run Tom Tom or Nokia Maps(free from nokia) which get updated more . No inbuilt GPS,you need a receiver.
I love the keyboard.

• It has powerpoint compatibility.
• Can watch films 
• Play games for Symbian or Java
• Word process
• Spreadsheet
• Listen to the radio
• You can hook it up to a projector
• It can act as a modem
• It connects to wifi and bluetooth.
• Runs Symbian 

X6

The newest phone I have acquired is the X6 also Nokia.

This is an awful phone because it is touch screen.
My fingers are small,almost child-sized and I have trouble in typing on it so that my finger ends hit the right letter.
My son who owned this phone before me(not OH in this case) , has much bigger hands and couldn't type anything with it.

It has a saving grace however, it can take photographs.
For me,this is its main feature, it has an excellent camera.
It has become my phone number of quote in case I have to stick a contact number in on a form anywhere and my camera when I am submitting my receipts to shop and scan.

I keep the phone alive by dialing the 'whats my balance' number once a month so I don't bother ever topping it up as the money doesn't roll over month to month on 3 pay as you go tariff which is daylight robbery.

This has inbuilt GPS but it is a piece of sh**e ,it has only once connected to the satellites and when I most needed it to do so,when we were in  a hurry , it completed copped out .

The maps are still viewable without connecting however which is handy for general use.

It can connect to wifi and that is handy for Internet and email if we are not at home but in range of a wifi spot.

I did get skype on it too but my daughter couldn't get it to work on her phone so that part is untested.

This also runs on Symbian OS.

I really like the OS as it is easy to install things to it but the newer versions have certificate signing which is a complete pain in the proverbial because it means that certificates can expire and the software you once installed no longer does..

Woman of 49 can do 13 pull ups

LOL I am such a boaster.
I can do 13 ... just ...since yesterday.

My shoulders have become much stronger looking and although I haven't been doing workouts during the day, the pull ups and pistol squats and our two evenings of running are enough to keep my weight constant and the flab away.

I noticed how much stronger my shoulders had become, today because I carried a box of groceries home and also had a back pack filled with more groceries and yet I was only just sore around my neck and forearms after about a 1 1/2 mile trek back from the shops.

1st run for a week

We finally dragged our sorry Arses out to run  last night.
We only did the short run which is about 2.2 miles I think but hillier than the longer run.
Luckily I have been keeping up with the one legged pistol squats so my legs didn't complain at all.
The boy was at Karate practice so he was excused LOL

It was a bit nippy, leggings and long sleeves and hats and jackets weather.
Thankfully the deluge was in the morning ,so while it was wet underfoot, it was dry over head.

Garmin was not invited as I had no wish to embarrass myself  by comparing the newest run, with the fastest.

Food

The boy and I decided on ' impossible quiche' for tea.
It isn't my recipe so I wont post it but if you google ' impossible quiche', it will jump out at you.

Anyway the main advantage over 'possible quiche' is that it has no pastry and so is not as heavy eating.

Tonights grub will be Pilchard Lasagna which is very rich and filling.

Spending and not spending

Last week was my first go at shop n scan.
I did a couple of little shopping trips instead of our usual supermarket visit because the car is up the spout at the moment and is sitting in the mechanics garage waiting for attention.
On Sunday morning,I collected up my receipts and discovered that I only spent about £8 this week. Later O(ld)H(ubby) gave me a receipt from his sweets shopping. It was about £3. Then even later he produced another one for a further £3 for two drawing pads and 2 more bars of choc.
That is embarrassing! £8 on food for three people and nearly £5 for chocolate for 2 and a half(I hardly eat it any more).

Yesterday he was home for a Dentist appointment and guess what he bought in the afternoon?
Um yeah, it was a big bar of chocolate !
When he dies, they wont need to preserve him like the man in the documentary that we watched on Sunday night, he will be crystallized already from sugar overload.
Here is a clip about Alan Billis the volunteer who was embalmed this year for science in the UK

No more self employement

I have officially deployed myself,as in, I am no longer employing myself .

I rang the insurance people to confess my lack of work for the last 6 months.
They took all the details then gave me another number to ring as in the words of the telephonist ,'we don't talk to the other sections of the national insurance offices so you have to do it yourself'.

Anyway at the end of the second phone call ,guess what?

I am given a third number because you guessed it, there is a third section who ought to be told but they cant tell them as they have no physical connection!

ARGH!

Anyway I haven't managed to contact them as they are constantly too busy to answer the phone and their web page is non existent.

Bookish Monday

I have been reading the Hunger Games part 2 this week.
I haven't got to the end yet.
It is called Catching Fire and is the ongoing adventures of Katniss Everdeen and her family and community.
There are twists and turns everywhere in this book.
You cant predict what will happen from one chapter to the next and I like the underlying story that is just peering through.
Of course the next one I read will be part 3 as that is also sitting on my Daughters shelf calling to me.


Pull up news

Pull ups are going well.
Lost count of how many I have done today but I am now able to do 10 wide grip pull ups which are harder than my usual hand hold.

pedal power

I have had my bike for a good number of years !
28 to be exact.
I bought it to ride to work in comfort after owning a couple of other cheaper  bikes.
It is a Claud Butler Dalesman touring cycle and works as well today as it ever did.
I have replaced the gear mechanism which finally wore the teeth down and the changer became very weedy so that all got swapped out some 15 years ago.
The bottom bracket was replaced with a sealed unit so that instead of breaking it down, greasing it and replacing ball bearings, I could just forget it.

I used to read a lot of Cycling publications but mainly the Cycle Touring Club magazine .
If you live in the UK and want a cycle orientated insurance for yourself and your machine, I recommend joining the CTC and taking advantage of their excellent insurance .

I have two bike books on my shelf from yonks ago.
One is 'Its Easy to fix your bike' which is a technical book that I found handy .
The other is Richards Bicycle Book by Richard Ballantine.
This latter is the best book I have ever read on cycling.
It gives advice on everything , road positioning  ,dealing with drivers , maintaining the bike ,commuting and is obviously written by a seasoned cyclist.

This weekend I found A new version of it in the Library.
It is called Richards 21st Century Bicycle book .
Written by the same man ,it is well updated.
He now mentions new gearing,brakes,tyres.
Recumbents.
Mountain bikes.
Helmet use .
You name it ,he has written something on it.
This book is worth having for the break down technical pictures of gears and mechanisms, alone.
I love the old victorian pictures the best.
It is powerful inspiration to get back on the dear old bikey.
I'm going to ask for this for  Christmas if anyone in my family asks what I would like.

Busy with little projects

I have been surveying like mad today.
No not for the building industry !
This is my Trickle feed income when I have no other .
That is most of the time!

I thought I would make a separate page about it and add new links as I discover where the most reliable or useful places to earn a little bit extra ,actually are.

Often the survey companies start to become busier as the season turns towards Christmas or other major Holidays .

Today I have done about 10 surveys and about 3 hours of  other stuff.

Anyway if you are interested,pop over to the new page,the link is at the top.

Still pulling on the bar

The OH went back to work today so our pull up bar made it back upstairs where it is used the most.
I managed 10 and lots of lesser amounts till I had done around 58.
I am still improving on the one legged pistol squats. Less wobbling.
The temperature is finally beginning to kick in here and it was only 17 degrees downstairs so we have been upstairs in the warmer rooms all day.

Making spare cash trickle feed style


I joined Shop and scan this week. It is a company that asks for you to scan all the bar codes on your shopping and you upload the scans( they loan you a scanning device) and a picture of your receipt (to prove you didn't just scan the contents of the shop) and send to them once a week. 

They reward in vouchers which will be so handy for Birthday present buying.


I am trying out Amazon MTurk too.
This is an american company .
You sign up and do little tasks on line for small payments in cents.
The UK participants are paid in US Amazon com vouchers only spendable on the US version of Amazon , so I thought I would have a go and see how handy they are once I have earned some.
If they are not really very spendable because of import duties making them worthless ,I will stop doing them.


I enjoy this kind of thing though, it is my trickle feed approach to life yet again.
If you stick at anything long enough, you will see rewards or at least know why you shouldn't continue.
Most of the tricklers have proved useful in one way or another .
Now the freelancing has dried up ,this is helping to fill in the time and provides a little bit of something for the very few times when I feel like parting with earnings.

Tinker ,Taylor,Soldier, Spy

We went to see the above named film today.
It was well worth it.
Full of suspicion and intrigue.
Great cast too.
The couple behind us were fairly elderly and couldn't understand why one character asks his male 'housemate' to move out after he is compromised. LOL
My son said afterwards, that ,theirs was the age of innocence.

OH stayed home as he had his exam to do.
He goes back to work tomorrow so I will get back to exercising properly .

Freecycling ,keeping it fair

We have done a fair bit of Freecycling over the years.
Last weekend we managed to donate 3 UPS units.
They all needed new batteries and that can become expensive if you don't have a cheap source of working Batteries.
Only 3 people put in requests and person number 2 actually turned up to collect them.
Had I been able to get the swollen batteries out,we might have tried to fix one of them ourselves as they are essentially a battery charger and inverter all in one.

We have been on the receiving end of Freecycling several times too.
Our dishwasher and washing machine were both from there.

I love Freecycle because it matches up the don't needs with the do needs.
Sometimes people will get greedy and request things just to sell on.
People even request anything in the list just so that they give themselves a chance to get as many free things as possible! Those people spoil it for everyone.
I really don't mind if someone wants to sell on something I donate but I do mind being taken advantage of and so do many others.

If you use Freecycle or Freegle, please think about why you are using it and keep your usage fair.

Bookish Monday

This week's book is called
The Hunger games by Suzanne Collins.
It is a book my daughter told me about and I am borrowing it to read.

What an innovative idea The Hunger games is.
It is about some young people who are the population of the future America.
Food is scarce, land has reduced in expanse due to the rising sea levels and in Quality due to the overfarming and overcrowding.
The land is divided into sections ,each with a different role and the people fulfill the roles if they dont die of Hunger in the process.
The game is a challenge in which a pair from each section must compete.
The rewards are worth the having,the consequences of losing are not to be dwelt upon....

A very absorbing book.
I might just have to read the next in the series which luckily is sitting on my daughters shelf tempting me.

Grocery shopping

The boy drove me to Asda again Today.
His driving improves weekly.
He is gaining a lot from having a qualified instructor's 2 hours a week.

I looked up the shopping on-line first using MySuperMarket.com
This lets you fill your virtual basket and see and compare prices of 3 supermarkets.
Quite handy for inspiring lists and keeping you on track.
I found I could save by leaving onion buying till another day.
The cheddar cheese price was bollocks though. It showed as £1.67 a Kilo and was nothing like that at the shop.
However,it made Asda look massively cheaper overall when comparing the shopping online .
Luckily,having been bitten by Asda's shenanigans before, I was not really expecting them to have that as a price in-store.

We haunt the reduced sections every week.

Sainsburys yesterday had nothing and when I asked the assistant where the section had gone,she looked as though I had slapped her and answered that they ONLY ever put out reduced things after 5pm.
I like Sainsburys,their goods are always good quality but sometimes, you are made to feel like a criminal just for asking about things which they should make clear. It wouldn't kill them to have a sign saying when teh reduced items are put out daily. The last time I felt like I had been fobbed off in there was when I asked why they insisted on putting the sale price per kilo rather than each piece of meats price, because that would be so much more user friendly.

 So anyway ,we are in Asda looking at the 'reduced' things.
I picked up 1 small packet of Hazlett and 1 packet of Garlic sausage.
The Hazlett was devoured in sandwiches for lunch with the remainder of yesterdays home made loaf.
The sausage will make a tasty pizza topping and was cheaper than the £1 packet of Pepperoni I was going to buy and didn't.
Fruit is so pathetically 'reduced' that we hardly glance at it now.
The tins are battered and dirty or laughable prices.

 I spent £12.80 in Asda and yesterday £7.37
So £20.17
The onions will be 90p in Sains if I end up going there so this weeks groceries will have set me back £21.07

Today is another exercise free day.

The OH has been off work on his hols for nearly 3 weeks and it is so much easier to fit in regular exercise when he isn't here.
Who knew one person could occupy so many rooms at the same time?
Thank heavens he goes back on Wednesday LOL

Tools rediscovered

I went on a little shopping expedition Saturday morning.
First stop was Hobby Craft.
It is a big warehouse type outlet selling everything hobby based.
I bought a helping hand tool for when I am soldering or gluing or painting,all of which I do every now and again.
A little pot of clear ceramic paint for adding a protective layer on top of my hand painted mugs.
A packet of Bits for the Dremel rotary tool that I salvaged a couple of days back.

Hobby craft is not always the cheapest option but often has everything you need.
Todays purchase was £3 off the paint so worked out about the same as buying the whole lot on-line would have,plus I didn't need to pay postage.

There are 60 pieces in the Bits set which was £13.99 as opposed to a 100 piece Dremel set in Wickes who wanted £29 !! When you consider that a lot of 'pieces' are actually things like a circle of sandpaper,a shaft to hold a blade, a soft circle to polish things, I think there was just as much useful stuff in the Hobbycraft set.
I wont buy lots more bits for it, some will be fabricated to incorporate the shafts that came in this set.
No idea what the thing that was stuck in the Dremel originally was, it appears to be a shaft with a nearly smooth end so possibly it was worn almost smooth over time. As it wasn't something you could remake , just having some new empty shafts is enormously advantageous.




This set will now be used to fabricate new blades for my mini bandsaw which I have rescued from certain death out of our Narnian book cupboard.

Pull ups today 40 in all,longest continuous 10
One legged Pistol squats 72=3x24 each leg

Softly softly catchee monkey

Friday saw me catching up on recovery.

Instead I tidied up the greenhouse, snipping off the weekly green harvest.
I managed a goodly amount of Lettuce and Spinach leaves, enough for Tomorrows salad to accompany our Sausage and chips .
The temperature is still comfortably warm in there.
I walked down the windy garden in a coat and hat but once behind the sliding polycarbonate door, it was like spring.

Hooray for the comic strip!
The hunt for Tony Blair was a very cheery film!
Cant help thinking Gordon Brown was shown in a worse light than T.Blair himself.

Thursdays scuttle

Thursdays Garmin induced run was faster than the plod of Tuesday.
We fair scampered along and managed a whole minute off of Tuesdays dismal time.
The boy did not accompany us.
We were spotted by my neighbour as we left the house ,it made us feel very furtive.

Pull ups have reached an all time high with  a new score of 60.
That isn't all at once but throughout the day.
10 is still the highest at once.

Keeping up with the exercise

Yesterday I did about 44 pull ups.
I do them whenever I am downstairs and remember to do it.
I think I did one 10 and the rest lesser amounts.

I also did 3 X 8 pistol squats each leg.
I go quite carefully with them because it is easy to hurt your knees if you don't get the angle of your knee right.
It can be quite stretching for the Achilles tendons too.
I can do them without holding something for balance now.

We ran yesterday evening.
2.89 miles.
It took 30 minutes which seemed quite slow but was only a little bit slower than usual once I uploaded the Garmin results.
I have been leaving my Garmin at home a few times just so it doesn't get too obsessive.
I think there was a wind blowing against us on the way back but I didn't notice it behind us on the way out.

Mending and making do

We inherited a Dremmel from a relative. Just the main unit ,no attachments.
It is one of those rotary tools where you fit little saw blades and drills and grinding ends into a shaft and then you can work on small projects.
We already have a cheap rotary tool but this is much heavier duty.

After much pulling and puffing,I managed to get the tool that was jammed in it, out.
It needed pliers and a lot of twisting and tugging.
The chuck is perfectly okay though so I will have a go at making some tools for it sometime this week.
Instructables has some interesting home made bits for them so I must do some research.

Bookish Monday

Cant help it,have rediscovered books LOL

My son lent me his copy of 'The left hand of god' by Paul Hoffman which is a fantasy novel set in an alternative reality. In this world religion has gone mad.
Things are familiar but skewed. For instance,the characters are monks living in a sanctuary that is filled with rules. Not the sort of rules you would expect to find in a monastery,more what you would expect from a penitentiary .

There is no specific icon that they follow ,their saviour who died for his beliefs is called the 'hanged redeemer'. However things overlap with the real world in that there is a Bible ,only man is not permitted to read it. Sins are punished by death.

Everything in this world is surrounded by espionage and deceit.

The characters are mainly but not entirely children.
Not children as you would think of them in our world, these children are naive and yet worldly at the same time.

Everything in this world that appears to have no direction,is in fact serving a purpose or there is one intended somewhere soon.

Place names are taken from reality and have a certain irony to them at times.

I love this book for its humour as well as it's intrigue.
Just when things are at their direst,along comes a lighter element to get you chuckling again in an almost Terry Pratchet twist.

Having devoured this book in under a week,I am now gnawing my way through the sequel .

What things pay for themselves?

I was thinking about how much we had saved by buying the battery charger I mentioned earlier.
I think we have had it about 15 years.
If I bought a packet of 4 batteries for 3.99 and used them once, they would cost £1 each.
Recharged and used again,they would cost 50 pence each.
Again would cost 33 pence each and again 25 pence.
WE would buy probably 8 sets of batteries in a year as all the cameras use Alkaline batteries and every one has an MP3 player.
8 X £4 is £32
In the first place we might buy £32 worth so that everyone has a set for a camera and a set for an MP3 player but the next time around,
1st recharging the batteries saves £16.
2nd recharge would save £21.12
3rd charge would save £24
4th charge would save £26.72
The better batteries will charge 4 times before being unchargeable.

If you did this sequence for a year you would save £87.84
The charger was £20 and also charges rechargeable batteries.
It would have paid for itself the second time it charged everyones full set.

You often see discarded batteries in the street where they have been removed from MP3 players and just thrown down. These can be recharged if they have a little bit of power remaining.
If you buy second hand electricals, they often have a set of batteries in which can be rejuvenated.

Rechargeables are cheaper now than they were 15 years ago but still run at around £5 for 4 and all depending on size.
With the non rechargeables, you can easily have 3 or 4 charged sets in your bag ready to swap out when your light dims or your camera or MP3 begins to sound tired.

Our charger can charge large sized D batteries(cycle light size) and below and so paid for itself ridiculously fast as we biked a fair bit to get to scouts or drama for the kids .
......................................................................................

We bought our breadmaker some 5 years ago.
 It was about £32
Bread at the time was about 48 pence and we went through about 5 loaves a week .
So we were spending  £2.40 on the cheapest, pappiest, stick to the roof of your mouth 'bread'.
 A bag of flour was around 48 pence and yeast was about 99p a tin.
We could get 2.10 loaves from a bag and about 17 loaves from the yeast.
About 2 pence of electricity.
So about 30 pence a loaf to make it in the machine.
The machine bread was more filling so we made 4 loaves a week to do the same job as 5 shop breads.

We were saving about £1.20 a week on bread
 The bread maker paid for itself in 6 months.
We are still using it today and bread is far more expensive while flour is now 68 pence(32,38 a loaf)  and yeast around 55p(3.23) .a loaf cost is now about 38 pence in the machine.
.......................................................................................................................................................
My Bicycle.

In 1980 I was traveling 6 miles to work and the same back in London.
The  fare was £8 a week Plus the waiting was tedious and could easily be an hour for going home.
The trip took around 35 minutes on a good day due to London traffic.
I decided to buy a Bicycle to do the trip.
I wanted a new machine. A mans frame because they are less whippy.
So I paid £315 for a machine with 12 gears and a leather saddle and added some lights and a saddle bag.

At first my trip took longer than the bus because I had to walk up the hills but soon, about a month I think, I could ride the whole way.
It wasn't long before my trip was taking me 25 minutes.
The machine had paid for itself in just commuting costs in 9 months.

In 1984 I moved jobs and worked 15 miles from home. It was a train ride costing around £50 for a months ticket or free on my bicycle. It took 58 minutes to cycle it or about 2 hours by public transport.

...................................................................................................................................................

As with all of these instances, once the original purchase money is reclaimed in savings,the purchase is actually earning you money in future savings.

I still have that bicycle. It was an expensive outlay in 1980 but is still perfectly sound today.

.......................................................................................................................................................
Sometimes it pays to sit down with a paper and pencil and do the maths!

Not exercising

Shh another non exercise day!
Well ,on Friday I did the usual pull ups and managed 10 in a row.
100 push ups and some bicycle crunches.

Saturday was walking in to town day so I often don't do a workout as well.
It was cold and wet.

Today I let my learner driver son drive me to the supermarket.
He is getting quite good.
His test is in a month.
We bought everything we need for a weeks meals ,6 bottles of malt vinegar to keep the toilet clean and it all came to £20.70.
I did already have some of the veg as I bought it last week when it was reduced,then chopped and froze it.

The vinegar gets used weekly,2 bottles at a time.
I empty the water from the toilet,replace with vinegar,tuck some paper under the rim (also vinegar sodden) and then leave it all night with the 'do not flush' sign on the seat. In the morning,it gets flushed and brushed. During the week it just gets brushed and the lid and seat get a clean every time I think of it.

This afternoon as it is dry again and a bit warmer, I shall dig my last onion bed and plant the shallots and Garlic. Then it is just a matter of keeping them weed free.
The greenhouse is shut now as it is colder and needs watering just as it always does. It has lettuce and spinach growing in containers.

I really must get my camera back into use. It needs the batteries charging so I shall take them downstairs and plug them into the universal charger.
This charger charges non rechargeable batteries as well as rechargeables so has saved us a fortune over the years.



This one that they have on Amazon does the same thing. I would recommend it for anyone who has kids with lots of battery operated devices as it is a massive money saver.
Plus once the batteries are fully depleted and useless(about the 4th use in my experience) you can still take them to poundland to be recycled.

We buy the energizer batteries as they are strong and recharge back to a good strength each time. It is a false economy to buy the cheap ones, they last a far shorter time and recharge only once or twice.

Running in the dark...

Yes we ran in the dark again.
It was much cooler this evening!
I had my wool hat,gloves.leggings and long sleeves with a light jacket .
OH had his jacket and hat over shorts and shirt.
We chatted all the way along so it wasn't the fastest ever run but at least we got out and did it!

My son decided he would stay home in the warm :P

My poor legs are aching . The pull ups work most of my body,not just arms or shoulders and I find it actually works even muscles in my stomach and hips.

Windy Autumn here at last!

It has been blowing a Gale all day.

Good thing we concreted the Greenhouse in.
I carried the battery box down to there and set up the solar panel on top of it.
The panel is not wa
It is massively heavy and took two of us to lug it over the threshold.
Later I will get the laptop plugged in down there to work in the free heat afforded by the Greenhouse and the free electricity afforded by the sun.

The pull ups have been going alright still.
Another 9 and various other lesser amounts today until I reached 40 in all.
We may run tonight if it doesn't rain.

I am reading Busting Loose from the Money Game by Robert Scheinfeld



Which is an interesting read, if a little parallel   based in its thinking.
Basically it is about not accepting the way life is presenting itself to you,especially regarding luck and money.
I find books like this fascinating because we have all been shoveled our Lot in life and told that ,'that is how it is,live with it' and here is a man saying ...actually it is all about how you react to what you are dealt that determines the path your life takes. It isn't anything to do with getting rich quick or anything, it is more about not being obsessed with money full stop.
If you like the Authors Robert  Anthony  or Fred Alan Wolfe  you will probably like this.

Still here :)

The garden has been calling me to work the last few days ,therefore the conventional exercising has been put on the back burner.
I have been keeping up with the pull ups though, cant have all that work wasted.
Yesterday I did 45 which was 9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 over the course of the day.
All sets were continuous so you can see that I am still getting stronger,the top set being 9 in a row.

We ran last night for the first time in a week.
Not too bad either, about 2.6 miles without stopping.
I didn't bother to time it.