OH had his exam yesterday which he sits at home with a transcriber to do the writing.
He can manage to write fairly well but his reading speed is painfully slow due to dislexia.

I took myself off into town to save being a hovering prescence.
First I went to the take away and bought my lunch.
I could have taken a sandwich and a drink from home but it is October and there is nowhere really to picnic out of the weather at this time of year.
Our town is notorious for having nothing to do and nowhere to do it.

I spent an hour sipping a big cup of tea and reading my ebook but ofcourse one cant keep that up indefinitely and even take away shops need their tables to be filled and emptied to remain in business.

Next I went for a roam around the charity shops.
I have nothing that we need so although it was an interesting browse, there was no buying involved.

After a long walk around of about 2 hours and feeling quite thirsty again, I stopped at a cafe and bought a huge mug of tea and resumed my ebook.

Around 3pm I met up with OH at the cinema so that we could see the film Looper which is on at the moment.
I had 2 cinema tickets from my online earnings at maximiles so it cost us nothing.

DS had an interview for a possible job so couldn't come too.
It turned out to be door to door canvassing which he is definitely not cut out for so I guess he wont be hearing back from them.
DD did a similar job a couple of years back and found it tedious even though she was marginally successful at it.
She also did something similar for a couple of days a few weeks back and was chased by a dog at one house. She discovered that the charity company wanted their canvassers to appear for work 2 hours before they were paid and to work through any breaks to 'make up the quotas'.
Needless to say, she found something else as quickly as she could working less hours and paying actual regular wages.

I wish the government could see the sort of jobs that are available themselves 'fly on the wall' style. I think they would then understand why people have trouble finding work.


I have resumed my skipping (jump rope) today.
5 minutes this morning without shoes was about all I could manage.
If you have only skipped when shod, try 'no shoes' it is a whole new ball game.
I was going to resume last week but OH has been at home revising and there was nowhere to skip without it sounding .
Outdoors has not been an option due to the rain.
We haven't run in ages as OH twisted his knee and I ususally only run with him.

I have been keeping an eye on eating though and still weigh the same as last year when we ran, worked out and skipped .
OH has had to reign back on his snacking as he had put on a bit of ballooniness (2 stone).
He is a bit of a chocolate addict which is fine when he is cycling,running and karatiing but not when he isn't.

A quiet weekend.

Our DD is gone back to university.
We are 3 again .
It means less having the dishwasher on, less cooking, less breadmaking.
I shall miss her chats though .

I am still reading my wheel of time ebook, only half way through, they are very long but worth the time .

Today I put the pull up bar back on DD's door frame and managed to do 4 each time I tried a pull up.
It will take time to build back up again.
I did a bit of indoor skipping too.

I am averaging 135 points a day on swag bucks which is nice as it is about £5 a week in Amazon UK vouchers.

I bit the bullet yesterday and ordered my vegetable seeds from the Us Amazon store where I accrue a few vouchers. They should be here by the end of the month.

Tis the first day of the new year!

Happy new year to anyone who reads this.

At the moment I am watching swagbucks TV and writing this at the same time.
I have Opera as my web browser and when there are 2 tabs open, I click Tile and can have the pages side by side.
So the SBTV can play in one window and I can go to the next video as each one reaches the progress bar point , and still do something else at the same time.

My resolution this year is to get back to frugal earning and veg growing.
I shall also continue with my fitness through exercising and running.

This Christmas my weight has not risen much despite the lack of running.
We were much more sensible about what we ate.
I bought 1 tin of chocolates before Christmas and we received another as a present.
Last year we had 2 tins,received another and also had chocolate oranges.

Today we will have a turkey dinner rather like our Christmas Day meal, with a home made Christmas pud  to follow.

Lunch time was home made bread,crackers, cheese and pate.
Coffee to follow.
The coffee was a free gift from Taylors or Harrowgate.
It is Christmas Blend and is actually very mild which I prefer.

My ebook reader has been busy this week.
So far it has only needed to be recharged once despite daily use for over a week.
I charged it on boxing day and it isnt even 1/4 used yet.


The men have gone for a driving lesson .

Wodens Day

It's been a bit of a dull day .
I have done some more exercises just to keep warm and have something to do.

• Pistol Squats X 10 each leg
• Dips X 10
• Ropeless skipping 5 minutes
• leg raises X 10
• Pull ups X8

This morning I did some work online and then read some more of the current Terry Pratchet.

I have another one lined up for when this one is finished and then a Robert Jordan book to make a change.

It has been Icy cold in the Kitchen as usual.
We have a very small radiator in there but we only have the heating on an hour morning and again evening so the rest of the time it is froozy.

Tomorrow will be spent in wrapping the presents that are sitting in my bedroom in a box.
I have saved the packing paper from an amazon delivery to use as the wrapping.
I shall make some microwaved Flapjacks too.

squatty Tuesday

I have been neglecting the running just lately.
Today I did 140 squats to keep the old legs in shape.

It is quite cold here, our house seems badly placed to take much advantage of sun shine.
While we ate tea, the front room showed 13 degrees on the electricity monitor.

I have been playing with the mended e-reader a bit today.
I put two books and a PDF file on it and they all read fine.
The transfer was easy,I can either drag books to it just by looking at it in the windows environment or I can open it in the reader program that it installs when you first run it, and put books on it using that.
It can play MP3 too although I most likely wont bother with that as I have a few MP3 players that can play them already.

Next I will make it a cover.
I'm going to hunt around for a hardback with a cover I like and use that.
We have loads of books so I am almost guaranteed to find one in the house, that no one cares about.

DS still hasn't passed his driving test.
He has another go next week.
I am disappointed for him because he is quite careful when he drives and it is just little things that are getting in the way.
Hopefully once he has his full license, he can find a job more easily,at present everything he has applied for has asked for a full license.

Today I was able to request payment on 2 sites!
One is the shop and scan site and the other was valued opinions.
Each one gave an instant link to the £10 voucher I had requested.
I don't need to get anyone presents now so they will be saved for May most likely when my daughter has a birthday unless there is anything we particularly need and Amazon sell in which case, they would go on that.

We have just had the new amount for our insurance on the car and it is quite steep (over £500)so I might try looking for cheaper alternatives or more likely suggest it to OH.

Bookish Monday rolls round again

I have been immersed in Terry Pratchet!
The book I have just finished was called Guards Guards and is very funny.
I especially like the Grim reaper who comes and waits for the deadies to realise they are dead !
Some hilarious Clichéd quoting too from Clint Eastward films.


If you have read and enjoyed any of the Red Dwarf books ,you will find these are at east equal in humour.
I think they are better but that is maybe just me.

Pull ups


I have been keeping up with the pull ups. I can manage about 14 in one go .



I'm afraid I have been slacking off on the running lately because it is cold and damp out and I am a wimp.


Presents



Presents are now all bought and paid for. I always buy them from my Internet survey vouchers if I possibly can.

This year I successfully managed to incorporate everything within that criteria . Just as well as the self employment was going nowhere.


OH has a couple of new things and the afformentioned vouchers and cover.
DS has something he will find handy(he mentioned how good they are and I took note without hopefully letting on that I was doing so ). 
DD has her reader dubries.
We don't go overboard on relatives.
OH has bought a few bits for his nephew and 3 nieces .
I haven't any on my side and all my aunts and uncles are dead .


For those of you who think Christmas us humbug, I don't disagree, I do think it is a great excuse though, when your kids are little and want everything.
I always used to say  'yes it is nice but that is the sort of thing you only get for Christmas or a Birthday present'.
It worked really well over the years and I still stick by it.
So for me anyway, it is an excuse to buy someone something when I avoid doing so at every other time of year.

Stiff legs

Ooch , I had stiff legs on Saturday morning.
We ran about 3 miles on Friday night ,having wimped out Thursday due to the rain.

BUT

it is Our postie who is responsible for my stiff legs!

He knocked on the door and handed me an envelope saying;
'back in a minute with a couple of parcels'.
'OK' I said and because it was cold ,pushed the door to as he had walked back up the path to the pavement.
I thought 'I will just keep warm while I am waiting' and grabbed my skipping rope.
It was more than 10 minutes before he came back with the parcels LOL

I think he must have mistakenly thought they were in his trolley only to find he had to finish the road and then get back to his van to fetch them.

Trotting along as usual

We ran yesterday evening.
It was cold and I had 3 top layers on and a thin jacket plus my ronhill trackies and a beanie hat I made from a jersey that had shrunk and felted ,plus gloves.

The hat being pure wool was far more comfortable than my usual acrylic and thinsulate hat because the wool was warm and the natural fibers allow my skin to breath.
It isn't as big either so I am not pulling on the cuff to get it out of my eyes when it slumps down.

The run was okay. I haven't done any skipping for about a month and we only ran once last week so I wasn't expecting to be fast but we still managed the full run without needing to stop.

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.

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.

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

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.

Core work

Managed to get in an hour long virtual gym workout this afternoon.
The ball was utilised as usual and still feels like it is doing its job on Abs.
I cant really understand the 'don't arch your back' comment the trainer gives out because it is done on a ball which is curved and so you don't really have a lot of choice.

I timed the workout so that I could gobble a banana while making dinner and then leave it to cook while I went and cleaned up and got changed.
That works well either before lunch or dinner as I don't feel like shoveling back food in addition to the meal if I haven't got long till a scheduled meal anyway and it makes it easy to just have an Apple or carrot or something later on.
Since I haven't been chocolating, I haven't felt the need to snack anyway. It's almost as though chocolate was responsible for wanting nibbles,not the boredom or extra exercise after all.

Hubs can be a bit of a nibbler. He will buy chocolate,biscuits,donuts and cake quite often at weekends and it is difficult not to join in with him. I'm sure he prefers his wife to be trim rather than blobby but the evidence would suggest otherwise.

New pull up scheme

After last times success with 3 pull ups in succession without a foot landing, I decided that I would change the routine a bit.
This morning I did 3,3,3,2,3,1,2,2
all being consecutive pull ups but smaller sets.
I think this is the way to improve because all the time I do single pull ups, I am getting more endurance overall but not very quick progress with increasing the time between foot landings.
After that,I did 6 singles,7 singles,8 singles and 2 consecutive.
Then
6 chin ups(singles)
12 leg raises
12x2 weighted leg raises
12 band assisted pull ups
My shoulders and arms feel very pumped and powerful.

I hung the pull up bar on a different door so that I could leave it there for the odd pull up throughout the day.
We really don't have a lot of doors where it will fit(3 in the whole house).
The usual door is right by the front door so the bar cant stay there else no one can get out or into the house.
The 2nd door is my daughters bedroom but also doubles as OH's study room and his exam room when the time comes, so would be a bit cheeky to hang it there , a bit too 'I'm in possession now'.
The only other door with a suitable frame, is the door of my workroom(former dining room) which has the sofa right up against it on the other side but as it wont be permanent,I have it there for now.

The usual scuttle
We ran our almost 3 miler last night. I didn't really feel like it as it was dark and cold but with a long sleeved top and track suit leggings,it was quite warm and I had my light jacket over it for visibility which left me feeling very steamy. I didn't take the garmin this time.I don't want to rely on it always .It can become a bit obsessive to always be fretting over a time when what I really got it for was the gps mapping and the heart rate .
We didn't have an audience last night and no dogs showed an interest.

progressing!

Yesterday was Sunday and quite windy out.
The boys went for a driving lesson so I got my skipping rope and bottle of water and went for a skip in the garden using the piece of board so that I could skip on the grass.
I wasn't sure the wind would let me but I thought I would give it a go and it was fine once I had found a place by the greenhouse where the wind didn't seem so strong.
I skipped 10 minutes to warm up choosing a different step for each minute.
A quick nip back in to the Loo (always a good idea before double unders ).
Then I double undered for as long as I could,giving myself very short water breaks about every 60 jumps.
I rarely manage more than 25 at a go so it was not exactly non stop but I did do 476 double unders all together.
On my second jump I did 34 at one go so that was very pleasing and then later on I did 43 which I think is equal to my best(not sure if it was 48 pb previously as I didn't write it down but I think it was 43).
Yay GO me! LOL

That was it for yesterdays exercise as I was worn out after 40 minutes of that lot.

About an hour ago I did the pull up routine again.
This time was 5 sets :
10,8,7,6 and max
The max was 10
What was especially pleasing was the 3 consecutive pull ups without my feet on the ground which I repeated three or four times in the different sets.
After the max,I did;
6 chin ups
12 unweighted leg raises
2X12 weighted leg raises
12 band assisted pull ups

HIIT and pullups combined

Friday was rest day.
Today (saturday) I needed to get back to it.
HIIT was neglected last week and so I wanted to get that in but also to do the pull ups that didn't get done yesterday.
So
I skipped 10 mins then did set 1 of pullups 7 reps
skipped 1 min set 2 ...6 reps
skipped 1 min set 3 ...7 reps
skipped 1 min set 4 ...8 reps
skipped 1 min set 5 ...9 reps
skipped 1 min set 6 ...6 chinups
skipped 1 min set 7...10 leg raises
skipped 1 min set 8...10 weighted leg raises
skipped 1 min set 9...10 weighted leg raises
skipped 1 min set 10..12 band assisted pull ups
kettle bell swings 1 min skip 5 mins to cool down.
This all took about 42 minutes and was hard work!

We walked into town earlier so I feel I have had a good exercise day today.

quick ladders workout

I decided to warm myself up a bit so looked for a good simple workout that I could do without any equipment.
I found a ladder style workout.
Found here

This comprised of sets of 50's,40's,30's,20's and 10's
Each set is made up of Push ups,squats(hands behind head),crunches(it says sit ups on the page but they sound far more like crunches and I don't really find sit ups do anything) and lastly lunges.

I began with the 50 push ups and managed all in one go,after that,everything else was easier and so each set followed on from the last without a break.
The whole lot took me 19 minutes.
I think it was so easy because of all the challenges that I have followed for the last couple of months.
I was breathing harder towards the middle of the challenge.

Being running day,I don't always do a workout but I haven't got any work at the moment and life can get a bit boring so it fills in the time, keeps me warm,cheers me up and keeps me fit.

Autumn on its way

It is colder for sure.
I am still wearing my shorts though and I got a full load of washing dry on the line.

Once the cooler weather comes in, exercise really comes into its own.
It is a great way of staying warm and even warms up the room a little bit.

Wednesday afternoon, my son was fitting a new Mortis lock to our front door and so the door was wide open for a good hour.
I logged onto the laptop and went into the workout program ,deciding to do 15 minutes upstairs in my bedroom.
Once it started though,I chose 1 hour as usual, 15 minutes seems hardly worth getting changed for.
In my room ,it is quite cramped and so I chose flexibility for the focus of the workout.
No equipment (as it was all downstairs and no room anyway).
The beginning part of the workout is always a warm up with a small section of cardio which was just about do able in the confines of an 8 x 4 area of carpet.
I was almost at the end of the session when DS knocked and asked me to come and hold something so he could mark its position.
Luckily there is the pause button.
Then another 10 minutes and he was back.
I was just in the middle of the dancer pose at that point , with only 3 minutes left so I called it a day and went back to help.

He made an excellent job of the Lock fitting and was bouncing around like Tigger on speed with  the high that the accomplishment had given him.
He has been a bit quiet lately as Jobs are nowhere to be found and life without something to do is very dull.

Then I made Tea of home made chips,bacon,sausage,eggs and baked beans with the last of the mushrooms fried lightly to finish them off. The meat and eggs were microwaved so not as fatty as it sounds.
After tea I went upstairs and there was the virtual coach waiting for me to answer how I felt about that last bit !
She wasn't the least bit irked by my abandonment!

Good reliable workout gloves.

Just before OH came home, I did a 3 minute plank just for the hell of it.
I have started wearing my weight lifting gloves for planks because they have a cushioned palm of leather.
The gloves are about 20 years old and say Bulls eye sports on the Velcro wrist tag. They double as running gloves in the cold weather and cycling gloves because they are fingerless and I can still change gears without catching the glove in the mechanism. They have also really helped with pull ups as the bar is hard to hold with my girly bare hands.

More digging up the pavement.

The water board are back yet again,trying to find the leak that is undermining next doors drive.
They have been here most weeks since about July and still haven't located it.
Part of the problem is the piping is not laid logically and so some peoples pipes go under other peoples gardens. The stop-cocks are all over the place too. This morning the man knocked and asked had my water been the one he had turned off? Nope! I think he just had to knock on every door and ask.
I cant think why they don't label the covers of each pipe when they work on them so that they would know the next time.

Running without seeing

Last night we ran in the dark again.
It was a 3 miler along parts of the river bank and some pavement.
The pavement was more precarious than the river, there are trees along the edge for quite a long way and the windy conditions of the last day or two have brought down some branches, which in the dark, we discovered by running into them.
Luckily they were all small bits and so no harm done but I had forgotten about the hazards of running along the unlit or poorly lit bits of that route.
The run itself went well. We ran at 9 minutes 40 per mile pace.
OH had his weighted vest on. It is an old stab vest complete with pockets which he can fill.
He had a dumbell and an ankle weight in each pocket and all the way up the river, we could hear one of the dumbells clanking as we strode, it was like having robotic joints.
He had to stop at the half way point and rearrange the weight .
He almost left the front door key behind as we set off but just noticed it lying on the path in time.
Although it had rained a lot during the day,the puddles were not too bad.

At home I had a bowl of yoghurt,1 weetabix and banana with jam to refuel. Usually I only have a banana but today I was ravenous.
Earlier ,I had done a 10 minute skip..
2 minutes regular speed,1 minute high knees (more like a run than a skip) ,repeated till the 10 mins was up.
It had rained and rained so I wasn't expecting to get a run later.
A 3 minute plank was added in a while after.

This morning (Wednesday), I dragged my weary carcass to the pull up bar and did the pull up challenge workout.
Today was 5 sets;
5,6,7,8,9
Then 6 chin ups
10 unweighted leg raises
2 X 10 weighted leg raises (the leg raises are for stomach muscle strength,not arms)
12 band assisted pull ups and
The Hydrant leg routine(performed on the floor mat)

My pull ups are better than they were but I still cannot do more than one at a time. I can do them straight after each other without a rest but I must start each one with my feet on the floor.OH admitted that he has trouble with the pull up hand position and prefers to do  chin ups.

Anyway,after the pull up session, I put the bench up and attempted some dragon flags.
They are performed lying on your back ,holding the handles on the end of the bench.
 You are supposed to lift your body up all the way from shoulders to feet in as straight a line as possible,then lower and lift in that same straight line.
I managed 3 but not particularly straight.