A thing my mind can't comprehend and another that scares the crap out of me

Hello all

Firstly, happy belated birthday to Hannah, a girl who I work with who asked me to mention her.....and I'm nothing if not generous.

Anyway, this blog is about two things that I have heard today, one of which took me a tiny bit by surprise, and the other scares the crap out of me.

So we'll start with the thing that took me a bit by surprise. I talk to my best friend Jodi on a regular basis, our conversations are quite varied but one thing that never usually comes up is temperature. For those that haven't read my other blogs, Jodi lives in Canada, I know Canada's cold, even at the best of times, but in our conversation today we got onto the weather. I had mentioned that I was losing a bit of weight because I was able to bike and Jodi mentioned that she couldn't go biking because it was -36 celcius over there at the moment. Minus 3FUCKING6!!!!



THIS WOULD BE ME IF I WAS WHERE JODI LIVED RIGHT NOW

 My brain can't even comprehend that level of cold. The coldest I have ever been in was -22 and that was in a freezer at a company where I used to work. I couldn't survive more than 5/10 minutes at a time without needing a small break in the warmth......and that's 14 degrees hotter (it seems bizarre using the word hotter and -22 in the same sentence) than what Jodi is having to put up with at the moment. I can't even begin to imagine what -36 must feel like, I really can't. I respect Jodi for a lot of reasons, and that has just been added to the list. It feels almost ridiculous moaning that it's only 4 celcius over here when that's 40 degrees hotter than what she is currently having to put up with.

So that's what surprised me, but what scared the crap of me?

Again, this relates back to a previous blog, more specifically the one where I spoke about a radio podcast I listen to called RadioLab (which by the way, is still the most awesome thing that has been introduced to me in recent months). I started a mass download of all 113 of their podcasts last night and there was one of them was that entitled "Talking to Machines."

It starts off very similar to all their previous ones, a short story starts, so on and so forth. The first story is about a guy who started communicating with a woman in Russia and they share romantic emails, become good friends and the guy wants to meet up with her, even mentioning he would happily go over to meet her, but she keeps ignoring him. At one point he even mentions to her dates he would like to come over, but the email he then gets back doesn't acknowledge the dates he's sent and even asks him to send dates of when they can meet.

He keeps sending her emails but various bits are ignored and so at one point he decides to make up pure and total nonsense in his email, putting letters together to form a word that mean nothing, something like dhghohsodhfoh. He sends and she responds without referencing it and it's at this point.........he realises he's been talking to a machine all this time.

YOU COULD HAVE SEVERAL FRIENDS THAT LOOK LIKE THIS

It turns out that there's an computer algorithm that I knew nothing about where you can have full on conversations with computer programmes where they seem so realistic, you could never realise you are talking to a computer. There is one in particular called "Cleverbot"  where it learns from what previous people have put into it to give it a better response to conversations you have with it.

The thought of that just freaks me out. It does make me wonder how many people that I have communicated with down the years that I haven't met in person or spoken to on the phone aren't actually real. There are those that I know for a fact are real just by how they respond and that I have received stuff from them, stuff that a computer certainly wouldn't say, but then there's others who I have only communicated with by email where thinking about it, they could have easily been a machine.

It's a proper mindfuck.

So there you have, two points of my day that brought about completely different

Friday morning = Crap, Monday evening = Loving it

As I've said in a few blogs I have started a diet recently and I am absolutely loving it.

This is the first time I have ever been on a diet (shock! horror!) and to be honest I had never really wanted to. That's not to say I didn't want to lose weight, but I certainly went about it in the extremely lazy way, I even once just contacted a plastic surgeon about liposuction.....stupid thing about that was that I would only get back to my original weight anyway.

So what encouraged the diet? Well reaching 18 stone 7 was certainly a start, not to mention that some clothes that I bought two years ago when they were baggy started to get a bit tight and I finally had the encouragement from Jodi, my good friend from the country of the Maple Leaf (Canada to those of you who are geographically challenged). I was quite surprised that she was wanting to go on a diet, I personally think she looks like fine, I would never describe her as fat or even overweight, and that made me look at myself and what my body have become.

So anyway, I started it on Friday morning and I've surprised myself with how much I am actually enjoying it. After 72or so hours, I am down to 18 stone 1, I know it's still big compared to a lot of people but I can't even begin to tell you how good it feels. I feel fantastic to be on a diet, eating healthily and getting in some exercise......I can't believe it's taken me 27 years to do this.

I've been eating healthily to the point where I am literally looking at the calorie count of EVERYTHING I am about to eat, and weigh up whether it's worth it....and since I have done this I have just been really concious about everything. Normally before a Lincoln City home game I would go to KFC and buy a large fillet meal with a popcorn chicken....which turns out to be a total of around 1,200 calories......no wonder I put on all this weight. Instead I walked two minutes down the road to a shop and instead bought a ham bagette, which was only 170 calories, and was just as filling.

I calculate that if I continue losing weight at the current rate that I will roughly reach my target weight of 200 pounds by the end of February. That's a bit unrealistic because obviously as I lose weight then the calories I burn in the exercises I do now will go down significantly, but I can be 200 pounds by the end of May then I will delighted.

I've finally found a use for dance/trance/electronic music

Back when I was a child and was earning (well, I say earning, more like given) pocket money, I decided I would try and get into music. I was about 5/6 at the time, give or take, and I had no interest in music at all…..and that is not an exaggeration. I didn’t have a single CD, didn’t listen to music and just wasn’t at all interested.

Like most kids, I listened to the radio and based my opinions on what was good music from that. My parents were convinced I would turn out to be gay because my first four CDs were “The Best Dance Album in the World Part 3,” 2 Unlimited’s Greatest Hits, an Eternal CD (can’t recall the name) and a CD by Wham………I can’t say I really blame my parents for thinking I was gay at that age…..infact it took until my late teens until they stopped asking if I was gay (that’s a story for another blog).

But anyway, as I grew up I became more aware of other types of music and around 16 I started to listen to rock music and it became my preferred genre of music by quite some distance. Dance/electronic music took a bit of a backseat, I didn’t hate it to be honest but I had no real need for it.

Skip forward to right now. I’m 27 years old and currently dieting to try and lose at least 1/3 of the 257 pounds I have accumulated so far in my life. Now the problem with liking rock music is that if you’re aiming to lose weight, it’s not the best music to exercise to, hence why dance music has crept back into my life like a stalker in the dark.

Now, I would stress that I still don’t like dance music much. I don’t dislike it but my main problem with dance music has always been that it is EXTREMELY repetitive. A lot of DJs seem to create five seconds worth of track and just loop it for 3/4/5/however many minutes. I never thought that would prove useless until now. Music like this is similar to a metronome in many ways, having a regularly repeated beat helps regulate you and you can pace yourself so efficiently that you can go much longer.

Rock music is not like that at all, so despite loving rock and having a passing indifference to dance music, I am now finding myself downloading dance music onto my iPhone, let me give you some examples, as well as some songs I had before hand anyway;

Anomaly by Libra Presents Taylor (although to be fair I did always like that song)

The Bad Touch by Bloodhound Gang (a rock band that produced what is effectively a dance track, go figure)

Breathe, Smack my Bitch Up, Omen and Voodoo People by the Prodigy

Flux by Bloc Party

Hello by Martin Solveig

House if Falling Down by Hadouken

No Ordinary Morning by Chicane

Operation Blade by Public Domain

Poppiholla by Chicane

Teardrop by Massive Attack

And that’s it. Ok, when I say I’ll give you some examples, I didn’t imagine I’d list them all, but figured I might as well as the list isn’t extensive.

Am I turning into a dance music freak? Fuck no! As soon as I stop exercising, whenever that might be, I’m dumping most of the above songs very quickly. As I started, they pace me and work like a metronome, whereas rock music doesn’t…..and let’s face it, certain rock songs aren’t exactly motivating at the best of times……I’m looking in your direction Blue October.

The many failings of the football club I support, summed up in one match.

I don't often write about football on this blog but yesterday pissed me off. Lincoln City could only draw 0-0 with Carshalton Athletic, a team that are two divisions below the Imps.

To sum that up in a quote, I am going to use one from the TV show "Dead Like Me." (a TV show I would highly recommend by the way)

"I don't like saying this in this hallowed place, but this is fucking inadequate!" : Rube Sofer, played by Mandy Pitinkin (right),

It takes a lot to piss me off these days, I'm far more laid back than I used to be but I am truly disgusted with my football club at the moment. I learned to accept a while ago that we're not very good, but even I never imagined we would struggle to even have a shot against a poor team. It was truly ridiculous.


I'm not sure what pissed me off the most about the performance.

• Everytime one of our players got the ball they just stopped. This isn't fucking netball, you can move with the ball once you receive it.
• When we broke two-on-one, three-on-two, etc, we wouldn't try and take advantage, we would always effectively stop and wait for the defence to get back in place.
• Set pieces. I don't know why Lincoln fans bother getting excited when we win a set piece.......when John Nutter takes a set piece, it always hits the first defender. No point winning set pieces if you're just going to waste them.
• Getting into the box and not playing balls across goal first time around, instead stopping, cutting back onto their other foot (ridiculously not even their prefered foot) and then playing a piss poor pass straight to a defender.
• The inability to complete a pass to someone who is more than five yards away.
• The lack of having a shot, even when the chance was available.
• Having all that possession and doing precisely fuck all with it.
• Players just giving up and not chasing down.

That's a brief summary of some of the things I hate about not only this game, but about Lincoln in general at these days, but then David Holdsworth did one of the most idiotic things I have ever seen in my time at Lincoln.

We're facing a team two divisions below us at home, we're struggling break them down with 2 strikers on the pitch......so what the fuck does he do? He takes one of the two strikers off and goes 4-5-fucking-1, one of the worst formations in football. It shows a lack of ambition, especially against a side who provided fuck all quality throughout the game themselves. 4-5-1 is one of those formations that basically symbolises you have given up hope of winning the game. You won't concede many goals but you won't score many either. It's a formation which means that it's very hard to get anything out of the game if you go behind.

It's not helped by having a revolving door policy, especially when most coming in are not better than those that are already here. Robson made his debut in the Carshalton game and kept playing balls into the box with precisely fuck all power on them, meaning they were easily cleared. He's no better than Tony Sinclair, and as Keith Alexander (RIP) always said, there's no point bringing in players that aren't better than what you already have.

Keith would also give a player a decent chance to make an impression before getting rid of him, Holdsworth seems to only give some one game before deciding he doesn't want them. Give them a chance, David.

I'm looking at the squad and although changes were forced becuase of the financial situation, how many players can I look at in the current general starting XI and say they are better than the player they've replaced? Not many. Conal Platt is better than Gavin McCallum, but other than that I don't think a single player out there that Holdsworth has bought to the club is better than the player they have replaced.

Following this football club is becoming more tedious by the minute and going to games it becoming more like a chore.

Day 1 of the diet : 259 pounds and a set of broken scales

I'll start this off by saying I weighed 18 stone 7 at the start of this diet.....or 259 pounds for those who live in countries that don't use the "stone" system. My target is to get down to 200 pounds by my birthday (September 12th), which I think is doable, that gives me a target of about 2 pounds a week....give or take. Given that I am hoping to move to either America or Canada this year to start a new life, I'd like to start that new life without looking like Fat Bastard from Austin Powers. That was only intended as a joke by the way, despite weighing so much, I generally don't look like I weigh that much.....at least that's what everyone tells me.

The annoying thing is that I don't actually generally eat that much, the problem is that I work in an office and unlike other jobs I've had, you're just sat there all day rather than moving around. I worked at McDonalds whilst I was going through college and you got free food and then got to eat what was left at the end of the shift, and I didn't put on a bit of weight because I was constantly moving.

It seems almost ridiculous that I weigh this much without actually eating that much.

Maybe I shouldn't have retired from playing football afterall.........

But anyway.....day one of the diet is over with and I think I've done a reasonable job.

The app on my phone gave me a target of eating no more than 1,700 calories and I only consumed 1,250ish, a good start. I say ish because I also had a home-made ham sandwich but that wasn't on the list of products that were on the app, so we'll say 1,350 just for argument's sake.

I was quite pleased with myself and decided to weigh myself already just to see if I had already lost some weight......a bit optimistic I know. That's when I realised I might need more than just an app to help me accurately measure my weight.

I got on my scales, waited.......17 stone 7.......that can't be right????!?! Don't get me wrong, I was pleased to have apparantly lost that much weight in just 24 hours......but I did find it a little unlikely. I weighed myself again and was back up to 18 stone 7.....a sad look went over my face.

I left it about an hour and went back.......18 stone 7.5......so despite not eating anythin in between, I somehow put on half a pound......so I gave it another go straight away......18 stone 8.....what the hell is going on??? Third time lucky......18 stone 5.5.

Now, I would have been happy with that after one day....but the problem is that I can't trust a set of scales that gives five different weights within such a short amount of time.

It sort of makes it all a bit pointless if I can't get accurate readings.

Don't worry, I'm not going to post every day about how I've been eating natural yoghurts and oranges.

Debating whether to buy an orange or not

In a previous blog I mentioned that I am very keen to start losing weight and this morning I have downloaded an app to help me keep track of all the calories I'm consuming.

Please note that these are NOT my feet

If I am to reach my ideal weight then I can only consume 1700 calories a day. I didn't really appreciate how little that generally is until I had my breakfast, a small bowl of Shreddies. At the time of writing that is the only thing I've eaten this morning and I've already 209 calories into my 1700 according to the phone app.

Then I decided I would get rid of all the stuff in my lunch box that would significantly add to that number.........so all I have in there now is a ham sandwich, a muller light yoghurt and a natural yoghurt from Asda. It looks depressing seeing my lunchbox that empty.

I thought to myself "I fancy an orange," went to the canteen at my work, bought one and got back to my desk. All of a sudden I started thinking "I've probably only burnt off 3/4 calories by walking to buy it, but how many calories is the orange? Oh bugger, have I just been counter productive????"

This is going to be a long road to losing 57 pounds.

RadioLab, the most intelligent and thought provoking podcast you've probably never heard of

I feel like all I've done since starting this blog is talk about the female half of the species and their impact on me, my bad experiences growing up and my issues with trust and paranoia, so I want to write a bit of a different blog that is more positive .

About two months ago my friend Megan, a current resident of Nashville in America, recommended that I listen to a podcast called RadioLab from WNYC. She said that she had been driving for six hours and was listening to one of their shows called New Normal, and it reminded her of me, so I downloaded it, listened and was instantly hooked.

Being a podcast from another country, it's not likely that a lot of people in the UK have even heard of it other than when I may have briefly mentioned it on Facebook or Twitter, but I can't recommend it highly enough.

I've listened to about 10 of their podcasts, ranging from 15/20 minutes up until 75 minutes, and each has been thought provoking and interesting. I'm slowly making my way through all of their podcasts (there are a LOT), but it is well worth it.

"New Normal" was one of the most interesting things I have ever listened to, a podcast asking "What is normal these days?" It contains three short articles about acceptance;

• What happened to a group of apes/gorillas (I can't remember which) when the alpha-male was removed.
• How a town accepted one of it's residents (Stu Rasmussen - left) becoming transgendered and then even more accepting by electing Stu as it's mayor, not to forget how that community rallied around Stu when the religious nuts came to town to protest it.
• An experiment where they try to tame foxes and the foxes evolve over a short space of time, not only in terms of "personality" but also in terms of appearance.

It was one of the most thought provoking 60-or-so minutes of my life.

I can't recommend radio lab enough and would seriously recommend that you listen to it.

http://www.radiolab.org/

I have actually managed to surprise myself

It takes a lot to surprise me these days, especially my own reactions to things, but last night that all changed.

I have a history of not taking negatives said about me well, especially from friends, and even more especially from people who I consider to be my best friends. I tend to go into a mental pit of self-pity for a few hours/days and even years later that sort of stuff drives me crazy......but not this time.

I was discussing something with a great friend who I haven't really spoken to much in the last few weeks for various reasons........well, I'll reword that, I've sent this person communications on a regular basis but didn't get a response....which prompted more one-way communications being sent. This friend stated that was one of the reasons that they don't always respond, they feel like I am, to use their word, "bombarding" them with messages.

Now normally I would have probably gone into the aforementioned pit, but I was surprised by my reaction. I just accepted it and reacted in a positive way. I've always had issues with controlling my enthusiasm for communicating with people once I've started to really like them and I think that was one of the main reasons that my friendship with Marinda started coming to an end. I was probably one step shy of being a stalker with Marinda, I was completely in love with her, I've never loved someone that intensely and I can fully see why it had a negative impact on our friendship.....and that's the first time I have probably admitted to myself that it was my fault that that friendship effectively ended.

Seriously, you have no idea what I became like with Marinda, I can't even put it into words. I think saying "one step shy of being a stalker" doesn't even do it justice. At one point I even contemplated getting on a train (I wasn't driving at the time) to see her without even telling her. Looking back on the friendship, I can see that it was me that drove her away and all the lies that she told me (or at least what I believe were lies) were for a good reason.

I'm determined for it not to happen with another friend, a friend who I care about, so instead of doing my thing of going into the pit, I am going to act on what this friend said to me and react in a positive way. I am not going to have a repeat of the past, I am not going turn into the person I was when I was Marinda was in my life.

From this day on you are going to see a different me. No more paranoia, no more pressurising, no more being the dick I have been for the last ten years.

Why I gave up 8 and a half years of hard work

I would stress I originally wrote this about three/four weeks ago, this is just a copy and paste from my other blog.

 

Back in 2000 I started going to watch my local football team, Lincoln City, on a regular basis. I loved it and although we did crap in the 2000/1 and 2001/2 (my first year of having a season ticket) seasons, I was hooked. I loved the 2002/3 season after we made the Playoffs after being relegation favourites and three years after I first went on a regular basis I decided to create a website just after the 2002/3 season. It was my third attempt at creating a Lincoln City website and although it got off to a very slow start, it soon boomed due to me creating controversial articles and having a "no holds barred" attitude when it came to describing performances. Afterall, why should I bullshit and say a performance was good when it was shite?

Not that a large number of Lincoln fans could deal with that as a lot have been long deluded as to the team. For example, I consistently slag of the continuing decisions of managers to give Andy Hutchinson a new contract when virtually none of them play him when he's not injured, and when he is on the pitch he does fuck all, yet everyone seems to think that he has the sun shining out of his arse simply because he came out of the youth system. Just because a player comes out of the youth system doesn't mean he's good enough, and just 1 goal in 22 appearances for City as a striker says it all. People will say he has barely been given a chance but he came on for 30 minutes at Stevenage last season and didn't even touch the ball.

Infact, Lincoln fans are one of the main reasons I am giving up. I'm sick of some of them. I'm sick of sitting in the stand and having Lincoln fans not understanding the offside rule or seeing one of our defenders blatently handball in the area and being confused as to why the referee has given a penalty. If you're watching a defender hoof it forward and they see it land with a striker that's 20 yards behind the last defender, they automatically assume it was offside and berate the linesman. If only the fans would realise that because they were looking at the defender when the ball was played, they're not looking at the striker, and therefore the striker, if not flagged, would have been onside when the ball was played, but because no fans were looking at the attacker, they automatically assume that he was offside when the ball was played, whereas it's just not the case......and yes, I used to do a lot of linesman duty whilst playing in the Sunday League.

The worst part about that is that you try and explain that to them and they refuse to listen. It's impossible to explain to people who simply don't want to listen.

It's that sort of thing that does my absolute nut in. Lincoln fans are so ridiculously biased it's unbelievable. Some asked me why I am not part of the Lincoln City Banter page on Facebook and the reason is that virtually every single thread breaks into an argument with the usual people (who I won't name) always turning the argument into being about themselves rather than the original point of the thread.

Then there's not to forget the decision to not open the Stacey West to fans in some cup games this season. The childish reaction was ridiculous, you go to support the team, not the stand. I sit in the CO-OP Upper and do you hear me bitching and complaining that I couldn't sit in my normal seat? No. I just got on with it.

Anyway, so the website became quite popular and at one point average 19,000 average unique users a day......which I was exceptionally pleased with when you consider that the average attendance at Sincil Bank at the time was just over 5,000. I also started doing an away day video diary that also became reasonably popular, and even saw me featured in Zoo magazine one issue. In November 2007 I was named as the runner up in Virgin Media's Biggest Football Fan competition after being nominated by various members of the football club.

I will admit that all this relative success got to my head a bit and that, combined with the people who ran the Lincoln City Vital website poaching members from all the other forums, meant that hits went down considerable, only averaging 5,000 unique visitors a day.

It got to 2008/9 and I moved to Nottingham. After two months I decided that that would be that and I announced at the end of that season that I would stop doing the website, although due to popular demand I didn't in the end. Despite agreeing to stay, my passion for doing the website and the videos had gone.

When my Youtube account was forced to close in October 2010, I was relieved in a way, and although they did return, the passion for doing them wained. It became a bit of a farce because of the shit battery on an iPhone making it frustrating as I then wouldn't be able to use it on the way home unless I carried around my laptop for charging......it's a big bloody battery.

I have considered getting rid of the website and the videos for some time and in the last week I made the decision that they would finally be going. Three days without a single post being placed on the message board convinced me that the website was well past it's sell by date, combine that with a lack of passion for doing it anymore and I decided to call it a day.

I need a new challenge in my life and whilst I have received generally positive comments for the videos, I need more than that, I need motivation and I haven't had that for some time. If you read through the read of my blogs you will notice that I have often said that I want a change in my life and a new challenge. I've wanted to try various little projects for a few years but never had the time because of work, website and video selections.

The reason I have decided just to close the website rather than offering it to others is because everytime I have asked if anyone is interested in writing articles of a subject of their choosing, I usually get virtually no response and I figure that if no-one's willing to take just twenty minutes to write a one-off article, no-one's going to want to take up to ten hours a week updating pages, writing articles, etc.

Am I ruling out returning to website administration and video production in the future? No, not even slightly. For all I know this could just turn out to be a brief spell away from websites and Youtube, but for now it just doesn't interest me.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of those who have helped out and offered their support during the last eight years. It has been very much appreciated.

Re-evaluation time : Goals for 2012

It's more than 2 weeks since my last entry and I have spent that time, amongst other things, reassessing my life. During the time it also turned in 2012, so I've started thinking about what I want to do in the next twelve months, and the future after that.

I have recently expressed a desire to leave the UK as I am becoming more detached from life in the UK. Over the last few months I have fallen out of love with a lot of things that were an integral part of my life a year ago. I no longer get excited by the prospect of going to watch Lincoln City play, or even football in general, so much to the point where I was able to just give up the website I had run for nearly 10 years without having any regrets.

I am not close to any particular member of my family and none of my best friends live in England. I do have some good friends in England, such as Ellen and Charlie, but other than them I can't think of anyone in this country who I would genuinely miss if I were to leave, not off of the top of my head anyway. I don't mean that offensively but I have 130 people on Facebook and how many do I talk to on a regular basis other than Jodi, Megan, Ellen or Charlie? Probably none of them, not a single one.....other than the ones I work with, but that doesn't really count.

I suppose one reasonf or that is that virtually none of my friends live in Lincoln, they all live a distance away and I rarely see them, or even talk to them on a regular basis. Don't get me wrong, some of the people I worked with at Showcase Cinema were people I loved working with, but as I say, I rarely see or talk to them, so it'd be hard to miss them if I moved away as it wouldn't really change anything.

I've always been a bit sceptical of Facebook in general anyway. I always found it to be a bit of a popularity contest. I was not a popular kid in school, yet the amount of people from school who added me to Facebook was ridiculous, especially given that most of them didn't actually talk to me at all during school. Despite that, I do find it useful for communicating with people and for that purpose it is a good tool, but again I've fallen out of love with it for most part.

So anyway, as we now enter 2012, I am going to start re-evaluating my future.

I have ruled out Norway as a place I want to live. I'd love to visit it for a holiday, but having looked into it a bit more, there's not enough justification to move therea and to be honest, I think Tromso was just a case of me thinking it was a beautiful city before actually doing sufficient research into it.

So my choices are America and Canada, and I have started to take it very seriously.

Although the image is a bit dark, I bought a book recently about moving to America, what to expect in general, how to actually apply for stuff like work VISAs, etc. The only thing it doesn't properly tell me is what the good areas to live in, and that leads me neatly onto Route 66.

Recently I started discussing with someone I know about a thing called "Complete North America" and it has a Route 66 drive. It's a 2 week driving holiday that goes down the whole of Route 66, which is a LONG way, it goes through a lot of different cities and areas, meaning I get a good view of America in a short amount of time. It's something I am seriously considering.

http://www.completenorthamerica.com/holiday-type/fly-drive-holidays/route-66-usa-fly-drive

I still want to see large amounts of Canada as well as I would still love to go there. Every time I turn on TV there is a programme on that references Canada and there are numerous other signs that are telling me it's the right place for me. My best friend lives there and it is a truly beautiful country........cold, but beautiful.

Changing subject, I'm not one for New Year's Resolutions but one thing I certainly want to do this year is lose weight. I weigh 18 stone (well, 18 stone 5 at the time of writing, but I figured I'd round it up) and it's not good. The problem with it is that I work in an office and burning calories and getting decent levels of exercise during the day is nigh on impossible, gyms cost far too much and I have problems with the back of my legs where the muscles tense up after just a few minutes, even when walking, and it becomes uncomfortable. I know that has nothing to do with my weight as I had that problem when I only weighed about 12 stone in 2005ish (I put the weight on after working in call centres).

I think my ideal weight at the moment would be anything under 15 stone. The lower the better but I'd be happy with anything under 15 stone. That'd be a weight loss of more than 40 pounds and I'd be delighted with that, especially if I end up getting back to the 12 stone I was a few years back.

So other than deciding about a new country to live, friends and weight, do I have anything else to talk about? Nope, not really, so for now, peace out!