Adam’s Cerebral Spillage

You might have noticed that I’ve got a bit slack at updating this over the last few weeks. I could say that I’ve been on a secret spying mission, or maybe abducted by drug lords while hunting for treasure in Peru, but in truth I’ve just been utterly rubbish. So what’s new I hear the assembled masses holler…

Work on the house continues apace, and it’s so close to being finished now it’s tortuous.  The old stairs are out, the new ones are in, and as I type the ceilings should be being plastered. The builders are paid in full now, and I can tell you it’s no fun walking through town with a bag stuffed full with twenty pound notes! I was eyeing everyone suspisciously like they’d been following me all day and had a master plan ¬_¬

My Xbox 360 gave up the ghost this week and has (for the second time) decided that rather than playing games and streaming my music and films, it’d be much happier showing the dreaded three red lights…. Once I can muster up the ‘can-be-arsed-ness’ to find the Microsoft number again I’ll get it repaired, it’s very annoying.

I have yet another new interest! A couple of weeks ago I went along with my friend to his first class in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and I’ve been back to every class since. It fits in nicely with my current training and I’m absolutely loving the technical - and very tiring -  aspects of the grappling. I’m covered in more bruises than a peach in a washing machine, have burned elbows and aches all over, but it’s great fun. It can be frustrating, but having something click and start to work feels awesome. It means I’ve had to buy yet another Gi (or dobok as is the case for Tang Soo Do), although this time it weighs easily twice as much as any other I’ve had. The heavy weave is really necessary as they take a heck of a beating on the floor, and are used for the locks and chokes. Some people really seem to like the look though.

And finally, to bring us bang up to date,  I went along to the Princess Pavilions in Falmouth last night to watch The Eagles Of Death Metal. I can’t imagine they’ll have known what they were letting themselves in for when they agreed to play there, but what we lacked in size and gradieur we more than made up for in effort and noise. The band themselves were awesome, every song sounded the way it should and the guitar riffs just tore through the place. You’ve never seen a more charismatic front-man, and it was so refreshing to see a big band like that who obviouslt didn’t take themselves too seriously.  What a great gig.

"I love you so hard baby...."

Technorati Tags BJJ, Eagles Of Death Metal, house renovations, slack git, TSD

I forgot to update this for a little while, I guess that’s what happens when another year ticks over and I hit the ripe old age of thirty-two twenty-twelve. So what’s happened in my absence? A few things as it happens.

For my birthday I had a couple of treats, the first being on the Friday before. We got in the car and I had to put an unknown postcode in the satnav and follow it. Ninety minutes later and I was sat in the grounds of Kitley House just outside of Plymouth, although I still wasn’t sure why. We had a lovely room right up in the top of the building, looking out over the gardens. Early in the evening I got ‘poshed up’ in a decent jacket and went down for drinks and dinner and it turned out to be a Murder Mystery dinner! It’s no secret I’m a fan of mystery, so this was just perfect for me. We had cocktails with the cast (an outside group ran the evening and played the roles) and after a few drinks everyone loosened up and got into the spirit of things. It was an awesome evening, soured only by getting in the car the next morning to find one of my tyres as flat as a pancake. An hour later and thirty quid lighter I was back in sunny Cornwall.

The other main gift I had was an hour in a float tank. If you’ve never seen one before, it’s like a big coccoon, half space-age and half ‘Mork from Ork’. After stripping off and clambering in you find yourself in ten inches of warm water, which is a really heady solution of epsom salts. The idea is that you float in water the same temperature as your body, which gives the impression of floating in mid-air. If you close the lid and turn the internal lights off it’s almost total sensory deprivation. The only thing you’re really aware of is the ‘music’ which is more some kind of mix of muted notes and whalesong, which is played through the water. For the first quarter of an hour or so you’re very aware that you’re just floating naked in a big plastic egg, but once you get the hang of relaxing fully (which is much harder than it sounds) the time just slips away. I didn’t fall asleep - just! - but they say an hours float is the equivalent of eight hours sleep, and I can well believe it. For the rest of the day I was a mental mess, barely capable of completing a sentence, but I slept like the dead that night and felt fantastic the next day. I’d recommend it to anyone having trouble sleeping or with a lot of aches or stress, it’s a real tonic.

Operation House is still going well, in the last four weeks we’ve got from a large concrete slab in the mud, to walls, windows, doors, roof trusses and a first floor. There are pictures to come once I get around to uploading them too. As I write this the roof of the old building is being torn off, and the new one being apexed into it. The kitchen arrives today, the appliances tomorrow, and the gas is due to go in this week too if memory serves. Although I hate to jinx it, I’m starting to think that I’ll be in before the end of July now. If anyone up there is watching, please keep this weather up for another few weeks.

And while on the subject of good weather, I finished off the week in fine style. There was an option on Saturday evening of going to St Ives for the Camra Beer Festival, but after a heavy session the previous night involving beer, tequila (oh so much tequila) and very loud metal music, I really wasn’t feeling like alcohol again. So instead a few of us headed out to the beach with some disposable barbecues (one of which I managed to drop on my toes, cutting and bruising them) to eat some grilled meat and watch the sun go down. Glorious.

Godrevy beach at sunset

Technorati Tags beach, birthday, float, murder mystery

Saturday saw one of my favourite nights of the year; Eurovision! For my American or Asian counterparts, the Eurovision Song Contest is a very glam, very camp, annual music competition held over here in ‘Yurp’. The various countries put forward their entries which really span just about every musical genre you could imagine, and we, the public, vote. It’s on for about three hours, and has a MASSIVE audience across the continent. I’m a huge fan and love getting together with my mates once a year to vote, do a sweepstake and generally get beered-up and have a good time.

A long-standing part of Eurovision for me has always been the commentary by the inimitable Sir Terry Wogan. He’s very dry, and gradually gets more and more drunk while taking the mickey out of the other countries. Unfortunately last year was his last, after years of what can only be called very political voting in the Eastern Bloc nations. He was obviously getting more and more disillusioned and last year’s very obvious voting for Russia was the straw that broke the camel’s back. So this year we welcomed Graham Norton into the fray, and personally I was very pleased with him. He’s got the same cutting sarcasm and his own cheeky witticisms, and once he got into his swing he was genuinely very funny. Well, what I heard was; I was at a very raucous party with my friends, drinking and eating European beers and snacks and arguing over the scoresheets I’d printed from the BBC website. Good times.

—————–

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to be asked to be one of the coaches for the new Kids Kickboxing class, and every week since I’ve been turning up for the extra hour before our Sunday Tang Soo Do lessons and working with the little guys. Quite where they get their energy from I’ve no idea, but I wish I could harness some. So far I think it’s going really well, I’ve had pretty much the same group with me each week and I’ve managed to remember all their names, which to be honest has been a task in itself. I’ve very quickly been able to see which of them is picking things up easily, where any problems might lie, and which ones of them have freakishly strong punches for their size!

It’s enormously rewarding watching them soak up everything they’re told and shown, especially when you’re able to identify a small thing to change which makes a big difference to their technique. They sparred with us (the coaches) last night, and I think I can safely say that almost without exception, they loved it. It’s not often they’re told to get stuck in and start hitting adults, and you could almost see their faces light up when we were getting them padded up. I’m looking forward to seeing how they progress over the coming months.

I’m really pleased to have this head start on teaching, because it’s definitely where I think I want to be in the not-too-distant future. Don’t get me wrong, I love my own training and will keep going for as long as I’m able, but I have to think realistically too. I’m thirty-two in nine days time, and I might only have a few good years of being able to compete and train for fighting at the level I do now. What does that leave afterwards? I’m not indestructable, I can’t keep going forever, and not training would leave a massive gap in my life. I think I’m lucky to be training in something traditional, as if it were competition or sport oriented (especially sport karate) I think I could get very bored just teaching drills and not actually training for a purpose any more. Spending all my time working on drills and techniques that I know I’d never use in competition would be pretty soul-destroying. It’s now that I need to focus on getting a strong Dan grade and to keep working beyond there, and work toward teaching more; both kids and adults alike.

—————-

Have you ever had one of those ‘I knew it!‘ moments? You know the sort of thing, you’re sure you were right about something, and it turns out you were spot-on. I had a good one this last week and it’s made me feel much better about myself. It’s nice to know that even if other people take you for a fool, you know better :).

Technorati Tags Eurovision, tang soo do, teaching

Old mobile contract cancelled - check!

Good tempered rant at old ISP who’ve still been taking money from me since November despite not even being with them - check!

All I’ve got left to do today is to wash all three uniforms from Sunday’s competition, teaching and training which should by now be creating a whole new life form of their own, zipped up in my training bag in the hot boot of my car. I’m another trophy better off now, but given the circumstances I’m not going to harp on about it.

Maybe I’m finally going to start getting organised in my old age. I’m thirty-two in a mere fifteen days now, and with 10 days off from the 22nd, I’m looking forward to the break.

Technorati Tags birthday, competition

I posted a throwaway comment on Facebook this morning saying how nice the weather was outside and how much I wanted to be out in the sunshine enjoying a particular ice lolly that I’ve not had in a long time. It got me to thinking about all the different ice creams and lollies that I remember and loved, and would definitely eat again given half a chance.

Cider Refresher – This is my all-time favourite ice, really thirst quenching and delicious, but the wrappers got really sticky. Appley goodness. AND you could get Cola Refreshers too!

cider refresher, mmmmm

Funny Feet – Pink strawberry ice cream in the shape of a foot. An odd choice for a shape that people fight want to put in their mouth, but creamy and yummy.

funnyfoot

Screwball – You’d get a screwball from the ice cream van with the creepy old hairy guy outside of school. A plastic cone with ice cream in and – joy of joys – a cheap bubblegum in the bottom. Remember those tiny spoons you had to dig the ice cream out with…

screwball

Honourable mentions should go to ones which I remember but had no particularly strong feelings toward, such as Juicy Lucys, Lemonade Sparkles and Zooms.

These days I still like one on rare occasions, but these days I’m really only limited to one of two, depending on whether I’m in the mood for something fruity or some sweeter;

Twister – By far the tastiest and most refreshing icy treat. I’m not entirely sure of the flavours without one in front of me, but I’m pretty sure it’s spirals of lime sorbet and pineapple ice cream, all wrapped around a strawberry sorbet center. It’s delicious and always seems to be at the percect melty temperature, you can pull pieces off with just your lips.

Twister...

Feast – It’s a classic, and deservedly so. Crisp chocolate and biscuity pieces covering chocolate ice cream which has more of a sorbet-y texture than a creamy one. And once you get under that, there’s a slab of chocolate in the middle. The jury’s out when it comes to how you should eat one; some people like to suck it and make it last, but me, I like to take bites out of it.

Feast!

There are tons of others I’ve forgotten about but will remember as soon as I’ve posted, so why not jog my memory or add your own via that very handy ‘comment’ link just down there.

People who just say ‘choc ice’ are rubbish.

Technorati Tags ice cream

As part of the club’s ongoing development and expansion we’re starting up a new kids class and programme. In order to get it up and running we’ve started a bit of a recruitment drive, and yesterday we did the first major part of that with a full day at a local primary school. Five of us took the day off of work (well, strictly speaking four of us, one person works at the school) and got there at nine in the morning ready to spend the day teaching the kids some basic kickboxing skills and to give them a good run about. Although we had a plan of sorts for the sessions, it sort of evolved during the day and was nicely refined by the end of the day.

I’m not sure what I was expecting before I went in, I mean, I knew the very youngest (Year 1) would be the hardest to teach the kicks to, but what I wasn’t expecting was how much shorter the attention spans got as the day went on and the children got older. It was a bit of a battle of attrition by the end of the day when the oldest kids were all crammed in, but it was a lot of fun. I knew I enjoyed working with kids and teaching them, but I was surprised just how much I enjoyed working that closely with them.

After over four hours of constant warming-up, stretching, kicking, cooling down and repeating ad nauseum (broken up with a nice spot of lunch down the pub), I was shattered once I got home. Unfortunately I didn’t have too much time to get settled; Wednesdays are training days. So I dragged my backside up off of the sofa and went along for another hour of Tang Soo Do and adult Kickboxing. I won’t lie to you, I was knackered by the time I eventually got home (via Tesco for sustenance and a beer), and all I wanted to do was eat some food, drink my beer and go to bed to sleep for a week. I painstakingly prepared myself some nice little panini stuffed full of chicken, and then it happened, Isaac f**king Newton stole my supper!

To be fair, he himself didn’t, but his law of universal gravitation did. Yes, my fancy sandwiches slipped of the plate and went all over the floor. I honestly could have cried, at that time that was just about the worst thing I could have imagined. Today’s swim is off the cards I think, I’m like a total zombie and barely capable of getting off my chair, let alone swimming a mile or so. It’s games and Inbetweeners (the funniest show on TV, no question) night with my reprobate friends tonight though, something I look forward to as the highlight of every week.

I’ll leave you with what might look like a very dull photo, but to me it’s brilliant. Walls at first floor height!

Look! Walls!

Technorati Tags gravity, house extension, Inbetweeners, kickboxing, teaching

Regular readers will be surprised to learn that I’m not in fact MacGyver at all, it’s just a post title that came to me. I’ve not posted for a little while so that’s why.

Work has been crazy busy this last few weeks as the new financial year starts, and yours truly has been permanently staring at a screen or buried under pages and pages of (very boring) code. I’ve broken the back of it now though, and the near-permanent headache and stress vein can be put back on the shelf for a while. Training’s going pretty well now, and I’m supplementing it with the very handy gym at work a few lunchtimes a week. It’s sparsely equipped, but I can row, run, pedal and, umm, cross-train(?). There are a couple of resistance machines which offer a few different exercises, and I’m finally taking note of what weights I’m working with. Hopefully they’ll go up in the not-too distant future, but for now I’m working at 70KG for lat pulldowns and seated rows, and 65KG shoulder pressing. It’s not massive, but then my arms and shoulders have always been my weakest area. I’ve also started swimming again, hooray! Just fifty lengths to get going again, but my aim is to get up to around eighty in an hour. I’m a way off that yet, but managed those fifty in about 45 minutes, and after a year off regular swimming I’m happy.

On top of that I get a little extra exercise on Monday nights still, courtesy of dog agility training! Me and Murphy still go and he’s coming on brilliantly. We’re up to 16-17 obstacle courses and he’s started to really get the hang of his weakest area, the weaves. I think competing is still a little way off, but I’m hoping to get him entered into something later in the year. It absolutely lashed down with rain for a while during last night’s lesson, which soaked me and the dog (and consequently my car…), but in return we got this beauty…

Lovely double rainbow, carn brea monument in the distance

There are some weeks when it can get very frustrating, especially if Murph’s not really ‘with it’, but more often than not it’s my fault if he gets something wrong. He really enjoys it though and has lots of friends there now, so even when Monday has taken its toll on me and the very last thing I feel like doing is running around a field in my wellies after a soggy spaniel, one look at this little face and I really can’t help but take him.

What a sad looking pup...

Work on the house has picked up again, and I’m elated to say that we have walls! Ok, they’re about five feet high, but they’re walls damnit! We’re told that we should be well up into the first floor by the end of the week, and from then on it’s almost going to be like having a home again. There are plenty of pictures I need to take off the camera at home to update progress, it’s just a case of finding the time and getting my backside in gear.

And to finish, well done Carl Froch. What an awesome fight on the weekend, talk about leaving it to the last minute! There’s more great boxing coming up too; Hatton Vs Pacquaio and Haye Vs Klitschko. The David Haye fight is going to be spectacular, I cannot wait!

Technorati Tags carl froch, david haye, dog agility, house renovations, training

Over the weekend I help a friend to put a pond in his garden. ‘Help’ is probably a strong word, as he had already dug the hole before I got there after stopping off to buy some more sand to cushion the bottom of it, and he’d filled a one-tonne bag in the process. We were left with the task of fitting the liner and filling it with about 250 litres of water. Fitting the liner was interesting; the only thing I can compare it to is fitting a duvet into a cover. Except the duvet is 16’ x 16’ and the cover is much, much smaller. Once you get the liner in the pond, it really needs some water in it to weigh it down and get it to fill into the corners. It also helps to hold the pleats in the corners tight. This is where we ran into the first snag.

He had bought a hose, top marks there, but the connector was too small to fit over the kitchen tap. The only option was to take the end of it up through the bathroom window – where it still wouldn’t fit. No problem, we’re smart chaps, I’m sure we can think of a way to overcome this trifling problem! Then there was what can only be described as quite literally a ‘Eureka!’ moment and an idea; fill the bath with water and siphon it down! Then we noticed the end of the hose in the garden, which was now about 20’ away from the pond…

Plan B then; let’s get some buckets and run a kind of relay, emptying one while another fills. With the hose precariously expertly fitted through the bathroom window, my cohort made sure the end of the hose was in the water and the bath wasn’t overflowing while I got on with trying to get the siphoning started. Unsurprisingly, it takes quite a bit of suckage to get water through a 30’ hose over two stories. I mean, this was harder than trying to suck one of those beastly thick-shakes through a straw, and anyone who’s found themselves drunk outside the Wimpy in Camborne (this is going back a few years, but yeah, Wimpy!) on a Friday night knows what I’m talking about. I found myself fighting the laws of physics as various pressures tried to suck my cheeks and lungs up the hose, but I’m nothing if not perseverant. After a little while I felt what should have been my first warning, as the sucking became less difficult and a slight rush of air came back down the hose. Me being me, I just thought it was the end of the hose coming out of the water, but no, a few seconds later and I was on my knees on the lawn trying to empty my lungs of water. What an embarrassing way to go that would have been: “Man Kills Self With Elaborate Drowning Device”. Once the flow started all was well, the bucket-chain system worked well, and some thirty buckets later we’d created a pond!

In celebration we got everyone around for an impromptu barbecue to make the most of the lovely weather. My BBQ sauce arsenal so far this year is consists of:

• Jack Daniels Barbecue Sauce (Smoky)
• Reggae Reggae Jerk/BBQ
• Nando’s Peri-Peri Barbecue

I’ve started with the traditional favourites this year, but the Nando’s one is new to me. It’s absolutely gorgeous, spicy and smoky at the same time and lovely and thick. For now it’s going to have to do, at least until I have a kitchen and can start crafting my own again. Speaking of which, I got home yesterday to find the long-absent builders just leaving. It turns out the floor has set, passed the crush test, and as of today they’re going to start on the blockwork! This is momentous news to me as it means I should get home today to find some semblance of walls. Maybe I’m really going to have a home by summer. Maybe.

Technorati Tags barbecue, pond

Ahh beautiful, the first barbecue of the year. Last Friday was my friend’s birthday and in celebration (of him being the oldest one of the lot of us and being due for a month of ribbing before the next birthday) he hosted a barbie on Good Friday. In true barbecue tradition we got through enough stubby beers to sink a battleship and headed down to a local bar on the beach for a few more later in the evening. I’ve got to say it was so satisfying to tuck into that first grilled meat of the year that I’m desperate to have the house finished and get into my Saturday rituals again. Quality sausages with leafy salad in a tortilla wrap, liberally smothered with whatever sauce is currently in favour – Jack Daniels Smoky at the moment – bliss.

Despite the amount of beer consumed, three of us headed into town the next morning for an old-style ‘games perv’. A couple of hours later, a few games shops down and a fresh pasty eaten, and we headed back to waste the afternoon locked away with our bounty. Well, actually we went via a garden centre to look at lizards and frogs and things, but that’s by-the-by. Between us we had a reasonable haul and had spent very little money, which has got to be good. We started off with Mad World (Wii) which was a real novelty for me, because I knew it was a ‘big’ game, but I knew nothing about it. It’s not very often I can say that. It’s great though, stylised over-the-top violence and a great sense of humour. Being rewarded for finding more and more ingenious ways of combining the items littering the levels to dispatch the enemies is a nice touch. I don’t think we’ve laughed as much playing a game for a long time, and the boss fights are pretty impressive. The music’s great, the voice acting for once is not actually too terrible, and the funky black-and-white visuals are really refreshing. At the time of writing you can pick it up in Game for about £20 which is a bargain.

Our gracious host wasn’t the only one playing new games, my other friend had grabbed himself a bargain copy of Fallout 3, and I treated myself to a second-hand copy of Pure. I downloaded the demo months ago and really enjoyed its mix of decent ATV physics, racing and over-the-top stunts, so I’d been looking forward to finding a cheap copy of the full game. I’m not disappointed at all in my purchase, it just builds on the demo and adds more and more to warrant a buy. The bike creation is very in depth and lots of fun. The first time I looked at it I didn’t even bother building one manually, there are so many components you need to sort through and add, it was just overwhelming. But when you take your time and choose it all by hand, picking the colours and decals for literally every part, it’s very satisfying to ride it and see it ‘in the flesh’. The announcer is a little annoying, and due to my constant playing every spare minute I’ve had I’ve pretty much finished the championships already, so I’m not sure about the longevity, but it is great fun and a great quick-fix, which is exactly what I look for in a game now.

Good times.

Technorati Tags bbq, games, Mad World, pure

Might I suggest that you all go out and get yourself a copy of the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album - It’s Blitz. Some of you might have first heard of them when ‘Maps’ was included in Rock Band - which is a brilliant song in its own right - but tihs new album is awesome!

If I had access to youtube here you’d all be listening to the tracks Zero and Heads Will Roll about now, I suggest you look them up yourself. Now. Karen O’s voice is just pure mmmmmmmmm.

Technorati Tags It's Blitz, Yeah Yeah Yeahs