exercise – dangermouse.net

A cold, cold run and lunchtime walk

As you can probably guess, it was cold again today. My wife took Scully to work and I did a 5k run and it was very cold, around 12°C. But I think the cold weather means I don’t get too hot running, since I managed to clock under 27 minutes for the fourth time in my last six runs, when I hadn’t broken that time for several months previously.

I spent time today working on more advance Darths & Droids strips to buffer over the time I’ll be away on my upcoming European holiday. The script writing today was particularly tricky, though I don’t want to spoil anything by saying exactly why.

After eating lunch (my home-baked sourdough with cheese and tomato), I caught a train up to my wife’s work and met her there at a cafe that i hadn’t been to before. They had home-baked dog treats, with chicken and vegetables in them, and she’d bought one to let Scully try it. Scully is very hit and miss with different dog treats – some she doesn’t eat at all. But this one she really liked.

My wife went back to work and I walked all the way home with Scully. It was a chilly afternoon, but my multiple layers of clothing and the bright sun shining on my back made it bearable. We walked past a bunya pine tree, which had these warning signs posted around it:

The bunya pine (Araucaria bidwillii) is the large tree at the top left, behind the foreground foliage. It grows enormous, heavy seed cones, from 3 kg up to around 10 kg, which can fall from heights as high as 40 metres. They have caused serious injuries to people. Bunya pines are not very common in Sydney, but there are a few around, and it’s a good idea to be cautious around them during the cone-dropping season. Although that’s January to March, so I’m not sure what the warning signs here were for. I guess the council just didn’t remove them. I wrote a blog entry three years ago about collecting bunya nuts from fallen cones, which had this photo showing how large the cones are:

Tonight I had my first three ethics classes on the “Let’s Design a Government” topic, and they went pretty well. I have tons of questions which we didn’t get through, which is way better than ending up with not enough!

12,000 steps

My wife took Scully to work for the morning today. This gave me time to go for a 5k run, as well as do my stretches and have a shower, before heading out to lunch. I also got some sourdough bread going.

For lunch I caught a train to my wife’s work and had lunch at a Japanese place there. They have a nice lunch special consisting of a bowl of miso soup, salad, rice, and your choice of protein. Sometimes I get salmon or something else, but today I got karaage chicken.

Then after eating I picked up Scully and we walked home. We walked a long way home, doing a big dogleg via Naremburn rather than the straight route. So Scully was pretty knackered by the time we got home. With that huge walk and my 5k run, I scored around 12,000 steps today.

I’m pretty lazy making sourdough and have been letting it rise just once before baking. But today I gave the dough a second kneading and rising after it had doubled in volume the first time. I’m hoping it makes a less dense final product. It seems to have turned out okay, but I’m not sure if it’s made all that much difference.

Tonight I had the first three classes of this week’s new ethics topic: “Socialisation”. I was supposed to have one yesterday, but the class ended up with no students in it due to one having an extended vacation, and others leaving the class time. The paused student will be back next week, so I’m hoping someone else enrols before then to avoid a class with just one kid in it. This week’s new topic so far feels easier to teach than the last two weeks’ ones.

I’ve been adding photos to my Flickr album for my Japan trip back in February. I want to get it completed before leaving for Europe next month! Here’s our travelling companion, Monkey, at the Kawazu Sakura Festival:

The sakura (cherry blossoms) there were really beautiful.

This one (below) is the original Kawazu Zakura cultivar tree, planted around 1955, which turned out to be a mutation that flowered early, leading to Kawazu being the place to go for February cherry blossoms, a month or two earlier than anywhere else in Japan.

Such a beautiful place.

Lots of running and walking

My wife took Scully to work this morning, giving me a free morning. I considered driving somewhere interesting, or going out for a nice lunch meal, but I decided to be good and do some exercise. The day was not too hot, while tomorrow is forecast to be very hot, so I wanted to avoid going on a run tomorrow. And so I took the opportunity today, and I also decided to push myself to 7.5k. I completed the distance in 43:15, about mid-range in the handful of times I’ve tried that distance.

After cooling off and changing clothes, I had some lunch at home (simple tomato bruschetta on home made sourdough), and then went out again, to walk to my wife’s work to pick up Scully and bring her home.

In the afternoon I wrote up my lesson outline for the new week’s worth of ethics classes, on the topic of Bio-Engineering. And then used it for the first class this evening.

I also spent some time doomscrolling all the executive orders that newly sworn-in President Trump signed in his first few hours. I don’t usually comment on politics online, but yikes, this is pretty much a living nightmare.

Speaking of which, I’m in the middle of watching Terminator: Dark Fate, which I’m enjoying so far. The first two Terminator movies were among my favourites when I was growing up. I haven’t seen any of the other media like the TV series or whatever it was, but I understand they are ignorable in the movie continuity of the first two movies and this one., which seems to flow nicely directly from them.

Weather today was pleasant and warm, but tomorrow is forecast to be very hot. Not looking forward to that.

New content today:

An outing to Tonton

The weather cooled down overnight from yesterday’s heat with a pleasant southerly change. I got up, head breakfast, and then went out for a 5k run. This brought my total running distance for the year up to an even 500 km. It wasn’t exactly a hundred 5k runs, because I did a few other distances in there: a few 2.5ks when recovering from a sore back, and a few 7.5ks when I felt extra inspired.

I began to notice a few months ago that reaching 500k for the year was a possibility, but I wasn’t quite approaching it fast enough with running only on the weekends, and needed an extra effort in December. Fortunately my wife and I have some time off in these weeks and I’ve added some extra runs in mid-week, which was just enough to bring me to the target.

After showering and changing into fresh clothes, we went on an expedition. My wife has been hankering for a December special from Tonton Bread advertised on their Instagram, a coffee bean croissant:

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We hadn’t had a chance to head over there (it’s a 15-minute drive) before Christmas, so we took the opportunity today. Unfortunately they didn’t have the coffee croissant that she wanted, but they had a pecan coffee choux pastry, which she got instead (upper right in this Instagram:)

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I chose a crookie:

This is a croissant with a cookie strip on top, and filled with cookie dough. It’s so rich that I had half after lunch and am saving the other half for dessert tonight.

In the afternoon I spent some time housecleaning. I washed the floors of both the kitchen and bathroom, and cleaned all of the tiled wall surfaces in the bathroom, as well as the front and back of the door. I also did a bit of bookshelf rearranging to shelve a pile of unshelved recent purchases. Which involved a lot of dusting as well. It’s odd how I always end up doing neglected housework during holidays.

For dinner I fried up some vegetarian sausages, and made garlic, chilli, and miso Brussels sprouts to accompany them.

Oh, the other thing I did this afternoon was go through all my photos from day 4 of last year’s trip to Japan, process and upload a bunch, and add selected ones to my travel diary of the day. There are a lot of food photos there!

New content today:

A make-up class, a make-up sale

This morning at 10am I had a make-up ethics class, replacing one that is normally scheduled on Fridays, but which I had to postpone this week due to the clash with the Standards Australia meeting I had then. The class normally had three kids in it, but two of them couldn’t make the shifted time today, so it was just me and one student. Thankfully it’s a good student who gives in-depth answers, so we didn’t run out of material to talk about.

And also this morning I sold an eBay item. This was a sealed booster box of Magic: the Gathering cards that I put up for auction a few weeks ago. It originally went for a final bid of $150, but the winning bidder never paid for it. I offered it to the second highest bidder, but they never replied to my offer. So last weekend I reposted it as a new auction. And this morning it sold for $180! So I ended up making an extra $30 due to the non-payment shenanigans.

The good thing this time was the buyer contacted me straight away and asked to do a local pickup as he also lives in Sydney. When I confirmed that we could meet tonight to hand over the cards, he paid via eBay immediately. And after my last class tonight I walked over to the meeting spot I’d designated, at the nearest train station, and he was waiting there. So the transaction is finalised and overall I’m happy how it turned out.

Before lunch I did another 5k run. I was convinced during the run that I was going faster than yesterday, and I pushed hard to sprint the last 100 metres or so in an attempt to beat yesterday’s time by as much as I could. When I checked my time… it was 1 second slower than yesterday!! I have no idea how that happened. Do people really have no accurate idea how fast they’re running while doing it?

Finally, Stage 23 of the Lego D&D set. This adds walls, windows, and roofy bits around part of the wizard’s workshop.

New content today:

Lazy Sunday, apart from the running and walking

The heading pretty much sums it up. I did a 5k run first thing in the morning, and for lunch went on a long walk (over 5 km) with my wife and Scully to the shops at Naremburn to have a chicken pie. Something like 12,000 steps all together.

But in between I just worked on some comics for Darths & Droids, and this evening started doing online ethics classes again, continuing the topic on Sleep that got interrupted by last week’s ISO standards meeting. I finish the topic tomorrow before moving onto the new one from Tuesday.

For dinner I made vegetable fajitas, spiced up by chilli from our new chilli plant. I’m still not sure if it’s doing well – it seems a bit scraggly, and the crop of chillis that were on it when we bought it were starting to rot and fall off, so we picked them all today and sorted through them. The good ones I chopped into pieces and stuck in olive oil to infuse and make chilli oil. We’ll see if the plant manages to stay alive long enough to produce another crop of them. It’s weird – the first chilli plant we got lasted several years and produced copious chillis, but both the ones we’ve bought since seem to have struggled and died quickly.

New content today:

Double running early Sunday morning

My wife expressed a desire to begin running for her fitness. She already goes to the gym most days, but wanted to add some more aerobic activity. SO this morning she set an alarm and soon after 06:30 we walked up to the nearest sports oval. I’ve done some running around here, since it’s nice and flat with no hills, but I find it boring because running laps doesn’t take me past any interesting scenery. But my wife wanted to start easy.

She ran 2.5k, although she was a bit staggered when she asked how many laps that would be and I told her five and a half. I looked after Scully while she ran, and Scully wanted to run after her, but that probably wouldn’t have been great after a while, so I held on to her on the lead. My wife took it nice and slowly and managed to complete the laps with a little bit of walking in between longer spurts of jogging. After she was done I started my 5k run around the oval (11 and a bit laps), while she took Scully to a nearby cafe to get a drink.

We did some stretches afterwards and were back home before 08:00. It’s actually really nice to get up early and do something and have a feeling of achievement while the day is still young. Although given I went to bed late last night after running the D&D game, I could have used a bit more sleep!

Speaking of last night’s Dungeons & Dragons game, I wanted to mention a fun thing that happened. But I know some of my friends read my blog, and I want to possibly run the same adventure with them some time soon, so:

If you’re one of my D&D players, please don’t open the following spoiler text:

SPOILERS

At one point in the adventure they found a vampire, impaled through the chest with a magic sword. This sword was one of the main goals of the adventure, so they wanted to retrieve it. The problem was if they removed it, the vampire would be released. It was currently pinned by the sword, and could talk, so it begged to be released. The party were understandably cautious, not wanting to release a vampire who might immediately attack them. The plan they came up with involved: moving the vampire still impaled by the sword onto a magical floating disc, covering the vampire with a tarpaulin, moving the disc outside the cave they found him in, which was hidden behind a waterfall, moving him to the opposite side of the river, then pulling the sword out. They figured the vampire would have to stay under the tarpaulin as long as the sun was up to avoid dying, and then would be unable to cross the running water back into the cave that they were still exploring. A very creative plan! – I thought, and let them carry it out.

It was one of several clever things they did. I also gave their pregenerated characters a mixture of odd magic items that did weird and non-obviously-useful things, and they used several of these to interesting effect. So overall it was a good session.

New content today:

Last day off for holiday period

Both me and my wife return to work tomorrow – her to the office and me with a bunch of online ethics classes. So we just spent today in relax mode, made moreso by the fact that the weather was hotter.

My first task however was to drop the car off for an annual service. I was booked in for a 7:50 drop-off. Normally I’d just walk home – it’s about a 25 minute walk – and then walk back later in the day to pick it up again. But I decided to make use of the fact that I’d be out early and did a 5k run on the way home. This is not an area I normally run in. It was along a highway and then I did a few laps of a cemetery to make up the distance without having to cross a road. The course was a lot flatter than my usual one, and I managed to smash my best time. My previous best was 26:28, and today I ran 25:59. I had a long term goal of breaking 26 minutes, but thought I might never get there. But all it took was a less hilly route! So that was pretty cool.

The car was ready by 11:30, so I walked back to pick it up. When I got home, we went on a walk with Scully and stopped at a cafe to get some lunch. It was a hot walk in bright sunshine, but there was a strong breeze and we sat outdoors in a shady area with the breeze blowing through so it was pretty nice. I tried a menu item I’ve not had before, a teriyaki barramundi fillet with fried udon noodles, broccoli, and enoki mushrooms. It was good and very filling.

This afternoon we played the board game Root again. I tried the Woodland Alliance faction again, and did significantly better against the Cat Marquisate, but it was still an easy victory for the cats. Looking up a bit of info about 2-player set-ups for the game, it seems the Alliance is not a great fit for a 2-player game, but could be helped by the hirelings that are included in the Marauders expansion, which I got the other day. So maybe next time we’ll try that.

New content today:

New Year’s Eve acquisitions

It’s New Year’s Eve! I got up late… after 8am, which is unusual for my recent habits. After breakfast I did my final 5k run of the year. That brought my total running distance to 455 km for 2023. Down a little on the 500 km I managed last year. Even though I’m doing longer distances, I’m not running as many days a week, due to the fact that my wife went back from working at home to working in the office. But still, I’m pretty happy with that.

After a refreshing cold shower, I decided to head into the city quickly on the train to check out the game store where I have some store credit (from selling some old Magic: the Gathering cards a while back). I really want to use up all this store credit before it potentially vanishes, if the store shuts down or something. I got a selection of roleplaying game books:

And a couple of expansions for the Root board game:

A nice haul overall! And I thought I’d run down my store credit to close to zero, but the guy who rang up the total told me everything is on sale, and I still have over $100 of credit left! So that’s a bonus. Also, not pictured, a got a copy of Kingdomino, which is a game I know well, but haven’t owned before. I decided to get that because it’s a good 2-player game for me and my wife. We played a few games this afternoon. And in true fashion, after I taught her the rules, she won the very first game easily. Though we swapped victories back and forth the next few games.

We went for a walk up to the local shops to give Scully some exercise. The weather today was cool and overcast – a nice change from hot. I tried to find some fruit mince tarts today, since I realised I missed out completely over Christmas and I like them. But neither of the big two supermarkets had them any more. 🙁

For dinner I made okonomiyaki. And in a little bit we’ll have our traditional New Year’s Eve snacks of cheese and crackers, before seeing in 2024.

Oh! And I didn’t share this at the time, but a couple of days ago while out walking Scully I got a good close photos of a kookaburra.

Probably a young one, as adults tend to be more wary of humans.

New content today:

A (mostly) lazy Sunday

I slept in this morning! It was my first time getting up later than about 7:15 since I returned from Italy. So it felt pretty good to just snooze until I wanted without any urgency.

I did get up eventually, and went for a 5k run straight after a quick breakfast. The weather was cooler and cloudy, with some intermittent light drizzle, which was a very nice change from the heat we’ve been having lately.

After that my wife went to visit her mother and help set up her Christmas tree and decorations. She took Scully, which meant I had the house to myself – a rare occasion these days! I didn’t really take advantage though, and spent time writing and making a new Darths & Droids comic, which took a while due to some writer’s block. What else did I do? Gosh… um… I made a sourdough loaf and in the evening cooked dinner in between teaching three ethics classes. And that’s about it.

Oh, my wife came home with the Christmas ham for our family lunch. I’ve been handed the role of preparing a glazed ham every year since the one time I volunteered to do it! I think this year I’ll try doing a version with an orange marmalade glaze.

New content today: