Apathetic mandible

Rather than slump back into my lazy natural state after 8 days avoiding the threatening (but rarely delivering) storm clouds, I had some catching up to do. 5 walks in 48 hours has me right back on track, with nary a drop of rain (or a ray of sun) to be felt.

While my mood has maundered a bit recently, what I've felt as a low point is really nothing more than the slight absence of the enthusiasm I've become more accustomed to. When I look back on the things I've enjoyed the past week, I can't help but think it's been pretty good:

• dinner with B and Liv (where the bus kept me dry...),


• getting to relive Chicago's six NBA championships on DVD,


• finally finishing this book,


• plus really positive momentum continuing to build at work.

Once again, you can tell I'm padding out a blog post purely as an excuse to brag about my walking... The post should just have read "1 walk every 576 minutes" or "10% of my weekend was walking" ;)

Gracious abandonment

It's more than two years now since I played any serious basketball, and I haven't really pined after it for quite some time. So, as another step in my always-just-one-moment-of-stupidity-away-from-unretiring retirement, I've finally started to clear out my collection of similarly retired basketball boots.

These span the gamut from my Nike days, inspired by Jordan and Barkley:





to my discovery of the wonders of Converse, via the best shoes ever - Cons Tar Max (the only shoes I never had an injury in - wonder indeed! I wish I'd bought 10 pairs of these...):



and beyond, to my last pair of blacks:



They've all been taking up space in almost forgotten shoe boxes for many years, and I've now overcome my reticence at throwing anything out. These photos form sufficient remembrance of my not-at-all-athletic past. It's walking shoes all the way from now on :)

Contentious infamy

Had a lovely picnic lunch with my family down by Lake Ginninderra today. Our spot was shady, with a nice cool breeze off the lake.

Here I am, contented after a filling meal:



And, luckily, we were heading home anyway as the clouds started rolling in, this time delivering on at least a little of the stormy rain which has been promised all week.

Efficacious redundancy

This was the real colour of the sky at my place last night. Everything around was bathed in this bizarre yellow, but that didn't come across too well in other pictures.

Outrageously sagacious

Storm clouds gathering? Not at all :)

I think this sums up pretty well my more recent approach to action, and why I've been able to recover more effectively from the odd bad month. It really is the journey, not the destination, as long as I know the things I'm doing are important (and enjoyable) to me.

Work shouldn't feel like work it it's what I want to do. And walking isn't (all) about the weight I lose, or the fitness I get, but the enjoyment of the walk, the beauty of the sights.

I've felt horrendously tired the past few days, and the second half of my walk last night my body felt like lead (even though usually the walk is a breeze). But despite that, my mood has primarily remained bright, I haven't complained to anyone at work and Extras has returned to TV. Life remains quite good :)

Irrelevance personified

I've caught little snippets of Labour criticism towards our PM about bad mouthing Barack Obama but, seriously, nothing said by anyone in Australia (except maybe The Wiggles) could have the slightest impact on the US election. Maybe Labour's starting to believe Howard's self-deception that our country has an important role in world affairs?

I'm not saying Australia couldn't be a leader, just that the lack of vision in our government means there's not even positive local influence, let alone anything on a global scale.

Xenophobic implant

Some random new pics, to prove I'm carrying through with my threat of more photography:







While I've been kinda sick for the past week, both with nausea and fatigue, I'm still making sure to action on :)

Sepia outlaws

Have you ever wondered what computer monitors looked like in the 19th century? My guess is they were something like this:



Actually, that was just a hella lame excuse to try out one of my camera's features that doesn't start with the prefix "auto". I've been planning to learn enough about my camera to do something a little more creative, and I'm now armed with a few more techniques (courtesy of a re-read of the manual). Now I just need to concentrate on taking more pics :) I've browsed Flickr and favourited some photos to give me a little extra motivation, so no excuses!

Comet McZero

Don't worry, it's not an optical illusion, there's nothing to be seen in my photo of Comet McNaught. If I'd had a tripod, and remembered how to set a longer exposure time with my camera, I may well have come up with something cool like all of these.

Regardless, it was actually clearly visible to the naked eye, and genuinely impressive.

I used to be a keen astronomer, with my own telescope and star wheel, and journal for recording seeing conditions, but somewhere between the disappointing smudge that was Halley's Comet back in '86 and this latest event I lost interest in looking at the night sky. Strange, since insomnia lends itself to that kind of activity!

Mothra

Anyone with mottephobia turn back now.



This guy was a surprise visitor in my lounge room last night when I returned from my walk and settled in to watch the cricket. Definitely the biggest moth I've ever seen, and I have no idea how he could possibly have gotten inside.

Anyway, he now has a Vita Brits home on my front porch, and can leave any time he wants.

Huh?

What's that? You haven't seen a new toy on my blog for weeks, months even? How about this one, which you can see in action by going to The Shenanigans Files and hovering over some links.

I'm not sure yet whether I like it or hate it, but it's new!

Great googly moogly

This post from Slow Leadership effectively describes some beliefs I've let stand in my way in the past, preventing me from being as happy as I can be. I set my standards low to avoid disappointment, and let fear of just about everything limit me to doing same-old, same-old.

"The most useless and harmful beliefs aren’t just wrong; they actively prevent you from doing or understanding things that would improve either your own life or the lives of the people around you."

Obviously it's not a simple leap from flawed beliefs to those which lead to positive action (well, not simple for me anyway!), but it's clearly a path worth pursuing.

Over the past few weeks, I've finally started to achieve a work/life balance, which means they're not balanced at all and that work is purely another aspect of my life. I actually want to be there when I'm there, not thinking about what else I'd rather do in my "life". Which is a pretty amazing feeling, and really helps with the "be in the moment" approach to enjoying life I've been moving towards for several months.

The one weird side-effect of that, though, has been I have no idea what day it is at any given time. Which, if all of my workmates had the same approach would be fine, but I still need to show up at times I'm expected. Not really an imposition, but a little quirk in "work" being more a smooth continuity of my week than it seems for many others.

None of this is entirely consistent, and I still have many moments when I slip back to thinking negatively. The difference for me now is I've improved in taking what feels negative and working out some action I can take to improve it. It's all about the small gains for me, taking satisfaction in how I handle any "tiny adversity" I might face.

Peripheral exigency

Thanks to the B's generosity and complementary DVD library, I got to see the following five movies over the weekend:

American Dreamz
Some excellent comic characters, with unsubtle digs at current US policy (always welcome). Paul Weitz hits again, after American Pie and About A Boy also in his canon.

Bring It On - All Or Nothing
or, as I'd prefer to call it, Bring It On-est (the second sequel to Bring It On and Bring It On-er).
Stars the super-powered cheerleader from Heroes as... a cheerleader. I started off watching this a little critically, then thankfully stopped taking it even slightly seriously and enjoyed it thoroughly as a result. Some entertaining crunkin', lots of stereotypes and an unsurprising but cheery happy ending.

Harvard Man
I was expecting a stock-standard girl-whose-Dad-is-in-the-mafia tries to fix college basketball game using her boyfriend-the-point-guard, but instead it's some crazy drug-taking, FBI-college-professor-threesome, Al-Franken-cameoing trip. Weird.

... and the big Corey double ...
Just One Of The Girls
I can't believe I didn't watch this as a teen. I mean, c'mon, Nicole Eggert! Nonetheless, anyone believing Corey Haim as a female cheerleader... I guess it was the era of big shoulders!

Dream A Little Dream
I don't even know where to start with this. Old man dreams himself into Corey Feldman, and Corey doesn't seem that keen to resume his old life... the rest I'll leave to interested viewers to discover :) And, if you like it, there's even a sequel!

Ventricle somnambulism

Climbing up from the comparative mediocrity of my 2 ADAC average of the previous four months, I managed to maintain an average of 4 actions per day throughout January, including a crazy peak of 10. This sets me a high standard to maintain, lets me know that this method of motivation is actually working for me, and has lead me to focus my energy on the right things, things which make me happy.