Frazzled identity

Usually I forget to take a photo of my meal before I tuck in. Is that an excuse to not snap away? Apparently not...

Despite having walked over 1000km over the past 13 months, much of it over the same course, I still find a simple pleasure in the lights and sights along the way.

Verdant imaginings

Both Em and Lisa Haneberg reminded me, in thinking about their posts, of one of my (many!) weaknesses, reinforcing the need to try new things and, even if they don't work out, believing that the act of trying is its own success. Just getting out there and trying something, and dealing with the inevitable bumps along the way with good humour. Sounds like it's gotta be worth the effort!

This may well be the next step beyond my action count. While ADAC's helped me become more active, it hasn't emphasised the value of something different over routine. In the search for passion and some kind of calling, repetition doesn't help me. Time to set myself new targets, which build on the (relative) stability of health and mood I've worked towards as an initial goal?

No wozzas

Today in pictures...

Visited the National Gallery gardens with Liv

and walked around part of the lake

then met up with B for dinner at Wagamama

for my regular Amai udon

before a soy ice blended mocha

at Starbucks

Sounds like a pretty awesome day to me :)

Melancholy triffids

Maybe...

Your Brain is Blue

Of all the brain types, yours is the most mellow. You tend to be in a meditative state most of the time. You don't try to think away your troubles. Your thoughts are realistic, fresh, and honest. You truly see things as how they are. You tend to spend a lot of time thinking about your friends, your surroundings, and your life.

What Color Is Your Brain?

but then sometimes the quiz lies!!!

Your Hair Should Be Pink

Hyper, insane, and a boatload of fun. You're a traveling party that everyone loves to follow.

What's Your Funky Inner Hair Color?

Contentious platitudes

Like many new time-wasters, stolen from B :)

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Gee whiz

I had planned to be taking lots of happy snaps around the shores of Lake Burley Griffin with Liv today, but the consistently inconsistent Canberra weather put a dampener on those plans. No excuse not to take a few shots from my front porch though!

Brisk capitulation

It's not so much that nothing's been going on which has kept me from posting much this month, it's more that I'm tired of reading the same ol' crud from me. So what follows will not be complaints about health, stories about walking or regaling you with action counts. And, in fact, the last two of those are soon to be entirely phased out, as my accounting has served its purpose, and I plan to stop measuring at the end of this month. Counting isn't action ;)

#1: I can't believe it's taken me so long to work out that shopping at my local, Kippax Fair, is about a million times more pleasant than navigating the drone-clogged Mall. On Monday after work, I managed to do my grocery shopping, visit the newsagent, chemist and post office, all within a few steps of each other, and happily walk home without violence ever having crossed my mind. I did much the same on Wednesday morning, and even took photos in the park out the back while I waited for my magic pills to be ready. I'm leaving the Mall to the suckers from now on, it's Kippax all the way!

#2: I'm concentrating on taking photos as much as possible, and even when I'm not taking photos I'm looking for photo ops. I'll hopefully venture further afield once my holidays start in 2 weeks, in search of inspiring subject matter all over Canberra.

They call him Flipper

I really thought I could cope without TV for a week or so, but being sick has meant that my resolve crumbled, and I've settled for the tiny little screen you see above, dwarfed by the dead black box behind it. As a Neo-Luddite I make a passable televisuoholic...

Fatalistic gorging

TV addicts look away, the next paragraph may cause nausea and dizziness...

After 2.5 good years, my TV finally gave up last night. It's likely nothing more serious than a new lamp being needed, but unfortunately I have to wait till at least next Thursday to find out. That's right, 9 days without TV!

Luckily for me, that gives the perfect excuse to continue with a resurgence of reading, as well as taking photos, walking and even the occasional blog post :) (Plus my family has the same TV, so I get to watch my usual Thursday shows this week anyway).

Combinatorial plaything

And that's how I got an ADAC of 4.57 for the month of February :)

Of course, the statistical underpinnings of the whole system are completely shot, since I started measuring meaningful work things as well (in keeping with my "work is just another part of life" mindset), which previously wasn't being counted.

Verifiably trenchant

I haven't posted much lately because I've been dreadfully uninspired about anything other than my work (which is continuingly excellent). Now that pretty much rests with me, and my slide back into inactivity, but how to reinvigorate myself for another charge at action?

The answer: A call from Em, exactly when I most needed it :) While I had been reading some interesting stuff (on Test Driven Development), the opportunity to vent made it plain I was returning to old, bad thought habits. As an activity restart, more walking photos and a much improved mood are the result.



That picture perpetuates the style of one my oh-so-obvious Antioch talk endings, segueing into a photo instead of a song. I've now found more energy and am ready to power on ;) Thanks Em!

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!