Stuff

I took a big bag of paper recycling to the banks by the park yesterday. There are loads of signs up in the park saying that they are going to restore a lot of the old features (bridges, and buildings mainly) which will be great. I hope they do it quickly, while we still live here!

We are off to Cambridge today for a week or so, so I am busy sorting stuff out in preparation. Olly seems to have infected me, and I now find packing boring and stressful, I am sure it used to be fun and exciting. Maybe I am just getting old?

Australia?

There is a postdoc advertised at Canberra, Australia. I have decided to apply for it and have spent most of the morning attempting to update and improve my hideous five year old CV. CV writing is hard! I got sufficient brain melt that I couldn't even remember the title of my M.Sc. dissertation...

I suspect there will be better qualified candidates than me, but decided that that wasn't a reason not to apply. Canberra sounds a nice place, Australia sounds a nice country, and the postdoc sounds great. It will be useful to have updated my CV as well.

This should also motivate me into finishing of the paper based on my PhD, as it will be my only publication!

This Weeks Running

Here is this weeks fairly dull training update :)

TRAINING
Sun 6th May - Sat 12th May
Number of runs: 3
Running: 9.07 miles
Running increase: 10.7%
Walking: 11 miles

Increased my running miles by 10% which is what I was aiming at so I am happy. Apparently if you increase more than that you are more susceptible to injury. Hopefully I can manage a similar increase next week (which will be almost 10 miles).

Windows Cleaned

I managed to make the windows both clean and not smeary - I cheated and bought a window squeegee (I think that's the right word, kind of like the things you scrape ice off your car with, but longer and with a flexible silicon "blade"). It cost 99p but is well worth the investment.

To make you house seem bigger and lighter (according to lots of TV programs), you need to de-clutter, accessorise, clean and redecorate in neutral colours. I have discovered a quicker, easier and cheaper alternative - just clean the windows! It is amazing how much brighter the room seems. The windows were filthy, especially considering that we've only had them for 18 months, and I have cleaned the frames a few times, and maybe the glass once before, and they get cleaned when it rains, and the front ones when kids throw water bombs, and we don't live on a main road. Must be the great polluted Liverpool air, makes me wonder how much ick gets into my lungs when I breath...

New Front Door

We had been undecided for ages as to whether to get a new front door or not, the old one is quite tatty but not totally fallen apart. New doors seem quite expensive, and unless you get one with a frame (which costs even more) it can take a while getting them to be the right size. Then you have all the painting to do as well.

Then we found a front door (plus frame) reduced in B+Q from £304 to £30, it was quite dirty, and the packaging damaged, but except for a slight dent on the inside at the bottom it is fine. It is the right size for our house, and is composite, so although it doesn't look quite as nice as a real wooden door, it wont need all the painting and matches the white uPVC windows.

It came with the frame and sill and some bits and pieces, but we needed to a new handle, letter box and frame-fixers. Despite shopping around for the best prices, we actually spent more on this than the door!

I think we will be fitting the door today, having got (hopefully!) everything ready last night. Fingers crossed that it wont be too epic.

Window Cleaning

Our dirty windows have been annoying me for ages, so I finally decided to attempt to clean them. Cleaning windows isn't as easy as it looks, or else I am missing something obvious. I must have got them a lot cleaner, because I tipped away a lot of dirty water, but now they are either smeary, or still look dirty :(

I guess I will have another go today, probably just using water, and not the Tesco Window Cleaning Spray I found in the cupboard.

Exercise

I haven't got as much done this week as I would have liked, partly because it was a shorter week (we got back from a weekend away on Monday evening). I have finished re-plastering the holes in the front bedroom wall, and I think it looks pretty good, certainly an improvement :)

I decided to keep a weekly recorded of how far I have ran and walked. The running miles are measured much more carefully than the walking ones. Hopefully the number of running miles will increase a little each week.

TRAINING
29th April - 5th May
Number of runs: 3
Running: 8.19 miles
Walking: 18 miles

Weekend away

Having spent the last couple of weeks redecorating the room martin had been renting we went away for a long weekend to the Dales. There might be "before" and "after" photos of the bedroom soonish.


We went away on Friday afternoon, and stopped off on the way near Caton to go for a walk along the River Lune. Olly took some nice photos. We did a circular walk along the river bank and an old railway line that is now a cycle path. From an early bit of the riverbank footpath, we noticed some translucent looking boulders on a rock promontory. We went down to have a look and it turned out that they were glass boulders attached to the rock! They looked a lovely translucent green colour. Very unusual, but very cool!

We stayed at the usual caving hut, and saved £5 quid for volunteering to be duty hut wardens for the weekend which was nice (it usually costs £2.50 a night).

We went cave surveying on the Saturday which was fun, but got a bit cold as it was so slow. On Sunday we went for a walk from the caving hut to Easegill Beck GPSing a few useful points for the cave survey. Again Olly took some nice photos.

On Monday Olly wasn't feeling up to caving, so we set off home, stopping at Morecambe to go for a walk along the seafront. I have never been to Morecambe before - it has amazing views towards the Yorkshire Dales and across Morecambe bay to the Lakes. All in all, a nice weekend, though we didn't do as much caving as I had hoped for.