Author: e.v.

These hips don’t lie

~ e.v. ~ 1 Comment

I had to miss Parkrun last weekend because I strained something in my hip, again. I did it this weekend but I took it a bit slower than usual, and it was still quite uncomfortable Saturday afternoon. I kept waking up during the night and my lower back felt really tight as well.

My hips are soooo tight. I stretch and foam roll but it seems like a losing battle as I sit down all day.

So I took the radical step of investing in a standing desk converter, which is basically a platform that sits on your regular desk that can be raised or lowered back down to desk level.

(Please don’t judge the dust on the right monitor’s base.)

I’m quite impressed with it so far, but I don’t tend to use my PC over the weekends so I haven’t actually tested it in actual use yet. Hopefully it will help!

Doggies

~ e.v. ~ 2 Comments

I never realised that having a puppy would be so much work. You see well behaved dogs out for walks, trotting alongside their owners with perfect behaviour. You don’t see all the training that goes into making a dog walk on a lead without attacking it. Or when they decide that what they really want to do is flip their water bowl upside down, while still full of water. Or the hours spent walking in circles around the garden while he searches for the perfect place to poo, because apparently it’s extremely important that you sniff the entire garden four times before deciding, except you also have a really short attention span so you might get distracted by a really tasty looking piece of grass along the way and then have to start over.

He always looks so calm and well behaved in photos. Trust me, he’s not.

He had his second round of vaccinations on Friday, so next weekend we can start taking him out. Chunky boy here now weighs 4.6kg, which is up from 3.9 only a couple of weeks ago. The vet didn’t seem concerned anyway, but I’m not sure if we’re overfeeding him… The breeder (or more likely, her young daughter) nicknamed him “Mr Chonk” because he was the biggest of the litter. But once we can take him out for walks he’ll be burning off more calories.

I don’t know how you tell if a dog is fat. For one thing he’s a crossbreed, so there’s a lot of randomness as to exactly what his genetics are so he doesn’t have a known ideal ‘shape’, and for another, most of what you see is fur.

We gave him the second dose of a ‘deworming’ tablet today. We did the first dose two weeks ago, and it made him completely crazy. He took it at about 11 in the morning and spent all afternoon totally hyperactive, barking, growling and generally worrying us because he seemed agitated and wouldn’t settle. We googled it and apparently it’s not a medically recognised side effect but plenty of people on forums talk about it. Others say it can’t possibly be the tablet because it’s not a known side effect. After having the second dose today, he was exactly the same again. So, yep, it’s the tablet. He’s supposed to have it done again in two weeks but we’ll have to ask to use a different medicine.

Life!

~ e.v. ~ 2 Comments

We’ve had the puppy for almost three weeks now. I never expected owning a puppy to be so stressful! I’m not getting nearly as much sleep as I used to. I keep napping in the evenings after work now.

He is generally doing a lot better now. He has his vaccination booked for next Friday, so a couple of weeks after then we’ll be able to start taking him out for walks. How this is going to work… I have no idea. It’s a struggle to get him to walk from one end of the garden to the other without him trying to eat my shoelaces or chewing on the lead. The lead tends to excite him and he likes to jump up and grab it. I’m a bit concerned about having him walk around much outside because I think he’ll probably try to eat everything he finds, and I’ve noticed the pavements tend to be littered with tiny pebbles and such… so that’ll be fun.

I’d like to get him down to Parkrun at some point so he can see a big crowd of people running but it’s too far for him to walk and with the fuel shortage it’s hard to justify taking him in the car. Maybe in a few weeks.

On the subject of Parkrun… since starting going again, progress has been slower than I thought. I did the first week at about 22:20 and was really pleased with that for a first effort, thinking I’d knock quite a bit of time off it the following week. But I actually got stuck around that time, for a few weeks, before suddenly jumping down to 21:30, where I’m stuck again. Last week was a bit of a struggle, but it was very humid and I’d done two sets of speedwork during the week before. This week I did some 1KM repeats on Wednesday, so hopefully I’ll be well enough rested to see the rewards tomorrow?

The problem is always pacing. It’s a course with an incline at the start, in the middle and at the end, so generally the pace tends to dip in the middle, but I think it’s also the psychological battle of the initial excitement wearing off, fatigue setting in and feeling like a long way from the end. This is the last two weeks:

I obviously still have enough left in me because the last kilometre is always the fastest. But it’s a fine line between taking it a bit too easy in the middle and imploding on the fourth kilometre. I’m still aiming to get it back to about 20 minutes. That feels like a long way away at the moment, though.

Day 4

~ e.v. ~ 1 Comment

Is it only day 4? All the days merge together now.

I think I’ve just accepted that I’m not going to sleep past 5AM for a while. We tried leaving the little pupper alone last night, for the first time, and he started howling at 5. We agreed that we would leave him til 6 in an effort to get his schedule a bit more aligned to ours, but by then he was really distressed and his stomach was gurgling loudly. He seemed a lot happier after we took him out for a toilet break, so I think really we just need to do that when he starts howling. Even if he’s just howling because he’s scared being on his own in the dark, letting him stay scared is just going to upset his stomach. At least, that’s how mine works! It’s a weird world for him. He’s entirely dependent on people who go through a door and disappear for hours. He hasn’t seen upstairs yet. He doesn’t know we’re only a few metres away.

He’s doing better with the toileting. He’s still peeing inside a lot but he hasn’t pooed inside since the first day. He’s a clever little dog. I’m amazed how quickly he learns things. I’ve taught him to “Sit”, and I’ve also taught him to stop howling and sit by the door of his pen before we let him out. He’s also learnt that when I hold my fist in front of him, he should boop it with his nose. I’m currently trying to teach him “Drop”, which seems important given that he puts everything in his mouth. On day two he ate a piece of gravel from the garden, which I hadn’t expected at all. Apparently puppies eating stones is not uncommon and usually they just pass them, but obviously it’s potentially dangerous so you don’t want them doing it. They also eat grass… In fact he seems to want to eat grass more than his actual meals.

The other problem at the moment is that he gets the zoomies. Which means that he’s playing quite happily with his toys one minute, then the next he’s rushing full speed up and down the room jumping up and down. It’s hilarious actually, but the problem is that this is when he starts getting bity and aggressive. His bites haven’t actually hurt yet but that’s something we need to stop. All puppies bite a little because their mouth is primarily how they interact with the world, they just learn not to do it by the reactions they get from their victims. He’s like two dogs in one. When he’s calm he’s lovely, but when he’s got the zoomies he’s like a possessed shark. It seems to happen when you think he should be tired… I guess he gets tired and grumpy and doesn’t really understand that when he feels like that he should go to sleep. He’s only a baby really.

Today we took him out for the first time in a carrier. Puppies need two rounds of vaccinations before it’s safe to let them walk around on the ground in public, and they tend to be 12-13 weeks old at that stage. Until then you need to both protect them from the outside world, but also introduce them to it as it’s an important part of their development. He seemed completely unfazed by being taken out, which was surprising. He just sat in the carrier quite contentedly (trying to chew the strap). This is the same dog who yesterday got scared and refused to go to the toilet because it was raining… and then got even more scared when I put an umbrella up.

Pupper

~ e.v. ~ 3 Comments

This is Monty. He’s an 8 week old cockapoo.

We picked him up this morning. He’s still quite upset but hopefully he’ll settle in a few days. He cries a lot when we leave him alone but he seems comfortable with us. This afternoon we were playing with him while I was sat cross legged on the floor, and he went to sleep nestling his face into the back of my knee (probably because I’m warm?).

So far his favourite trick is to pretend he doesn’t need the toilet when we take him into the garden, then go on the carpet 30 seconds after we take him back inside. Some of that might be stress though. He’s been twice outside and 4 or 5 times inside 🤦 But he also seems scared of the garden and much more comfortable inside, which probably doesn’t help. I’m frantically reading up on training.

Allergies seem OK. Or at least, no worse than they have been over the past few weeks. I think if there was going to be a problem I’d know about it by now. Last winter we had problems with dust on the radiators which got circulated when we switched them on, and 30 minutes of that was enough to make me feel like I had a heavy cold. I think it was just a bad hayfever day the other week.

Doggos

~ e.v. ~ 3 Comments

So we went to see the lady about the cockapoo puppies and we have put down a deposit on a little puppy who is black with three white paws.

Unexpectedly, I feel very nervous and unsettled about it now. The problem is that I had a lot of allergies in the evening after we visited. So naturally my brain decided that I’m allergic to dogs, even though this was hours later and I was fine while I was there. Actually I’m allergic to something in the air around this time of year, possibly mold spores. It happens every single year. It’s been bad all week. I’ve been taking anti histamines most days this week to try to keep it under control. My parents are complaining about it too, so it’s not just me. Even my mum, who usually isn’t very affected by this kind of thing. I don’t think I’m allergic to dogs, but I’ve never lived with one, so as it’s suddenly popped into my head I am worrying about it. My dad’s aunt used to have a dog when I was a child. Unfortunately we never used to visit her often, because she lived hundreds of miles away, but I definitely spent some time with her dog and in her house and I didn’t have any problems. I’m sure it’ll be fine.

We have been busy trying to get everything ready. We have a little pen set up in the corner of the living room now, we just have a few more things we need to get before we go and collect him next weekend.

I hope he will be happy here, but he’ll be scared and confused at first. A little 8 week old puppy separated from his litter mates and his mother… it’s going to be tough for the little guy to start with. I think I’ll be sleeping in the living room next to his pen for a few nights so that he’s not completely alone… I thought about having him sleep in my room to begin with, but it’s probably too confusing for him. We want him to feel that space in the living room is his little area, so we don’t really want to be moving him around. I think we need to keep things simple and consistent for him, at least until he gets used to us.

Assuming everything is ready, we’re going to pick him up next Sunday…

Excitement

~ e.v. ~ 1 Comment

The first big thing is that my sister and I are going to see a lady about a puppy tomorrow. We have been thinking about getting one for a while. This lady (or, more accurately, her dog) has had a litter and there are two still available. They are cockapoos – the little teddy bear like dogs that you see a lot. They’ll be available to leave in about two weeks, which would be perfect because I’m off work that week, but also not perfect because ohmygodthat’ssosoon.

In other news, I did parkrun today, for the first time since March 2020. I ran it in 22:12. With my foot injury I haven’t done many long runs recently, so the half marathon I did a few weeks ago was a bit of a disaster (1:53 – some people would be ecstatic with that, but for me it felt slow and it was a real slog), and I had a weird turn a few hours afterwards where I suddenly felt sick and hot and felt like I was going to faint.

That knocked my confidence a lot for doing anything intense, so I paced it cautiously to begin with and then sped up on the second lap (it’s a two lap course). I haven’t really done any speed workouts for a long time, so overall I was very pleased. When I used to do parkrun regularly before lockdown, I got a lot faster just from treating it as a speed workout every week. It’s a lot easier both psychologically and physiologically to keep a strong tempo going when you’re in a pack of faster runners than it is on your own during the week when you feel like you should still be in bed.

I’m looking forward to next week’s now.

Anaemia?

~ e.v. ~ 2 Comments

I’ve been feeling a bit off lately, and at some point it suddenly occurred to me that I am probably getting anaemic again. I used to have problems with anaemia a few years ago. I started feeling very tired and a bit spaced out sometimes. Early anaemia symptoms are a bit vague. But I’ve sometimes been feeling a bit woozy after running, which is what really made me think “hmm”.

So I phoned up my doctor… I had to phone because they’ve disabled online booking “due to COVID”. Which makes no sense. And then I had to phone four times. The first three I was told that the queue was full, and on the fourth I apparently got put into the queue. It took 35 minutes in total to speak to someone. The earliest appointment they could give me was a telephone appointment, in four weeks time. What has gone wrong with my GP surgery?!

So anyway… That’s ridiculous and I’ve started self medicating iron tablets. Fortunately you can buy them over the counter. Iron overdose is a thing but from seeing my iron levels in the past I think I’m more likely to develop diabetes from the sugar coating on the tablet than convince my body to absorb enough iron for it to be a problem.

I watched episode four of The Man In The High Castle this evening. I am really enjoying it so far. I really like the intro and theme too. The style reminds me of The Expanse’s intro sequence. In this case it’s very arty and surreal against the grim reality of the story.

Castles

~ e.v. ~ 5 Comments

I finished Clone Wars and The Expanse. Clone Wars ending was quite sombre but I already knew it would be since it lines up with the third prequel. I enjoyed Clone Wars a lot more than I expected to. I hope that we get to see more of Ahsoka. I think I’d rather see an Ahsoka series than the Boba Fett and Obi Wan series that they are also supposedly making.

The Expanse was… ehhhh. Something actually happened in the finale, so that was an improvement over the previous 5 episodes. But it seemed like it was a set up for S6. I hope it’s better than S5! S5 is by far the weakest season so far.

I’ve started watching Man In The High Castle. I’m only two episodes in so far but it seems very good, if incredibly bleak. It’s set in an alternate history 1960s America where Germany and Japan won WW2 and occupied and divided up America. I think the logistical improbability of this has been hand-waved away by saying that Germany won the race to the atomic bomb. Anyway…. I really like Rufus Sewell as a.. err… gestapo? officer. He plays a very intelligent and very scary man.

I don’t know what else to watch though…

I have heard good things about The Orville but I don’t think it’s on any of the streaming services I have. Star Trek Lower Decks might be good too. I keep thinking about watching S3 of Star Trek Discovery but I’m not sure I can face another 10 hours watching Michael Burnham being serious and dramatic.

Daybreak

~ e.v. ~ 3 Comments

The BSG finale was…. not really overwhelming and not really underwhelming either. It was medium whelming. It gave an OK sort of resolution to the characters as a whole that’s moderately satisfying as long as you don’t think about it at all.

But if you do think about it….

The promise that the cylons “have a plan” was dropped from the title screens at some point, but it was definitely there early on and they really didn’t have a plan, or understandable motivations at all. They are one dimensional villains apparently driven purely by spite. Other things that weren’t really explained were: the opera house, which seems to have been an extremely complicated allegory to help Hera walk a few metres down a corridor, Starbuck’s resurrection and disappearance, and Hera in general.

Hera was supposed to be special. She was so special we had to endure two ridiculous plotlines to ensure she was the only part-cylon child after the writers accidentally introduced two other part or fully cylon children. The first being Tyrol’s son actually turning out to be a product of the least believable affair in the history of TV, and the second being Six’s pregnancy and miscarriage (peak soap opera). And in the end, Hera turned out to be special because… she becomes mitochondrial Eve. Literally any of the women in the fleet or on the planet could have become mitochondrial Eve!

And then at the end they decided to abandon all technology (including medical technology), because… ??? And everyone’s perfectly happy with that, despite having mutinied only a few episodes ago for far less.

Another special moment: When Adama is picking a replacement admiral to stand in for him while he’s gone, he says “We need someone the fleet admires and respects… so we’re picking this guy who occasionally stands in the background! Well done, extra, you’ve earned it”.

I mean, I enjoyed the series as a whole, even though it went downhill after half way through S2, but you do have to switch your brain off for a lot of the later episodes. Which is frustrating as it was intellectually intriguing to begin with.

I think a good example of doing this stuff well is Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes. They managed to keep the intrigue right until the end, and then it concluded in probably the only way that really made sense, but was still unpredictable.