I feel like it’s worth noting that I don’t have targets for any of the things I consume or do over the week, we have plans as a family but the rest of my time is mine to flex as I wish.
Although it is telling that even in compiling these weekly notes, I find myself more apt to focus on WHAT I’m consuming, and have barely been on social media these past few weeks, so much so I’ve deleted all the apps from my phone.
🤷♂️ Life
- Six Nations is done, Scotland played well but Ireland deserved their win, and the last gasp penalty kick for France was stunning. What a tournament it’s been this year!!
- Another big fire in Glasgow has caused damage to an iconic building, shame to see my home city aflame again.
- Blairgowrie visit on Tuesday (for work) as we were getting a new scanning machine delivered. The ‘morning’ delivery ended up turning up at 4pm. I tend to try and avoid the Glasgow traffic on the 2hr drive home but because of that delay I ended up taking 3.5hrs to get home. Ugh.
- Been focussed on my health and I’m finding that just by knowing that I am tracking my sleep with my Apple Watch, my sleep time has increased by over an hour or so and is holding steady at a little over 7hrs a night. Which is fine by me.
- Back to being a one car family, our old (100k miles+) Dacia is starting to creak as well, another repair (throttle attenuator) needed, another couple of hundred quid down. As long as it makes it to the end of the year I’ll be happy.
- Jack can write his own name now. It’s tricky because we know he’s smart and picks things up quickly but he’s always so reticent to show us. Any praise and he gets all shy and ‘nopes’ it away.
📚 Read
- Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd – Which was interesting. Written in a style to match the setting (1960s Cold War era) I enjoyed it but it took a while to get into the cadence. Very much a Hitchcock style ‘everyday man plunged into danger’ type story, which is a-ok with me.
- Beloved by Toni Morrison – not long started but already the language is making me slow down to enjoy it. I always get this way with character driven stories (see Elizabeth Strout recs recently), and it’s nice to get fully absorbed into a novel.
📰 Considered
- Our children paid the ultimate price – 30 years since Thomas Hamilton walked into a primary school and murdered 16 children and their teacher, in a small Scottish town called Dunblane. We have gun laws because we reacted. I still don’t understand how America doesn’t.
- She came out of the bathroom naked, Employee Says – Meta glasses just SEEM dodgy and a bit creepy. I get the ‘always on’ appeal but given employees of company sub-contracted by META to help process the data ‘for AI’ can see ALL of the footage, yeah this isn’t great (and neither is META’s AI offering either it seems).
- How I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard – Always wanted something like this, given we have shared calendars already, I think it would be useful. Expensive, but the geek in me loves this!
- Electric air taxi – The Jetson future is getting closer and closer!
- WHAT CAUSES SPONTANEOUS HUMAN COMBUSTION? – I can remember this being something that was mentioned, but can’t recall exactly where. TV? Playground? See also The Bermuda Triangle.
- Potoooooooo – made me laugh. I love 🥔.
📺 Watched
Not had much time to sit and watch (I like to single task when watching TV/Movies).
- Still re-watching Schitt’s Creek, last night we got to the ‘Simply the Best’ moment which never falls to illicit happy tears.
- Monarch is still a fun silly watch. Definitely more a ‘passing the time’ watch, than MUST SEE, but that’s ok.
🎧 Listened
- Play Me by Kim Gordon – I seem to have missed the fact she’s released a couple of solo albums over the past decade. Unmistakeable voice over a very different sound, bit hit or miss for me though.
- A Short History of Decay by Nothing – Nice enough stuff, sort of SnowPatrol vibes; mid-range pop/rock to have on in the background.
🩻 Health
- Gym: This week, and the next couple, have different schedules so I’m just going when I can BUT I’m still going which is what matters. Slowly increasing weights in the 3 routines I have been rotating, and created a 4th one for a purely Core workout which kinda terrifies me so not tried it yet.
- Current Weight 112.3 – down just over 1 kg from last week, largely by moving more and eating better/less (see Tech for another reason).
- Avg. Sleep: 7hrs 20mins (up 2mins, I’m gonna stop the variance tracking though as it’s pretty steady now).
👨💻 Tech
- Alimor – a Food Diary app which largely does what I want, lets me log a meal easily, and that’s about all I’ve been using it for. I’ve tried doing this in Apple Notes/Journal, but then it builds up and it’s not data I’m ‘using’ as it’s the act of entering and knowing I have to log my food that I need. Definitely has helped me not over eat this week. Here’s hoping it sticks.
- I am building (slowly, oh so slowly) a custom WordPress theme for this site. I know what I want from it, but I’m taking the time to learn how to do it properly. A lot has changed in the past ten or so years since I last looked at this stuff, before it was straight ‘build HTML/CSS site’ then chop it up into the pertinent parts and a theme was born! Now there are so many options, but I’m aiming to keep it simple.
What are your thoughts?