Damn, I stopped blogging for a bit there….

But the good news it’s only temporary!

So much has happened, so many potential blogs and blog subjects, but I haven’t posted for ages.

I need to update the old Diet Club information, in which I’ve lost 2lbs and some centimeters.

I’ve done some bike rides with Joby, some other bloke and Lost.

I’ve been to the gym and made myself unable to walk for a few days (not in a bad way, just in a muscle pain way. In Germany they describe this as a muscle kater. You have a kater if you have a hangover. It’s a good description I think). Wikipedia’s description of the symptoms of a kater:

Ein so genannter „Kater“ ist gekennzeichnet von Kopfschmerzen, einem flauen Gefühl im Magen und allgemeinem Unwohlsein. Häufig kommt durch eine Gastritis (Magenschleimhautreizung) Erbrechen hinzu, verbunden mit Appetitlosigkeit. Die geistigen und motorischen Fähigkeiten können eingeschränkt sein (z. B. Konzentrationsschwierigkeiten, leichtes Zittern). Teilweise treten depressive Verstimmungen bis hin zu Angstzuständen auf.

Hope that helps .

Other activities include spinning at the Studio in Glossop with Cherry Baker, pilates guru, fitness instructor and my aunty! I love spinning, really I do. If you feel tired and a bit low, then Spin! You feel lifted and alert after a class. And you sleep well. Also if you prefer sore buttocks. Spinning can help there too.

I have some new bike stuff I should review, including a saddle, waterproof overshoes, gloves and lights.

I set up the diet club web site and subsequently did nothing with it.

It became winter. I forgot about the grey smudge skies, rain and darkness in the afternoon that is winter. Now I remember. While I can’t wait for summer again, I’ll aim to make the most of winter. I find I have to be careful to keep hold of the hours as they blur past into days. I always feel as though I’m holding together a leaking dam of to dos by patching stuff here and there, holding off the deluge of bills to pay and household tasks. I keep missing stuff as I find myself tired and more absent minded than usual.

The reason for my silence is that there’s been a whole lot of work going on. From time to time I get completely absorbed by work. I don’t live to work, but I find it difficult to let go during busy times. I’ve been doing a lot of theme customisation with Confluence. This involves using CSS and Theme Builder to change the look and expand/more around some of the functionality of the Confluence software. CSS is really fiddly and time consuming and it works in quirky ways especially in internet exploder. Helpfully most businesses and government/public organisations use Exploder so it results in a lot of hitting head on table/hair tearing moments as it has to work for them as their browser of choice along with several others. On a positive note, as a result I am pretty good at this with several years behind me now, if I don’t say so myself.  I’ve also been doing some Theme Builder and Community Bubbles training. I got some really nice reviews on the training from some folks in California too, not sure if I can include it in a non-work blog. It could be the case that I’m essentially a teacher at heart. God help me. I’d hoped for a calling with a bit more bling and less sandal wearing.

Oh and my big news is I’m signed up to the Tower2Tower ride in May. This is from Blackpool to the other not so impressive tower in Paris, the one that based its design on the one at Blackpool. It’s just a few people and was set up by Paul Carruthers who recently completed the Lands End to John O’Groats ride.

On the other rides subject there’s the Fatboys Unofficial Cycle Club that we are unofficially setting up. I think it’s another bloke’s baby, but I’ve asked my friend Daz to do us a logo and some decal which will go on a T-shirt. It will look brilliant, he’s a great illustrator and does awesome stuff in a very stylised way. He did the wiki monsters on the Adaptavist t-shirts. There’s a ride with them, I’ll include that in a later post. My brain is slowly becoming porridge so I’ll have to stop with the wittering for now.