Day 7.071: The fruits of my...wrong turn

It's almost certainly my last weekend alone in the apartment, and so it's time to think about what needs to be done in order to move out.

This morning I decided to take my recycling out. This was a quite momentous event as I had some 72 bottles and six bags of assorted cardboard and plastic taking up quite a bit of my small kitchen. I run past the recycling place almost every day, but it was only my second attempt to get there by car and I took a wrong turning.

I found myself in a very congested parking lot, and looked up and saw it was Trader Joe's. Well, what was I supposed to do? Just drive out again? I decided to go and do a bit of grocery shopping.

I didn't end up with anything particularly Trader Joe's-y but I did buy some Mexican food and rustled up this for dinner tonight:

which I then crunched loudly on while Skyping the family. Good times.

I also disposed of all my recycling - remembering to achieve what I'd set out to do albeit after getting a bit distracted.

Day 7.070: Sleeping around...

...seven hours a night is a challenge when marathon training and even that is probably not enough.

That was my phone screen as I was going to bed last night. It was just after 9 and first alarm was set for 3:55 am - seriously, who knew that was a possible beginning-of-the-day time?! - so that I could run my 12 miles, have a shower and get to work on time. As you can see - on shorter run days I allow myself to lie in until 4:25!

The real story however involves the previous night. Wednesday night was my big night this week because Thursday was one of my two scheduled rest days. So I could get to bed, sleep for maybe 8 hours, catch up a little...yeah...no that didn't happen.

Firstly, I stayed up too late playing 2048 (are you thanking me yet?), but it was still going to be OK when I was going to bed about 10:30 pm until at about 1 am when I was pulled unceremoniously from my sleep by a car alarm going off in the apartment complex parking lot - right outside my window. Oh well, you can't win them all - at all as I discovered when, having got back to sleep my phone rang at 2:30 because Exile #2 was in the house with three kids and a malfunctioning carbon monoxide detector. Sometimes you just have to roll with it!

Day 7.069: Throwback Thursday #1

So, Throwback Thursday is a thing on the interwebs - it's Thursday - post an old picture. I've done it on Facebook a bit, now I'm doing it here.

I looked back seven years in the blog - then went back another week to find a nice photo. This is what I found. Wow.

If you're interested, you can read the post here - one of the many culture-shock stories of Year 0.

As for the present day, our real estate transactions are in progress, as are move preparations, marathon training, a still-fairly-new job and all the normal things of life. None of which is very interesting to write about so you won't get to read about it (any more than that). Not today anyway.

Day 7.068: You can thank me later

I have just discovered (thanks to today's XKCD) 2048. It's a very addictive puzzle game that you can play on your computer or mobile device. Click here to try for yourself!

I've since introduced the rest of the family, and a cross-section of my Facebook friends to the fun.

Here is my best score to date - check out the 1024 tile (not, however, the eponymous 2048 yet)!

Enjoy and - when you're ready to complain because your whole life has fallen apart - read the second sentence again and don't say I didn't warn you!

Day 7.067: New England and England (new)

I haven't spent much time tweaking my PC at work. My personal touches did not go far beyond choosing a wallpaper image from the options provided by Windows - this rather Maine-ish lighthouse.

My Dad sent the image on the right - taken today on my parents' walking holiday in the Lake District. It made me a little homesick for a moment for that kind of landscape.

Not that the landscape round here is bad at all - as I remembered when I looked back at the other screen!