This Sunday I have probably my hardest target ride of the year coming up. The Struggle Dales starts and finishes on my doorstep, and takes in 200km (125 miles for the luddites) of the Yorkshire Dales, going over some of the nastiest hills the organisers could find.
Marathon is the upcoming extraction shooter from bungie currently in closed alpha. They've been fairly open with it cancelling the NDA's that would usually bind such an early look at something like this so there is a lot of chatter in the intermanets and the youtubs.
I've always liked a nice cup of coffee and I've mostly been a french press, aeropress, or drip machine person for most of my life. I would drink the stuff at work out of the big filter coffee machines which were loaded with a dark roast made drinkable with some milk or what passed for milk (powdered stuff) in the more automatic machines.
One of my new year resolutions was to attempt Vegganuary (not vegan...dairy is too much of my diet, and I really don't like the plant-based alternatives)...and I managed it* (there were a couple of known exceptions...on 1st January I was marshalling a cyclocross event, and was not going to be picky about what I ate whilst standing in a field in wet, cold conditions...and on 26th January we had a birthday trip at
It's reasonable to say that I use my Switch a lot...mostly for "casual" rogue-like games, as my Year in Review kindly points out. I'm say about 90% of my gaming is currently done on it, mostly in handheld mode, in quick, short sessions (rarely more than 15-20 minutes at a time). it's rare these days that I sit down for a prolonged gaming session.
2024 was really fucking hard. Naomi's nocturnal sleep cycle absolutely fucks with the extended family as a whole. Kate's ex-other-partner "A" was a twat and the understandable fallout from that went on for months. Glad that's over. Kate's got other partners now and is much happier. I'm happy with my extra comet relationship with Beki, I imagine that will de-escalte naturally over time but we're cool where that's at.
That said, I'm still trying to live a life outside the 7-11 days.
A typical day for me (for posterity):
As well as keeping up the general fitness, I want to have some targetted events. I'm not sure I'll properly race again (though I am keeping my race license for now), but might be convinced if the fitness is there and the course is right.
Targetted Events
So the other day I had my yearly opticians appointment and as part of that they blinded me with a machine that supposedly images the back of your eyeball. The photos they took, very tasteful subdued and flattering, of the back of my eyeballs showed a bit of bleeding. So I had to go to an ophthalmologist to check it. They took more pictures after blinding me this time with eye drops and confirmed there was something there.
So I was then required to go down stairs and get one of my arms drained of blood for "testing" purposes.
I mean, how can you fuck it up so badly?
I know the sequels were trash. I know the original can very much be accused of fridging...but there was a simple elegance to the orginal, undercut with some amazing cinematography, which was very much done on a budget.
[Spoilers ahead for The Crow (1994) and The Crow (2024)]
There are a handful of films I can quote almost verbatim. Dodgeball, Princess Bride, the original Star Wars trilogy , and Clue!.