Hibernation ?

Back to work tomorrow.

The main objective of this holiday was to get some healing in. That's mostly for the troublesome skin thing but partly for energy too ... I think I'm there with the energy thing for a few reasons :

I can feel that fire of the hyperactivity lurking in the background. It's like an electric charge where your hair stands on end and there's temptation to bounce off the walls. It also makes it much harder to get to sleep too, which is an especially terrible thing for me at the moment because if I can't sleep, I damage the skin even more when I fidget. (I know - bad me).

So yeah - I think the energy is back, although I'll see what I'm like tomorrow evening after a day at work. I have to watch the hyperactivity actually, as it makes me act without thinking. Which can be good, unless I'm behind the wheel where I drive ... faster. And scare people. But I view the hyperactivity as a wave to be ridden and enjoyed while it lasts.

Skin ?

It's improving, gradually. Some of my bits are much tougher than they used to be, although my ankles are still a disaster. I'm still my own worst enemy with it, I just can't resist damaging it even more. We'll see how it does over the next week at work. But I do see general and visible improvement with it.

What have I been up to ?

Lots of cricket watching :-) Some good (the county games), some really bad (the England games). Still worth watching for the cricket addict though. There was supposed to be a local England game in Bristol on Monday but that got abandoned due to the horrible weather we've been having. It's ok at the moment (looks outside, sees Yellow Face, hides).

Some gaming - I'm still not back to wanting to learn any new gaming systems so I've been on Moo2 and Defence Grid a lot. Moo2 is a space strategy game, Defence Grid is a tower defence game. I've been beating high scores on Defence Grid and trying to beat Moo2 again. I have a quite slow but if it gets enough time, irresistable strategy in Moo2. Trouble is, the vaguaries of the AI lead to it having enemies go from My Friend to I Hate You inside a turn.

Many music hours - iTunes tells me it's 796 unique tracks listened to since Friday 22nd. That's a bit down on my usual, which is a sign of how much cricket has been on the telly. There's been a tonne of good albums in that batch, I'm due posting the A to Z - K list soon and coming up very soon is one of the very best albums in the collection - Long Gone Before Daylight by the Cardigans. It's chock full of outstanding tracks.

And a film - we watched Lucy on Thurday.

Interesting film, very well made as you'd expect from Luc Besson. Scarlett Johanssen is as good as we've come to expect. Strange film actually, it's liberally interspersed with jump cuts to things like leopards chasing gazelles (it kinda makes sense in context)

When I watched Lucy, my mind was going back to another film called Limitless. They both share a theme that drugs are the path to unlocking the power of the mind. They go about it in different ways though. Limitless rubbed me up the wrong way by glorifying the power of the drugs. It gave a Drugs are for Winners message, which I wholly disagree with. I avoid drugs, if you don't absolutely need them you shouldn't be on them. Things like painkillers, if I used those I'd do even more damage to myself by not heeding the warnings from abused bits of body. Mind you :

I am on 2 antihistamine a day (8 hour ones).
I could probably do with sleeping tablets to knock me out and stop me fidget-damaging myself.
I'm still taking the vitamin tablets.

Anyway - Lucy's message is more a highlight of the dangers. The character quickly came to realise that the drugs would kill her, which is the antithesis of the message of Limitless. I'll stop there to avoid spoilers, although the Mind Over Matter thing was a little bit too much scifi for me. The brain is a massive computer, while there are unexplained phenomena like alleged clairvoyance and telekinesis, I can't rationally believe that even a hopped up supercharged brain can achieve these metaphysical feats.

Fun film though. Well worth seeing.

Last bit ? I've continued to lose weight ... I think there's two parts to this :

At the start of the holiday, my knees and legs were exploded. They were so swollen that it felt like someone was trying to lever off my kneecaps with a screwdriver. Now, my knees are nicely knobbly. Little bit scarred but that's the damage for you. I think some of the weight was in the swelling.

Eating properly - the weight's started coming off since I rediscovered the pasta stuff. So that's the F+B dinners, plus the pasta bakes I get from ready meals at home. I could do with learning how to do those myself. Home ingredients are more controllable. Plus there's the leftovers.

At the last check, I was down by 1.5 stone, to a weight of 12.5 stone. That's pretty good and is a decent target weight for my current build. Less would be better. I don't need the weight of muscle on my legs any more, although it's a good supplement to weak arms. Like, lift with the legs with a straight back, instead of breaking things by being all bent over. We'll see how the weight goes but I've shifted into trying to maintain a weight instead of losing more.

But only cos I don't want to have to buy new trousers !