New Year, New Resolutions ?

I'm not really one for new years resolutions.

If they're that important, I'll have been following them already. If they're New Years specials, I tend to forget them by the time I finish my first packet of Mini Eggs.

You know the ones I mean - the I must eat less, diet more, be more healthy resolutions. Being healthy isn't something for a new year resolution temporary thing, it's something that evolves over time.

(Note - I have absolutely no idea where this post is going, definite ramble time !)

What I eat has caused me lots of problems that I'm still recovering from. There is a falsehood that says that to be healthy, you must eat from a selection of munchies to cover dietary needs. You do need to cover those dietary needs but they will change according to what you are doing and it's a fact of life that there are certain foods that some people can't tolerate. Those differ between people.

For most people, pizza just makes you feel good and get chubby. For me, it does both of those but the cheese sparks off a lactose sensitivty that causes me to make too much acid. Not good when it kicks off while you're trying to get to sleep.

I used to drink a fair bit of milk while I was still playing cricket - the abuse from running around and bouncing off things meant I needed the calcium in the milk to keep my bones happy. I don't need the milk so much now (plus there's that lactose tolerance thing).

There's an eternal balance of calorie intake vs energy consumed. I have to admit, I've been eating too much and not exercising enough. It's been making me heavier than I need to be.

So I'll be continuing to keep an eye on what I eat and how I react to what I eat. I'm apparently sensitive to :

Lettuce - it sparked off the major skin allergy thing.
Orange - critical breathing problems - not good.
White flower - brown bread seems fine.
German market Bratwurst - cook your food right !
Hayfever tablets - yep, you read that right.

With all that though, there is a tolerance factor. I can have occasional hayfever tablets when I need them but if I went back to 2x 8 hour tablets every day, I bet I would have the same issues I had before I stopped taking them. And I need to get all those confirmed with an allergy test.

I'm getting healthier overall. My outsides are gradually recovering and healing, albeit slowly and it's still easy to reverse that healing. I'm shaking off a bug at the moment which is in its 6th day. I'll be sniffly at work tomorrow but hopefully not for long after. I do need to do more exercise though. My insides are ... getting older. But they're ok. The shoulder doesn't hurt much at all at the moment and I'm very close to being able to wear the knee pads again that support weak knees.

I do need to get some stuff done though that doesn't involve me :

Lots of jobs in the house ...
I've had a drippy ballcock in the roof for ages now - I need to fix that. It's been on hold while I figure out how to stop the supply to it (stuck tap, wrench applied, tap not stuck now).
Fixing the boiler. It makes hot water but it isn't very happy about it. The house is heated by an electric fire and the computer. And I'm warm because we're having an exceptionally mild winter.
Changing the meters. This is annoying. Having a smart meter is ... unnecessary from my point of view, especially when it requires that I take a day off work in order to babysit the person changing the meters over.
And lots of other jobs that I think are necessary before I let someone else see this place. (Or the other long term objective of moving onto a boat).

I was also looking to spend some money on the pooter with a graphics card replacement. How come these jobs didn't happen over the last week ? Having a cold kicking my butt has a little to do with that but it's also the exhaustion that was building up over the past year. I need my sleep pattern back in order. The graphics card stayed in the shop (well, the warehouse!) due to stock shortages. Plus I'm fairly sure the prices will come down in the next few months and there will be more stock availability. The closest pooter shop to here is either Telford or Portsmouth (similar distances), other than that it's trusting a £200 item to questionable couriers and having to be in to receive the item.

One resolution for you - if you don't need to spend money on something, don't. The old graphics card is still poorly (I suspect it's why Flash videos are so crashy on this machine) but still supports the games I play (which isn't actually that many at the moment !) so I can hang on until I want to spend my cash and not spend when the retailers are happy for me to spend it. Spending when the retailers are desperate is the route to discounts

This has been very texty so far hasn't it ...

This holiday's been :
Restful while tiring - the travel does knock me out somewhat.
Solitary while loved - I've been on my own for most of it but it's always good to see the family and Ben the Staffy.
(There's been some controversy break out about animal cruelty with a twitch streamer being rightly kicked off their accounts and pics posted online of a cat in a monkey outfit - I don't think that cat was too happy about that. Ben always gets ear scratches, belly rubs, strokes and a little bit of love in return for photos, especially when I wake him up or he notices while resting - he's a loved dog)
Illness and recovering - my outsides are improved but it's been annoying being affected by the cold bugs.
Presents ! I've read Man Plus, enjoyed that. Thank you CG ! It's the tale of an astronaut subjected to heavy modifications to turn him into a cyborg that can live out in the open on Mars. And I got a game called Darkest Dungeon from the Steamgirl, I've enjoyed an early look at that but I'm going to wait until it's on full release in January before diving into it more.
Lots of music - I reset the library playcounts at the start of the holiday and I've managed to listen to 2149 unique tracks (some several times) for 5.1 days worth of music (iTunes remembers and counts). Next album up is Velveteen by Transvision Vamp.
Beardy - last time I left the beard this long was in the worst days of my outsides being bad. My face was so torn up I couldn't shave. Happily that didn't last long. My bald patch has fixed (from an injury when I was 12!) but ... beards = itchy.
Crickety - England have been playing well in South Africa, I've been enjoying watching some spectacular cricket.

Another resolution - I must play more of the games that I pick up in sales. I still haven't flown my Elite Internet Spaceship since they enabled Planetary Landings. There's also Alpha Protocol (shooty role play game), From The Depths (build an AI controlled Navy) and Planetbase (manage a colony on a hostile world).

But I do need to do more than just the games. Over this week, I want to get that ballcock repaired, which means a Mall run to get the parts. Not quite as easy as it sounds, it'll take a couple of days to get back up to speed cos of this cold, plus the road mayhem will continue. I literally can't drive out of my cul-de-sac some nights due to excessive traffic. I need to turn right into that traffic.

Too many words !

To finish off - one resolution we should all follow is : Be a better person.

This isn't just being kinder to others, it's also about not putting off the jobs that we need to do. Because it's not right to foist those jobs off onto others. That's one thing about living on my own, if the jobs aren't done by me, they don't get done. And I've neglected this place a little too much while I've been affected by the problems with my outsides.

There are a few places I'd like to go over the next few months :
London Boat Show (mebbe) - starts on Friday. Lots of travel though.
Bristol Planetarium - please someone give me the excuse to go ! ;-)
More Comic Con - last year's NEC Comic Con was magic, mostly due to the company.
And seeing more lovely people.

Cos I do mirror the people I'm around and it's great to be around lovely people.