OneAndOneIs2

A.A.Milne, the creator of Winnie the Pooh, got a lot of fan mail. Often, when going through it, he would hand a letter to his wife, and ask "Wol?"

She would scan through it, and generally agree "Wol" - and then the letter would be put aside, with all the other mail that never got a reply because there were just too many letters to even try and reply to.

The reason the question was "Wol?" rather than "Do you agree that I shouldn't reply to this?" has its roots in the exchange between Owl and Rabbit:

"What did you do?"
"Nothing."
"The best thing," said Owl wisely.

Well, I've been doing the best thing all month, and I have to say I'm getting a bit sick of it. So I've decided to get some things done today.

First things first, I got up and did the usual exercise. As long-term readers may remember, I used to have bad RSI, until a recommendation from a physiotherapist on an online forum found me the cause (bad posture due to skeletal misalignment) and a cure: A series of stretches and exercises to correct the misalignment.

They were pretty effective insofar as they took away the worst of the chronic pain. But I still can't quite get fully-straightened. In a year or so's time, when I stop being a student and have a regular income again, I think I might finally cave in and go to an osteopath to see if they can get me the rest of the way there.

That said, I still recommend Pete Egoscue's book, Pain Free, if you either suffer from chronic pain, or want to make sure you don't. It's an interesting read.

Anyway, point being: After doing the typical series of stretches, I headed out for my morning jog around the park. But this morning, determined to keep that "Do things" attitude going, I tried a meditation exercise as I ran: Body awareness, focussing on my back and neck to keep my spine straight.

As I came to the final uphill straight of the first lap, I could tell by my breathing that I had been pushing harder than usual. In fact, I had to ease off slightly to avoid a stitch.

Normally, my time for the first lap is around 9 minutes 20 seconds. On a good day, it's maybe 9:10ish. When I've gone all-out and run as fast as I could round the whole lap, I can just about, by a matter of seconds, beat nine minutes.

Today, without even trying to go fast, but just by focussing on being upright and well-balanced, my time was 8:45 - an all-time record.

I was quite impressed by that.

So now I'm home, showered, shaved, etc. I have to get some more things done. I need to send a letter to the bank to get the last of my cash from my previous employer, so that I can put it into a cash ISA (That's a tax-free investment, for you non-brits) and pay a call on my bank and find out just what savings account I've got with them that gives me such a pitiful rate of interest. I never really worried about investments or interest before, but preparing to spend a year being an unemployed student does tend to make one worry a little more about where the pennies are :o)

Whilst in town, I need to call in on the library to get one of the "Recommended reading" books for my course out. Then I need to read it, and the one from Amazon that I'm already halfway through, and ideally the others that still haven't arrived, so that I can write the pre-course "critical commentary" on a very dry paper they sent out with the course paperwork.

It's somewhat galling that it's mandatory work, but the mark you get doesn't count towards the final qualification... And what the Hell IS a "critical commentary", anyway??

I also need to get the washing done, and ideally cook something for Lou's supper... so that should keep me fairly busy today. Then I'll have to start thinking about tomorrow.

I'm going to have the same problem every summer for the forseeable future, of course - teachers being cursed with the same long holidays as the schoolkids. Should be easier then, though: Hopefully, in a year's time, we'll be moving home. Then in the next few years, when we're no longer living in a small-ish second storey flat, I can finally get started on those hobbies I'd like to have, but just can't fit in right now. There's still one or two kit cars I want to build. And since decent metalworking equipment is useful for that, the Gingery series should also keep me out of mischief for a while to come.

It seems like I've spent far too much time recently thinking "Oh well, in a year or so..." - I spent the last year or two looking forward to quitting my job and starting as a student teacher. Now it looks like I'll be spending the next year looking forward to becoming an ACTUAL teacher. It's going to be very odd in a few years, when suddenly I'll have no excuse to look forward to things rather than just get on and DO them :o)