Day 890 & Day 891

Day 890...Friday

The morning was bright, sunny and a little chilly but within 36 minutes we had our usual 1.9 mile walk completed.

My morning started off with a few household chores; some laundry and some cleaning around. But once those jobs were out the way I took the time to paint my nails; not something I do that often and apart from an odd occasion where I've paid to have them done, it's something I tend to do myself. I do have a UV gel nail kit that Simon bought me a few years ago but it still takes a fair while to get them done that way so a cheap bottle of quick drying, one coat varnish is my preferred go to option!

Not a bad effort for a £1 nail varnish from Primark!

Maybe now that I am retired I could take advantage of the extra time and actually indulge in a manicure every now and then. Trouble is I know once I start it will become a habit, and not a cheap one at that! Best dig out that UV light instead.

But with freshly done nails it gave me the perfect excuse to sit outside in the sunshine (to let them dry of course), enjoy a coffee and catch up on a little reading.

After lunch it was a mixture of little tasks. I had a present to wrap ahead of going out tomorrow evening, there was another 3D print that needed cleaning up, more research on the ideas for my next tattoo, some jigsaw time and re-connecting with an old friend over social media.

An old friend of ours had posted on social media about the different medications they now find themselves on and so both Simon and I had reached out to chat about diet and lifestyle choices. With both of us living a low carb/keto life we are keen to pass on what information we have gained over the years. Often people do not want to know what we do, they are content to carry on as they are and just take a pill that will make everything alright. Our approach is to do the utmost that we can to eat right and live right to try and stack the odds in our favour so that we can avoid as much of the possible downfalls of getting older that we can. No-one can ever rule out getting something horrid but at least we can try and put ourselves in the best possible position for dealing with it or avoiding it completely. For once our old friend didn't dismiss what we had to say and so we started chatting and hopefully we have been able to point them in the right direction. 

On this blog I have a couple of pages 'Eating Well, Staying Healthy' and 'Getting Real' which document my approach to a healthy lifestyle and my progress. Both of these pages are a few years old now so I think they are due either an update or a new additional page and I'm hoping to find some time to do just that. Please check the pages out if you want to know a little more about what I do!

Friday was rounded out with a gym session although I really wasn't feeling it tonight for some reason. My left shoulder can sometimes cause me issues and I think tonight was one of those nights and I perhaps just need to give myself a little more recovery time in between those sessions where I focus on my shoulders. But I still got down the gym and did something which has to be better than nothing.

Day 891...Saturday

We had a more gentle getting up this morning and with a coffee inside us headed out for our morning walk. As we had a few things that we wanted to get done today we just stuck to our usual 1.9 mile route and in 37 minutes we were back home again.

The morning was taken up with helping Simon with an interview he'd been asked to do for a retro gaming journalist in Russia! A fair few years ago (like over 20 years ago) Simon had been the lead designer on a game called Shadowman that seems to have developed a bit of a cult following as he often gets asked about his time working on it. Often Simon will be approached with questions for magazine articles but in this case the journalist is working on a documentary and so Simon thought it would be better to video his answers to the questions. This involved a little bit of set-up to get the positioning and lighting just right. We had decided to invest in a stand that will hold either a phone or video camera that comes with its own light ring as well as a small clip on microphone which once set made the whole process so much easier. And before we knew it the morning had flown by and it was time for lunch.

After lunch I decided to get caught up with writing this blog as I'd run out of time yesterday while Simon edited the mornings video before sending them off. It was also chance to get some more tattoo research done (yes I know more...but it has to be right!) so hopefully I can now get the images sent over to my tattooist at some point this weekend.

I decided to get a little jigsaw done before taking the time to get my make-up sorted ready for going out later in the evening. We are helping some friends of ours celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary and they have hired out a room at the pub across the road from where we live, which is very convenient. So for the first time in a while we are going 'out, out' so I thought I'd better put my best face on. I don't tend to do full make-up very often as it's normally just a bit of mascara, touch of blush, some lipstick and off we go so today I got chance to play with some eye colours. I'm not one for 'natural' colours and have always preferred to go for something brighter but I always feel out of practice so I made sure I gave myself plenty of time rather than rushing at the last minute.

And that is where I'm going to leave it for today...time to go out and have some fun.

See you all tomorrow.
xx

3...

3...days to go!!

So here we are with only a matter of days to go...so what have we been up to?

Well the boys in the family paid an early morning visit to the barbers to get themselves all smart and handsome for our vacation and then we were into a pretty usual Saturday.

Our daughter had her usual guitar lesson which meant Simon and I got chance to chill out with s Starbucks whilst she learnt to 'rock out'.  This did get me thinking that our next Starbucks may well be on Main Street, USA!!

This afternoon saw us doing a multitude of tasks; Simon continued with his mission to get our old vacation home videos onto some form of digital format (he thinks he may have succeeded after much swearing and frustration), I continued with getting a few bits together ready for packing tomorrow and making sure that we have directions for our overnight hotel on Monday.  We also went visiting our parents; we are both lucky enough to have parents that live within a 3 miles radius of where we live so we can pop into see them whenever we can.

This evening has involved Simon playing about with the Go-Pro camera and editing some video that he had taken last weekend whilst I've been painting my daughters nails; a combination of orange and green on her toes and a blue/green colour on her fingers!! Her choice!

And now I think I shall put my feet up with a glass of wine and some of my favourite chocolate...well it is a Saturday night after all, I can spoil myself :)

5...

5...days to go

Well it's getting closer but what has today brought...well a combination of mundane tasks and a surprise treat!

This morning started off with general mundane tasks getting done; cleaning the house and more laundry.  The thing is leaving the house for a couple of weeks and arriving home with jet lag means I'd like to come home to a house that's clean and tidy.  Although I'm guessing we may have a repeat of our return last time we went away as depicted by Simon's drawing as part of his 365 Mickey's project...

The downside of living in the countryside - spiders!!

I even ended up doing some more pre-school work today, having to speak to the dreaded Ofsted (our national governing body) about our annual fees...suffice to say I was right and they were wrong!

I then decided it was time for my run (or as I like to call it my bouncy walk), but before I went out I had an idea.  I had been struggling to decide which colour nail varnish to wear for my vacation so I posted a photo on Facebook and asked my friends for some advise.

The possibilities...

So off I went for my run/bouncy walk and did myself proud even if I do say so myself.  I've only been back running a few weeks but I can feel it getting easier each time I go out.  I'm never going to be doing marathons but I am enjoying what I'm doing and am looking forward to a few runs around Lago Dorado in a few days time!

But when I got back I had a number of replies to my nail varnish dilemma all of which contradicted each other but one reply offered another solution.  To actually get my nails painted by a professional...now I'm not one to do this sort of thing I always manage to talk myself out of it but a spur of the moment decision led to an appointment this afternoon and look...

Matching toes and nails, a lovely neon pink in gel nail varnish which should last me over my vacation :)