What is it with women and map reading articles on news.com.au? Here’s the latest, which basically uses a study of spacial ability to draw the conclusion that lesbian women are better than heterosexual women at reading maps.
And the WORST thing about it is that it’s written by a woman! Argh! Obviously, people like myself are getting incensed and they’ve decided to pray on that to get a few more clicks. Oh well, nothing like flogging an issue to death, I say…
In other news, I’ve joined Facebook. Which isn’t very exciting in itself - after all, it’s just another silly social networking thingie. But what is interesting is that I seemed to have joined about a week before it suddenly gained enormous momentum. You see, not wanting to annoy my friends with yet another invitation to join some lame Web 2.0 site, I didn’t invite anybody. Yeah, I was a real Nigel there for an entire week. Then my girlfriend Sal mentioned she was on it, so I invited her. And then another friend, Brett, found me.
But then my friends list populated itself, seemingly overnight. Yesterday I had one friend, today I have seven. From people I haven’t seen for ages and ages! It’s really weird. And cool. I’m feeling loved!
EDIT: Actually, I joined on May 25. So five days ago. Perhaps I did accidentally send out invitations? I didn’t mean to…so sorry if I did.
Richard Black, a BBC correspondent in Japan, ponders the cultural mores that make eating one type of animal a delicacy in one country, and unthinkable in another. Very interesting article, but a little unnerving. For a moment, I could see the other side of the argument, and then I felt all unclean and ashamed for doing so.
Because I haven’t posted much about it recently. Yes, I am still running. Well, at my speed, jogging is more accurate. I can pretty much lope along at about 8 min/km for as long as I need to, but any faster and I can probably only get around 10 km max. Yesterday I jogged 11.15 km and it took me about 88 minutes, but I did it easy - had enough in the tank to sprint up the hill and home for the last 500 metres. I’m starting to think a half marathon is doable, if only I could get a bit more speed on. Not this year tho…I’ll concentrate of the City to Surf for the moment.
Now I’m sore tho. And, I have these awful big black bruises on my leg - I knocked myself about getting a darn crosstrainer machine into our flat! So it’s not a good look at the moment.
We’re doing the MS run this weekend…8km of hills with stairs! Yikes.
UPDATE: Actually, it was 88:42. Me slow runner swannie!
Break out the bubbly! Not only did the beloved complete all 21.1 km of the SMH half marathon, but he did it in less than two hours! 1:57:50 to be exact. I am so proud…and it was such an elite field. I mean, seriously fit bods. And he did it easy.
Go babe!
We arose at 5am (it was still dark! yikes) and it turned out to be the most glorious day. I’m amazed at how many fit people there are in Sydney. There were 5000 competitors and it was packed! Spent most of the time hurrying from one part of the course to the other to catch a glimpse and cheer. It was fab. The running community is really one of the most encouraging communities around, I think. They really love their running. It’s great to be part of (ok, so not *really* part of but you get the drift).
Lots of Striders in the field, and even the guy in the gorilla suit, who insisted on handing out bananas to the runners. One of the girls I work with (who also did the run and posted a fabbo time) said he was very chatty. But we have a sneaking suspicion he only joined the course at about the 16km mark. I mean, who would run all 21+ km in a gorilla outfit!
Anyway, I very happy coz Mikey worked very hard and I’m so glad he did so well. Next on the running agenda is the MS run in 10 days (8 km…I’m in that one), then the vinyards run, and things start really ramping up for the City to Surf. My own training efforts are chugging along. This week I’ve been concentrating on trying to run faster - the only thing that stops me from a half marathon is my god-awful lack of speed! So today I ran 7km in 49 minutes. I’m getting there…slowly.
Please stop with the ads mid-program!!
Sorry. I got sidetracked. That wasn’t actually why I was posting. My original plea was to buy this show and put it on before Iron Chef on Saturday evenings. It’s called Ninja Warrior and it’s tops:
Signing up for stuff on the web generally isn’t my thing. Nor are toolbars. So it took me a while to understand the sheer joy of StumbleUpon. You see, I was going to the website proper, which is a fairly static affair. Anyway, I finally cracked and downloaded the browser toolbar and, for the first time, I’m finally feeling like the social community caper is the really cool and powerful thing that all and sundry are claiming it to be. And I love the fact that whenever I’m bored, I can just click ’stumble’ and be instantly transported to something that’s cool.
So what has all this to do with the recently shuffled Kurt Vonnegut? Well, today I stumbled onto this gem:
There’s this strange, very unpleasant smell in our bedroom at the moment - kind of like really bad garlic breath that you get on buses from time to time. But neither of us have garlic breath that bad. And I can’t for the life of me find its cause. It’s so bad that I spent half of last night on the couch to get away from it!
Not the usual reason for sleeping on the couch, I know. But I am starting to really worry about the stinky boudoir. I opened the windows to air it out, and I’ve burned all kinds of incense, and sprayed bathroom spray, but it’s remarkably persistent. All that happens it that you end up with an even stinkier cocktail, and that ain’t good.
