Life right now

Oh, heyy!
I’ve been kind of absent from the blog this week (by which I clearly mean entirely absent!), so here’s a quick rundown on what’s going on in my life right now…

• I started the 30 Day Squat Challenge on Monday and I am so unbelievably glad that today is a rest day! My thighs hate me already. Back to it tomorrow with 70 squats. Hopefully by the end of it I’ll have lovely toned thights though…
• I went to a local brewery’s beer festival at the weekend (more on that in a separate post) and it was HOT! According to a local news website, temperatures hit 37.6°C at one point over Pentecost – a record for this time of year apparantly. It’s now down to a “mere” 29°C, which is still too hot for me. Especially since it’s also horribly hot at night, meaning I can NOT sleep!
• On Tuesday I was at a charity concert here in Karlsruhe (well, Durlach, which is a borough of Karlsruhe). It starred Fools Garden (remember Lemon Tree anyone?) who are from the area, Eva Croissant (who those in Germany might remember from The Voice of Germany), David Hanselmann (who I had never heard of but has apparantly performed with famous bands like Canned Heat and Colesseum II – obviously before my time) and the big special guest of the evening: Fish, of Marillion fame. If nothing else you will have heard of the song Kayleigh. All the artists were accompanied by The Seán Treacy band, who are kind of celebrities in the local area. If there’s a Fest going on in Karlsruhe you can practically guarantee that they’ll be playing. So that was a nice evening. The concert didn’t finish til nearly midnight though, and then we still had to get home! Combined with the heat keeping me awake most of the night before and I was a very tiiiired Bev at work yesterday!
• We fiiiinally made it to the train station last night to buy our tickets to Vienna! Normally we buy train tickets online, but travelling to a different country with 2 different Bahncards makes things slightly complicated. My Bahncard 100 is valid until Salzburg, so I’ve ended up paying less than €100 for the return train ticket. Result!
• I was so tired last night that I actually managed to sleep from 11:30 p.m. until 3 a.m. (when I woke up so thirsty my throat actually hurt!). I had some bizarre dreams, which I’m totally blaming on the heat! I don’t remember much, but it involved running away from someone or something in the middle of the desert! I definitely think this was my brain’s reaction to my body being so hot. Also, when I got up at 3 a.m. to fecth more water, I happened to glance out of the window and the moon looked amazing! Sadly, I did not think to take a photo (well it was three in the morning!).
• I’m currently reading Peony in Love by Lisa See for the reading challenge, and so far I’m disappointed! I will still read the whole thing though. On the other hand, I started reading Captain Cook’s birography this morning as my “train book” and I found myself wishing my commute was longer so I could read more! That almost never happens with non-fiction books 🙂
• Tomorrow I won’t be at the office, which means I’ve only had to work 3 days this week (Monday was a holiday). I’m not “off” work as such though… I’m spending tomorrow and Saturday(!) at a seminar for translators. It’s about banking terminology, so not sure how much fun it will be! But hopefully it will turn out to be useful anway.

That’s all folks! I need to eat my lunch and then get back to work. Normal blogging service will resume next week, I hope.

P.S WordPress informed me earlier that I registered my blog 6 years ago today… so happy birthday dear bloggy!

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Weigh-in Wednesday (The last time in my 20s!)

I know I’ve already posted today, but it is Wednesday and that means weigh-in time! You can just view the Goslar post as an added bonus…

Naughty… but oh so gooood! (Photo credit: dangermain)

Well, I was doing really well with eating healthily and sticking to my calorie limit until yesterday, when I was just hungry all day! By the time I got to the pub for quiz night, there was no way I was going for the semi-healthy option of breaded chicken breast with salsa and salad. Nope… toasted sandwich and chips all the way! Despite that, my weight is down by 0.8 kg since last week and down 2.3 kg since I started using My Fitness Pal. So about 2 kg left to go until goal weight!

My body fat percentage has been up and down like a yoyo this week! This morning it was 29.6%, which is down on last week at least, although not exactly ideal. It was the chips that did it, obviously! 😉

Just look at those fluctuations!

Since last Thursday, I’ve been consistently measuring a waistline of 77 cm! Woo hoo. If it stays that way until my birthday I shall be very happy.

In terms of exercise, I have to confess I’ve been doing extremely badly, partly because I’ve been coming home in the evening then switching the computer on to do more work, but mostly because it’s just been far too hot! I managed some sit ups on Sunday, but that was it. Sorry, but I just can’t bring myself to work out when it’s 38°C outside… It’s cooled down a bit now though after yesterday’s thunder storm (which I got soaked in!), so hopefully it will stay like this and I’ll be able to do a few work outs!

Next weigh in will be the day after my birthday, so we’ll see what damage a day of not caring what I eat and drink does for my progress 😉

It’s a good job I was wearing a long skirt…

I arrived home from work today and immediately had to go and sponge down my entire body with cold water. I was seriously that hot! First my train was delayed, then they sent a replacement IC (Inter City) instead of my usual ICE (the express train). For some reasone ICs are always really old, have hardly any seats and, in this particular one, no air conditioning. In a stupidly full train on a day where it’s 33°C outside. Well done Deutsche Bahn. The window was open, but apart from blowing hot air around the carriage (it was a bit like a hair dryer, but less noisy) all it did was practically pull my hair out of its roots. That and cause my ears to feel like they were going to explode when we went through the tunnel. And while the top half of my body was being buffeted by warm wind, I could actually feel sweat trickling down my legs. I told you it was a good job I was wearing a long skirt!

Apparantly it’s going to be 38 degrees tomorrow. If you haven’t heard from me by Monday I’ve probably melted into a puddle somehwere and been evaporated by the sun…

Turn down the heat!

Somebody seriously needs to turn down the Earth’s thermostat! I’m actually dying here, and the forecast says it’s set to get even hotter. And before all you people from Australia and wherever start telling me that 30°C is not hot, in my world it is! You are talking to the girl who managed to get sunstroke after half an hour of being outside without a hat. Well, actually you’re not talking to me,  but you know what I mean… It really doesn’t help that our office is a bit like a greenhouse either. It’s bad enough downstairs, but as you get closer to the top you can actually feel the air getting hotter with every step, and by the time you reach our room – at the very back – the heat is almost like a physical weight resting on your shoulders. We found a fan, which helps a bit, but it’s still hotter inside the room than it is outside… and I’ve already told you how hot it is outside, so I’m not sure I even want to know the temperature I’m actually having to work in. Woe is me, etc, etc. On a brighter note, it’s July tomorrow (how on Earth did that happen?! I think the person with the thermostat needs to take a look at the world’s timekeeper while they’re at it!) and that means only one month and eight days til I’m off on my holidays. And we’re going to the UK, where temperatures are reasonable 😉 Just one more B&B/hotel to book and all will be sorted…

It’s too hot to cook…

…so I think tea shall have to be a whole packet of (rather expensive) mature cheddar flavoured crisps and a couple of half melted mini Galaxys. Sounds like a plan, no?

Also, they are selling parasols in a shop in town and I desperately want one. But when I went in today I couldn’t find any. I really need to get over that fear of asking German shop assistants for the things I want (that dress in my size… the other show… parasols…)

Please excuse the crapness of this post. Not only is it too hot to cook… it’s too hot to think as well. If the temperature ever gets below 30 degrees again I’ll try to write something more interesting. Right now though I’m going for a shower. A cold shower!

Tossing and turning

I was in bed before 10:30 last night. Very sensible, no? Actually, me being me it had nothing to do with good sense and a lot to do with that fact that I couldn’t think of anything else to do. After 5 hours of looking at art and books online even I couldn’t bear to spend any more time on the computer so I decided I would go to bed early, get a good night’s sleep and be all refreshed for work this morning.
Ha! I wish it had worked like that…

At 20 past ten I snuggled up in bed and turned the light out. The next 15 minutes I spent trying to get warm. 10 minutes later I was too hot, so off went the extra blanket I had put on top of the quilt. Then I was thirsty, so I drank half a bottle of water only to discover 2 minutes later that I was still thirsty. More water. Lots of tossing and turning and trying to get comfortable followed. When Jan sent me a text message at 11:30 I was still awake. At 10 past 12 I got up to turn the radiator down. At 12:30 I drank the last of my water and got up again to refill the bottle. I supose I must have fallen asleep not long after that – the next thing I remember is waking up at 2:30 desperate for a wee. Not really surprising after all the water, but still unbelievably annoying. After all, at this point I had spent more time tossing and turning than actually sleeping. The last thing I wanted was to go through it all again. Luckily this time it only took me about 15 minutes of trying to get comfortable before I fell back to sleep and managed to stay that way until 6 o’clock. If this is what I get for going to bed at a sensible time in future I’m not even going to bloody bother…

I’m melting…

For some reason I really didn’t enjoy work today. It’s not like anything went wrong. Normally I would have considered it to be a pretty good day. I had jus the right amount of work to do – not so little I spent most of my time twiddling my thumbs, but not so much that I was stressed out for the entire day and had to cut my lunch break short to get everything finished (I have done that in the past). No, it was just an average day as far as work load is concerned. The texts were all really nice as well, interesting and not too difficult. And yet I’ve spent the last 4 hours counting down the minutes until I could get out of there. This isn’t how I wanted to spend the last few days of my internship. I really want to enjoy the last of my time there. But today it just wasn’t working.
I think it’s the heat. It was bad enough outside, but I swear in our office it’s about 5 degrees warmer! The window is always open but no breeze comes in, the various electrical devices we have standing around  seem to be competing to see who can produce the most heat and when you try to breathe the air tastes like it’s full of moisture. I stil feel like I’m melting now and I’ve been home nearly half an hour!

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love the summer. It’s just this this excessive heat I detest. If I was in Spain or Greece I would understand, and I might even enjoy it (if only because I’d most likely be sitting in the shade somewhere), but it really doesn’t need to be 29.2°C (according to wundergrund.com) in Karlsruhe, Germany at quarter to seven at night.  And there are people out there who think global warming doesn’t exist? What the hell do you call this then, coincidence?

I’m off for a shower now. A cold shower!