Into The Wild

Signor DogBot is hard at work, sleeping on the sofa, fighting with his ball and barking at passers by.
All I want to know is, what do dogs do for a break? They can't sleep, that's their job!

And another one. I'm on a roll. A bacon roll.

I'm going to get my hair cut on Thursday. I've had more or less the same hairstyle for the best part of a decade.

Hayley calls it "the chicken".

I call it "the awesome man".

I asked my new hair dresser what's cool at the moment and she said "choppy".

As tempted as I am to let her go for it, all I can think of when I hear the word "choppy" is this guy:

What happened to winters wistfully wishing for snow?

This is a list of things I have encountered in the last few days:

• A tube of Chapstick that was almost completely used
• No less than three (3!) biros that were almost out of ink
• An empty spindle that once held 50 blank CDs, now all used

That's a small collection of objects that almost never gets used to the end of it's life. All of them get lost and subsequently replaced well before they "run out" or are "used up".

Why is it commonplace to hear "Where's my pen?", or even sometimes "This pen has dried up and stopped working" but never, ever do you hear "This pen is out of ink". Ever.

If you don't find this interesting, you are not a good person.

No snow this year...

Nothing is ever better or worse than anything else. Ever.

Everything is just different, that's all.

New years resolutions for 2012

New year, new targets. Swinstead is dead. Long live Swinstead.

But, before setting resolutions for 2012, I need to look back at how I did in 2011.

2011

Last year I set myself three resolutions.

The first was "Pay off my debts". This was technically a failure, as I still have debt, but I did manage to pay off some pretty huge chunks of it in 2011. The £1300 Natwest credit card is now fully paid off, as well as over £1600 paid off towards my car, and quite a few hundred quid spread across some HP debts from a few years ago. In fact I haven't missed a single payment on anything all year. So yea, I'm marking this one as done (as much as could be expected realistically).

Number 2 took was "Quit smoking". It took me until most of the way through the year, but then I did it. No excuses necessary on this one, I just did it, I completely quit smoking. Ok so I will admit, I wasn't exactly a big smoker before, so maybe setting this as a new years resolution was cheating. Still counts though!

Number 3 was "Get in shape", which also went quite well. I did a lot of working out at the start of 2011, then I had a bit of a break from it when work took my main focus, but then I jumped back on the waggon around September and I've been hitting the gym hard ever since. Armed with an endomorphic body type and a kitchen full of protein shakes, I gained a lot of muscle in quite a short space of time. Done. Sorta.

 2012

More financial stability
As I get older I feel more and more like I need to be monetarily independent, and not rely on anybody for anything financially. This means, first and foremost, that I will continue my mission to get completely out of debt. If I can repeat last years rate of progress (I paid off a grand total of £3,200 of debt over the year) then by the end of this year I will owe only a few hundred pounds, and that will all be on a low-interest overdraft.

But this goal means much more than just debts. This year I'm setting my targets higher and I want to be able to provide money for myself completely, not even relying on an employer for a wage. I want to go self employed.

I won't post any details on here, but I'm currently toying with a few ideas on how I will do this. Nothing is set in stone yet, but I'm determined to achieve this in 2012 one way or another.

Cycle to Skegness (and back) for charity
At the back end of last year a few of us at the gym decided to set ourselves a challenge for a long bike ride. We decided on Skegness because the 80 mile route seemed like a distance to challenge us just the right amount. We roped in a few more people who were up for it, and set a date at the back end of March (weather permitting).

The initial idea was not to do it for charity, but just to do it for the challenge, but I'm going to attempt to raise some money for a good cause along the way.

Everyone else involved is currently planning to cycle there on the Saturday, stay overnight in a hotel, and come back on the train the next day. I, being a sucker for punishment, have decided to cycle back the next day as well. I'll see if I can convince anyone else that they are mad enough to join me.

Get (even more) in shape
I know I considered this as done last year, but fitness isn't something you can just do once and have done with it. It's a progressive thing; something you're always working to improve (or at least maintain).

My new goal in 2012 is to cut down my body fat massively from my current 28% to as close to 10% as I can get, while still building more muscle than I currently have. Given the progress I've made already, I don't see why this shouldn't be possible if I set my mind to it. Training for my bike ride should also help with this a lot.

And that's my lot.

Boom boom boom, let me hear you say HOSEPIPE BAN.

End of August

Been quite a while since I wrote a blog on here. I'll keep it short and sweet.

Here are a few of the things I've been up to since I last posted:

Buying new cars
Going on holiday (Prague in February, Turkey in May)
Battling space zombies
Working - a lot
Remodeling my back garden
Running around on powerbock tilts (and falling over on them a lot too)

The space zombies were the best part; I kicked their asses!

And now for the things I will be doing in the near future:

Working - even more
Battling Magneto's mutants
Remodeling my front garden
Redecorating the bedroom

All of that to come, but for now I'll just sit tight and watch The Da Vinci Code on channel five, even though its crap.

To The Weekend That Was

Since my last blog I've fallen foul to a series of unfortunate events. Most of these were fairly inconsequential but one was not: I had a nasty car accident and wrote off my shiny new car. Bugger!

Fortunately both me and Hayley left the accident unscathed, albeit Hayley is currently suffering with a bad back because of it. I guess it could've been a lot worse, but still I was absolutely gutted to wreck my car that I'd only had for 5 months.

Nonetheless life goes on which is why I spent the last few weeks since the accident looking at new cars, and finally chose one yesterday, which I will be picking up on Friday.

This brings me to an update on progress towards the 1 of the 3 goals I previously set myself: Pay off my debts.

Because I got such a good deal when I bought the Corsa back in July, 5 months and 5000 miles after buying it, it was still worth only £300 less than I paid for it (and considerably more than I still owe on the loan). I used this as a chance to buy a car on a lower budget, meaning that I've got a chunk of cash leftover from my insurance after I pay for the new car.

This remaining cash will be used to pay off my Natwest Credit Card that's been haunting my credit report for a few years, and will pay off the vast majority of my Capital One credit card as well.

Also in the next fortnight I will be selling my old Ford Escort for the scrap metal value, which will give me enough cash to fully pay off the last of an old HP that's been around for donkeys years.

After this I have a long term plan going forward to pay of the last of my Capital One card and my remaining HP within 6 months, so that I can start making double payments on my car loan and get that paid off way ahead of the scheduled 3 years.

While I'm at it I can also update on progress of my other 2 goals.

Quit Smoking: Done! As of today I haven't smoked, not even a drag, for a full month. Easy.

Get in shape: I've been hitting the gym pretty much every day since Christmas. And by 'the gym' what I mean is the spare bedroom, where I've set up a small home gym. It's much easier to get motivated to work out when you only have to walk upstairs instead of having to drive across town.

That's all for now kids. I've got places to go, people to see.

New Years Resolutions for 2011

I don't normally do this, mainly because I don't think you should wait until a set date before trying to figure out how to improve your life. Rather, it should be something you're doing every day. But nonetheless here goes my New Years Resolutions for 2011.

Pay off my debts
This means my £1200 Natwest credit card, my £400 Capital One credit card, and a handful of HPs that I'm paying off very gradually. And of course my £1300 overdraft. This will require learning to control my spending very strictly.

Quit smoking
It's not like I smoke a lot anyway, and for the last few weeks I've been cutting down and smoking less and less, which should help. Cutting down from 40 a day would be difficult, but stopping from 10 a week should be easy peasy.

Get in shape
Santa brought me some home gym equipment for Christmas and I am determined for 2011 to be the year I finally get in shape.