Digest 20250608

I’m well overdue for a digest catch-up, the last one was 20250202, over a month ago! I’ve not written for so long because a lot has been going on. We went to Venice, I spent a weekend pruning in the garden (and then lost half my Sunday to a migraine), we got the new car and spend a weekend driving it to visit family, and the bathroom renovation finally started.

Walking challenges

Walking to Modor the last milestone I passed was Bree and that was quite a while ago, that being I think the longest stretch of the journey. Currently at 233 miles walked. February started really with averaging 8K steps a day for a couple of weeks, and Venice was netting 16K a minimum of steps a day, but with a few days being unwell and more days in the office and now the routine being a bit of a mess with the bathroom disruption my daily step count has been wildly fluctuating! That’s OK though, my overall average is currently about 7,411 which I’m quite happy with.

I completed my Star Trek: Data vs. Lore virtual challenge! And I got my lovely medal! Well, I now have two because the first one came with a missing magnet for the back plate so they sent me another. I love it, it feels so nice in my hand and the holographic effect is fantastic.

I’m now doing the Locutus of Borg one! I ummed and aahhed a bit over which to do next but something about the little picture of Locutus on it tickles me, and honestly this I the one that first caught my eye when I saw the ad for it!

I’m already 23% of the way through (38km) and I started it a couple of weeks ago! I might have to rethink how I approach it, and perhaps only track my runs instead of walks and runs. The Modor walk is enough motivation for walks at the moment, so maybe this challenge can encourage me to jog longer distances.

I had fallen off the jogging a bit. I think I ended up with two weeks entirely off, with my coach plan paused, between the holiday and feeling ill/routine disruption. I’ve got back on track this week, though, with the lovely sunny spring weather providing an ideal boost! I’ve been doing more walking than running still, but I’m OK with that. I’m not actually training for a race; I just want to build myself a habit of actually going out and doing something.

This week I did my longest running session at 3.3km which I’m very pleased about!

However, strength training has completely stopped. I think it’s been a month at this point. I felt unwell, then we were on holiday, and now my exercise room is full of tiles and bathroom parts! When I have my space back, I’ll get back into it because I did enjoy it and was starting to feel a bit stronger.

New Bathroom in progress

You may remember that way back in June 2024 we were planning the new bathroom and looking at tiles. The new bathroom was meant to happen in September but not all the tiles arrived and with one thing and another it got pushed back to start in February!

We’re now 10 days into work and it’s starting to come together, but not without some problems!

It turns out the white tiles, the ones that caused the delay, were made a couple of millimetres longer than the green ones and we didn’t realise this until the green ones were already on the wall. This difference meant we couldn’t continue the same horizontal pattern up the wall so had to come up with a solution!

I wanted to put them vertical but that wouldn’t work because the width of the wall and the position of the windows meant some impossible tile cuts would be needed. And so, we’ve had to compromise and offset the top section while keeping the horizontal pattern.

Annoying because if we’d noticed the size difference, or thought to have our fitter look at them more closely, we could have planned for this and had a better placement of the top section of tiles.

I think it’ll be OK in the end though when everything is completed. The tiles themselves are gorgeous, I love them! When the light hits them right they have a subtle wavy texture that looks like water.

I think it’ll be another week to have everything finished! I feel bad it’s taking so long, our fitter (also my fiance’s cousin) said this is the most individual tiles he’s done in one bathroom… and I don’t think he’s enjoying it! We’ll definitely get him a thank-you gift and pay him more for the extra week it’s taken!

In the meantime, we’re using our downstairs bathroom. We’re very lucky to have to have it with a working shower but (champagne problems) it is a horrible dingy little room. It was a poorly thought-out conversion of the under-the-stairs space, done by some previous owners so it is cramped, badly lit and doesn’t have any kind of extractor fan in it so the wallpaper(!) on the ceiling over the shower(!) is slowly falling down. It feels a bit like using a shower in a crappy cheap B&B.. but it works (albeit with barely existent water pressure) and means we can keep clean while our main bathroom is out of action!

New car!

We also, FINALLY, got our new car! We’re now smug electric car owners. We love our IONIQ 5!

I’ve never had a brand new car and definitely not one with any fancy technology so it’s taking a bit of getting used to. My first car was a base model 2005 Ford KA I had for 14 years that had a cassette player and didn’t have central locking. My second car, a second-hand 2015 Fiesta Zetec, felt like a huge upgrade with its CD player, electronic key and Bluetooth! So the Ioniq 5 Premium is like driving a spaceship to me! It feels too nice to be my car!

I love having cruise control and lane assist, it’s definitely helping me to be at least 15% less stressed while motorway driving. I don’t think my Garmin told me to relax once when I drove it for 30mins on the M1, unheard of! It’s just so nice to drive, and I’m coming around on the automatic drive too. My left arm still wants to move the gear stick sometimes, and my left foot wants to get involved and do something but I’ll lose that muscle memory soon I’m sure.

It is fucking massive though. Car parks and driving down narrow UK streets (where you often have parked cars on either side) is not going to be fun, so it’s not going to allow me to live entirely stress-free.

Spring 🌷

I am very excited about spring. The crocuses have been out for the last week and I’ve seen some daffodils! The bulbs I planted are budding too, including some surprise ones I didn’t plant but I guess can get enough light now I cleared all the Triffids!

I need to get out and do some garden jobs this weekend, hopefully. Still a bit of pruning to do and definitely some weeding (never-ending removing of blackberries).

I also went a bit mad ordering seeds for bedding/planter plants in the Dobbies sale, I may end up with more than I can do anything with but they were 89p each and everything is so pretty! I should be resuming my garden blog soon I think!

Face 💄

I have been procrastinating on trying to find a MUA or a Hair + MUA (a HAMUA?) for the wedding. I don’t really know what to do about it because the wedding is in Scotland I can’t get any trials done so I’d have to blindly trust that they’d do something I’d like. I don’t wear much make-up – if I do it’s very light powder foundation, the subtlest single shade of eyeshadow, and mascara – and I don’t want to get plastered in so much I don’t look like myself! I’ve been shocked in the past at how much my friends have had on as brides.

Plus I have to find someone willing to work a Sunday for just a couple of hours, so ideally someone local to the venue.

With all this anxiety, I have been instead been half-forming an idea to learn how to do my own in a way I like. Most of my make-up is very old at this point – the last time I regularly wore makeup (for work) was probably 2017 – so I thought I’d start by looking into getting a good foundation.

I wanted to try Bare Minerals because my skin only seems to like power foundation, I prefer something buildable and that is one I always wanted to try but in the past could never afford.

I thought I’d just pop into Boots after work on Tuesday to try to get a shade match but of course, it wasn’t that simple because fancier makeup involves interacting with a salesperson. Before I knew it the very lovely, fast-talking, Ukrainian sales girl had me a face full of foundation and I’d bought a pressed powder and a primer! I’d also been bamboozled by serums and skincare advice that put me in mind of Rogue by Mona Awad!

My skin has been very dry lately so I am considering trying a serum, which should give me a better base for applying makeup. I don’t want to spend stupid money on one though so I tried to do a bit of research and soon realised that Mona Award was barely exaggerating with skincare onsessed Mirabelle in Rogue!

So anyway, I guess I am going to be trying to learn to do my own bridal makeup so I look nice in photos! Which may end up costing me more in products!

I have to say I am very impressed with the Bare Minerals BarePro pressed powder. I wore it yesterday for work and it looked great and lasted all day. I’ve also been out in it all day today in the sun and wind and it’s not moved at all! Noticeably better than the L’Oreal True Match pressed power I’ve used for a decade. Which is good because it was at least 4x the price!

Wedding hair might be trickier though… Not sure yet what my plan is going to be there.

What else?

• As I said in my February reading roundup, I’m currently 5 book reviews behind.. dangerously close to 6!
• I am still a bit obsessed with Two Point Campus which is honestly partly why I’ve fallen behind blogging!
• Still love Severance season 2! I also watched Am I Being Unreasonable? Season 2 (on iPlayer) and it was fucking great, can’t wait for Season 3!
• We continue with Deep Space 9 too, now flying through season 6. Last week we watched The Magnificent Ferengi which is a very fun episode and I’d completely forgotten has an excellent cameo from Iggy Pop! He makes a great Vorta! It was also this episode where we finally clocked that Brunt (the Ferenghi liquidator with a vendetta against Quark!) and Weyoung are played by the same actor (the amazing Jeffrey Combs!).
• We watched the first two episodes of Daredevil: Born Again… I’m personally not convinced so far. Something feels off about it, I am not enjoying the cinematography style or the sound and I’m not feeling connected to anything happening. It probably doesn’t help that I absolutely hate Karen Page so I was fuming about episode one… I cannot stand that character, I don’t think I finished season 3 of Daredevil, or any of Punisher because I just couldn’t take any more of her. But I won’t turn this note into an I Hate Karen Page rant!
• The UK Eurovision entry this year is – in my humble opinion – fucking terrible. The worst in my recent memory! But, maybe it’ll work performed on the stage… but it’s not pleasant to listen to as a song.
• My friends and I got tickets to the Five Reunion Tour in November! Actually 5/5, they got J! Can’t wait! We have so many amazing memories of dancing to Five on student nights out!