Digest 20250421

I’m been slacking off on these update posts lately. I’ll be honest, it’s because I’ve become obsessed with playing Two Point Campus and then Two Point Museum! If I have some precious free time and I’m on my PC, it’s very difficult to resist the temptation to fire up Steam and get a game running… then it’s 2 hours later and I’ve not done anything else!

I feel a bit guilty about that because playing videogames doesn’t feel as “productive” as writing blog posts does… but then I try to remind myself that it doesn’t matter how I choose to relax and enjoy my time! I only keep this blog for me, so it’s really up to me whether I spend my evening writing or running my virtual university/museum, and nobody other than me is going to care…

The difficulty is that Future Alice does care, when she realises she has a backlog of 4 book reviews to catch up, and hasn’t drafted anything for Top Ten Tuesday! And also, she’s still not written up a review for Rouge despite thinking about it twice daily when she runs through my new skin care routine! Plus, Future Alice actually does really enjoy reading this blog, and she’ll be sad if she looks back and finds gaps in it.

So yeah, I had grand plans for the long Easter weekend… I was going to catch up on everything with the blog… But in fairness, I “lost” two of my free days to family events, and another day to catching up on chores, and then most of the rest of it to games! Non-work time just always goes too quickly.

And really, now I’m sitting here thinking about it… I have got a lot done, even if I don’t feel like I have, because I happened to also spend 10.5 hours playing Two Point Museum over the weekend!

Movement 🐌

Firstly, I am killing it with the running at the moment! I really feeling the improvement in stamina over the last couple of weeks. Last time I was lamenting that I’d had a bad couple of weeks and hadn’t been able to jog for 11 days, well, following that, I did get myself back out there, but I had terrible hay fever for a week!

Turns out I must be sensitive to birch pollen and there are so fucking many birch trees around here! All the streets are bloody lined with them, and I guess since I’ve been out there more huffing and puffing sucking it all up… I got the worst hayfever of my life! Runny nose and sore throat for days. I was even taking a daily antihistamine, which I’ve never done before!

Anyway, the point of this is after a week of bad sleep because I couldn’t breathe through my nose, I got to Sunday, which is my long run day, and I decided I’d get myself out and just see how much I could do. Once I got out there, it was tough to get going at first, but then I found my groove, sank into my audiobook (which was Witchcraft for Wayward Girls!), and I did my longest run to date – 6.5km! I was so proud of myself when I got home.

Similar story again this weekend too. I’m now in the luteal phase of my cycle, and my hormones crashed pretty hard. I had a couple of low-mood and low-energy days, particularly as work hadn’t been very stimulating for the last week, and I’d found it hard to focus. Sunday morning I wasn’t feeling like I wanted to go out and do anything, but I decided I’d put my gear on and I’d walk with my Fiance for a bit (since he was going to the shop) and then if I felt like it I could go off on my run route and see how I go. If I wanted, I could just stop early or just walk (I have to do a lot of reminding myself it’s fine to take it easy as long as I’ve got out to try!).

I did walk a lot of it, but I also ran plenty! Again, once I got going, I enjoyed myself, and I could sink into my audiobook (which was by that point The Rivers of London!). However, because I was not feeling it and I half thought I’d probably quit the training programming running on my watch, I hadn’t checked how far it was planning to make me go! Bearing in mind I’m on week 14 of the 15-week 5K programme I’d set… it decided to make me run 4.8 km (3 miles)! This is by far the furthest I’d gone… but I bloody did it! I’d got far enough by the time I twigged what it was doing that I didn’t want to quit! It took me an hour and ten minutes, and I did walk a good portion of it, but I did 7.8km total with warm up and cool down!

Past Alice never thought she’d get into running, but now I am honestly enjoying it, and I am amazed by how much I’ve improved, even on my bad days, and that, with a good audiobook in my ears, it’s not felt like doing hard work! Honestly forget all that “no pain no gain” bollocks.. all you have to do is get out there and do as much as you feel good, a tiny bit at a time.

So yeah, now I’m going further with my runs, I’m making good progress with my Star Trek: Locutus of Borg virtual challenge. I’ve completed 102.11 km, which is 63% of the total, with 52% of the time I gave myself left. In the story, Picard has now been kidnapped!

With our walk to Modor, I’ve been very inconsistent with the number of steps, swinging from 5K days to 11K days, but that has kept my average creeping up! The main reason for that is work, I’ve needed to do a lot more of the type of thinking and problem solving for which I need to sit down and can’t do while walking at my desk, so I keep forgetting to do desk walking until after work! I will say that being addicted to those Two Point games has also really helped with my step count because I only need my mouse hand to play them! Currently, I’ve done 404 miles and I’m at Mr Biblo’s Trolls. My daily average steps are 7,682, which I am very happy with.

I did attempt to get back into strength training last week, but as I mentioned, I had a low week, and I did not manage to consistently motivate myself. Also partly that was because I was neglecting the step count during the day, and it became a choice for the 30-40 mins after work but before dinner between catching up steps at my desk (while playing games!) or doing the strength training… and one is easier and more fun than the other! I was still moving, so I’m not going to be too hard on myself about it… But I must get back to the weights soon, now I’m approaching my forties, my muscles are starting to get weaker and weaker!

Wax seals 💌

Another thing I achieved this week was finally using the wax seal we got in Venice! I spent Thursday evening trying to perfect the technique, and it is not as easy as the lady in the shop made it look! It took me hours to get the hang of it. It seems to be a combination of the right spoon (teaspoon), flame (bigger candle was way better than a tea light) and getting the wax to the right temperature (very runny but not bubbling!) and then letting it cool to the right consistency, and the stamp itself being cool! Seriously… hours… I had about 10 seals I didn’t immediately remelt, of which 6 were pretty good.

The plan is to use this for some wedding invitations for the 9 guests (+ 3 dogs) that will be attending our elopement! I only needed 6 for the different households, thankfully! I decided on a basic invitation using Canva (what can’t it do!) and printed it off on some fancy writing paper I have loads of left from one of my past aborted attempts at having a pen pal.

I ordered some nice envelopes now too, so I just need to figure out how I’m going to incorporate the seal… either fold the letter up nicely and stick it on there, or stick it on the envelope itself. They’ll be hand-delivered, so no worry about Royal Mail breaking it!

What else?

This is getting longer than I expected, and I have work in the morning, so I’d better wrap this up!

• My wedding ring came, and it’s so gorgeous! I am thrilled with it and cannot wait to wear it for the rest of my life! It’s this gold celestial band by goldsmith Ruby Tynan. It’s very dainty and it’s thinner than my engage(ment) ring but I still think they look cute together, if I want to wear them both!
• We had some beautiful weather in the UK a couple of weeks ago, especially the previous weekend, which got me out to do some more garden jobs (I think I’ll do a post soon with some photos) and a few hours enjoying doing some embroidery. I decided to work through some more of the magazine kits I have, starting with this little spring pendant banner bit.

• The big garden job I did last weekend was to dig up the Bear’s Breeches! It took a couple of hours of chopping and digging but it’s out… I’m hoping I got enough of the root chunks… There is some danger I’ll just end up with 50 new smaller plants because apparently it can regrow from roots left behind!
• I originally wanted to try some sports bras from Sweaty Betty (the ones I got from Primark 8 years ago are falling apart!) And I ordered a couple from their sale plus some trousers that looked good. The Power Bras were a no because I don’t want to dislocate my shoulder every time I need to get out of it (how do people get out of those, I don’t even have much boob to contend with!) but their explorer trousers are amazing! I got the ones with a strip down the side and they are so comfortable and so flattering! They hit my waist in exactly the right spot the material flows beautifully over my lumps and bumps. I feel relaxed and stylish in them. I’ve got the ones with stripes in green and black now, and a “winter” pair in black as well. They are very expensive but they just feel so good on I think it’s worth it. They look so smart I think I could even wear them to work!
• I am going to be in the market for new running shoes soon because on my big run this weekend I noticed my big toe had worn through the top! To be fair I have had these for probably 8-9 years at this point… Though very intermittently used!
• We moved office at work to a new private office in a managed shared office building. I’ve been there a couple of times and it’s really nice! They put on a mini Easter egg hunt, and we got free coffee and cake on Thursday on the shaded level! One day I’ll be brave and talk to someone from a different office… Also we have fancy new double width monitors which I love! Wide screen spreadsheets, NotePad++ and Jira boards have changed life!
• Speaking of work, we had our annual team days a couple of weeks ago which completely wiped me out and set off the usual post-event social anxiety spiral which is a large part why I didn’t update part weekend and while I worked it out in the sun and the garden! Maybe one day I’ll be able to spend time with a group of people without feeling horrible about it for 2-3 days after…
• I watched all of Daredevil: Board Again and I honestly think it was a bit crap? It was very slow, I didn’t’ feel like it offered anything new for the character, I hated that they killed Foggy and not Karen, and I found the style very self-conscious and a bit cringe.
• We continue into Westworld season 3 and … Yeah it’s a jarring jump from fake Wild West to pure Sci-Fi, it doesn’t totally work… We’ve only watched 3 episodes so I’ll try to reserve judgement but Delores continues to both bore and annoy me, and I’m very distracted by how empty this future city is!
• I also became fully obsessed and binged all of Bump which is a 5 season Aussie family drama. It starts with a teenage Oly giving birth in the school toilets after a cryptic pregnancy and then it follows her family and extended family over the years. It’s nice, quite laid back and deals with life issues but in a way that feels real and relatable, and comforting. I really recommend it, it’s rare to find shows like this these days! It’s on iPlayer in the UK.
• I finally listed some stuff on Vinted and I just had my first sale! One pair of Levis Mile High Skinny Jeans are off to a new home! I don’t know how I ever fit into that 26 inch waist and I don’t need the reminder! 😅
• If you’re reading this in a browser then you might notice I’ve been at it again fiddling with my blog’s CSS. I did also use a chunk of this weekend working out how to change the styling for some of the header tags! I’m in more of a “label tape” phase at the moment!