Author: Adrian

Categories
Life event

Double-jabbed

Last week I got my second pfizer jab. I booked them both as soon as I was eligible to do so, with the second around 11 and a half weeks after the first one. The only location listed when I booked was a hospital about 7 miles away. According to a friend, there were more possible locations if you clicked cancel and then reloaded, but anyway I had booked and didn’t want to change it. However, when they started to recommend second jabs at 8 weeks (rather than 12 weeks), I looked to see if I could change the location of my second jab. Which I did, with my second jab at my local council’s Civic Hall.

I thought I’d do a comparison of the two experiences:

First jab: NHS hospital COVID vaccination centreSecond jab: Council COVID vaccination centre
I arrived about 10-15 minutes before my appointment because that’s what times the trains were and I didn’t know exactly where I was going.
The signs said don’t arrive more than 5 minutes before your appointment, so I sat outside and checked my phone for a bit before wandering up to the security guard who just waved me through to the single reception desk.		I arrived about 10-15 minutes before my appointment because I walked there and I didn’t know exactly where I was going.
The signs said appointments only. There were a couple of people sat outside but I just went in anyway. I told the volunteer in the jacket that I had an appointment but they just waved me through and told me to follow the arrows.
After following several arrows and corridors to the main hall, the man on the door asked me if I had my card from my first jab. He then pointed out that it couldn’t have been five months since my first jab and that they must have written it down wrong. He then told me to go to the third reception desk (out of three).
The woman on the reception desk took my details. She gave me a load of paperwork which I wouldn’t have time to read and then told me to follow the long corridor round. There was no-one else around and despite the woman calling “next” there was no-one behind me.The woman on the reception desk took my details and then pointed out that it couldn’t have been five months since my first jab. I commented that they must have written it down wrong. She gave me a load of paperwork which I wouldn’t have time to read and then told me to go to the next set of desks.
The woman on the next desk took my details and asked a few questions about whether I had any allergies and such things. She pointed out that it couldn’t have been five months since my first jab. I commented that they must have written it down wrong. The woman corrected my card and told me to join the queue that was behind her.
I got to the end of the corridor without seeing a single other person waiting to be jabbed. I was then directed to one of the nine pods that they were using.A man directed me to join the queue of about 12 people before directing me to one of the three pods that they were using.
The man in the pod said “you must be Adrian” and then checked a few details and asked if I had any allergies and such things. I was then jabbed and he filled in my vaccination card and a piece of paper with a time on it and told me to follow the next corridor round to the waiting room.The woman in the pod checked a few details whilst the man in the pod did something on the computer. I was then jabbed by the woman, and the man filled in my vaccination card and I was told to move into the waiting area behind.
I was told to take any seat in the waiting area until the time on my piece of paper. I was then free to depart, leaving my piece of paper with the time on on the chair so they knew it had been used and needed cleaning. I left as soon as my fifteen minutes were up.I took any seat in the waiting area before being told there was a system and got moved to a specific chair. As the last person in the row, my time defined when the rest of the row could leave. I was allowed to leave as soon as my fifteen minutes were up. Everyone else in the row also had to wait until my fifteen minutes were up.
I got the train home. About 2-3 hours later, my arm started to feel a bit sore. The next morning it was very stiff, but by about 24 hours after the jab it was all back to normal. I walked home. About 2-3 hours later, my arm started to feel a bit sore. The next morning it was very stiff, but by about 24 hours after the jab it was all back to normal.

If I had to do a third jab, I’d probably go back to the hospital, even though it’s further away. Although that may just be because it wasn’t as busy. That’s a question to ponder for another day (if it ever happens).

Categories
January Habits

January Habits Update: Journaling

We’re just over halfway through the year, so I’m going to review my January Habits and see how I’m getting on. This week, the final week, is Journaling.

This is another habit which I’ve (generally) kept going fairly steadily over the last few months, although to be honest I probably have slipped a bit and don’t always spend as much time on it as I could do. There has been the odd week when I’ve not felt like putting the time in on a Sunday evening to plan for the next week, but I have generally caught up. I have missed one or two weeks, including two weeks ago when I missed my weekly Wednesday evening blog post, so maybe I do need to keep at it.

In terms of content and layout, these have remained broadly similar (if you compare the below image to the one back in January). At the moment a lot of my entries are reminders of what runs I need to do in my marathon training plan, but it is quite handy to be able to see at a glance what I need to be doing that week and plan around it.

This week’s log pages (at time of writing)

The only thing that’s really changed (apart from the styling of the month in the top corner) is adding a couple more items to the tracker and modifying the colour requirements. It’s now more colourful, but I’m not sure I’m making the most of going back and comparing one week to the next.

Some weeks are better than others

I do intend to keep going with my journaling habit (such as it is), but I don’t think it’s completely embedded into my life yet. It may be that I need to tweak it slightly to make it more relevant day to day, but I’m fairly happy with it at the moment so will likely just keep going as I am.

And that’s it for my mid-year review of my January habits. Assuming I’m still blogging at that point, I’ll revisit them again in December to see if they’ve made it through a whole year (although I’ll probably combine them all into one post for a briefer overview).

Categories
January Habits

January Habits Update: Cold showers

I know I didn’t post anything lost week. I’m sorry. Absence makes the heart grow fonder or something. Anyway, back to this week’s post…

We’re just over halfway through the year, so I’m going to review my January Habits and see how I’m getting on. This week, cold showers.

I’ve very much had a love-hate relationship with cold showers, but surprisingly this is the most consistent habit that I’ve developed. Apart from when I’ve been away staying with friends or family (such as last week, hence the lack of blog post), almost all my showers have involved cold water.

I’m probably not embracing the cold shower thing completely, but I’ve settled on a few different levels of cold shower. The coldest shower is the icy cold shower which I tend to have after I’ve been out for a run. At the warmest end is a cold-to-lukewarm shower for an after breakfast shower (an icy cold shower straight after eating isn’t so comfortable). And then all my other showers fit somewhere in between those temperatures. Even if I start with a “warmer” shower, I’ll still often turn down the temperature for the last few moments of the shower.

There’s not really much to say other than that I’ll keep going with this habit. It is surprisingly enjoyable to have a cold shower and I would recommend it to anyone (although it probably needs to be tested in the long term, rather than just a one off). I would also recommend showering in the dark. My bathroom light switch broke this week and not being able to see anything adds a whole other dimension to the shower experience.

Categories
January Habits

January Habits Update: Exercise

We’re just over halfway through the year, so I’m going to review my January Habits and see how I’m getting on. This week, exercise.

Back in January, things were very different. Although “guidance” rather than “the law”, due to lockdown it was only allowed to do one outdoor exercise per day. Back then I was fine with only going for a short run every day as it helped keep my mental health on track for a day of working from home.

But now, things are returning to normal and I’m back in the office most days and generally just out and about more. I’m also now following a training plan for running the London Marathon in October. Suffice it to say that my short 2km run per day is no longer suitable. Today, for example, my training plan had me run 5 miles (about 8km) and yesterday was 6 miles (just under 10km). Tomorrow is another 5 miles…

I can just about fit a 50 minute (5 mile) run into my schedule before work, assuming I wake up early enough, but anything longer than that and it has to be on the way home or in the evening. And as the training plan goes on, the distances get longer too, so it becomes less likely that I’ll be able to do the exercise before work.

There’s something nice about not even having got to work and already having met the step count target for the day, but I think I am going to have to move my runs to the evening. The good news though is that I’m currently running five days a week as part of my training plan. It’s not the every day that I mentioned in my original January Habits plan, but rest days are important too. I would say I’m still on schedule with this habit. And I’m fine with that.

Categories
January Habits

January Habits Update: Waking up early

We’re just over halfway through the year, so I’m going to review my January Habits and see how I’m getting on. First off, waking up early.

I actually quite liked waking up early, but I never quite fully got into the routine of it. I would just about get used to waking up early and then something would disrupt my pattern and I would be back to waking up later again.

I think the main problem was that I didn’t have any incentive to wake up early. Yes, some days I would go for a run (more on that next week), but on the other days I didn’t really have anything productive to do. I did have a few ideas of things to do, but being sat in front on the computer first thing in the morning isn’t what I want to do (I realise I could do other things but that’s what most of ideas revolved around).

The other problem is that real life started to occur. Back in January, everything was locked down and my bedtimes/waketimes weren’t impacted by anything else. Since then though, things like seeing friends, going to the pub, going to the running club, are all things that are done in the evening. And if I stay up later for these things, I don’t want to be waking up early in the morning too.

I have however taken away some things from this experiment. I do still go to bed earlier and wake up earlier than I used to, but not *as* early as I was back in January. And I do still get my 7.5-8 hours sleep every night (I also don’t set an alarm clock now, but maybe that’s a different story). But it feels like a good balance to me.

Categories
Out and about

“Walking” From Home

I know, I did a post with a very similar title recently about doing a long walking route where I went home every night and back again the next morning. Well, this one is different.

Back in May, I went out for a 26 mile walk in the Chilterns (I know I’ve done a lot of walking recently). This was a set route with questions to answer at various checkpoints to prove that the route had been followed. All of the grid references for the questions were available before the walk started, and part of the challenge was to plan your own route. But given the questions and the available footpaths between them, there was really only one possible option for the majority of the walk. For example, in the picture below, the only sensible option between points 7 and 8 is to follow the green-dashed footpath (the red line shows the direct line between checkpoints).

However, there was one point where I got distracted and forgot to look for the answer to the question I was on. It was only when I was a few hundred metres later on that I realised I’d missed it out. I knew exactly where the answer was as I’d seen it as I walked past (but just not realised I was supposed to be paying more attention). Rather than go back, I decided I would just check Google Street View when I got home.

And then that got me wondering: how much of the walk could I just do from home on the internet without doing any actual walking. So I thought I would check.

Some answers were very easy to find on Street View (including the one I needed). However, Street View doesn’t generally cover footpaths and so a lot of answers couldn’t be found this way. And even if there is Street View coverage, some questions relied on reading signs which is quite impossible due the image resolution not being high enough.

This is the correct signpost, but good luck trying to answer “What symbol is displayed in a square sign for the National Trust?”

Some of the answers remaining were quite easy to find elsewhere on the internet. For example, there was a question to state the reference number of the trig point at the top of Ivinghoe Beacon. The internet is full of photos of trig points and it was easy to find the answer.

My photo of the trig point plate at Ivinghoe Beacon. There are lots of very similar photos at Trigpointing:UK

Some other questions were guessable based on the context of the question without even visiting the area, although not always correctly. For example, “Happiness grows on what?” is probably “trees” (correct), but “Warning! What vehicles are operating?” is “agricultural” (my initial guess was “farm”).

But a lot of answers couldn’t be found at all (or at least not without specific knowledge of the subject or a much more detailed search).

Number of correct answers visible on Street View or available elsewhere on the internet10
Answers that may or may not be correct based on guesses or incomplete information on the internet6
Number of answers not possible without visiting the actual location16

There were six questions that I could possibly make a guess at based on the question or making an extrapolation based on internet data, and even if these guesses were correct, it would only be possible to get 16/32, a measly 50% score. I don’t know if there was a “pass rate” as such, but I don’t think that only half marks would qualify as completing the route.

I got 100% correct by walking the route and to be honest, I think it would take longer to try and find all the answers on the internet than just doing the walk. And I also had the advantage that I had already done the walk so I knew what the actual answers were and what I should be searching for online. So really it’s well done to the organisers for choosing good questions which can’t be found on the internet and ensures that “walking” from home can’t happen.

If you want to look at the questions (or to do the walk), it’s available here. (Note: You had to do it before the end of May to do it as part of the organised event, which is why I can talk about the answers now.)

Categories
Life event

Duvet Day

Two weeks ago was Duvet Day.

Duvet Day, noun. The day at which I switch from using a duvet and duvet cover to just using a duvet cover.

Duvet Day happens every year, normally towards the beginning of June. When it gets too hot overnight for a full duvet, I switch to just using the duvet cover by itself. There’s normally a delay between the temperature increasing and Duvet Day, mainly because removing a duvet from its cover is awkward, as everyone knows.

Yesterday was Re-Duvet Day.

Re-Duvet Day, noun. The day at which I switch from using just a duvet cover to using a duvet and duvet cover.

Re-Duvet Day happens every year, normally towards the beginning of September. When it gets too cool overnight for just a duvet cover, I return to using a duvet inside the cover. There’s normally a delay between the temperature dropping and Re-Duvet Day, mainly because inserting a duvet into its cover is awkward, as everyone knows.

But this year is one of those with an early Re-Duvet day as the temperature has dropped early. Here’s a graph showing the temperature this month:

(Taken from Accuweather)

The first half of this month (bar the 4 June) has been well above the average temperature for this time of year. However the last few days have been far below average, hence the return to a duvet. It does look like the temperature is rising again, and I’m sure there will be a second Duvet Day in the next few weeks. Until then though, it’s back to my trusty 4.5 Tog.

Categories
Miscellaneous

Running out

I feel like I’ve run out of things to say here.

Not because I’ve run out of ideas, but because I’ve run out of content to post. The problem is that I have several ideas for things to write about, but they all take quite a long time to research and write up (and then correct all the errors). Alternatively, I post something short, like last week’s, which is quick and easy, but feels slightly unsatisfying.

I could probably get some of these longer articles posted if I didn’t leave it until last thing on the Wednesday evening to start writing. But the rest of my time is spent doing other stuff, and it’s currently too hot to spend too long sat in front of the computer writing something (especially when I’ve been sat here all day too).

I could probably just not post something weekly, but that seems like admitting defeat. I was tempted not to post something today, but I’m sure someone would have complained (not that I have a huge readership). I’m sure I’ve said this before, but people who blog regularly (with actually interesting content) are impressive people.

I don’t think I’m there yet, but I’m also not throwing in the towel yet.

Categories
Wordless Wednesday

Back to life

This is the reason I’m glad I hadn’t thrown away my basil plant.

Categories
Life event

Challenge (partially) complete!

I did it. Well, partially did it. Remember the challenge to walk 100 miles in 48 hours? Yeah, I didn’t completely do that. But I did walk 75 miles continuously and in doing so I did achieve the secondary target of walking 50 miles in 24 hours. At triple the distance of my previous longest walk (27 miles), I’m very happy with what I did achieve.

Here’s three things I learnt:

  1. 100 miles is a very long way to walk
  2. 75 miles is also a very long way to walk
  3. Eating a pot noodle without a t-shirt on isn’t the best idea (it’s quite splashy)

Here’s three things I’ve done since finishing the walk:

  1. Slept for 11 hours
  2. Washed all my walking clothes
  3. Realised I’d left my earphones in the pocket of my walking trousers (they’re actually fine)

Here’s three things I should have done since finishing the walk (but haven’t):

  1. Fully unpack my backpack
  2. Clean the mud off my walking poles
  3. Put some effort in to writing a blog post about it