Olympic Torch Relay

The clouds cleared for the Olympic flame and half of Nottingham turned up to gawk:-


Spot the flame, the dogs were pulling me in the other direction as I took this, towards a Leonberger:-

Rainy Day

I intended to head to the beach for a couple of days yesterday, but delayed going as the weather wasn't very beachy. I abandoned those plans, this morning, as the weather was like this:-

Instead, I went to see an exhibition at the Nottingham Contemporary, of video's by Mika Rottenberg, and prints by James Gillray, the 18th century caricaturist.

I tried to see this earlier in the month but discovered that the Gallery is closed on Mondays. Here are some photo's I took of the outside of the gallery, last time I visited:-

I was pleased I went as the exhibition ends on 1st July and the Mika Rottenberg video's were my kind of bizarre.

Squeeze is a 20 minute film showing how this spam like cube, made from blusher, rubber and lettuce was made from various body fluids that are harvested in a weird factory:-
 
The Olympic Torch comes to Nottingham today, and there is an evening of festivities lined up. As the weather seems to be improving, I will probably take the dogs out and have a look

Jobsworth

I'm about to resubmit my resident's parking renewal form to the Council for the third time - it keeps getting returned for different, trivial reasons - despite the fact that I have had a permit for all the time that I have lived here.

I shall return their letter with an added tick box.

The Poker Diet

I've been on a diet all this month, as I had been slipping back into the old, bad habits, and my waistline was expanding rapidly.

Breakfast consists of porridge with a couple of apples and a banana. For Lunch and dinner I have been having a big pile of lettuce, broccoli or cabbage (although I have to go a bit easy on the cabbage to avoid unpleasant side effects!) with jacket potato and a portion of meat.

The diet has been working well - I have shed 20 pounds and now tip the scales at 17 stone. I'm getting there - just another 3 or 4 stone to go. The promising thing with this diet attempt is that I haven't felt hungry on it, and am not feeling at all bored with it. I have hardly snacked at all - just the occasional extra piece of fruit/tin of soup. I have had one slip up, when I succumbed to a craving for an ice cream binge after a night on the tiles a couple of weeks ago.

I have cut out bread, pasta and rice completely, limiting my carbohydrates to porridge, jacket potatoes and sweet corn.

Accompanying the diet, I have been working on improving my poker skills - I have been playing online tournaments with larger fields - 90 players rather than the usual 9 player games that I play. I have noticed some encouraging improvements to my game. I have two online tournaments coming up, 1 this week and 1 the next, which offer me a chance to bag a seat at next years game in Vegas.  I have signed up to a new poker site for these games and have used Dad's winning lottery syndicate name as my poker nickname, hopefully that will give me a bit of extra luck!

Poker Tournament

I spent the day at the casino playing against 207 other players in the Regional final of the pub poker league. I was knocked out in 50th place so nothing to show for it other than another trophy for being the pub champion for the season. I stayed on to support one of the other qualifiers from the pub I play at. He ended up crashing out in 11th - 2 places short of the prizes.