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.

Travels with Charley

I've been a bit quiet on the blogging front, partly because I have either mislaid or lost my camera and also because it has been too hot for the dogs to walk very far.

I am reading "Travels with Charley" by John Steinbeck. It's an account of a 3 month journey across America, in a converted pick up truck, that he did in 1960 with his standard poodle, Charley.

This excerpt struck a chord with me, as it describes exactly what Milo and Bruno tend to do to wake me up:-

"Charley likes to get up early, and he likes me to get up early too. And why shouldn't he? Right after his breakfast he goes back to sleep. Over the years he has developed a number of innocent-appearing ways to get me up. He can shake himself and his collar loud enough to wake the dead. If that doesn't work he gets a sneezing fit. But perhaps his most irritating method is to sit quietly beside the bed and stare into my face with a sweet and forgiving look on his face..."

Bruno favours the ear flapping, snorting approach, whilst Milo is more of a face starer.

Southwold to Walberswick

I did this walk this afternoon on my journey home from Nigel and Tina's house. By the time I parked up to start the walk at the Southwold water tower, I felt fairly puffed out -  after a week of toing and froing, table football tournaments and wii dancing - so because of that and tomorrow's weather forecast (rain) I decided to head straight home afterwards, rather than spend a night camping.

This is the water tower, built in the victorian era, a local landmark that stands on a common on the edge of town. There is plenty of free parking on the common next to the tower. The area is quite posh - a shiny new Maserati parked up next to me, and I noted a lot of plummy accents as I walked.


The route led me across the common, part of which is used as a golf course, across the River Blythe and through the Walberswick South Nature Reserve which is an area of marshland reedbeds by the sea. I kept my eyes peeled for Bearded Tits, but had no joy.

The dogs taking a breather before going through the marsh. They had to stay on the lead so as not to disturb the nesting birds (and also to prevent them from rolling in marsh mud):-
 
 I headed back along the beach to Walberswick, the dogs had a good frolic in the waves, they were acting like puppies. The shoreline was a bit of a disaster area with a couple of dead dog fish and thousands of bedraggled insects that must have been blown out to sea. I stopped to give first aid to a couple of bumble bees but left the rest to take their chances.

The Monster Mash