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Pens and my relationship with them

My god, I have a weird relationship with my pens. Every single pen I’ve ever owned has ended in disaster.

In primary school I would chew pencils, just like every child, but this is has been a life-long habit I’ve never been able to grow out of, leading to all the inevitable problems.

While those cheap, plastic roller-ball pens are nice and come in their thousands in the office environment, they have always been a source of hate in my life. Why can’t someone make them out of stronger plastic? They just can’t cope with the full force of my teeth, chewing on them, day in, day out. About once a month I have to pick tiny shards of plastic from between my teeth, and discard what was quite a full pen in the bin because the structural integrity has now gone.

Pencils are more of the same. While I do enjoy using them more than cheap pens, again I end up with bits of wood stuck in my teeth. Then I have the age old problem of keeping it sharp. I don’t have the lightest touch in the world so they blunt extremely easily, but when it comes to sharpening, I can never get it right. I never get that nice shape that you get when it comes out of the box. Instead I get that stupidly sharp point that breaks off instead of wearing down, leading to bits of pencil pinged across my desk and the need to sharpen the pencil again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Now we come to the slightly more expensive pen. You know, the clicky kind with 1000 moving parts inside them. I exaggerate, but as a geek, that’s exactly what it seems to me. They’re just too irresistible to take apart and see how they work. Then inevitable then happens. I wonder about how springy the spring is and it’s role in the pen. PING! It’s now on the other side of the room and we all know I’m not going to look for it.

Finally, the fountain pen. The SCOURGE of my school life. My teachers hated my handwriting, and I can’t blame them. It was scruffy and rushed, and more often than not it was smudged because I wouldn’t wait for the ink to dry before rubbing my hands all over the page. Then there was the fact that I waved my pens around as a child and found more ink floating around in the lid than in the pen itself. No, the fountain pen was a disaster for me.

But now I’m all grown up, I find myself holding on to this Batman fountain pen, given to me as a Christmas gift from Tori, not just for its sentimental value, but because it’s a writing implement I can finally get on with.

My handwriting improved so much since my time at school, I’m slightly less fidgety, and coupled with the fact that the fountain pen only has one part to unscrew, I don’t think I’ll ever need another pen again. In fact, I take this pen to and from work with me every day.

Now I just need to make sure I have some ink at home and at work all the time. And maybe a pocket protector.

Keeping it up

I guess one of the most important things you can do with any lifestyle change, no matter how big or small, is to keep it up.

I’m sure you’re already aware, as I’ve discussed here, that I’ve started doing some running and some cycling. Well, while I’m doing at least two runs a week, the cycling hasn’t quite taken off yet. This isn’t because I don’t want to do it, it’s just a by-product of visiting Tori very regularly, and also having to go away for work last week.

Needless to say, I will be cycling to work tomorrow, and maybe again the day after that, while I have access to my bike.

There is another slight change, which I am extremely proud to announce, I have been eating sea food. Tori, ever vigilant when it comes to trying to make me slimmer/healthier/more awesome/less annoying/less scruffy, decided that we should have salmon for dinner a couple of weekends back. Knowing that I would probably have some problem with it, I agreed on the grounds that I would be cooking the fish myself.

To my surprise, as I lifted the fillet out of the packaging and on to the already spitting frying pan, I wasn’t as freaked out about touching it as I thought I would be. I then proceeded to casually push the salmon around the pan to ensure it didn’t stick/burn/etc.

We cut it up and put it on a bed of rice and it was absolutely delicious. The taste certainly wasn’t anything I expected, so I wolfed it all down. Later in the week when I went to Birmingham for work, I decided to have a trout starter with my dinner, thinking to myself that if I kept eating fish, I couldn’t slip back in to my fish-phobic ways. Once again the food was amazing, especially sitting on risotto rice. Nom.

Fast forward now to last night and I was eating chilli squid in Wagamamas! Holy hell! I never in my life thought I would be doing that. Next stage will be going out for some sushi somewhere. Any one want to join me?

And now for the journey home

FUCKING OW. I knew this would happen. Five miles down hill is real easy. Five miles up is hell.

While the journey to work along that route was really nice and I loved it to bits, it is obviously not the route I should be taking home. My initial thoughts were that I had found a nice flat way to get up the hill, and while it is indeed more flat, it means there are sections which are a nightmare to climb. Not to mention, of course, that really nice wooded path on the way to work? IN THE DARK IT IS SCARY AND FULL OF MONSTERS.

OK, next time I’ll be taking the direct route home. Straight up Holloway Road and Archway Road. Holloway is actually quite flat, and Archway at least flattens out for a bit.

Alas, no cycling to work again this week because of my Birmingham trip tomorrow, and I’m going to spend the end of the week at Tori’s while she finishes her dissertation.

http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/hHsr0Kjyl1s

Holy Crap, I made it!

Guys! Guess what? I MADE IT TO WORK without being dead and things!

Turns out that the road users are *very* aware of you and not one of them did anything dickish. The route I took was full of false turns so the time taken to get here is about a few minutes more than it should be, but I think the next time I do it, I’ll be able to get my time under 30 minutes. The route is quite nice, especially the first couple of minutes when I’m barrelling through a wooded path.

The real challenge of course it getting home because there’s an awful lot more up hill and we all know that London Transport isn’t very sympathetic to people who can’t make it all the way home on their bike. You can’t take them on the tube, and you can’t take them on the bus. Additionally, it’ll probably be dark at 5.30 when I leave the office.

It’s a bit of a shame I can’t cycle to work tomorrow because I’m going to Birmingham for the night with work. No point in bringing the bike here, only to leave it here over night.

Here’s some details of the work out.

http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/iGFRlatEipc

Cycling to work starts tomorrow

OK *pant* This cycling to work *pant* malarchy *pant* is going to be *heave* a lot harder than I thought.

First up, I bought this bike: http://www.decathlon.co.uk/elops-3-ii-id_8166113.html

It’s a five gear city bike, with a back bit for panniers, and it has a nice comfortable up-right riding position. The bike, plus everything else that I need (helmet, locks, etc) came to the price of two month’s worth of travel cards. I’m really looking forward to riding this to work tomorrow, but there is one slight problem. I live at the top of a hill. I’m not very fit. Looks like I have a lot to work on.

I did try a little trip to the Muswell hill Sainsbury’s this morning, which has a lot of up and down, and I did struggle a little bit on the way back. I guess Archway Road is going to be a challenge for me at the end of the working day, but I shall prevail.

I’m going to start with a couple of days cycling to work a week and take it from there. I hope it goes well

Sorry about the Twitter Spam

I ran a plugin to import my LJ into WordPress and forgot to turn off auto-tweet.

I decided to import my LJ and make it all private so I know I have the data here all the time and that I’m in charge of it. It’s part of my drive to make SuperMatt.net the definitive site about me. I’m tempted to get SuperMatt.net to update my facebook and google+ pages too, undecided though.

Workout 2012-01-17

http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/q4ZG9sRvfv0

Arctic tundra

Stepping out of the house this morning, I immediately regret my decision not to wear my arctic weather gear. I think soon it’ll be the weather to employ huskies to get me to work, rather than relying on the tube.

But now all seriousness, the thing I despise about winter in London is permanently going from freezing cold, to boiling hot on the tube, back to freezing again as you get off, and hot again in the office. I tend to just suck it up and deal with the cold so at least I’m comfortable when I get to work.

Snotty weekend

Had quite a nice, but essentially snotty weekend, this weekend. Saturday started with me waking up at stupid o’clock to go to work for a software rollout. Surprisingly, the rollout took a lot less time than I thought, bashing it all out by 2, instead of 4 like I thought.

Despite harbouring a cold throughout, I took Tori with me to see some friends in Anerley. We had a very nice evening hanging out with the s1e crowd from university, a group of people who I don’t see often enough, but will always love so dearly. Now I realise how close Sam and Gemma live to Tori, I’m going to try to see them more often. I wish I could get out in to Essex to see Kate and Dave, but that’s not easy without a car.

It was a nice evening of chatting, catching up, entering wedding dates into calendars and having a small drink. Unfortunately, my stupid cold got worse, so we left quite early, around 10ish. I’ve been feeling pretty crappy ever since, and I’d like it to go away now, thanks.

If you haven’t noticed, btw, I’m using my site as my social networking page these days, because I have all the control I want over it.