Now don’t get me wrong, I understand that everyone has to earn a living, but one of my pet hates at the moment is door-to-door salesmen. These predominantly young and often very arrogant people seem to be constantly ringing the doorbell with great savings on telephone calls, electricity, gas, double glazing and you name it we’ve got it.
There was a time when I’d happily listen to them wax lyrical for 20 minutes – from a sales script – on my doorstep before taking great pleasure in informing them “no thanks”. Even that isn’t fun anymore. I mean let’s face it, we get hassled by post, by telephone, by txt message and even in the high street sometimes – so I’ll be damned if I’, going to get hassled on my own doorstep as well.
I’m a massive fan of self service, which is why I love the internet so much and loathe the “in your face” sales approach so much. I understand that not everyone’s an anorak like me, but it’s about choice at the end of the day, and who asks for salesmen to come knocking on the door?
Well now that I’ve had a rant, I’ll just put a signpost here about my 29 minute run today. Why the signpost, well it’s just so that I can look back over my blog in days/months/years to come and think – it’s no wonder my bloody knees are knackered!
We continued our tour around the Gower beaches today with a visit to Caswell Bay. It had been a good number of years since I last visited Caswell, but on returning I could instantly remember why it was always one of my favourite Gower beaches.
The soft golden sand makes it an ideal destination for families and no doubt the DDWT family shall be returning again in the not too distant future. Of course no visit to the beach or anywhere for that matter, would be complete without my usual snapshots.
Seeing as the promised rain never materialised in these parts, I decided to go for a bike ride after we got back from Caswell. Given that I’d done my exploring for the day, I opted to do the same 14 mile ride I did the other week and take in Route 43 up to Ystalyfera. It certainly blew away any cobwebs I might have had left!
The tale of the tape was once again in my favour this week with another 2lb weight loss – which has now set me tumbling down to 17st exactly. Maybe getting to my target weight of 16st 7lbs isn’t as impossible as I thought it was going to be when I started all this fitness stuff back in January.
I’ve been doing some work recently that involved looking at Belbin‘s team roles and team building methodologies – obviously this also involved an assessment of my team role and profile. It was at this stage I thought it would be interesting to make a comparison with the last Belbin assessment I had back in 1993 whilst at university (studying a maths and computing degree I hasten to add).
It was weird to find out – although perhaps not totally unexpected – that I’d moved from being a Shaper (SH) to a Co-ordinator (CO). What me made chuckle more though was that in terms of negativity, I’m now manipulative as opposed to being provocative!
With the weather being a warm and sunny 16 degrees today, we decided to take a stroll down to Blackpill Lido and make the most the weather. DDWT Junior was particulary impressed with the variety of play stations at his disposal and we were also fortunate enough to see a rather nice sunset over Blackpill later in the evening.
Being a glutton for punishment and somewhat vain in terms of my physical appearance (aren’t we all?) I went running along the beach again today. In order to satisfy my statistical nature and for the purpose of maintaining my training record, I note that I only managed a 24 minute session today.
Nicknames are funny things aren’t they. I mean they can be highly flattering in some respects and immensely hurtful in others – at this point I seem to recall many from my younger days which fall into both categories, especially the latter! However during the last 15 months of employment, I can recall several nicknames that I have affectionately been called by my office colleague (whom is known simply as JR). I mean to be called ‘Shrek‘, ‘Johnny Cash‘, ‘Greg Rusedski’, ‘Licorice Man’, ‘Big D’ and ‘The Bouncer’ during this time has been very amusing, if somewhat bizarrely confusing – as to why I’ve been attributed with some of these titles. JR tells me it’s to do with a variety of things – my appearance, my dress sense and my attitude. Yikes, my sort of pciture does that present! Anyway, I’m sure there’ll be more nicknames over time and if I’m honest, they’re far nicer than some of the things I can imagine I’ve been called!
I watched ‘Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason‘ tonight with Mrs. DDWT and although I usually keep an open mind when it comes to chick flicks, I’m afraid I found this one rather annoying on the whole. Perhaps it is becuase I tend to lack patience when it comes to way over the top dizzy people (such as Bridget Jones (played by Renée Zellweger) or maybe it’s because film sequels are usually crap anyway.
Whilst on the subject of the movies, those film buffs amongt you might want to check out the Internet Movies Database Goofs Section – i.e. errors that shouldn’t have made it into a movie, but somehow got by the editors. There are some classics in there believe me!
Well I finally got my arse in gear today and started back with the running – having done nothing in terms of physical fitness since last Monday (April 10th) tut tut.
In retrospect, I’d missed my lunchtime trot along the beach and surprisingly the 38 minute jaunt was a lot easier than I’d anticipated. Perhaps the break had helped me recharge my batteries, even if it didn’t feel like it had.
Whilst on the theme of exercise, perhaps you’d kindly like to sponsor me for the 29 mile Gower Bike Ride and raise money for the British Heart Foundation in due course.
Please visit my personal sponsorship page and make a donation – it’s for a very worthy cause and in return I’ll keep you all updated with my preparation for the bike ride – saddle soreness and all!
