I wish I had written up our trip to Gran Canaria as it went, but I didn’t so I’ll just have to move on and hope I can get enough out of twitter when I get around to making the scrapbook.

Sunday July 12th - I was thrilled that we’d left the house in a pristine state.  Got home to fresh sheets, empty washing lines, clothes to wear to work and even meals in the freezer!.    We enjoyed walking in the sun in Dublin before it started lashing rain to welcome us home.   I imagine my summer clothes will be going back in their dusty box for a long time now.

Monday July 13th - I met up with Laura for a pint at O’Donaghues.    We booked the back room and agreed it’s a sweet spot for a couple of drinks after our geeknic August 2nd. Vishal joined us for a while and we joked around for a couple of rounds.  It was fun being back in dublin, out in an old bar too.

Tuesday July 14th - Jan hit the town tonight after we went to the gym.  I think I maintained my fitness and weight which is pretty cool after such a wild 9 days away.   I relaxed with Jan out.  Mud mask, my tv shows, feet up, hot chocolate.  It was so nice.   As I went to sleep I was listening out for the ocean like in our hotel room, but our suburb is completley silent.

Wednesday July 15th - We went to see Harry Potter, The half blood prince.   I really loved this movie, at one point a door knocked and I forgot where I was and thought I was in my lounge room.  I was immersed which was great, I really needed to escape for a while.  The movie is so dark like the books at this stage.  Can’t wait to see it again and to see the last book come to life over the next two years.

Thursday July 16th - At work I learned a lot about JQuery and Boxy this week which was kind of fun and pretty frustrating too.  Though always good to get a new set of skills.  Declan announced his new podcast Code Mongrel which ROCKS.  it’s a quick update of open source news over the last week.  He give our OSSBarcamp a plug as well.

Friday July 17th - Jan and I sat chatting about our future over crepes, then went to the science gallery and saw the Infectious exhibition.   We really love the science gallery,  they always have really interesting exhibits including some electronics,  art works to do with the theme as well as demonstrations of the science as well.    One of the rooms was set up to explore how laughter is contageous.  You would lie back (beer in hand) and watch videos of people laughing,  eventually a smile did spread on my face and I laughed along… I would catch the eye of Jan or another person in the room and we’d both laugh.  Fun.  We went tonight to see ‘Richard Wiseman’ talk about his Laughter Lab project to find the funniest joke in the world.  Richard told a lot of jokes, did some magic and connected his stories to psychology which is his area of expertise as well.

Jan Science

Saturday July 18th

Today was the big day.  We’d been training for months for this.   Andrea drove us over to Pheonix park and we ran in the 5 mile race with over 5000 people.   I came in at 1hour and 4 minutes, and Jan sped ahead of me in the last mile and got to the finish in just under an hour.  The course was pretty easy,  there was a hill but it wasn’t so nasty.  I had fun along the way stopping to look out over the city, and see the runners go past the tops of old buildings.   I even spotted a deer but it bounced away before I could get a photo.   Doing the distance was my goal all along and we got through 8km with no worries.   I enjoyed the finish line where we got Tshirts and goodie bags.  The bag contained a lunch box with cheese sandwiches and an apple.  There was chocolate, popcorn, toothpaste(??), a running magazine, a guide for running the marathon, which we’ll use to train to run for 30 minutes in a row, then set other goals.

We napped in the afternoon and brought home some curry.  We watched Slumdog millionare which I mostly found depressing, not sure why people enjoyed watching so much terrible poverty so much hrmn…

Sunday July 19th

I bought some size 12 jeans which don’t quite fit me but I’ll keep trying on as I lose weight.  I also bought some size 14 jeans that fit fine, first blue jeans I’ve owned in a long long time.  I’m alergic to the metal studs but I painted them with nailpolish.  I wrote up a training plan to jog 15 minutes in a row,  aiming to do that by the end of October.  I chatted with Dad about doing a trip to South Island New Zealand…

Jan and I have signed up for an 8k race on July 18th. We’re not so fit so we’ll have to train.

Here’s a basic training plan, hopefully can update along the way with how we’re going. The race is 11 weeks from Saturday. :D. Unfortuantely the week before we’re going to be in the Canary Islands where we usually get pretty lazy. The plan this year is to keep up with the program though, go for a run along the beach or something.

Need to also note we’re jogging and running this distance, using intervals of jogs. Last weekend we went between lamp posts or to the end of the block etc.

Completed Runs