work chrimbo lunch

Today is the day of the work Christmas lunch.

One of the nice things about the company I work for is that we get little perks like this. We also go to the pub for lunch when it's someone's birthday, and it's always paid for by the company, which I think is a nice little perk.

Recently, though, there's been a tendency for the bosses to try to use the Chrimbo lunch as a business opportunity. So, basically they invite along lots of people they want to butter up, if you will. It's gotten to the stage in recent years where these people actually outnumber the people I work with.

I shouldn't complain, but it hardly makes it a situation where you feel like letting your hair down.

I've not much else to say today, either.

I do have two worries for this coming weekend.

First off, there's the Sunday weigh-in, which I'm again not expecting to go well. I'm starting to think I should just formally say the diet and weight loss is officially "on hold". I mean, I'll still try to avoid massively consuming food and I'll walk when I can, but that kinda feeds into my second worry.

Which is the weather - forecasts have been predicting a return of the snow around here (I believe it's never actually left some places) for the weekend.

I don't really care if this poxes up work on Monday and Tuesday, but it'll be a bit of a disaster if it's still having an impact later in the week, as I'm supposed to drive down to Devon for the family get together.

only thursday?

Wow - it's only Thursday.

I feel like yesterday should have been Friday. I'm getting to the stage where I could really do with a break from work. But my last day at work isn't until next Tuesday.

In fact, to be honest, I'm not sure I can really be bothered to write any more today.

into the blue

The weekend's movie rental was Into The Blue.

To be perfectly frank it was okay - nothing spectacular, but equally not terrible either. Actually, if I'm honest, it felt weirdly like a TV movie, rather than a proper Hollywood film.

I mean - think extended Baywatch episode and you're almost there.

And really the stuff it does well is the whole water-based filming. There are a lot of shots of very good looking (well, the women are a bit skinny for my taste) people swimming about in not very many clothes. And you get to see a lot of sea life and it's all very well shot and enjoyable to watch. Much like those montage bits in Baywatch.

The plot is less solid - it does basically work, but it relies on quite a few conveniences and expositional scenes that I'm not sure if I really bought. It's full of what I've heard called movie logic - it works at the time you're watching it, but when you think back afterwards, you realise it doesn't really hold up.

There was quite a nice twist towards the end, but more because it had successfully sold a dummy and even there, how it gets to that twist and disposes of the dummy is a bit ham-fisted. Not sure that really makes sense, but I don't want to spoiler anything.

I think it was also a bit long at an hour and 45 minutes. I think chopping 15 minutes off that - and there were a few sub-plots that could easily have been dumped. Indeed, there seemed to be a few elements that looked they kinda had been half dumped, as they didn't really have any pay-off.

But if I was to make one really big criticism it was that there wasn't really any reason to care about these people. At the end when everything comes up roses, it doesn't really feel like they deserve the pay-off that they get.

I'm also not entirely sure that it makes sense when you look back at the reasoning that got them into the pickle they find themselves in in the first place. But the point is more that these people aren't really doing all that badly in the first place, and when they get greedy they aren't really punished for that greed, just very unlucky, if that makes sense.

So given that pickle they end up in is almost entirely of their own making, it doesn't really endear them to you. If they'd been doing it for nobler goals than simply greed, I think I would have liked it better.

no change

So last weekends weigh-in revealed I'd not lost any weight whatsoever.

This didn't really come as a surprise, but was a bit disappointing.

There were reasons I wasn't expecting any change, and they relate mainly to what I ate. Basically, last week marked the beginning of the influx of sweats and other treats at work. And while I resisted for a while, I still ate a few bits and bobs and then on Friday I totally caved in and ate several biscuits and several sweets.

What makes that really bad is that the snow was still hanging around and I was unable even to go for my short lunchtime walks. The previous weekend was also really badly affected, as I talked about last week, so overall my exercise was also down.

Now, I tend not to think of the exercise as my primary means of loosing weight, but I do tend to think of it as a way of keeping my metabolism up. Doing exercise raises your metabolism, which is the primary way you burn calories.

In other words, the double whammy of eating badly and not doing much exercising was why I didn't loose weight.

And, to be perfectly frank, I'm not expecting next week's weigh in to go well either. This Friday is the work Christmas lunch, where I'll be eating a really big, calorie rich dinner, and the odds are several people will bring in some snacks and treat too. So yeah, a bad week is likely this week too.

What I'm hoping for in order to reach my target weight is that after that I'm on holiday, and so can stay away from snacks and treats, but also do lots of walking. Except, the weather forecasts are not looking promising - the snowy conditions are predicted to return and could well bugger me up.

In other words there's the real chance that I may well be facing a forced abandonment of my plans.

crap-tabulous

I felt really crappy this last weekend.

I'm not really sure why, though. I think a big part of it was that the end of the week wasn't all that great at work. I'd basically made a mistake on one of the projects and on another project I was really struggling t get my head around some numbers, where I thought it would be a quick job.

Also, things were pretty distracting last week - there was a lot of coming and going and general activity in the office. Ours is a small office, as we're only a small company, but it's open plan and the location of my desk means that any activity can be very distracting.

We've also had a new person start work and, if I'm totally honest, I'm not all that keen on her. She's basically joined because someone else is about to go off on maternity leave and she seems to be struggling to really come up to speed on how stuff works.

Now, to be fair, this isn't totally unexpected. How we do stuff is all about stuff in people's heads, where really it should be written down and formalised. I mean, the mistake I made was essentially as a result of my not quite getting the right end of a particular stick and using the wrong document as a template.

Now really, we shouldn't have multiple independent templates that are so close as to be easily confused, but we do, so I can understand why she's struggling. But it means she's asking a lot of questions and that can be pretty distracting.

But also this last weekend I was finally able to go out for some walks and, in attempt to make up for the previous week, I did a couple of long walks and found myself aching a bit. And that, combined with a more general fatigue, meant I wasn't feeling particularly on-form physically either.

So yeah, have to say it was a bit of a miracle I did anything this last weekend other than stay in bed.