Cycling on roundabouts and other such extreme sports

I attended a cycling safety training course this morning and then almost got squashed under a car while cycling home, because I didn't look over my shoulder on a roundabout - how beautifully ironic that would have been! I cycled for about 3 hours in total, with some breaks, which is the longest I have cycled and I didn't keel over at any point so yay me I say! :)

I'm also having more fun than I ever imagined possible with the uklele - I'm playing a few songs now already and trying to improve my strumming and that. I'm not very co-ordinated, I'm quite clumsy actually so I tend to lose the rhythm of the strumming very quickly once I start singing along. However, I'm having so much fun while learning it doesn't really matter! :D

The uke is here!

It arrived yesterday, and I can play (badly) On The Radio, Creep and 5 Years Time. It's such a wonderfully happy instrument, I could strum away on it making no kind of musical sense for hours!

In other news, I went to the gym last night and went for a lovely swim, I can feel the difference even the last week of healthiness has made on my body already, more energy and strength and even feeling the need to go to bed at a healthy time now and get a healthy amount of sleep. It's great :)

My impoverished status because of iphones (and ukeleles) means I also can't really afford to buy crappy food or go out so it's all water and gym for the next few weeks anyway!

Savage. :)

Weekend of loveliness - fishing, BBQs and fake tan!

What an awesome weekend - I grabbed a lovely sushi lunch with a friend in Jervis Square on Friday, attended the Trinity Ball that night and then headed to Cork on Saturday morning (quite unwell it must be said).

That day we went fishing off the pier in Ballycotton. All we caught was seaweed (and Chlamydia...as my friend Ash kept saying....) but it was so gorgeous out there, I could have stayed all day optimistically casting off.


We then headed to Ballymona beach which is quite near Ballycotton, lit up our bucket BBQ and roasted sausages, burgers, lamb chops, some chicken, turnip (??) and I ate paté on cucumber (I'm a coeliac and had no crackers with me so I improvised!).

It was such a lovely day, with lovely people and lovely food. Factor 50 suncream meant I didn't get a sniff of sunburn or sunrash, but today I made up for my whiteness with some fake tan - my new love. I'm lovely and sunkissed but not orange. It's a bit of a novelty for me!

In other news, I got my bike lock replaced. Hurrah!

Pluckety pluckety plinky plonky

I bought a ukelele - isn't it adorable!



The red colour and the dolphin just seduced me the moment I saw it. I'd imagine this will end up abandoned in a corner in a few months but for while I'm trying and failing to learn beautiful songs on it it shall keep me entertained!

Beautiful!

UCC is beautiful. I was walking up into the campus today from the gym, stepped under the arch and into the quad, and was just blown away by its beauty. I had no camera on me, and the iPhone's one just didn't capture the gorgeousness of it. The evening sun was glinting over the trees in front of the Boole library, there were blackbirds pecking the grass and only a handful of people were walking around its perimeter. So lovely and peaceful, I'll miss it when I have to leave.

Back in January when the snow was around, I took the following picture - what an amazing day that was!


In other news, I had to cut the lock off my bike myself this evening. The fact that I spent 20 minutes clipping off my bike lock in the middle of a busy thoroughfare in UCC with not a single person stopping to ask me why I was, for all intents and purposes, stealing someone's bike does not reassure me about the safety of my bicycle in the future. Halfords shall also be getting an angry e mail re: broken bike lock. It's new, it shouldn't be breaking that easily!

...........I smell....

of suncream!

Oh the delights of sunshine once I have Factor 50 plastered all over me. I can almost forgive it for hurting me so when I see everyone looking so cheerful and eating ice cream, playing football and cycling around!

Life is full of puppy dogs, lollipops etc! :)

Bad food and bike luck!

Bike lock is jammed and it's trapped at work for the moment, the sushi place is closed on Mondays and I made an utter bollocks of BBQ rib by making a rookie mistake of not soaking the bodice before baking it. It was so salty it actually burnt the inside of my mouth! What a doofus I am!

On the plus side, the move to Dublin is getting more exciting, and I'm heading back to the gym to do some more training tomorrow after my evening meeting. :)

The cycle I'm doing is a 70km charity cycle from Dublin to Arklow for Womens Aid, a charity that work to stop domestic abuse and protect women and children who are caught up in that cycle. It's a brilliant charity and as soon as I have the money to register (oh the poverty) I'll set up my charity page and start getting moneys togehter for it! :)

I'd like to add a nice happy picture to counteract my little rant above about the food, so here's a pic of the puppies I go home to every weekend in my parents' house!

Dirty looks begone!

Ì have cycled to the gym, did some running and some exercise biking, stretches and whatnot, and have returned on the bike. Betty the bike is incredibly happy. As is Rebecca, owner of said bike.

The gym was odd today actually. I plucked up the courage to wear shorts for the first time ever in the gym, and for some reason everyone else took the opposite tactics and were covering more flesh than I've ever seen covered. There was even a woman in a burqa.

Things I didn't expect to happen today:

1) Actually managing to cycle to the gym and back
2) Seeing no shorts in the gym except mine and instead witnessing a birth in popularity of the gym burqa.

What the frikkin frack? Great session though, I forgot all about my pasty little legs wobbling back and forth on the exercise bike and got right into it.

Of course now that I'm back, all I can think about is eating something incredibly unhealthy, but the homemade lasagne waiting in the fridge to be reheated is keeping my willpower strong.


I really feel great, hopefully I can keep the momentum going. :)

Who knows where the gym is?

So I bought a bike a few weeks ago, with the intentions of doing a lovely charity cycle in May. I was doing well in terms of training etc but between being away for work and feeling a bit sicky I've been a bit shocking the last 2 weeks or so.

So I've decided today's the day I'm going to cycle down to the gym and do a bit of exercise and hopefully manage to cycle home (I've a feeling I'll end up face down on the pavement, but at least I'll be toned and embarassed).

Here's the bike, I love her very much. She's currently sitting outside my room throwing me dirty looks:

Daffodils in a student house

Note the innovative use of a Heineken glass as a vase. So beautiful, so cheap - Daffs cheer any house up :)

Not really sure...

...What to actually blog about really. It all seems a bit self indulgent to have a corner of the internet just for the random thoughts in my head.

I suppose it's different when you're a teenager and you feel like everything you think must be original and interesting, because it is to you. Eventually however, you run out of thoughts, or at least you start noticing the same patterns in them - and you even start to bore yourself with your hysteria and pretension.

See unlike marvellously talented and wonderful friends of mine (www.maevekeane.blogspot.com) I don't have lovely items to show off or random bits of art or cookery. I just have me and a keyboard and a lot of ranting.

But sure....we'll see how it goes. :)