Monday February 7th 2005!!
I assume it hasn't escaped your notice that it has been well over a month since I have managed to get around to updating. It has to be said that all blame for this must be laid at the door of the Lush Forum. Never has soap been so interesting and engaging. I spend most of my time there, it is like a disease, seriously. Between that and my new friends from the the Forum and regular Trillian chattings with lots of different people I spend all my time on the computer playing and not enough telling you about it.
But enough is enough. Never before has an entire month gone past without me updating - let alone the first one of a new year - and I am missing being able to chat in an uninhibited way without getting up anybody's noses. They're a weird lot on that Forum (presumably, the same as every Forum in the known Webiverse) and it's very easy to offend them. I am getting quite good at tact and diplomacy, although my nickname is "Gobshite" at the moment.
In REAL life there have been several Bristol Forum events of late which have kept me busy and Mr Z with a dearth of home-cooked food. These have included -
Next week I am going "off-posse" (like in ski-ing where you ski the bits that aren't mapped) and going to a Forum meet at Bluewater, in Kent. It coincides nicely with visit to Maternal Gran, who, bless her, hasn't been out of the home since October due to Mother Hand's ongoing loopiness and inability to travel. Hence, I have managed to talk Kez into putting me up on Sunday night at her loverly pad in Orpington so I can get down to Hythe nice and early on Monday, and then pop into Bluewater on my way back to Bristol. Or something. I am a bit nervous venturing off-posse but I'm sure it will go well. Then on Tuesday we're doing another BBC meet so we can eat the Krispy Kremes I buy at Bluewater. I am starting to look suspiciously like aforementioned fried cake with all this eating we've been doing. But it is so lovely to finally have some friends that are local to me who aren't going to move anytime soon (surely they can't ALL move, anyway).
I've also been mad busy with work in January. Having two year 11 groups is nothing to be sniffed at when you've got to mark their mocks AND their coursework AND write their reports. AND chase the bloody coursework up. That's 46 mock exams, 46 long reports and 92 pieces of coursework. As well as that I've had to scrape the barrel of creativity to come up with a revision aid that everybody will find useful. I settled in the end for a couple of big circles of card, one with a window cut in it, paper-fastened together. Then we will write notes on the card underneath so that they can revise a little at a time. It involved about 30 quid's worth of card, but since the department have just purchased 4 brand new TVs, videos and DVD players, I think we can afford it. We started it today. Amazingly, it took the class 2 hours to cut three circles in card, divide each circle into 8 segments and label them in the appropriate way. I think I will invite a maths teacher to come and observe when I do it with my other group, since it involves angles and suchlike.
I have also been planning and teaching a rather excellent (although I say it myself) sequence of lessons on Dracula. The kids have been loving it, and it has involved watching bits of the Simpsons and looking at German and Romanian versions of disgusting stories about gypsies being cannibalised and so on. Not by Dracula - he wasn't a blood-sucking vampire. That's Bram Stoker for you. The whole unit is based on interpretations and why we think of Dracula as a vampire when, in fact, he was merely a tyrannical Romanian ruler in the 15th century.
So the parental complaint seemed a little off-topic.
I love getting these. The latest wasn't for me, but it was about the Dracula scheme of work.. It was along the lines of, "I am very concerned that my daughter is studying Dracula, as a strict Christian family we do not believe in the undead and do not feel this is a legitimate learning exercise, I want my daughter removed from her History lessons until this sequence of lessons is finished." I feel that if her daughter had listened, she would have realised that the whole point of the lessons is to point out that Dracula is NOT the undead and that he has just been the victim of a shameless smear campaign by Bram Stoker. Mike composed a scathing reply along those lines. I told him letting them watch Van Helsing wasn't a good idea though.
I am feeling fatter and fatter. I have tailed off going to the gym, every so often I get a twinge of last year's groin strain threatening to reappear, and it was so painful I am afraid to push it. I still go about 3 times a week, but I am much less dedicated about going during the week now. It's easier to sleep. I even skipped kick boxing last Friday and went to bed at 6.30pm instead. I slept for 15 hours though, so I must have needed it. I am nervous to go kick boxing too, because I keep getting hurt. Last time I went, I ended up sparring with this testosteroned newbie who booted me around the head so hard that I thought I was going to (a) chuck and (b) burst into tears, so I told him I wasn't fighting anymore and sat out the rest of the bout. I know that makes me a bit of a wuss, but I wasn't wearing headgear OR a mouthguard. Fighting inexperienced people is always the worst because they don't know how to keep it light. I need to keep going to the gym though because otherwise the kick boxing warm up is such a killer. I also have my old spare tyre back around my ribs and I am losing the definition I liked so much in my arms. I am determined to be thin enough by May to wear my old slinky red dress to the Year 11 ball, or my new black dress with the cherries on (would be even better but is a size 14 so I am not TOO set on that).
I have been to a couple of Spinning classes since Christmas but there's no denying it, I just hate them. I am doing dance sessions on Saturdays and I am still going to Body Combat on Sunday mornings. It's a funny old class, that. There is this older lady who goes, she doesn't seem to realise she's no longer a teenager. She punches like a bit of seakelp caught in a current - really weedy (groan) but also stupidly stylised. And when the tracks end she does this silly series of punches and jumps all of her own and then jogs off to the side to get a drink while we're all stood there. She wears a sweatband and full make up and has a pierced navel and dyed blonde hair. Perhaps she is one of the Grans from Fame. Then there's "HUH!"-man, who makes grunting noises in between the rest of us going "Kiya!" (or whatever it is we say, I only mime it anyway). The class is usually led by Shark-instructor, who has big scary teeth and a weeny crop top. I have much more respect for her since I saw her in my local Chinese takeaway. She makes us do silly shimmy-shimmies in time to the music when we should be roundhousing and stuff, it's a lot of fun. Last time I went she was ill though, and so was Bunny-instructor (she wears full make up and has long false nails) so it was taken by Hamster-instructor who needs little explanation. Hamster-instructor usually does the yoga stuff, and it was the day after that class that me old groin strain started playing up, so I fear I have something against her now.
Anyway, I expect I will get back into the swing of it soon. The kids at school will start commenting on how fat I am soon, that should help. It's bad enough already, I only have two pairs of work trousers left that fit - my "fat" work trousers are out because the flies won't stay done up due to belly bulge *blush* and I split the seam on my other "fat" work trousers, from the bottom of the zip to the crotch, before Christmas *double blush*. Fat fat fat fat fat fat fat. AND my Slimming World Consultant is leaving AGAIN. That's the second one who's left since I've been going to my local class. I am starting to feel rather disheartened. And FAT.