October / November 2013 Review

I missed a month. I had a cold. Actually I had two colds. One on the first long weekend I took off, and one on the second. Since the second, in November, I have been taking Zinc, Vitamin D, 2xDay Nurse first thing to help keep the coughing down and until the last week, Night Nurse to sleep.

I've seen Zizek's The Pervert's Guide To Ideology and the documentary Cutie and The Boxer at the ICA; Hannah Arednt, Fifth Estate, Blue Jasmine, Muscle Shoals, Seduced and Abandoned and the Curzons; and Thanks For Sharing, Machete Kills, Captain Phillips, and The Counsellor at the local Cineworld. Also Wayne McGregor's Atoms and Hofesh Schecter's latest at Sadler's Wells. I read several volumes of the amazing Transmetropolitan, The Theory That Would Not Die, Antifragile, The Signal And The Noise, Tokyo Vice, Information Is Beautiful and Gustave Caillebotte: An Impressionist and Photography. I also took another lap round Kendig's A Guide to Plane Algebraic Curves and the fun bits around Hirzbruch-Riemman-Roch in Gathmann's lecture notes on Algebraic Geometry.

My training has been erratic, so I've switched to doing two sets and more but shorter sessions. Plus each week I have to increase the weight on something I'm doing, or add in a new exercise. So over the two months I've reached 132lbs on dead-lift, comfortably, just hit 165 lbs bench-press without a spot, and have reduced the support I use for pull-ups to... no, that's embarrassing. And added Turkish get-ups. As ever, call me when you're my age and doing those weights.

 

Sis and I dined at Picture in November - if I had money I would seriously book a seat at the bar twice a week at least - and had our annual visit to Rules in October, where we dined on Bambi - Roe Deer, and very nice it was too. I went to a farewell supper at Floridita for Renata, who's now left the Third Space to go travelling for a while.

Plus work gave us a team-building trip up and down from the London Eye pier to Canary Wharf and back on one of those whizzy boats, followed by some time up the Shard, though the visibility was not so good: that was the annual jolly.

All I can really remember is coughing, clearing my nose, and not wanting to leave the house for the last two or three weekends. I didn't even go training the on the last couple of Sundays. Hence the increased weekly schedule. One reason to do these things is to remind myself that it wasn't all a loss. I'm making good progress with the Riemann-Roch essay, though it's hard getting consistent time to work on it, as Saturdays really are just turning into serious days of rest. Until I do the ironing in the evening. Also I do appreciate how much more rested I feel the next morning after returning straight home from work and watching some Burn Notice.

And now it's sodding December. Xmas. The gym is closing for a week for refurbishment before the holiday. I have already arranged massages and osteopathy.