Now that I’m home again it’s time to start back into my exercise program.  I did consider continuing this whilst travelling but it was too awkward.  At home I use quite a few exercise DVDs which I didn’t want to bring with me.  This doesn’t mean I didn’t exercise at all but it did lack structure.

Marty has been going to the gym regularly and has been trying to convince me to join.  I find the gym boring.  Why would I want to sit on a bike that goes nowhere when I can go out and cycle around the river?  He has, unfortunately, come up with a valid reason.  Most of the exercise I do is aerobic.  I like to dance, cycle, and hit things.  I don’t really do any sort of strength training.  As thyroid disease causes muscle weakness I need to do something about this.

Yesterday I added strength training to my daily routine.  I have a set of dumbbells and a book on how to use them.  Day 1 focused on the top part of the body, which was fine, but today was all about the legs and lower back.  My legs don’t want to exercise.  I have enlarged calf muscles, as I walk strangely, but the muscles in the top of my legs are wussy things that like to hide behind layers of fat.  I’m not even going to look at what’s coming up in Day 3 in case it frightens my abdominal muscles into finding a way to prevent me exercising.

Tomorrow I might go the gym with Marty.  I suppose it can’t hurt to give it a go (though I have a feeling that those words may be poorly chosen.)

I have finally gotten round to signing up to the Perl Iron Man blogging challenge.  I’m hoping that this will motivate me to write more about my involvement in the Perl community.  Someone, probably Schwern, pointed out that since I joined The Perl Foundation that I don’t really write about Perl anymore.  This isn’t a deliberate choice it’s just that lots of my spare time now goes into working on a variety of Perl projects instead of blogging about them.

I have lots of draft posts about the conferences I have attended this year.  It would be good to have these finished before I attend YAPC::Asia in September.

I have been spending more time in the sun than I like.   A week in Lisbon, Portugal, a week in Yalikavak, Turkey, and now a week in Aalsmeer, Holland.  I always joke that I was born for the winter months.  I like the dark, shade, and shadows.  I like the winter sun,  the bright blue skies and the biting cold.  The summer sun and my skin are in constant battle.  Long clothes and sunblock may protect it but leave me feeling hot and uncomfortable.

People in Europe make fun of me because I’m pale – vampire, ghost, Morticia.  Strangers normally don’t make comments but the Turkish can be quite vocal.  Walking through the market I was described as a snowflake.  When I went swimming in the sea a Turkish woman stroked my arm and exclaimed at the colour as I was so white.  What I wasn’t expecting was to be surprised by the colour myself.

I was wearing a black and white bikini and my little sister was asking me if my skin ever got as pale as the white material.  I lifted my arm to show her that it’s a completely different shade and noticed that I was sparkling in the sun.  Like the vampires in Twilight who can’t go into the sun because their skin sparkles I realised that my skin was glittering gold and silver.  I always wear sunblock but not usually so much of it.  It’s good to know that my Japanese sunblock is going to help me look like a modern, friendlier type of vampire.

I was really hoping to get the opportunity at the airport to catch up with my huge backlog of email.  I have my laptop, power, free wifi, and a desk.  My flight doesn’t leave for another two hours.  It should be perfect.  But I can’t manage to not overhear the conversations going on around me.  I’ve always had problems blocking out background noise but today the English conversations are driving me mad.