Tag Archives: fitbit

Friday 21st July 2017 – WELL, I’M NOT …

… going out for an evening walk tonight, that’s for sure.

Not only do we have a howling gale, we have a lashing rainstorm too. And it’s pretty black over Bill’s mother’s too.

I had another bad night last night, that’s for sure. Only 5 hours and something-worth of sleep, with ony four hours of that in a deep and restful sleep. Yes, I’ve charged up the Fitbit and uploaded the data to the laptop.

I was busy working on another mega-blog page after my walk and somehow ended up being carried away. 01:45 when I went to bed. No wonder that I was tired when the alarm went off, and that I crashed out for a couple of hours this afternoon.

But a shower brought me round somewhet after breakfast and having dealt with “a computer issue”, i went shopping.

And I’ve been spending my money too, yet again. Although nowhere near as bad as last week.

The Centrakor was the beneficiary of my largesse today. They had some multi-USB hubs on sale at €3:99 and I need one of those, seeing as how Brain of Britain has somehow contrived to leave all three of his back in Virlet.

But of course one thing leads to another, and once you make a start you’ll be surprised just how many other things there are.

The Bluetooth oyster that I had as a hands-free device before the bluetooth radio – I took that to Canada for use in Strider, but it’s a different kind of lead than a standard USB lead, and I’ve … errr … misplaced that.

And so I’ve been havong a good look around for another one. And they had one in Centrakor – with a Bluetooth oyster device included. All for €7:99, which is the same price as I have been quoted for a cable. Do bears have picnics in the woods?

Not only that, they were having a sale of silicon pie dishes and the like for just €3:99 which is cheap at anybody’s price. And now I have a proper round pie dish, a bread/cake mould and a mould for making six tarts. I’ll be having a go at making mince pies in the winter.

Note to self – ask someone to bring me a couple of jars of mincemeat from the UK.

I stayed in at lunchtime too – the winds were wicked out there and I wouldn’t have enjoyed sitting on my wall at all. And I rather lost direction this afternoon with the fatigue. So it’s not been a very good day.

But I did finish the blog entries about the trip to the UK in June 2011. Now to see what else I’ve missed before I start on the Canada 2011 pages.

And I did have a visitor at lunchtime – and I’ll tell you all about that tomorrow. I’m too tired to go into details tonight.

Footnote
I did go out – just for a quick lap around the block. And in the 5 minutes that I was out, I was soaked to the skin. Except where I had my new McKinley raincoat. That did exactly the job that it was supposed to do – and I wish that I had bought it in a bigger size now.

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Wednesday 19th July 2017 – THIS WALKING IDEA …

… is supposed to make me sleep better at night.

And it worked for the first couple of nights, but last night I dunno what happened because I was still sitting up here working at 01:45 and even when I did go to bed I couldn’t sleep (note to self – check Fitbit next time that I charge it up)

So a very tired me staggered out of bed this morning … errr … somewhat after the alarm had gone off.

Grey, miserable and windy. But that’s enough about me – let’s talk about the weather. And I didn’t feel much like going out for my baguette this morning. But I was early too, which makes a change.

Lunch on the wall, with no lizards and mice to keep me company, a little … errr … repose this afternoon, and another helping of lentil and mushroom curry for tea.

And the blog.

Having spent some time last night (or, rather, early this morning) untangling my visit to the UK in early June 2011, I started the assault on the pages.

I’m halfway through at the morning, having dealt with pages like this one that never even had a place-holder before. The next half a dozen have been done too.

It’s amazing the things that I have forgotten, and the things that never made it onto the blog. it’s high time that I caught up with it.

And remember the other day when I mentioned my mammoth expenditure?

The first part of it has come today. But of course it’s the part that doesn’t work without the other bit, so you’ll have to wait a little longer to see what it is.

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Monday 17th July 2017 – LAST NIGHT …

… I had 5 hours 38 minutes of restful sleep and 1 hour 14 minutes of restless sleep. I can see that I’m going to become pretty annoying with this Fitbit thing.

But don’t worry – it only synchronises the data when I charge it up off the laptop. That’s about once every three or four days, I reckon. And if I charge it up off a plug then it will be even less frequent than that.

But it must have been the restless bit when I was away with the fairies. And just for a change last night, with something that doesn’t happen very often at all, I was an observer in this one.

For some reason the star of last night’s show was a woman. She needed to be somewhere at 08:15 and it was now 07:55 so she reckoned that she had a couple more minutes to loiter around before she needed to leave. But just as she was about to go her husband shouted down from his window that he would take her if she could wait a couple more minutes. It turned out that her husband was a medical man of some description and in taking her he was leaving a couple of patients unsupervised. While he was away something went wrong and he was hauled up before the GMC. It was held that as the nature of his wife’s voyage was something medical, he was not wrong to attend to her, but in abandoning his other patients for that period he was guilty of a lack of good judgement.

The alarm awoke me and after breakfast I went and had a shave and a shower (and to charge up the Fitbit off the laptop – hence the data – while I was in there). And I nipped down to the magasin de presse quite early for the baguette – before the crowds arrived.

Lunch was of course on my wall, and I saw the Grima come dieseling in. I was going to take a photo but I found that I had left my phone behind. But it was nice up there in the sun – I really enjoyed it.

For tea I put a mug full of lentils in the slow cooker at 17:00 and by 19:30 they wee done to a turn. With the left-over mushrooms I made another mega-curry with enough for three more days.

Good news on the blog front. I’ve now caught up with where I wanted to be. I have however lost 48 entries somewhere that don’t fall in the “unclassifieds” and don’t fall in the “updated” either. I’m intrigued to know what is the issue with them.

But what I’ve done is to start at the beginning – july 2009 – and go through looking for missed days – days which have been conjoined into others. I’ve already found eight or none that I have missed and which now have pages of their own.

Two pages in particular from my 2010 visit to Canada – this one and this one – have taken me all afternoon and quite rightly so.

They were immense and it gave me an opportunity to put into practice the idea about which I told you yesterday – to write up my daily adventures in North America on the blog rather than on the website – although I might do that as well in due course.

Now I’m going to go for a 10-minute stroll. I’ve done this the last couple of nights as the Fitbit is telling me that I’m not having anything like enough exercise and that I’m sitting around far too much.

Sentiments with which I concur wholeheartedly.

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Saturday 15th July 2017 – OUCH! THAT HURT!

And I’m not talking about cutting my finger open with the sharp vegetable knife when I picked up the cutlery out of the drainer either. It was much more painful than that!

So last night was another restless night. Especially so seeing as how I was off on my travels again.

There was a war on, and of course the UK was very susceptible to a blockade. However there was no rationing and people were going about as it it all was of no consequence, something that struck me as being a great matter of concern.
And then I was with my mother (but whoever it was wasn’t my mother, thank heavens) and it involved something to do with Mark III Cortinas. She drove away and I was left holding a bonnet from the aforementioned – a light blue one. I was trying the blots with my fingers to make sure that they were loose enough without disturbing the settings. A couple of women in a cafe made some ribald remark about me being with a “much older” woman so I went over to say “hello”. Their tune soon changed when they saw me come over because they recognised me, and they realised that the “much older” woman had been my mother.
While I was in the queue here a whole group of people came to the counter and it was all people whom I recognised from from a difficult period of my life. They were all pleased and enthusiastic to see me but I wasn’t at all pleased to see them. They crowded around me and asked me how I was and I was really uncomfortable in all of this. We discussed work and they found out that I had given over a good job to go driving taxis – but at leat “it was my own taxi, and not someone else’s”.

I’ve no idea where all of these people have come from – people whom I met in the early 80s in a couple of unpleasant encounters and whom I wish never to see again. I can’t think whatever it might have been to trigger all of that off.

After breakfast and a shower, shave and clean clothes, Caliburn got his motor running and headed off down the highway in the general direction of the shops.

LIDL came up with nothing special and neither did NOZ, the rubbish shop. But at least they had a few more of these hexagonal herb and spice jars. I get through tons of turmeric here so I stocked up with two containers of that together with a couple more of different types.

At Centrakor I went a little berserk. They were selling cigarette lighter socket twin-USB adaptors for just €1:99. I need one of those for Strider over in Canada so I picked one up.

But they also had some of those portable battery packs for powering your mobile phone or other hand-held appliance – a 2600 mAh set-up and just €3.99. That’s half what I have seen them elsewhere at their cheapest, and that’s without postage and packing too of course!

LeClerc was just the usual banal stuff, but I REALLY went mad in Intersport.

The trainers that I bought at Sports Direct in Leuven last October have fallen apart. So I only paid €20 for them, I know, but they’ve been letting in water for quite a while and now the soles are falling off.

Intersport was having a sale so went to have a look around, and came away with a pair of Salomon Goretex trainer-style hiking boots. They should have been … gulp … €119 but they were reduced by 30% in the sale and they were so comfortable.

I hope that they last a darn sight longer than these ones that I’ve just chucked in the bin.

And that’s not all either.

My rain jacket is falling to pieces. It has a couple of holes in it (never good for a rainjacket – holes in it) and it’s looking well the worse for wear. I have another one but that is one of those bright yellow rubberised ones that is uncomfortable, bulky and sweaty.

Today though, reduced to just €24:95 was a proper McKinley breathable Aquamax. And in my size too, which was unusual.

And last, but by no means least – I’ve been talking for a while about buying a Fitbit – one of these that tells you your heartbeat, how far you’ve walked, how many calories you’ve burnt and all of that stuff. But when I’ve seen the price, it’s put me off.

But a new model has been launched and Intersport was clearing out the remains of the previous one. Nothing wrong with them at all – there’s just a new design – and they were reduced to just €50:00.

Yes, I’m making ready for my holidays, aren’t I?

All I need now is a new suitcase and a new camera.

But this Fitbit – “always ready when you are” it proudly announces on the packet. So I went to wear it … and the battery was flat! What kind of misleading publicity is that?

Back home, the whole town was heaving with grockles as predicted. Even coming home the back way I was stuck for ages. And it’s a good job that we have our own private parking here because the public car park was jam-packed, with grockles dragging off suitcases all over the old town.

Early for my baguette tomorrow, I reckon.

Fighting off the waves of sommeil this afternoon, I was on the blog again. Not reducing the “unclassifieds” but untangling a few bits and pieces from when I returned from the Ile d’Yeu until going back to Brussels.

I’ve put that bit off for a while, but a close look at it revealed that it was fairly straighforward to untangle so here I am. Well on my way to finalising that little lot.

Tea tonight was more mashed potato, frozen veg and burger. And I fried a little onion and garlic with my burger too and it was delicious.

I really do appreciate living here in my little apartment.

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4th March 2017 – HANNAH’S FITBIT …

… tells me that we walked over 11 miles today. And I’m supposed to be ill too! You would never think so.

Last night was a bad night as far as I was concerned. It took me a while to drop off to sleep and I kept on waking up during the night, like at 03:00 and 06:00. At 07:00 the alarm went off and so I crawled into the shower for a really good soak (I didn’t have the energy to do that yesterday evening) and to wash my clothes from yesterday.

Breakfast started at 08:00 and although I was 5 minutes early, I wasn’t the first person down there. It was a good breakfast too and for a change I managed to eat something realistic.

Hannah was having a lie-in so it was getting on for 10:00 when she came a-knocking on my door, and then we headed off to the metro station at Brussels Midi.

And here we had our first set-back in that there is a cosplay convention in the town and the Metro was swamped with cosplayers. They were holding up all of the Metro trains so that they could set these people on their way.

Our second setback was once we were on our way, the Metro broke down and we had to alight. What we thus did was to cross the tracks to the other platform and go the long way around the circle to the Simonis station.

At the Simonis we took the old Bus 13 – the one that I used to take back home again. We alighted at the woods and went for a tramp therein (he got away unfortunately) but we didn’t have sight of a parrot as we did when Terry and Liz were here in 2011. Our walk took us past my old apartment at Expo and then round the corner to catch the bus 84.

At Heysel we had our third setback – in that the little shopping precinct there where there were all of the cafés, it was closed for refurbishment.

This led us nicely on to our fourth setback – Mini-Europe, which was what Hannah had really been hoping to see, was closed for refurbishment too.

But never mind – there was always the Atmomium. But with all of the people having come out today for the cafés and for Mini-Europe, there was nothing else to do except visit the Atomium. And so the queue was all the way down the street. That was our fifth setback.

And so we went down to the café at the bottom of the hill, and true to form, our sixth setback was that it was closed. We eventually found a café so that we could have a coffee.

A tram took us to the Tour Japonais and the Chinese Pagoda, and that was closed too. Setback number seven.

But never mind, we waled down into town past the Royal Greenhouses, the Royal Palace and the monument to King Leopold, past the Chapel of St Anne and the Riding Stables. We stopped at the Royal church at Laeken, to find that closed too. But it was 13:50 and it opened at 14:00 so we waited.

The caretaker turned up on time and we could see the interior of the church. It’s the first time that I’ve ever been in there too. It’s quite impressive too and I’ll be back at some point to take some photographs.

Down the hill to the tram stop and we took the 93 in the direction of the city centre. But then we had a tram breakdown (the eighth setback) and had to jump on board a bus. We jumped off the bus so that we could walk past the huge abandoned church of Schaerbeek, and then down the road to the old Botanical Garden where we stopped for a drink in the café there

There was an exhibition of photos taken by some Austrian of ruins that he had discovered of the German extermination programme of the mentally-ill children during the Holocaust. as I have said before, it’s quite simply not right that just one group of people has claimed the Holocaust as its own. All kinds of minorities were targeted by the Germans and focusing on just one group devalues the lives of all of the others.

The Metro and a bus took us out past the little apartment that I had at the Place Meiser and to the Tir National where we have been before, to see the graves of the Belgian Resistance who were executed by the Germans.

By now we were hungry so a Tram 25 took us all of the way round to Ixelles and the posh fritkot where I used to go when I lived at Marianne’s. And wasn’t it all delicious there, just as usual?

A bus 71 and then a tram 81 took us to Merode, and a walk through the Cinquantenaire took us to the Rond-Point Schuman where I showed her the European Institution buildings. But I was so disappointed that they were all in darkness. I hope that it isn’t symbolic.

We’re back here now and I’m stretched out trying to relax as I can feel my muscles tensing up. And I need to be fit for tomorrow as I have yet more walking to do.

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