Another while has gone by without an update here. This is because I am slack. No other excuses will be made. I still have all my notes from my trip to England to transcribe at some point, and that was ten months ago. Anyway, here’s what’s been happening in Greig-land. It’s almost all beer related. I’m NOT obsessed. Read the rest of this entry »
I have had a very productive weekend. Yesterday’s effort has already been documented. What I failed to mention was the reason for such industry. What else? Beer! While I love having a hobby where the fruits can be enjoyed in such a hedonistic way, it can be a lot of work getting to the “enjoying” part. Read the rest of this entry »
It feels so good to throw things away. Seriously. Try it. Go to that room or cupboard you all have. You know, the one with all the accumulated crap you’ve had for ages “just in case”. Have a good sort through it all, enjoying any memories conjured up. Now, bung it all in the bin. That’s right, the lot. You know damn well if you were ever going to use it you’d have done so by now. Trust me, the feeling afterwards just can’t be beaten. I did this today, and it made me very happy. Ironically, it also made me wish this house had more storage space.
In other news, I’ve recently started contributing to the real beer blog. I’ve never really thought of myself as the sort of person who contributes to blogs, but after meeting Luke from Epic Brewing, and getting motivated to promote good beer wherever possible, I thought I’d give it a crack. Can’t hurt, eh? Anything for the cause!
I hate spammers. They’ve figured out wp-hashcash. I don’t want or need anything they have to offer. Does anyone? I assume someone must, or they wouldn’t do it.
This is a message to anyone who buys anything from spammers. I will hunt you down and invent new and horrible ways for you to feel pain. I’ll use you as a guinea pig to perfect these horrifying methods of torture, and then… AND THEN… I’ll use the newly perfected methods on the spammers themselves.
Seriously spammers, fuck off. It’s not funny anymore.
In other news… I should really write something more often.
Back home in Hamilton now. We had a fantastic time, though the weather was fairly miserable except for Saturday morning. That said, it doesn’t need to be fine to drink a good ale!
Here then is a summary of what I posted to the NZ Homebrewers mailing list, as it’s easier than writing the same thing twice. 
Here we are in Sunny Wellington. Yes. Really. OK, so it absolutely pissed down when we got here on Thursday, and we got totally saturated walking from pub to pub, but that’s OK, as the sun started to peek through yesterday. Saturday has now dawned with barely a cloud to be seen, and the prospect of many hearty brews just waiting to be sampled!
For those who don’t know, BrewNZ is New Zealand’s only (to my knowledge) beer festival. Fairly disgraceful when you consider that we are a British colony, and England alone has over 4000 beer festivals per year. Anyway, for this year’s BrewNZ, James, Alexandra, and myself made the trek to the other “tron” to see what was to be imbibed.
So one month down, probably another few years to go knowing my weight loss record. Greig and I weighed in yesterday. It was the first week of following the Kelly diet. Be good all week and have sunday as the day we can eat anything we like. Neither of us had exercised all week, and with Greig having lost about 3.5kgs the week before we were not too sure about how it would go. But surprise, surprise, Greig lost .8kgs and I lost .9kgs. So I am now 84.1kgs, and am actually where I wanted to be after a month. I was hoping to lose a kg a week, but that never happens in the long term, you always have crappy weeks that throw you off. But so far so good. I have rached my first 5kg goal, only another 4 lots of 5 to go :). This week is going to be tough as we are off to Wellington on Thursday with the specific goal to drink beer. The only thing that might save us from completly ballooning out is the fact that our accommodation is on a hill, and we will be walking from pub to pub.
I really enjoyed my free day yesterday. We had BK for lunch, and I had Killer crocs and a picnic bar for snacks. Followed by fish and chips for dinner, and smoked roe on toast for supper. There is so much you want to eat but your tummy can only take so much.
So I sat up to watch the F1 last night as I always do, in hopeful anticipation of a McLaren win, as Kimi was on pole, only to see his engine lunch itself on lap 35 when he had a 12 sec lead! This is really starting to piss me off. he has the fastest car this season, but his engines kept blowing, DAMMIT he should be winning!
The first Ashes test was a bit of a fizzer. And you would think that the members of Lords would know not to move around in front of the site screen…but no…
Till next time…
Well not a good week. We had catering for a course I did at work, and I can never resist free food I actually thought I would gain this week, but I stayed exactly the same. Greig on the other hand lost 3.3kgs, but then he cheated and got sick. We have decided to take Kellys advice and have one bad day a week. We will weigh in on sunday mornings and then the rest of the day is ours to eat what we like. If it doesn’t work I will go back to the old way. I have just been coerced into putting on a shout at work tomorrow. A few weeks ago me and two others here at work won a technicians award to do some study in a Commonwealth country. So we have to put on a shout. I guess I’ll be getting the fruit.
This week I have been really slack about exercise. I think it mostly stems from being very tired after staying up to what as much of “le tour de France” as I can (I usually last to about 12ish). Plus now the Ashes start tomorrow and at least they are test matches and being at 9.30pm at night, rather than 2.00am like the one dayers.
Well weigh in this morning. Lost 0.9kgs. I was aiming for 1kg per week, but considering my eating habits this week not too shabby. We had a work mid-winter christmas dinner on friday night. We got the roast takeaway place on Hood St to do the dinner catering. Beautiful meat and potatoes. I think I ended up having 4 potatoes. I tried to restain myself with dessert and only had a small piece of pav and a scoop of ice-cream.
I only exercised 2 this week, but I did do 7hrs of housework on saturday. I’m having a hard time holding on to my motivation. It’s only the start of week 3, so this is terrible. I’m feeling so tired lately that exercising is hard. I haven’t done any today, and I have eaten a foot long sub and 3 of their cookies. It was a reward for losing 0.9kgs, so now I have to be especially good for the rest of the week, plus do lots of exercise.
I find the weekends the hardest. At work I can keep away from food, at home there is the FRIDGE!
Well I didn’t get onto the bike on monday we went and saw “War of the Worlds” instead. Very cool movie. While any actors could have played the main roles the movie captured the intensity of the book. There was no mucking about with this movie, almost from the start we were into the alien bits, and just as suddenly at the end it was all over.
Yesterday was a bad food day, probably at least 30 points. I ended up having some small pastries and club sandwiches. To try and make up for this loss I got on the bike for 75 minutes. Boy that gives you a sore bum. I am surprising myself by actually wanting to exercise. Unforetunately thought doesn’t always turn into action. The trick to staying on the bike is a good TV program. If I try to read a can’t concentrate on my book, so it has to be TV.
I’m a bit worried about my iron levels. I haven’t eaten any red meat for 1 1/2 weeks. I don’t know how long it takes for iron levels to drop. I’m supposed to go and give blood on the 20th so I will have to have a steak between now and then. Blood giving is a difficult time when you are dieting. Of course by giving blood you lose 1/2kilo straight away, but then they temp you with all sorts of yummy choccy biscuits.
The blood centre is really short on blood stocks at the moment, so if you can, please go and donate, it is worth it for the biscuits
Well it was not a good weekend. While I didn’t go over points I didn’t do any exercise, unless you count walking around town shopping (and I don’t). I was just very tired all weekend. But anyway, it was weigh in this morning, and since I didn’t want to cheat, I had my usual breakfast and wore the same clothes I wore last monday and I lost 2.2kgs. You always lose a good chunk in the first week, the rest of the weeks won’t be like this. The first time I went to W.W I lost 3.1kgs in the first week and I have never been able to meet that again.
So far I’m not finding it too hard to stick to the diet. We went out to La Dome on Friday night, knowing how great their chips are I made sure I had some crumpets before going so I wasn’t hungry. Just as well as A.J brought chips and bread and dips for the table. I only ate 2 small chips so I’m quite proud of myself.
I hardest thing this weekend was going into New World on sunday morning, starving and having to walk past all their breads that smelled so great. Usually I would buy a sour dough loaf bring it home cover it with butter and devour it over the course of the day. No more can I do this.
Now its a whole week to go before next weigh in, when you are being good you really want weigh in to hurry up, not so much when you are bad. Anyway going to try and get back on the bike tonight and hope for another good week.
I am sick of being fat. So I am highjacking Greig’s website to provide a sort of journal that I am hoping will help me stay motivated. So the facts are….I currently weigh 89.2 kilos (including shoes), my goal weight is 64 kilos. Next year I turn 30, before then I want to reach goal. Once upon a time I was thin, and I have the pictures to prove it. But once I left home the exercise became non existent and far to many takeaways crept in. Ever since I have been working I have been overweight. I would be good to be able to use the money I now earn, to buy nice clothes rather than fat clothes that help to hide the bumps.
I started the diet on the 27th of June and my weigh in days are mondays. We have a set of scales here at work that will give my weight to 3 decimal points, so I will jump on those before other people arrive in the mornings. The other half of the plan is to get in the habit of exercising again. This will be difficult as I find exercise for its own sake very boring. But weight loss is hard enough as it is, but exercise will help speed it up.
We have an exercycle at home, which I will use to try and follow the recommended 30mins of exercise 5 times a week. On monday I did 23 mins, tuesday 35, and thursday 45mins. I am following the Weight Watchers diet plan and under that even aspects of housework count as exercise, so maybe I will end up with a much tidier house than normal, god knows it could use the work.
Anyway, so far (all 4 days) it hasn’t been to bad. All food is assigned a points valve and I am allowed 20 points per day based on my weight and sex. I had saved a few points each day from Monday-Wednesday, which turned out to be needed for thursday where I used 26.5 points after trish came round for dinner. A few wines and some pre dinner snacking were what undid me, not to mention the going away shout we had at work for one of my collegues, who is deserting us for a job at the Uni.
So thats it for today. I won’t write every day, because that would be very boring and I wouldn’t have anything to report. The next entry will probably be monday, weigh in day.
Alex
My oldest and best friend James has arrived back in the country from a year long sojourn in the country of his origin - England. I’ve missed him terribly, and have found upon his return that life has continued almost exactly where it left off. We still talk about the same old things, still drink great beer, still check out the hotties when the wife isn’t looking… oh, sorry Alex!
Anyway… the point is that a year has passed and we remain exactly as we were. This is a really comforting thought, in this age where stasis is a cardinal sin, and change for change’s sake is viewed as a pre-requisite for life.
The batch of beer I brewed for his homecoming was a bit of a failure though. It tastes quite nice, but it seems to have drastic memory-loss effects. Neither James, nor myself remember too much after consuming an (admittedly, reasonably large) amount of it. Science, of course, demands that we re-attempt this experiment, to ensure it wasn’t an isolated event…
G.
In a drastic break with the past, I’ve bitten the bullet, and blown away Scott’s long serving website layout, and migrated wholesale to wordpress. I may get Scott to make it look a bit better at some point, but for now, I’ve settled on my own cow-inspired logo, and a very clean and simple look.
Watch for more changes to come…
Hi there,
I must remember to correct any spelling mistakes that may occur in this post, unlike last time.
I have been to a Hen’s night this weekend. To any women reading this go to Ginas restaurant on Symonds St in Auckland, very cute Italian guys and the food is great too.
Thank you Greig for the naked guys and attachments, we had alot of fun.
Limo drivers can tell alot of interesting stories, especially when they pick up porn stars.
Well thats one busy weekend down only 3 more to go. This weekend its off to my parents to make sushi and play with my nieces who know exactly where my father hides his chocolate.
Chow
If this comes up I’ve managed to log in and post correctly
You would think after Christmas things would calm down, but Jan and Feb seem busy than the Christmas season. This weekend I have a hens day in Auckland, next weekend is family stuff, the weekend after that is my Nana’s 80th birthday, the next weekend is the pool smashing(I think) and Greigs off to a concert in Auckland. The following weekend may be free, but something will probably come up. And in amongst all that I have to get the house ready for a valuation and run round all the bathroom places making decisions on what to get for the bathroom (if the bank lends us the money). If it wasn’t for the cricket I’d get a bit depressed. Not that I’m winging or anything but a break would be nice, so I’m looking forward to a holiday hopefully sometime in April.
I’ve been ripping all the old demo recordings my old band, Still, made in response to a couple of questions about them from people.
Still were:
Myself (guitar, vocals)
Paul Wansbone (guitar, bass, vocals)
Andrew Parsons (keys, bass)
Mel Parsons (was Brown) (drums)
and for a while
Steve Parkinson (guitar, bass, vocals)
Songs were written by Myself, Paul, and Steve, and arranged by the band.
Most of our stuff can be found here. It’s pretty raw, and yes, I can’t sing. I was most proud of My Place, which I wrote, and I Have Fallen, written by Paul.
Read on for the song notes, so I can apologise for things like Frown, which was never right, but could have been so much better. It makes me cringe just listening to it, so sorry… Zero-G is cool though…
I’ll put up some live stuff, when I get around to getting it digitised. Hopefully I can find some recordings of Steve’s songs as well…