Odd Thomas Odd Blog

Well, I hope you all had an excellent Christmas! Unfortunately, at this end, various bugs were having their best Christmas ever by making me ill Christmas Eve so I couldn't perform the annual feck-is-it-Xmas-already-I-must-go-out-and-buy-something ritual, made my nephew literally cough his guts up Christmas Day and now my parents, sister and brother-in-law are doing battle with the little buggers.

Well, training for the Great North Run hasn't gone quite according to plan, but last night I did succeed in setting up the gadgets and widgets for tracking my training :-) I had refrained from getting sucked into the Nike and iPod combo, but the lure of glossy tech and the trendy adverts sucked me in and spat me out the other side, complete with green iPod Nano , Nike Shox Arraw trainers, a slick black'n'red Nike armband , Nike+ shoe widget thingy and a cool black-and-white shirt designed by a closet sci-fi costume designer*. Admittedly, the shirt is going to remain in the drawer for the time being as it currently emphasises my spare tyre and man boobs which, lets face it, isn't the prettiest site to be running round these parts. Then again, certainly not the ugliest, either! The calibration of the Nike kit was a bit annoying. After having calibrated for a 1.05 mile run I then tried to calibrate a walk for the same distance, only be told halfway around that the di...

Another week gone and another epic blog entry to whittle down to a few salient points; though going by past posts, you'll be lucky to be awake by the end of it! Top of the list, I've been spending a ton of cash ... again. I can't really afford it, but the retail therapy has been giving me a bit of a lift. Okay, it hasn't all been retail therapy (more on that later), but every now and then a little cash for fashion goes down very nicely. I came to realise recently that I don't have any cool, low profile, fashion trainers, which are useful in good weather for wearing with shorts: the only option open to me before now was either a sturdy pair of running shoes or some cheap suede slip-on things, both of which made my feet look like they were in concrete blocks and ready to be chucked in the local river. So, feeling the need to spend*, I popped onto the JD Sports website and selected a few pair that I liked the look of. This was whittled down to two pair: a pair of L...