What Matters Most

#smilingontheinside – Monday 14 July 2025

It’s just as well that we didn’t take the van up for Alan’s early start, because he ended up being fog-bound and wayyyyy late. If we’d done what we talked about, it would’ve meant I’d have spent almost the entire day waiting for him, parked-up somewhere. Where that would’ve been, who knows…? Ardmore MCA most likely because I would needed to have plugged into shore power to continue working (until we get the inverter).

Instead of getting home about 09:00, it was 14:40 when he finally walked through the door – all in a day’s work.

What matters most is that Alan got home safe’n’sound. #smilingontheinside

Tea Strainer Required For Coffee

I’m not sure what goes wrong, but every now and again my French Press coffee spurts. What do I mean by spurts? It’s when the coffee comes up the side of the press and I end up with coffee grinds where there shouldn’t be coffee grinds – in my cup!

Depending on how bad it is – whether it happened right at the start of the plunge and therefore lots of grinds, or almost at the bottom and few grinds – is whether a tea strainer is required.

Maybe it’s because I plunge in an uneven way…? Or perhaps the bottom thingy hasn’t been screwed in tight after washing…? Who knows…?

Today was a Tea-Strainer Coffee Day.

Ordinary Day

Because it was oh-so-foggy – which didn’t lift until about 14:30 – I delayed my walk, hoping the sun would eventually break through. In the end, with the day still marching on, I went out about 13:40.

Last week I briefly explored the thought of joining a gym – for upper body strength – and enquired at a gym that popped up on my FB feed (advert). It’s an expensive gym – that’s one thing that put me off. But the biggest deterrent was it appears to be one of those “high five” “ring the bell” when someone PBs… lotsa hype. So. Not. My. Thing.

There’s a gym less than 1km away from home. No frills. Definitely no high fives and bell ringing. I mused on that as I went for my interval-walk around the block.

What intervals did I do? I tuned into my personally curated disco playlist on Spotify – music I enjoy dancing to. Then I marched it out fast for one song, and dialled it back for the next. Not quite Japanese Walking (3min on/off) but near-as.

Not being able to navigate my way to the exercise page on my watch, I hit the streets with the hope my steps would be counted even though I wasn’t actively measuring the route. I have no idea what I did – or whether I could do it again – but somehow I’d activated voice updates/notifications. Every kilometre, I was told via my earbuds, how fast that km was and what my heartrate was. I enjoyed the updates.

My walk on Monday was good cardio (at a 6kph pace) but I still need to do something about upper body strength because I realised over the weekend while manoeuvring the van’s mattresses, that I’m not as strong as I once was. And I know that if I don’t do anything about curbing that strength loss, it’s only going to get worse.

And wouldn’t you believe it – the sun finally broke through the clouds with about 100m left to walk! I’ve still yet to make the decision about which – if any – gym to join.

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Here’s to Alan getting home safe’n’sound…

Here’s to the sun eventually shining bright…

Here’s to Macgyver tea-strainer coffee fixes.

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Here’s to SmilingOnTheInside!