Claiming the right to be unhappy

My favourite moment in Brave New World is when John talks to Mustapha Mond about civilisation, God and life.
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."

"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."

"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."

Life would be terrible if everything went exactly as planned. If I didn't have a dangerous tendency to throw caution to the wind (and silence that little voice saying "Miss A, you know better"), then I wouldn't have gone through my any of my favourite experiences, which all required a bit of nerve and a fair amount of stupidity.

I might be wicked and selfish and difficult but that's OK. Because when it comes down to it: “I'd rather be myself," he said. "Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly.”

"Prettier without your glasses"

Recently I dropped my glasses and scratched up my lenses. No big deal, I've had them for 6ish years now and I have plenty of contacts. Contacts can be sort of annoying when I'm in a hurry to leave the house, which is why I rarely wear them, even though I much prefer them.

I had no idea what a big deal it would be to abandon my glasses. First it was fine. Coffee guy commented in a very factual way, and asked if I like them better than my glasses. No problem there. Four or five people at work walked straight past me without noticing me at all. First I felt like Clark Kent, then I felt like maybe I'm a jerk and they're using this to avoid me. Sigh.

Then a guy who calls me 'lolly legs' when I wear coloured tights said 'HELLO GORGEOUS!' when he saw me. He just blurted it out and stared. Now, I must stress that he's not creepy. He's a non-creepy older dude. He never leers and he doesn't make me feel uncomfortable. So really, when a person you like calls you gorgeous, you take it as a compliment. Then the next day I got an email saying:

I would just like to apologise for my slip up in terms of political correctness yesterday. I hope you didn't take it to seriously because there was nothing meant by it .

I was horrified, and assured him that I was not in any way offended.

What did offend me was the idiot that told me "You look prettier without your glasses."

Mr G thinks he was just trying to compliment me. :-/ I think that I look my best when I'm happy, glasses or no glasses.

500 workout

So that I don't forget, I'm going to start posting some of my sessions with Sam.

When he first said "we're doing the 500 today" I laughed to myself and thought "poor thing means the 300". But no, he meant exactly what he said.

Lunges x 50
Squats x 50
Pushups x 50
Hurdle jumps x 50
Bicep curls x 50
Rows x 50
Shuttle runs x 50
Bridges (one leg) x 25 each leg
Burpees x 50
Tricep dips x 50

There was NO way I could do this as it's written. Sam kindly gave me permission to mix it up a bit if I couldn't do a straight 50. Lunges and squats were easy. Pushups were tough. Got to 20 and fell down. Swapped between hurdle jumps, bicep curls and pushups for the next 130. Rows and shuttle runs were swapped (25, 25, 25, 25), then the bridges were done in one go. The burpees and tricep dips were swapped as well (25, 25, 25, 25).

Brutal but damn effective. I probably wouldn't be busting this out again in a hurry - the soreness today is pretty bad. Why the hell does my ribcage hurt???

Today is a rest day, and tomorrow I'm going to try one of the NF workouts.