schneefink | Entries tagged with sports

I'm not really watching the Olympics, I just occasionally hear some fun stories of surprising victories. My favorite so far (and I like to think it would be even if she wasn't Austrian) is the story of cyclist Anna Kiesenhofer, the 30-year-old postdoc mathematician hobby athlete without a team who won the road race because for a large part of the race she was so far ahead on her own that the rest of the field forgot she was there, and the second place rider even thought she had won at first. (Unfortunately most videos from the Olympics are blocked in my country – and tbh I'm too lazy to figure out a way around it – but I know there are highlight videos etc.)

I have read 10 books in the past two weeks, and one a day for the last five days. The benefits of being on semi-vacation! (I am going to the office this week too but fewer hours than normal. Although today that just meant not doing any overtime.) Also, eight of the last 12 books I read feature necromancy of some kind, apparently I'm in a mood. Next, maybe some nonfiction books I picked up from the library (rare for me, I don't read a lot of nonfiction); or maybe something else entirely, idk.
I've read 24 books so far this year and didn't post about any of them, I should probably start doing that. At least about some of them. Maybe only 2-3 lines each, so I actually do it.

Several weeks ago my left big toe started hurting for some mysterious reason, and after the doctor ruled out some things I now got orthopedic shoe inserts. Especially annoying in summer. He said it'll take about 2 weeks to get used to them, which thankfully is not too far away because it felt very strange today. I should also be able to use them in my running shoes so in theory I can go running again soon, except it's so hot and humid most of the time that I'm not in the mood anyway. I went swimming once last week but mostly I'm too lazy. This weekend I did some of DD's Qigong exercises with her, I learned that my arms are weak as noodles, meaning I should probably do that more often… we'll see.

- Last weekend was con.txt, which I was excited about, but I ended up missing most of it because of a combination of factors including scheduling errors on my part (i.e. a failure to correctly remember times and time zone conversions) and computer problems. Fortunately I did get to see parts of both the hanahaki disease panel and werewolf torts vol. iv. I still plan to read all the chat transcripts eventually. (Also, someone talk me out of offering a "tax systems in SFF" panel next year because I'm not really qualified ~~yet~~.)

- I tried to go running more than once a week and my knees complained, and now that my knees are good again my left big toe is swollen and hurts, which is very annoying and means I still can't go running. The orthopedist wasn't sure what it was either but told me to wear different shoes and I have a check-up in a week and a half, we'll see. (He also saw my wrist brace, was not impressed by me telling him that it's a chronic problem, touched my shoulders for about two seconds and asked me "is it always like this or just because of stress?" and didn't like my answer "probably both.") Maybe I can go for a swim this weekend though.

- On Saturday DD and I ended up watching the Italy-Austria soccer match on a whim, and were very surprised how much we enjoyed it. I don't plan on watching more games rn - maybe the final? But it was fun and exciting. Austria did surprisingly well! We even got to celebrate being in the lead for about a minute before the goal was called offside. I never watched soccer much but having learned how to watch hockey is a huge help. In soccer everyone moves slower and the ball is more easily visible than a puck.

- It's so hot! Fortunately it's supposed to be slightly cooler starting tomorrow but still. Making it worse is that there's work deadlines so I'm doing more extra hours, and we still don't have an air conditioner in our room. Today at least we had ice cream in the afternoon, and when I came home DD had made nectarine frozen yoghurt. Another silver lining is that I bought a bunch of summer clothes recently (where "recently" = in the heat summer of 2019, which totally counts as recent when it comes to buying clothes right?, plus one summer dress last week) and at least I look cute.

Just in time for Easter the sakura tree in front of my window started blooming, which is lovely. We had almost entirely clear blue skies recently, but today it rained, which is good because it's barely rained this spring so far. And I can't remember the last time we had a proper thunderstorm, it'd be nice to have one again.

My usual running route is currently way too busy during the day, so on Saturday I got up early and then went for a run at 6:40am. There were very few people around and it was very nice, I ran for two hours and I'm definitely planning to do that again. (Maybe even a little earlier, to catch a little of the dawn.) As very much not a morning person I'm especially proud of myself.
It's not that I don't like mornings: rather, I never manage to go to sleep early and I don't want to leave my bed in the morning. I keep meaning to work on both of these things, occasionally I'm more successful for brief periods but it never sticks…

I went running today, not because I thought I had to but because I wanted to even though it was already dark outside, and I already felt/did a lot better than five weeks ago, when I started running again after a long break. And I only ran once a week! I did not expect to see progress so fast but it makes me happy.

We cooked first and put everything (duck with dates etc.) in the tajine and left it to simmer, so when I came home there was delicious food ready, with fresh pita bread and mulled wine. Luxury.

Originally I wanted to post about the next few TMA episodes in more detail ( Read more... ) But I got distracted by, um, procrastinating on packing for tomorrow. Which I really should get back to.

I went bouldering today, for the very first time, together with LB and his friend (who've been doing it for months now.) It was fun! And exhausting. LB warned me I'll be sore tomorrow. I've been running semi-regularly, but I've done almost nothing for my arms the past several years and it's very noticeable… Nothing that can't be fixed, and reaching the top is a great feeling.
I don't think it'll be feasible for me to do hockey this semester/year – once I get a job the likely times of the university courses won't work for me anymore, but the alternatives are more expensive and I don't want to commit to that before I've found a job – so for one year climbing could be a fun alternative, I'll see. On top of that I want to continue running more regularly.

I have a freezer now! I'll be able to store ice cream, and most importantly I can cook in advance and just heat things up when I don't have the energy for cooking. It'll be great.

Quotes of yesterday's D&D session:
"I didn't sell my soul, just my body – wait, that came out wrong."
"I have an idea! …can I have an idea?"
"Trust us, nothing too terrible will happen," after which the whole table laughed.
In summary, my character has now made a (short-term) deal with the succubus possessing her, we (temporarily) turned a vrock demon Lawful Good, there was another healing-via-killing-cannibalism-and-reincarnation, there's a vengeful spirit after us that's attracted to even thoughts of its name, and next time we'll finally enter the haunted library. Probably.

Crossposts: http://schneefink.livejournal.com/173209.html

I'm having a couple of frustratingly unproductive days, and I'm running out of excuses. I recently switched to a lower dose of antidepressants: I really hope that's not the main reason, or at least I'm pretty sure it's something I can adjust to, but obviously I'd like it to happen sooner rather than later. The NHL season is over, even the parade (so nice to watch), which in theory should free up time but in practice there's always stuff I can do to procrastinate. There's even other sports going on!, even though it's obviously inferior.

Examples: Dominic Thiem, young Austrian tennis star, recently won a tournament on grass. I knew that Austrian media was very excited about him, but I didn't realize that he's actually very good until I checked r/tennis, where several users already proclaimed him the heir of Federer/Nadal/Djokovic. Probably not going to happen, but it does mean he looks actually good and not just lucky. I used to play tennis for a few years and every once in a while I still enjoy watching it, but rarely now.

And then! For the first time ever Austria's men's team qualified for a European soccer championship. Everyone was extremely excited, and they lost the first game 0-2 to Hungary. Not the start they wanted. I watched maybe a quarter of the game, just out of curiosity, and I constantly noticed all the little differences to hockey. Thanks to hockey I am better at watching soccer now, it's easier to follow what's happening. Yes, there are a lot more players on a bigger field, but they're also slower. The trick for me was watching passing lanes instead of players. (Soo many unclean passes, seriously guys if you want to win you have to be better than this.) I was also amused thinking back to all the discussions about hockey goalie equipment and net size etc. because "we need more goals to make the game exciting." Soccer, according to my brief look, has even fewer goals and doesn't seem to care.

Other things happening: More cooking, I went running on Tuesday and plan to again this evening, and I read "League of Dragons", the final book of Naomi Novik's Temeraire series. The book seemed a bit, hm, thematically disjointed?, but I enjoyed it and I mostly liked the ending.
( spoilers )

Crossposts: http://schneefink.livejournal.com/166633.html

Austria won 4:1 against Sweden in football and qualified for the European Championships for the first time in very long. I'm normally not a football fan but I heard about the recent successes of the national team and I watched the last few minutes of the game. I think I'm starting to understand a bit better why people enjoy watching football, which surprised me but hey, why not. The long and enthusiastic post-game hugs on the field must be excellent for RPF fans.

Barely a month until the NHL season starts again! Before that there's the preseason, and before that training camp starts in less than two weeks. Today is media day, and Phil Kessel is in Pittsburgh. Apparently Sid already took him on a dinner date. (Insert yet another moment of "Phil Kessel is a Penguin!" This will take a while to get used to.)
I'm really looking forward to hockey.

I'm in a kind of weird between-fandoms moment. Now I still have more time to watch TV/movies etc. than I'll have once the NHL season starts again, so I want to take advantage of that, and I did. Usually when I meet new good canon I don't know if I'll get into the fandom or not, but this time I know I probably won't because I'll be distracted soon, and it's kind of a weird feeling, like there's a time limit. (Also none of the fandoms really grabbed me so far but that usually surprises me.) I could rewatch Killjoys and try to write that vampire fic or one of the other ideas I had, but it would take me some time and by then will I still be interested or will I want to write mostly hockey fic again? (Right now I'm a bit stalled because "more canon soon!" is distracting. No it doesn't make sense.) Or I could attempt to write that one Clone Wars fic with the droid, but I'm pretty sure I won't have the time and in any case it will never be as good as it is in my head. I could just continue reading Les Mis fic – I have no idea how I even started with that, I never read or watched any of the canon. Or I could watch something else, maybe iZombie or Dark Matter. I thought about FMA but I'm pretty sure I can't finish that in one month and still get work done.
Oh yeah, I should get actual work done. Ahem. Maybe I don't have time to watch anything new after all. The last few days were very unproductive and I didn't even do something specific to procrastinate, I'm skilled like that.

(Cooking regularly on my own turns out to require more effort than I thought. I'll have to work on that. At least laundry is not a problem.)