Scuba Diving

I have just got back from a week in Lanzarote. It was a great holiday and I had fun in the sun. One of the things I did while there was go Scuba Diving. It was amazing! We went to about 6 metres in depth and saw a lot of fish. It was amazing to be in the sea amongst the fish. I felt like we were miles out but when we came back to the shore and looked out to the rocks where we had been I was shocked to see that we really hadn't gone that far at all. It has made me want to do the PADI course which would mean I would then be qualified to go out diving when I liked. The course costs quite a lot of money but I think it would be really worth it. You can do the course anywhere in the world and I think it would be great to do it somewhere with exotic sea creatures rather than in England. That's something that I will be adding to my list! I did take a waterproof camera with me and I took some photos while diving so once they have been developed I will put some of them on here!

The Delia Smith Experience!

It was my Dad's 60th birthday on Sunday so at the weekend we had a bit of a family get together to celebrate. I left work at midday on Friday and made my way through the snow and ice to get to Gorleston in Norfolk. Was a bit of a trek cross country in the snow but I managed it.

On Saturday my sister and brother-in-law and myself met up with my brother and his wife and of course my dad too in a pub in Norwich for some lunch. Following lunch we walked to the football ground to watch Norwich vs Huddersfield with some friends. For those of you who aren't familiar with English Football or indeed Norwich City football team then you may not know that Delia Smith is the director of the club! We had really good seats and were sitting opposite the dug outs (is that what they're called?!) and spotted Delia cheering on Norwich! To be honest the first half of the match was awful! It was very very cold and Huddersfield were all over us. At half time, with a goalless, we were all saying that we didin't think Norwich were going to win.

We had paid a bit extra for our tickets so that we could put a happy birthday message into the programme with a photo of dad. It was a photo from when he was about 2! He looked very cute and actually very much like my nephew. What was a surprise though was when it got to half time the message and photo also came up on the score board! It was sooooo funny seeing a pic of my dad scrolling down the score board. I think dad liked it all and it was all a surprise for him so that was good.

I think Paul Lambert, Norwich's manager, must have been giving the team a bit of his mind during half time as when they came back on the pitch they seemed to be on top form. The goals didn't stop coming! In the end the score was 3-0 which made the minus 3 celcius temperature we'd sat through to watch the game all worth it!

After the match we had booked a table at Delia's restaurant for the early bird deal! She has her one and only (I think!) restaurant at the football ground and runs a meal deal for post football. When we began to thaw out though from the cold I think we all went into shock and we could begin to actually feel how cold we really were! It started hurting loads!! Once we had thawed out we had a great time. Towards the end of the meal the evening punters began arriving and you could tell the difference between the post football crowd and them as we all had jeans and jumpers and jumpers and more jumpers on and scarves and hats and looking plain scruffy whereas they all had suits on and looking very posh! The restaurant were really good though and we didn't feel at all rushed to finish our meals and get out!

The highlight was when we were all at the reception area putting our coats and hats back on and in walked Delia herself! We didn't really expect to see her there but she must have been staying in Norwich that evening. It would've been better if she had have walked out of the kitchen rather than in from outside! Anyway it was a nice evening with gorgeous food and definitely worth going.Of course it also ticks off one of my tasks!

Chunkster Reading Challenge

I have added this to here because I have to have a blog to post for it and I don't want it to be part of my 30 B4 30 challenge so it's going to become part of this challenge instead! The details are as follows and I will be taking part as Mor-book-ly Obese:

February 1, 2010 - January 31, 2011

Many thanks to Dana who has hosted this challenge for the past couple of years and has generously handed over the reins to me in 2010. I am keeping most of Dana's rules and definitions...Why? Because why fix something that isn't broken?!??!

Definition of a Chunkster:
A chunkster is 450 pages or more of ADULT literature (fiction or nonfiction) ... A chunkster should be a challenge.

If you read large type books your book will need to be 525 pages or more ... The average large type book is 10-15% longer or more so I think that was a fair estimate.The Rules:

No Audio books in the chunkster. It just doesn't seem right. Words on paper for this one folks.
No e-Books allowed - we are reading traditional, fat books for this challenge.
Short Stories and Essay collections will not be counted.
Books may crossover with other challenges
Anyone may join. If you don't have a blog, just leave me a comment on this post with your progress (and to let me know you are playing)
You don't need to list your books ahead of time.

Once you pick a level, that's it...you're committed to that level!You must pick a level of participation (thanks again to Dana for the humor in these categories!):

The Chubby Chunkster - this option is for the reader who has a couple of large tomes on their TBR list, but really doesn't want to commit to much more than that. 3 books is all you need to finish this challenge.

Do These Books Make my Butt Look Big? - this option is for the slightly heavier reader who wants to commit to 4 Chunksters over the next twelve months.

Mor-book-ly Obese - This is for the truly out of control chunkster. For this level of challenge you must commit to 6 or more chunksters OR three tomes of 750 pages or more. You know you want to.....go on and give in to your cravings.Some Other Questions you Might Have:

To review or not to review, that is the quesion...Reviews are not mandatory, but they are strongly encouraged. I will be putting up a Mr. Linky at the beginning of the challenge for links to your reviews. I will also be posting a Mr. Linky for wrap up posts at the end of the challenge.

Will there be prizes? Perhaps. I am still thinking on this...but I may consider some bookish giveaways as the challenge progresses! If I were you, I would subscribe to this blog just in case I announce something important.

Is there anything else we need to know? Um, not that I can think of right now. But, lately I have been into being flexible. And I may decide to add some fun stuff to this blog, or even have a guest poster or two. Check back in occasionally (or subscribe to the feed) just in case!

Scuba dooba

Last night I went scuba diving! It was a 'try-dive' in a specialist pool which had a shallow end of about a metre deep and then a deep end which was 3 metres deep. I had a great time and enjoyed it loads. I am going to Lanzarote over Christmas with a friend who wants to go scuba diving while we're there. We decided that we would try it out in a pool first to see if we could do it and whether we would enjoy it.

The session lasted an hour and a half and we were shown how to do a couple of things that we may need to do on a longer dive. We had to learn how to take our mouth pieces out while underwater and put them back in again as well as filling our googles with water and emptying them again underwater. I found the mouth piece part surprisingly easy and relatively comfortable. I can't say the same about filling and emptying my googles though! I think just the thought of having to fill my googles with water scared me and then I couldn't get it out again. You had to just breath out of your nose to do it but I can't seem to do that with my mouth open, which it technically is as it's round a mouth piece! I managed to do it once but it was more of a fluke than anything as I certainly couldn't do it again when I tried!

Once we had spent some time doing this we were then able to go down to the deep end. We had to gradually go down using a slope from the shallow end to the deep. It was quite uncomfortable on my ears. I kept swallowing and clearing them by holding my nose and blowing but they did still hurt a little bit. Once I was down on the bottom though I just had to remember to keep clearing them and it was fine! The feeling of weightlessness was awesome. To just sweep along the bottom and lying horizontally was brilliant.

I'm now excited about going diving in lanzarote. It will be great to dive in the sea and get to see some sealife! I am a bit anxious about whether my ears will cope in even deeper water but I will just have to give it a try and keep remembering to acclimatise my ears by swallowing or holding my nose. If I get on with it in Lanzarote I may even put on this list of things to do the open water diving course for some point in the future!

Links

Ok so yes maybe it really isn't that hard but adding a link to my blogs has seemed to have stumpted me! I would always click on the add link then write the address in and click ok and yet it still wouldn't work! Having spoken to a colleague of mine I have realised that yes it was me being dumb. I need to highlight the text I want to be the link! So here goes I am going to now try crossing of my first thing to do on this blog by directing you all to my other blog. My other blog is my 30/30 challenge which is where I am trying to achieve 30 tasks before I turn 30. If you would like to see my trials and tribulations with that then just click here!

Introduction

I saw the above quote today and it made me think. So much of the time we hear people talk about 'finding ourselves' or maybe we even say it ourselves. I'm sure I have at some point or other. But actually we are who we want to be. Our lives are what we make them. Instead of trying to find somebody who hasn't existed yet (afterall we're all unique so this is me living for the first time) I want to start living my life as I want it to be. Our lives are what we create them to be and from now on I am going to knowingly and more consciously create mine! The life I want to create is a life full of having good times, doing the things that I want to do and what I enjoy!

The person to blame for my new hedonistic ideals is Dannie. She is a good friend of mine who are at the beginning of this year started a challenge to do 101 things of her choosing in 1001 days. Her enthusiasm for getting out and about doing stuff soon rubbed off on me and got me drawing up my own list of what I want to do. Knowing me as I know me I realised that setting a goal to get that many things in that time scale was probably setting myself up for failure before I even begun so I decided to choose just 30 things to do before I turned 30. That gave me just over two years!

I'm just 4 months into my 30 before I'm 30 Challenge and I've been sucked right into the challenge bug! To be honest I think it is down to the fact that I have a list with the things I'm to do and I get to tick the things off when I've done them. Ok, so I'm a complete sucker for lists! I am doing more things with my time mainly down to my friend dragging me along to all the things she's got on her list but also because I have my own to do too. Dannie has now created a 'life list' which incorporates everything she wants to do at some point before she dies. This blog is basically me stealing that idea and using it for myself!



As you will see to the right there is a list of things to do (I did warn you I was a sucker for lists!) and as I do them they will gradually get crossed off. But some of them may take some time. That's ok though as this is about creating me, creating my life. I have the rest of my life to do them in which why it is called to 30 and beyond. There is no time scale. Okay so I realise that I'm not going to live forever and I accept that I may die before I complete all of these things. Having said that it is my intention to do every single one of them.

I take my vow before you all today that from this day I will live my life looking for opportunities to complete tasks that are on the list today and the tasks that will gradually appear as I want to do more and more things. You will NEVER hear me say "Oh I would love to do that but I doubt I ever will" because from now on if there is something I think I would enjoy and will hurt no-one in the process of doing it I will make it my aim to make sure I do it. So if I don't do anything which is written on my things to do it won't be for want of trying!