Today is, once again, my birthday. I’m now well into my mid-thirties.
I haven’t anything special planned today – I’ll be going to work as usual. Tomorrow, I’ll be meeting up for lunch with my parents for a birthday meal.
I’ve not really asked for any presents this year. Instead, I’ve simply asked for money, to put towards buying a new iPad. My current iPad Mini was a 30th birthday present, and is now four years old. The screen is cracked and broken and the home button no longer works. And I suspect that iOS 12, which is likely to be released later this year, won’t run on it.
Also, my age now is double the age I was when I started this blog, back in January 2002. Although, to be pedantic, I was 17 years and 7 months old when I started blogging, so it would be some time next year that I could claim to have been blogging for half of my life.
I’ve been feeling pretty rotten this week, having caught a particularly nasty cold. Presumably from Lizzie; she’s had a cold for a few days now and so her face has been constantly covered in snot. And she likes giving us kisses now, which is cute, but also a sure-fire way to pick up her germs.
I have still gone to work as normal, and I thought I’d write about what I do to get through a rough patch.
Please be aware that I’m not a medical professional, and none of this should be considered medical advice. If a medical professional advises you to do something else, follow their advice, not mine. This is just what works for me.
Get up and get clean
When you’re feeling rough, either because you’re ill or experiencing a decline in mental health, there’s a temptation just to stay in bed. And, if you’re so ill that you really cannot get yourself out of bed, it may be best to stay there – if you have ‘flu for example. But maybe call NHS 111 if this happens, just in case it’s something more serious.
If you can get yourself out of bed, then do. Have a shower, and put on clean clothes. Brush your teeth. Shave, if you have facial hair. You probably do these things anyway, but make a special effort to do so. If you’re feverish, then you may have shed a lot of sweat, so getting yourself clean and fresh should help.
Get some fresh air
Go outside, even if it’s just for a few minutes. If you can’t, at least try to get a window open. I felt noticeably better as soon as I got out of the house.
Go to work, if you can
This is a subjective point. I have a desk job, so work isn’t too strenuous; plus, this week a lot of people were off so the office was quiet. Also, I take the train to work, so there was no need to drive; I would have been less likely to go in otherwise. Being at work, seeing other people and being productive actually made me feel better.
Drink plenty of fluids
I mentioned fever sweats – you’re more likely to get dehydrated when you’re ill, so drink plenty of water. Avoid alcohol; the odd hot toddy is probably okay but too much alcohol can leave you dehydrated and feeling even worse. Stick to no more than one average-strength alcoholic drink a day.
Take paracetamol
Paracetamol (acetaminophen to Americans) is cheap, and can help ease your symptoms. Adults can usually take two tablets no less than four hours apart (but always read the label).
Get plenty of rest and avoid stress
Finally, whilst I do advise getting out during the day, rest is also really important when you’re ill. Go to bed early, and avoid doing too many strenuous or stressful activities so that your body has time to recover.
As the certificate above shows, I passed the PRINCE2 Practitioner certificate in project management. I took a week-long intensive course with QA Training in Leeds in March, which included the foundation and practitioner exams.
I was lucky to get a funded place, in a ballot held by my trade union branch at work (Unison). QA’s PRINCE2 course is not cheap, costing over £1000 – there would have been no way that I would have been able to afford it with my own funds. For your money, you get a copy of the official textbook (Amazon link – sponsored link), workbooks and full sample papers for both examinations. Refreshments are also provided, and the coffee machine is pretty good, but you need to bring your own lunch. That being said, QA is based in City Exchange in Leeds, which is the tower block overlooking the Trinity Leeds shopping centre, so there’s no shortage of places to eat within staggering distance.
PRINCE2 is a project management method, originally developed by the British government. Indeed, the Cabinet Office co-runs Axelos, the company which manages PRINCE2, in a joint venture with outsourcing firm Capita. Consequently, PRINCE2 is commonly used in project management in the UK public sector and it’s a useful certification to have.
As mentioned, the PRINCE2 course is quite intensive – especially the first two days, where you prepare for the foundation exam. You start the course on Monday, and sit the foundation exam on Tuesday afternoon. There’s around three hours of coursework to complete before the course starts, and two to three hours each week night. That’s on top of full days in the classroom. That coffee machine was very much welcome, and I’m also indebted to my wife for managing Lizzie whilst I looked myself in the bedroom to study. I’m also thankful to one of my colleagues who took the course a few weeks before I did, and was able to lend me the textbook. That allowed me to read the first few chapters before starting, so that I had a better grounding of some of the terminology from day one.
You receive provisional results from the Foundation exam straight-away, as a pre-requisite of the Practitioner exam is that you have passed the Foundation level. On Wednesday, the class gained a few additional students who were just studying for Practitioner, and we took the Practitioner exam on Friday afternoon. Both exams are multiple choice, but whilst the Foundation exam is just an hour, the Practitioner exam is two and a half hours. And I needed the full two and a half hours. In the Practitioner exam, you’re typically given four choices; two will be wrong, and the other two will be the right answer but with one for the wrong reason. This is still counted as a wrong answer though, and is the major difference between Practitioner and Foundation. You need to know why an answer is right, not just that it is the right answer.
The results took a couple of weeks, and, fortunately I passed. The pass mark is 55%; I managed 81% in Practitioner and a similar score in Foundation. You don’t get anything extra for passing well: it’s pass or fail. There’s no merit or distinction grades.
The Foundation certification is valid for life, and the Practitioner certification is valid for three years. You can extend this by doing continuing professional development with Axelos (and paying them some money), which I’ll have to contemplate.
As for my own career, having PRINCE2 doesn’t change anything in the short term. It may mean that I’m able to take on some project work in my current role at work, and I may look for other roles in project management. It was a big confidence boost though; excepting my driving tests, this was the first time I’d taken an exam since leaving university. I also feel pleased that the extra effort that I put in was worth it.
Happy New Year! As usual, I’m making a handful of resolutions that I’ll aim to achieve in 2018. I don’t always blog about them (as a quick search of my old posts suggests), but here’s an overview and the rationale.
Try to get at least 10,000 steps on an many days as possible. I’ve been a Fitbit wearer for almost two and a half years now. 2017 brought some good streaks where I managed 10,000 steps on consecutive days, including 100 days from July through to October. I would like to have more streaks in 2018. I think 10,000 steps every day for 365 days is out of the question, especially as I’m writing this shortly before lunchtime on the 1st January and I haven’t even hit 1000 steps, never mind 10,000. But I think it’s having a positive effect on my fitness, requires a relatively small commitment each day and it’s achievable.
Become a PRINCE2-certified project manager. I’m booked onto a week-long intensive PRINCE2 course in March, with funding from my trade union. The funding was awarded from a ballot, and the course would normally cost a four-figure sum, so this really is an opportunity that I can’t afford to lose, both morally and financially. So I need to make sure that I put in adequate preparation beforehand, allowing me to make the most of it and pass the exams.
Move forward with house renovations. We did some more work on our house in 2017, but not as much as in previous years. Two rooms downstairs are almost finished, so this year I need to get on and complete those jobs. We also need to start on our two-year-old’s bedroom, which will be a major project including re-plastering and probably some electrical work.
More child-free evenings out. Christine and I managed two child-free evenings out in 2017, which were the first ones since the end of 2015 when our two-year-old was born. We’ve had several offers from potential babysitters and need to do more to take up these offers, so that we can have some more quality time with each other.
Write more blog posts. My blogging basically fell of a cliff at the end of last year. I’m going to aim to write two new blog posts each week, and re-start my answers to Richard Herring’s Emergency Questions.
Clear out our spare room and have more guests staying over. We have a spare bed, but it hasn’t been used since May 2016 because we’ve had too much stuff piled up in our spare room. We should now have enough storage space to put all that stuff away properly, so that we can actually use our spare room and have more guests staying over.
Although our child turned 2 this month, we’re planning a proper birthday party in the new year. We didn’t do one last year as I don’t think a one-year-old would’ve known what was going on, but I think they’ll enjoy having a party.
In June, we’re going on holiday! We’re spending 10 days in France with my parents. It’ll be our two-year-old’s first trip abroad, and the first time that I’ve been out of the country since my Middle East trip for work in 2015. And it’ll be my first time driving abroad.
We have two weddings in the calendar. One is the day after our own wedding anniversary in May, and the other is later in the year.
I’m hoping to buy a new iPad, and perhaps a new phone – I will have had my iPhone 5S for three years in February.
More work on the house. We’ve nearly finished the downstairs, but the room that will be our two-year-old’s bedroom needs a lot more work.
Education! Christine starts a part-time university course for a few months in January, and I’m taking a week-long intensive project management course in March.
Whilst we haven’t booked anything, we’re hoping for another London trip.
Although we did go to a New Year’s Eve party, we were home and in bed asleep when the 1st January began.
We made a return trip to the Yorkshire Wildlife Park, which is one of our favourite zoos and in within reasonable driving distance of home. We only went once in 2017 but I’m sure we’ll be back at least once in 2018.
Our first child-free day of the year saw us go to the cinema to see A Monster Calls. It’s a great film that gets very emotional in places.
As usual, January is my blogiversary, and in 2017 I marked 15 years of blogging. Whilst I barely wrote anything in the last three months of this year, I’m not planning to completely give up on blogging any time soon. I also reviewed the Google Chromecast that I got for Christmas, and which has seen extensive use throughout the year.
Halifax is home to Eureka, the National Children’s Museum, and I took our one-year-old there in March. This was the first time that I had visited as an adult, the museum having opened 25 years ago when I was a child myself. Other museum visits included the Manchester Museum and Temple Newsam near Leeds.
I contemplated buying into Apple’s updated iPad range. That hasn’t happened yet, for financial reasons, but I am likely to buy a new iPad in 2018. My existing iPad Mini 2 won’t get iOS updates after this coming summer and it needs a screen replacement. I’d rather not spend more money on it if I’m due to replace it soon.
May is my birthday month, although it was yet another year of insignificant age. In addition to a child-free day, to watch Guardians of the Galaxy volume 2, we also had our first child-free night out. We went to see a recording of I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue in Halifax.
May was also the time for our annual trip to London. It was our one-year-old’s first long-distance train journey, and the first time that we took a pushchair on London Underground. We had hoped to make another London trip in 2017 but we never got around to booking it.
In April, a General Election was called, and the Labour Party (of which I am a member) decided to launch its manifesto in the building where I work. It was good to see the nation’s media descend on Bradford and to see Jeremy Corbyn and his colleagues receive such a warm welcome.
And I went on a Stag Do, in Leeds and then up and down the Worth Valley.
June
The General Election took place in June and for once I wasn’t disappointed with the result. We didn’t get a Labour government, but I think the result was the best that we could hope for considering the circumstances and how far behind Labour was in the polling back in April. We had a nice afternoon riding model trains in Brighouse, and a trip to Thornton Hall Farm near Skipton. June saw the second of the two weddings. Afterwards, for the first time in a while, we had no forthcoming weddings in the calendar but we’ve recently had another invite come through for 2018.
In July, I started answering all of the questions in Richard Herring’s Emergency Questions book, 15 a week. This lasted until September, when I took an unplanned blogging hiatus. I wrote about the first thing that I bought on Amazon.
I got a new Fitbit, and our one-year-old got their first passport. We haven’t been abroad yet, but have a holiday to France planned in 2018.
August
We visited Ponderosa near Heckmondwike. I don’t know if we’ll go back, as I wasn’t happy with the way the animals were kept. We also went to the Legoland Discovery Centre at the Trafford Centre – we may go back in a couple of years but I didn’t feel like it was very good value for money.
Another trip to Manchester included the Museum of Science & Industry, which has the benefit of being free and it has a toddler room. Being open on the August Bank Holiday Monday helped too.
August and September are always busy months for me at work, but we did manage to slip in a visit to Harewood House, north of Leeds, and a day trip to Harrogate for Christine’s birthday (including lunch at Betty’s, of course). We also went back to the Leeds City Museum, for a new exhibition on skeletons. As well as being free and easy to get to, Leeds City Museum always has plenty of activities for kids, especially during school holidays.
October saw visits to the Tropical Butterfly House near Sheffield, twice in consecutive weekends. I took our one-year-old one weekend when Christine was working, and ended up going back as a family the next weekend as we enjoyed it so much. I’ll do a proper blog post about it soon.
November
Just the one day out in November, to the Elsecar Heritage Centre near Barnsley. Christine and I had a child-free week off; we had planned to go away somewhere, such as London, but we didn’t get it booked in time. We did, however, spend over £1000 in Ikea, by buying a new sofa and some storage units for the dining room. This ultimately required five people to build.
December
And finally December. We made two trips to Lotherton Hall near Leeds, the second with Christine and my parents. The first was during its Christmas experience, which sees it opening late with extra Christmas activities. It was good value for the £6 per adult entry fee, although I ended up with a filthy car after parking in a muddy field. We also went to the Trafford Centre to finish off our Christmas shopping, where we also saw the Coca Cola truck.
We had Christmas in York with my parents.
So it’s been another busy year with plenty of days out. Hopefully there’ll be many more in 2018.
Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas, from me, Christine and almost two-year-old. We’re staying with my parents in York, as per usual.
I realise that this is the first blog post in two months, and only the second since September. One of my New Year’s Resolutions is likely to be to get back into blogging twice a week, it we’ll see.
Hope you enjoy the rest of Christmas and have a lovely time with family (or a relaxing time on your own).
Yesterday, I completed 100 consecutive days where I recorded at least 10,000 steps on my Fitbit. That means that I had done a minimum of 10,000 steps every day since mid-July.
My previous record had been 57 days, earlier this year. That was forcibly ended when the Fitbit Charge HR that I had at the time stopped working. Before that, I’d managed 32 days last year. Getting to a triple digit number has been a much bigger achievement.
10,000 steps is the default target, and, whilst I can achieve this with ease on weekdays, weekends are another matter. Sunday was a good example – knowing that I wouldn’t have many opportunities to get my steps in, I took advantage of the clocks going back and went out for an early morning walk whilst the rest of the household slept in. This is why I haven’t changed my target to be more challenging; I’d rather it be obtainable with some effort than feel bad about not meeting it.
I’m going to try to keep this steak going if I can, although next week may present some difficulty. Christine and I are both off work all week – we had planned to go somewhere, but left the planning too late and can’t really afford to stay over anywhere. Not having my regular routine may make it difficult to reach 10,000 steps every day, but I’ll give it a go.
Today is Bi Visibility Day – an annual event where bisexual people can show that they exist. People, like me.
I’ve decided to use today to come out publicly. I guess I’ve always been bisexual, and especially during the hormone-charged teenage years, but it has taken me until this year to accept my feelings towards other men as valid. It’s a long time to repress an aspect of your personality, and I wish I had come to accept who I am years ago.
I came out to Christine a few months ago. She has been completely supportive, and I remain 100% committed to her. It hasn’t changed anything about our relationship, other than that we spend more time commenting on men that we’re attracted to. We have somewhat different tastes, although we both think that Justin Trudeau is dreamy.
Bisexuality is a spectrum, and, on the whole, I’m more often attracted to women. But I’m no longer trying to repress my feelings when I see an attractive man. I also realise that, as someone who is in a committed different-sex relationship, I have a ‘passing privilege’ that other bisexual people do not have.
So, Happy Bi Visibility Day. If you haven’t already, take the time to listen to your Bi friends, family or work colleagues, and see what you can do to combat biphobia.
I’ve recently upgraded my fitness tracker, and now own a Fitbit Alta HR(sponsored link). I’ve previously owned a Charge, and a Charge HR, and this review will mostly focus on the differences between the Alta and the Charge. I reviewed the Fitbit Charge in October 2015.
Improvements
Compared with the Charge, the Alta HR is narrower, and the metal bands either side of the display make it feel more solid. I find that it fits my wrist better and it’s lighter, so it feels more comfortable. I feel happier wearing it when asleep than I did with the Charge models.
Battery life is much improved over the Charge HR, with the Alta HR typically lasting a full week on a full charge. You can also view the current battery status on the device itself, as it’s one of the screens that displays along with your step count, calories burnt, distance travelled etc.
Notifications are expanded beyond phone calls; the Alta HR will also notify you of text messages (and show the sender and first few words), and calendar events if you wish. If you’ve turned on Fitbit’s hourly movement tracking, then if you haven’t done 250 steps in the last hour, you’ll get a nudge at around 10 minutes to the hour to get up and move around.
In my experience, the Alta HR was better at synchronising throughout the day with my phone than the Charge models, which would sometimes go a few hours at a time without a proper synchronisation. This may be a quirk with my phone though.
Disadvantages
If you’re switching from a Charge to an Alta HR, you’ll need to turn off the floor climbing tracking. There’s no altimeter in the Alta HR and so you won’t be able to track how many floors you’ve climbed.
There’s no button on the Alta HR, so you have to wake the display either by raising your arm or double-tapping the screen. Also, the screen doesn’t automatically illuminate when you receive a notification. This probably improves the battery life but makes it a little harder to check your status quickly.
The screen is much bigger, and has a higher pixel density than the Charge. But it’s orientated lengthways, so when reading a message you’ll need to twist your arm. It also means that it’s not wide enough to display more than three digits of your step count, so once you hit 1000 steps, it’ll display ‘1.0k’ and then ’10k’ once you hit 10,000 steps. However, below this, a series of five dots shows whether you’re at 20, 40, 60, 80 or 100% of your daily goal.
Finally, your existing Charge or Charge HR charging cable won’t work with the Alta HR. It has a much improved cable that clips on to the device, but it’s incompatible with other models. You may want to order a spare cable.
Verdict
On the whole, I agree with this Gizmodo review – this is probably the best fitness tracker for most people. £10 more will get you the Charge 2, which overcomes some of the limitations of the Alta HR, but is bigger and probably less comfortable. If you’re the sort of person who wants to record their floor climbs, easily view GPS data, or practice relaxing breathing, go for the Charge 2. If not, then the Alta HR is a very good, comfortable fitness tracker.
