Its been snowing you know...

Well of course you do, unless you've been locked away in a box the last several days.  It does make me wonder why this country effectively grinds (or should that be slides) to a halt as soon as we get a dusting on the roads.  

This is the first time Sasha has seen any real snow as its not really had anything like this since she was born (about 5 years ago now) so it was interesting to see how she would react to it.  But typically with Sasha, not much phases her.  She sneezes a few times when a snowflake goes up her nose on the walks and kinda did that wretching noise when she had her mouth open and I think one touched the back of her throat.

The photo was from a couple of nights ago.  There's a tree stump at the halfway point on our walk so a great spot for a photo opportunity I thought. She wasn't too sure at first when she put her front paws up on the stump but was happy to pose for a picture once she eventually got comfortable enough to sit down although I don't think she enjoyed it as it was only a split second after taking the picture she was off the stump and wanting to crack on with our nightly walk.

But I won't let that stop my weekend with Keegan stop us from doing anything. We're off to the snowcentre in Hemel Hempstead for his first freestyle lesson in what seems to be an eternity.  

It'll be the first time since coming back from Austria that he's been on his snowboard so it'll be good to see him throwing himself over the kicker on the training slope again.  That's the difference between Keegan's snowboarding "courage" and mine.  He'll just go for it and launch himself over a jump.  Doesn't matter if he's not done it for several weeks or not, the bravery level is exactly the same.  Whereas I like to build up to things, I don't go "straight to 11" (play on words from this is Spinal Tap).  Plus I am not so much into the freestyle aspect of snowboarding, preferring to keep my snowboard on the ground.  So, while Keegan will get "big air" he doesn't like to go as fast as me.

Also, we're off to see Black Panther at the cinema Saturday afternoon.  Keegan hasn't seen Captain America : Civil War where Black panther makes his debut into the Marvel cinematic universe so hopefully we'll watch it tonight just so he has a grounding on who this guy is.  But while I was booking tickets I saw this rather interesting seating option.

I just had to book it!  So Keegan and I have one of these each.  You'd be forgiven for thinking that having a stretch out quasi-bed in the cinema would be uber expensive but seeing as I initially was looking at watching it at the BFI iMax (the big one by Waterloo station) where two premium seats came in at £40 and two normal seats in the £30 range, for two of these was even cheaper.  I think about £11 each which in this day and age is really good for a cinema seat.  I showed the above pic to my sister and she promptly replied "nighty night".  

Hmmm, I didn't think of that when booking the seats but I'm sure a mid-afternoon showing will not have me so tired that I'll be heading off to the land of nod before the starting credits have even finished.  Perhaps thats why the seats aren't stupidly expensive because people do fall asleep on them and therefore pay to watch the film again, but in more normal seats.

At Xmas time I bought two legs of spanish ham.  One from Groupon and one from Asda.  The groupon one was done before new years came about I think it was but at that point I knew I was going to be starting my Slimming World inspired diet so the other leg remained untouched, for months.  When my parents came to look after Sasha for the week that Keegan and I went away I told them to make a start (and hopefully finish) the leg as apparently its best before is the end of May.  We came back after the holiday and the leg wasn't touched or even moved from its resting place.  So, I decided to bring it into work:

As you can see its only a little leg and it did catch a few people by surprise, walking into the kitchenette to see a disembodied leg / hoof in there.  So that was Tuesday I brought that in, we're making steady progress on it but there is still loads left although I do think people are enjoying it they are leaving it to me to carve bits off and put it on a plate which is now part of my work morning routine.  Get in, power up the computer, go into kitchenette, make / pour coffee, carve serrano ham, back to desk.

In different news, the weight loss journey is still continuing.  There was a day this week I was convinced I'd taken a step back on my efforts as I'd felt the waist on my trousers being a tad snugger than usual but it was a false alarm, well except it wasn't because they were tighter but all because I'd been wearing a 34" waist all day!  At the start of the year I was a tight 36" waist just to put it into context.  So yay for me! 

I created a spreadsheet so I could view my progress and nearly every time I weigh myself, I record it.  Of course excel has lots of lovely features but I thought it good to see a line graph of it all which I will share with you now.

No prizes for guessing when I weighed myself after getting back from Austria but overall its a huge loss.  The last point on the graph has me only 2.2lbs away from my target of 13.5 stone (189lbs)!  I joke that I'll celebrate by binging on a box of Krispy Kreme donuts and a cocktail day in London but that wont happen.  What will happen though and I'm glad I didn't jack in my gym membership is I'll be going there in the evenings so I can start preparing more for the 100 miler I have going on at the end of July.  Yes nearly 2 stone lost and I didn't set foot in the gym once.  Walked past one many times though but that doesn't count.

What I am hoping to also do, once the weather clears up (i.e. no more snow / ice on the roads) is to get out on my bike once more.  Maybe throw in a bit of swimming also, we'll see... I don't want to overdo it :-)