Catching up on 2022

 Its been an interesting start to 2022.  But let me roll the clock back a little bit to the latter end of 2021 after the Brighton Marathon (which I'm sure you've read about in my previous blog entry).  Two weeks after that I did the London revolution Ultra.  2 days after that I finally moved into my new home.

So much more space than I was used to which just means there are now more places to lose things, but given I'd been working from home since 2020, it was nice to be able to leave my bedroom and have an office.  The garage in the background is now a home gym set up for my zwifting which now also includes running as well as cycling.

Xmas day I cooked for more people than usual in a smaller than usual kitchen.  Ironic that in a place which is a few hundred square feet bigger, I have a smaller kitchen.  

But work progressed on the house.  Had some walls painted, new electric points installed. Brand new (not Argos) furniture is now in place, the most recent is a very nice L-shaped couch and single chair. Of course being me they have buttons so you can recline to whatever position you want.  I liked how the manual (yes the couch came with a manual) used the phrase "bed mode".  Oh yes indeedy.

of course it didn't take long for Sasha to find "her spot", but only when the blanket is up there.

In the next few weeks I'll be getting the place wired up for ethernet as I'm having a bit of a wifi problem in terms of significantly slower speeds when not in the office (the single bedroom).  Right now I've got a naff workaround in the form of a seriously long ethernet cable that Keegan can use in his room to have a wired connection for his consoles, or I can use downstairs.  I'm also using powerline adapters with onemesh functionality.  It could be much better, but could also be worse.  At least I have wifi througout my house though.

I briefly met someone also! While it was great while it lasted, unfortunately there were sticking points which we just could not get past despite various changes and compromises.  I do miss her as we did spend quite a bit of time together but I guess it just wasn't to be.  So I've learned to differentiate between missing the companionship and missing the relationship.

Now its back to the running because the next Brighton marathon is looming again.  Car parking spot is already booked and the training continues.  I find myself struggling to keep my easy runs, easy.  It is just so difficult to not push it as I want to feel like I'm getting a workout.  99% of the time I'm running at a pace faster than the recommended pace window.  Doing a 5:00/km solo workout just doesn't sound like I'd gain anything from it but I do have to trust the plan. 

Chilli growing

I was given a chilli plant from my friend Tori as a housewarming gift.  Left the chillies on there for as long as I could and only harvested them when the temperature outside really started to drop.  Reason for doing it this way is I wanted to see if I could grow my own next year so wanted the seeds / chillies to be as mature as possible.  So come November (ish) I removed all the chillies from the plant.  Believe me when I say there were quite a few on there.  

I'd found an article online that suggested using a bowl of water to see which seeds would be viable for planting in the new season.  So after carefully extracting the seeds I put them into the bowl.  The ones I wanted would sink to the bottom and the useless ones would stay floating on top.

I didn't do all the chillies but I did a fair amount.  As you can see I had quite a few viable seeds for planting.  These were all dried out and ready for planting:

Onto amazon to buy some seedling trays, heat mats and a UV light.  I suspect these purchases would have earned me a visit from the narcotics squad back where I used to live.  

I planted them about 5 days ago now and have been taking photos every day just to see how they're getting on.  Right now, still nothing to see here:

I figure that either none of them will grow, or I'll have a couple of hundred chilli plants on my hands to look after.  Will be able to give away about 4 of them and with the rest I'll open up Daves chilli farm.