One of the things I’ve touched on in a recent post is that I am trying my hardest to become more grounded and it involves getting back into a routine with life. This isn’t just having that cup of tea in the morning or getting up at the same time each day, but mainly it’s about having the right work/life balance, something I have always struggled to do.

For a while I have had the Reading Tweetup, a meetup twice a month by Reading tweeters. They are always fun and I fully recommend you come along if you live in the Reading area. It really isn’t creative though.

Last year I went along to two knitting groups in Reading – one on Tuesdays and another one on Wednesdays and I thoroughly enjoyed going, but felt that everyone else already knew each other so well and I wasn’t prepared to put in the effort to become a part of the group. The members in both were impossibly nice and friendly, but clearly some had known each other for a long time and with being tired from work or other commitments I quickly stopped going completely.

Fast forward to June this year and I started going again. It helped that @sahfenn was interested in going again, too, making not going a bit more of an issue even though I’m sure she wouldn’t have minded.

Since then there have been times I’ve struggled and was too tired from work or didn’t feel in the mood for it, but forcing myself to go was always rewarding and having gotten to know the other members a bit better has been brilliant. I was there last week when I was so tired I nearly fell asleep and I went today when all I wanted to do was go home and chill out.

The moral of the story is that nothing comes easy and that I have to do more things that I might not enjoy doing at the time, but that will ultimately turn out to be rewarding. Now I just need to apply that same reasoning to my Shine training, or rather lack thereof!

As for the title of the post that is the literal translation of a German idiom. ‘Getting over one’s inner swinedog’ or ‘den inneren Schweinehund überwinden’ means to ‘to overcome one’s inner temptations’, but the German version just sounds that bit cooler.

I am absolutely in awe at the amount of donations people have made for Shine! With just over a month to go I have received £248 in donations for the £500 target I have set myself.

So how is it going with the training?

Well, it could be going better though it’s definitely not going terribly. Basically I haven’t done half as much as I wanted to. I walked maybe six miles in London the other day and I’ve been walking home from work a bit more, but all in all that’s been it.

And I mostly blame the weather for it. I’ve been meaning to take a walk along the Thames for the past two weeks which would be just under nine miles, but it’s rained on both weekends.

Seeing it’s just a few weeks left I’ll need to start moving on that!

Previous Shine posts:

• Half-marathon, me?
• Shine London 2011 – It’s on! [Please sponsor me!]

I have mentioned in my previous post that I was considering taking part in Shine 2011 which is a marathon or half-marathon walk in London during the night of October 1st.

Well, I have just signed up for it.

It is a 13.1miles walk and I am about as unfit as they come and will have to really prepare for it. As a colleague kindly pointed out it is about 42000 steps. Which is a lot of steps.

It would be incredible if you would sponsor me. All the money goes directly to Cancer Research UK’s work.

If you don’t want to or can’t sponsor I would love any other support you can give me.

Thank you!

On the second day I was getting itchy to do something like that myself. After all, 5k isn’t all that far and some people actually mentioned on Twitter that they’d sponsor me. The reason that always turned me off in the past was the belief that I wouldn’t be able to raise enough money and that spending my time as a volunteer was better over all.

As the event concluded, however, I had all but made up my mind to take part in a Race for Life in 2012 in addition to volunteering again. I was looking at perhaps taking part in the Oxford one which has the route throughout Oxford’s city centre and then volunteering a couple months later at the Reading Race for Life.

Along came Shine. I randomly saw it on the Cancer Research UK website and within minutes was incredibly excited about it. When asking on Twitter and Facebook whether my friends would sponsor me over 20 replied that they would.

Shine is on 01/10/11 and is a marathon [26.2miles] or half-marathon [13.1 miles] walk through London at night. It starts at 11.30pm for the half-marathon which is the one I would consider doing. The training plan is crazy and would take up a lot of time.

So am I crazy for even considering taking part? Yes, I think I am! I’m the one that sits on the sofa watching Poirot while knitting. I’m the one that takes the bus when she should be walking. I’m the one that is just generally lazy.

Overall Shine sounds exciting and I really want to take part in it. I will sign up for it on payday this week and then it’s time to start the training!

As I’ve mentioned before I was part of the volunteer team at Reading’s Race for Life this past weekend.

The weekend was really good though at the same time stressful due to many other things I was doing that weekend, not all of them planned! The weather was mostly beautiful and at least I could improve my tan and do some knitting during the Saturday downtime between races.

Kodak moments included:

• A 94 year old woman walking on the Saturday AM race and completing the course!
• All the costumes, specifically the child in the Doctor Who one even though he didn’t take part!
• A woman who is normally in a wheelchair completing the 5k course in the Sunday race after just under three hours after there were only volunteers and random families in the park left.

Of course there were bad things, too:

• Bitchy volunteers. Yes, they’re volunteers, but at the same time you should never bitch about the people taking part in the race nevermind how prepared they are. One of the reasons Cancer Research needs the volunteers is to ensure the event hasn’t got any major problems, not to bitch about someone forgetting their safety pins to attach their running numbers..
• Lack of activities around the race leading to an empty park when the race was underway.
• And then there was a run in I had with one person who got a bit aggressive when he found out his wife and daughter weren’t able to register on the day as the race was completely full.
• Music. There are some songs I never ever want to hear again!

Pictures:

• Heart Fm Saturday AM and PM
• Nivea

And some of mine:

I’m planning to do volunteer again next year and am also planning to walk one of the races. Are you going to sponsor me?

I’ve long since supported Cancer Research UK with monthly donations and I have in the past volunteered with them, though it never actually came together as the events were either fully staffed already or at times when I couldn’t make it.

A few months ago @chelthan told me that she was taking part in the Race for Life in Oxford which got me interested again. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to find enough people to sponsor me for the race itself so decided to take another look at volunteering.

There are three Reading events this weekend:

• Sat 17 July 2010, 11:00 – 5km
• Sat 17 July 2010, 15:30 – 5km
• Sun 18 July 2010, 11:00 – 5km

More info on this flyer.

I will be part of the admin team responsible for the sign-up and allocation of numbers for all three events which, judging by the weather forecast, most likely means sitting underneath a flimsy tent in the rain hoping that the wind won’t blow it away. Yet strangely I’m also looking forward to it.

Are you going to be there?

You are sulz!
Don’t know much, but you make up for your lack of knowledge with your friendliness and niceness around the forums.

Take this quiz

It all began two three days ago when, after having used Diurnal for a long time, I decided a change was needed and I consulted the lovely people in the wordpress.com support forum for alternatives. I also stayed around answering a few questions and went along reading some blogs as one does. As an aside, I do think that time spent in the wordpress.com support forums is somewhat related to the amount I’m blogging.

Aaaanyways, I digress as per usual; back on track. I was attempting to answer a question and whilst doing a Google search for the thread I knew was there I had this excerpt amongst the results:

Which WordPress.com Forum Volunteer Are You? You are raincoaster!

Obviously that sparked my interest as I was wondering why on Earth raincoaster was unsure about who she was. But then again, we are talking about raincoaster here.. I followed her links which led me to sulz’s blog, although, shouldn’t that be my blog as I’m her? Turns out her and Juan [you know, the guy who did this amazing theme] had a project that involved quizzes to determine our split personalities on the forums.

I suppose there wasn’t an option to be me, was there?!

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This was kind of obvious with regards to my answer on question two! I am wondering about question one though, who are they?

• A nickname that could be a name of a virus
• A nickname nobody is quite sure what it means but you

As for Hanni, well, I’ve not been around the forums much in the last few months, so I’m unsure whether it fits or not!

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I actually very much agree with this, although I would be interested in the other possibilities as well!

Thanks, sulz & Juan, it was fun!

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And, before I forget:

Diurnal is an amazing theme, great colours, layout and the change of the colourscheme according to the time of the day is ingenious. However, considering how it’s now October and winter is most definitely coming it was about time to change it.

Dark Lake by Juan aka Devblog is a dark theme which makes this the first time I’m using a dark theme on this blog. An incomplete history of all themes I’ve used so far can be found here. One of the main things I like about this theme is the display of comments as speech bubbles.

If there’s any broken stuff or things I need to fix, please let me know. So far I’ve noticed some images don’t like to have text wrapped around them, but I’m not too sure why. Yet!

And I’ve also updated my ‘About page‘ which I appear to do on a yearly basis and a list of places I can be found at on the internet. I am also currently working on modifying and extending the pages found within the games section.

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I am planning to take part in this year’s NaNoWriMo and will write it on the internet. I’ve created another blog for that for which I will post the link closer to when it starts in November. What is NaNoWriMo?

National Novel Writing Month (also known as NaNoWriMo) is a creative writing project originating in the United States in which each participant attempts to write a 50,000 word novel in a single month. Despite the name, the project is now international in scope. 101,767 writers participated in 2007, with 15,335 reported winners, for a cumulative word total of 1,187,931,929 words.

Want to join me? I’m carocat on the website and I’ll be twittering about it as well.

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And it’s October or as it’s also known as: “National Breast Cancer Awareness Month“. I’m planning to do something over on cat on tumblr, but I’m not sure what yet. Maybe something along the lines of taking one pink image a day. Think Pink!

• Gillian Gibbons has been released early and handed over to British officials in Sudan after being jailed for letting her class name a teddy bear Muhammad.

I know I’m pretty much on my own with this opinion, but I really don’t think that she should’ve been released early. She broke the law. Yes, we might not understand it, but it is the law in that country and everyone working in another country has to be aware of them.

What if a foreigner breaks the law in this country? Should he/she get away with it?

• Foreign observers have said that Russia’s parliamentary election, won by President Vladimir Putin’s party, was “not fair”.

Well observed.. I’m not sure what gave it away though, was it the lack of private booths in the polling stations, the propaganda fed by Putin’s party over the last years, or maybe the excessive police presence that removed anyone that dared to ask a question or complain about the voting conditions? Well observed indeed..

• Appeal bid by urinating attacker

I don’t even know what to say to that. What is wrong with some people? That is just sickening and disgusting. If you ask me he’s lucky with only three years.

• Fire teen ‘tried to save family’, now gets a pointless award.

Do not get me wrong, that is a terrible tragedy and I very much feel for relatives and friends. It also made me check my fire alarms.

However, what is the point in giving her an award? Would it not be better using the money to spend it raising awareness? And comments like this drive me crazy:

“This was a young girl, an emblem of innocence, with the courage to seek help and turning to her faith in the midst of fear and danger.”

Thanks for that, Detective Chief Superintendent Norman Baxter..

• A row over a teenager being suspended from school because his hair is too long is set to go to court.

Grant Stranaghan, a GCSE student at Ballyclare High School, was suspended for three days last week for having collar-length hair.The 15-year-old’s father George claimed his son was now being kept in “solitary confinement” in a separate school room.The school said its rules applied to all pupils equally with due regard to any mitigating circumstances.

He told the BBC that the High Court hearing was due to take place in several weeks’ time.

“Grant is being kept in solitary confinement, he is completely separate in a different class, and has separate breaks and lunch-time with no contact with his friends,”

Now I could sort of understand it if he had long hair like Dumbledore, but his hair isn’t even that long. All this for his hair which isn’t even shoulder length and looks in a decent condition?!

• Oh and I bet y’all don’t know what this is:

Well, I don’t know either, but it relates to one of the only good stories I’ve read today:

A plan to end the postcode lottery in cancer treatments and improve services to patients is set to be unveiled.

The only question left is are their five years the same as ours or will everything still be the same in fifteen years time?

Cat

In addition to that I’ve always wanted to get involved a bit more, for example helping out with events and raising awareness to the charity, even though it’s a widely recognised charity already. The only thing that’s really stopped me is that I didn’t know how to get involved.

However, looking at their website recently, I discovered a section which I have missed for years: ‘Volunteer for us’. I singed up and will have a meeting with a local organiser in a few weeks to discuss how I can get involved.

Cancer is something that may have influenced me more than some other people. I’m sure pretty much everyone knows someone who knows someone who has had cancer or maybe even died of it. Also see the ‘Six degrees of separation’.

My mother died ten years ago because of cancer and I have seen her health getting worse and worse all the time until it was too late and she wasn’t even able to leave her bed any more. And I have also seen just how much it can mess up families, my stepdad’s and mine relationship was very strained throughout her suffering and even more so after her death. In fact I would almost say that it’s never fully recovered.

Several people I know have previously gotten involved in various charities, all just to raise the quality of their CV. Maybe I know the wrong people, but talking to some friends today about wanting to volunteer, most answers I got were just: “But how would that help you in your line of work?” or “Why would you want to do it, you’re not applying for university?” Of course, I don’t ‘need’ to to anything, my CV is decent, it won’t help me as a certification tester to volunteer with a charity and I am not applying for university.

Is it wrong to want to help without necessarily getting something out of it? Am I looking at it from the wrong angle? Is everyone just so selfish that other people and charities don’t matter? Is that part of today’s society, just look out for yourself and no one else?

Cat