Sunday Morning Stuff (05/05/19)

Thought perhaps I could do some actual typical blog stuff on this site since it is a blog and that wouldn’t be such a far fetched idea. Basic premise: what have I been reading, listening to, playing, and watching this week gone, plus anything else of note.

Reading…

Made a trip to the local charity second hand book shop and gathered a decent haul. They say don’t judge a book by it’s cover but that is quite literally what I do in these shops. More Márquez is always good, and the Gatsby cover is gorgeous, but I was particularly taken by the two Pushkin Press novellas: Slow Boat, and The End of the Moment We Had. I’m not familiar with the material but the cover designs are top notch and I’m looking forward to seeing what’s to be found in-between such sweet wrappings.

Otherwise I’ve been going through the second short-story collection in the Witcher series for a review next week, as I’m still eagerly (read: nervously) waiting on the Netflix series.

Listening to…

I’ve been letting the YouTube algorithm take me for a ride. Italian jazz fusion, Estonian soul, lost 70’s folk funk. There’s a low-fi, uber-cool, nostalgic tone which ties these disparate genres together. It makes you forget about the site’s commercial progression and the terrifying hellholes which are its monstrous comment sections. Sitting in the dark and clicking intriguing album art after intriguing album art, each labelled with the names of musicians dead long before I was even born and of whom I have never heard of, it’s exciting. And for once, I was happy to scroll below the video to find others like myself revelling in such bizarre and brilliant finds. Here’s a couple of my favourites:

Playing…

Dragon’s Dogma has been taking up plenty of my time, as it was designed to do. It’s the kind of game I’m not always that excited to turn on, but when I’m in it time just melts away. Trekking back and forth across the fast respawning word, kitting out my party with kit and selecting pawns is an intoxicating loop.

Also, PES 2019 continues to fill the gaps.

Watching…

The week-by-week nature of Game of Thrones is something I crave. I hope premium series’ like it don’t completely disappear, the conversations it sparks (although there was a disappointingly brief amount of spoiler-free air on Twitter) are so engaging because no one knows what happens next, Billy from accounting didn’t spend all night binging the entire series to laud it over you in the morning because he couldn’t. The simple act of waiting, the anticipation, makes each twist all the more engaging. I know Episode 3 of the final season didn’t resonate for everyone, but I thought it was one of the most exhilarating episodes of television I have ever seen. Where it goes from here I don’t know, but I’m looking forward to seeing it.

And anything else…

Anything else, if it wasn’t work, was running. Having increased my training slightly in the past month, moving into 30 mile weeks, I decided to bite the bullet and get down to a Parkrun to see where my 5k time was at. The Hitchingbrooke Park course is not fast, but it is fun. Distance wise the course comes in a little short on my watch, but I was still pleasantly surprised to come in a comfortable 20:46. Initially my goal as I went into this new batch of training was to prepare for a 45 minute 10k, but I’m slightly ahead my own expectations and would now like to get under 20 for a 5k, hopefully within the next 6 weeks. I’m in decent enough shape to do it now, on the right course, but having had so many niggling injuries in the past means that I’m keeping my expectations reasonable to ensure I don’t overdo it with the training.

And that is about it on the details of my life that I’m willing to share with the internet, I’ve got to go and enjoy the bank holiday by…going to work?