Day 96 - Novelty worn off

This video pretty much sums up the current feeling. It's better than keeping everything inside though, and then weekend is fast approaching. Time for a relax, a destress and a rethink of priorities. 

Stay safe folks, and look after each other 🙂

Till tomorrow, Tom

Day 56 - Quick Charity One

Sat in the apartment here in New Orleans after a very busy day yesterday. Full blog will come later tonight once I get back to Baton Rouge but I know I still owe you Day 56. So, as promised, here is a quick list of the charities I've been sup[porting as part of my lent initiative. 

These are a combination of charities that I know from conversations with people in my life, that I already donate to regularly or that I believe are important from my own research. Please help to support if you can, thank you so much.

Lupus UK

Sepsis Trust

Rett Syndrome (in memory of Jude)

Shelter UK

RSPB

Woodland Trust

A little bit can go a long way.

Till later, Tom

Day 31 - Oops

Missed my blog. I blame it entirely on going out for a few beers last night and not actually returning home till well past my normal "school night" bedtime. A few of the folks from work decided to introduce me to one of the local sports bar chains, which has the slogan:

Eats. Drinks. Scenic Views.

The food was pretty good, a nice juicy burger and good fries. Everything else that came out also looked good too. Definitely more on the menu to try. The local beer was tasty, plus we managed to catch the back end of happy hour, which is never a bad thing! 

The scenic views are definitely the selling point of this chain though. And you can probably guess from the name Twin Peaks exactly what those scenic views just might be! Yup, it was exactly what you'd expect. And exactly the kind of place where wearing a suit might make you look a little out of place. Throw in a British accent and it is amazing the kind of attention that generates!

All joking aside though, it was a lot of fun. Got to catch up properly with a few of the folks from work that I know a little bit, plus meet some new ones too. Was kind of a strange feeling watching them disappear one by one to report back to their various commitments though. 

As much as I miss home and the people back there it is sometimes nice to know that you have that freedom to just see where the evening takes you - to just say "yes" when those opportunities arise.

So tonight is "electronics blackout evening". No phone, no TV, no PS4 when I get home. Just me, my book and possibly a nice long bath. I do owe a blog later though before I go - so I best get to thinking about something to talk about in the next few hours then!

Till later, Tom

A bit of a rebrand

So I noticed it is over a year since I wrote anything on this blog that wasn't a book review or in some way related to books! I don't think I've run out of other things to say (anyone who knows me would confirm that its unlikely) but for some reason the only thing I feel like I want to write about is other books.

As a result, I've rebranded the blog ever so slightly - in fact you may not even notice the changes. The name of the blog is the only real thing to change (as well as some of the sidebar stuff). I've not changed the URL over yet as I don't want to lose any who may have this on alert, but I am planning to try and switch it over later to something along the lines of fantasyaccordingtotom.blogspot.com or fantasyaccordingtotom.blogspot.co.uk.

Content-wise you won't notice much difference. I'm still planning on keeping the book reviews coming, as well as looking to get a couple of Q&As together in the near future.

Other than that, keeping reading and keep enjoying.

Till next time,

DT

Challenge #16 is done!

Another weekend, another challenge done. A full review will hopefully follow tomorrow cos I am absolutely shattered. 6:30am start on Sunday, didn't get to be until 21 hours later. A 10km run and one of the best day/nights out in a long long time.

Two newcomers to our little muddy-running band and they both enjoyed it so much (well maybe not during it!) that the sign-ups for upcoming races are coming thick and fast!

I'm off to lie on my very comfortable bed and comtemplate the fact that Tough Mudder is a mere 13 days away. Oh joy!

Till tomorrow,
DT

Here comes the Warrior

Tomorrow is Challenge #15, the 10km Total Warrior. I finally got around to looking at the course map, I now I wish I hadn't bothered!! This one looks absolutely crazy with a ridiculous array of obstacles both natural and man-made. There is an advantage to that though, more obstacles usually means less distance running between them. Full report will follow tomorrow once I've cleaned all the mud off!

You might find it odd to learn that someone who does so many of these runs (both obstacle and "normal") doesn't actually enjoy running that much, but I don't. I don't hate it, it just hurts a lot both during and afterwards and to be honest if someone could ferry me around between the obstacles that would do nicely. In hindsight I should probably have picked a hobby that I am actually good at and also physically capable of doing on a regular basis without falling apart.

Though then a big part of me asks "where is sense of adventure in that"? That sounds like an easy way out when in actual fact the whole point of doing these things is to challenge your limits isn't it? Life can be done very quietly, very easily and with the minimum amount of fuss if we want. But is that what we are supposed to do with it? Or are we, as I mentioned in a previous post, supposed to seize it? Are we in fact meant to do things the "hard" way, because the reward from overcoming challenges like that is the prize itself.

So tomorrow I'll spend a good few hours soaking wet, covered in mud and in varying degress of pain. And you know what, there is a very good chance that despite all that I will love every single second of it!! Which is the whole point of things in the end.

Till next time,
DT

Coming thick and fast

After a bit of a lull between challenges we have now hit "busy season". Between now and the Men's Health Survival of the Fittest on November the 8th I appear to be attempting the following:

• Total Warrior (10km)
• River Rat (10km)
• Tough Mudder (18km)
• Spartan (5km)
• Reaper (2 x 10km)
• Men's Health (10km)

Six challenges and 73km across a mere 101 days (plus hopefully this accursed zipline). 

The longest between events is 3 weeks and the shortest will be the few hours between the day and night versions of Reaper! I pretty much blame Rick entirely for this and I will make sure I moan at him continually before, during and after all of these events.

But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't anything but genuinely excited about this little stretch. It is a chance to try and get myself fit and really get out there and do something positive. I'm lucky enough to be still able to even attempt these challenges and even more fortunate to be raising awareness and funds for such a fantastic charity along the way.

First up is Total Warrior (Challenge #15) on Saturday. It's been a wee while (April in fact) since I last encountered the mud and it'll be great to feel its sticky goodness again. Wish me luck and please check out the website if you get a chance. It would mean a lot.

Till next time,

DT

Challenges and Travelling

Been a busy day today. First thing this morning my brother-in-law and I headed over to Leeds for the Asda Foundation 10km run - Challenge #14 on Tom's Many Silly Adventures. We survived in one piece which is obviously great news indeed!!

A full review can be found at my Silly Adventures website. Don't forget why I am doing these events though, to raise money for Friends of Serenity and raise awareness of Trisomy 13 and other syndromes caused by chromosomal abnormalities. I'm delighted to report that we got confirmation of our full charity status this week, which is fantastic news and testament to all the hard work being put in by everyone.

So please please please visit the website and direct friends and family to it aswell. The more awareness we can raise, the more we can try to do something about these illnesses in addition to helping those who are dealing with them. Thank you.

In other news, I've finished my travel blog from my recent trip to Lisbon. It can be found here, any and all comments and thoughts are welcome. Hopefully you'll find it interesting, informative and useful if you have any plans to go to Lisbon. I'd definitely recommend you do, it is a great city with plenty to do and see.

I'm aware that I'm still a good 3/4 book reviews and one MOOC review behind schedule (at least) so I've got plenty to keep me going over the next week or so. Hopefully I'll have something on every day but for now, thanks for taking the time to read :o) As always, any feedback and comments are much appreciated - either on here or to doctortomowens@gmail.com

Till next time,
DT

Quick Friends of Serenity Update

It's been a month or so since I last gave you on update on the Friends of Serenity adventure. We are flying along with our fund-raising efforts, with almost £15,000 raised to date. Plenty of people as well as myself are getting involved in challenges and the like and it is fantastic to see so many folks rallying to the cause. Check out the Recent News section of the Friends of Serenity website for more information, and to find a cause to donate to if you want to contribute.

As for myself, well its that time again when a big raft of challenges get booked and I start to worry that I maybe need to get a bit more training done!! My Silly Challenges website has all the information about what I'm doing and when, please go and check out the extent of my crazy ideas for the next few months.

What is coming up soon? Well touch wood I will FINALLY be doing Challenge #6 which is the 1.5km long Snowdon Zipline. Check out the website to see this amazing experience and also check out some of the other cool things they offer (hint: it involves underground trampolines). Challenge #6 is scheduled for Friday, I'll keep you posted.

Challenge #14 will be on 20th July - the Asda Foundation Leeds 10km and the next mud run will be on the 2nd August. We've plenty more to come in the rest of the year; a 10 km "wet" obstacle race, Tough Mudder, Spartan and a repeat of Manchester Men's Health. All good fun and plenty to keep me fit.

In addition check out my latest news post with a bit of information about a new mud/obstacle racing team that I've joined. Team Primal is brand new and we really looking forward to getting some quality training in before tackling some great events. These things are always better with friends after all.

So that is where we are at the moment. I'll have a full review of Challenge #6 on Friday if it goes according to plan. In the meantime, try something fun and different yourself - it's well worth the effort!!

Till next time,
DT

Ideas aplenty

I'm not sure how this works, but I seem to be at once both physically exhausted and mentally invigorated. I can barely sleep more than two or three hours a night but I am chock full of ideas for stories, new challenges, fundraising concepts and numerous other things that I am not 100% sure are actually my thoughts. It is a classic chicken and egg; am I tired because I am mentally overworking myself or is my mind on overdrive to compensate for the physical exhaustion. And why can't the two parts get together and agree some kind of ceasefire?!

The more physically drained I get the more impossible it seems to be to turn my brain off. I have seriously cut down on my late-day caffeine intake yet I seemed more wired than ever. My evenings are much less "thought intensive" yet I seem to be more occupied with things than I was before. I've restarted exercising but all that is doing is energizing my brain completely (my body is essentially a write off so no real change there!)

It is just very very bizarre. They did say it might be a function of my multiple conditions but I'm marginally confused by exactly the effect it is having on things. In some respects it is great as I'm at an all-time high in productivity levels (both outside and inside work). I've redoubled my efforts to get these kids books off the ground and I'm finding my creative ideas are bouncing around like crazy in my head.

But it is shattering. It then becomes a touch frustrating because I know I am exhausted but I don't sleep. I guess part of it is sub-concious as I know there is a big decision coming up medically and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't at least partly on my mind. How do people manage like this, is is just something that you become accustomed to and it eventually becomes the norm!?

It is probably a good job I've managed to find some outlets as I can imagine this causing me to burst if it didn't. I now kind of understand why I used to "blow up" needlessly in the past sometimes. I'm putting it down to the fact that I had all this mentally and nervous energy and somehow wasn't able to find the right outlets for it, even if they are just a silly blog and some short stories that have a very small change of seeing the light of day!!

It is an exciting, invigorating and sometimes overwhelming existence but it could be worse. Things could always be worse so I'll take my chances with this for now thanks.

Till next time,
DT

Bring on the doggy paddle

Open Water season is upon us. For those unfamiliar with it, that means swimming around outside in various bodies of water while people look at you and wonder when you lost your senses! It is actually not as bad as you might imagine though. 

If you swim somewhere "official" then I've generally found that the water is a damn sight cleaner than your average swimming baths. Not to mention it is a bit more liberating than having to file upon and down in a line, endlessly changing direction every 25m. Throw in the fact that most pools tend to get pretty crowded these days and it is a recipe for disaster sometimes.

Open water swimming is definitely one of those things where I can see people wondering if I'm right in the head when I talk about it (I unfortunately have a lot of topics that illicit that response in people but I put it down to me being simply too cool for school). People often enquire, politely of course, why on earth I swim outside in what is perceived as cold, dirty water when there are perfectly good pools all over the place!! 

But it is the sense of something different and "outside the norm" which is exciting though. Trying a new twist can often rekindle a love of an activity or a topic that has fallen by the wayside. I've definitely found that the open water swimming aspect of the triathlon training has been the most enjoyable over the months, which I would not have thought would be the case when I first started out.

So tomorrow why don't you try and rekindle a passion or an enjoyment of something you used to love doing? And if you can throw in a new twist on it, you might find that you discover a whole new way to enjoy it!

Website of the day: My next Friends of Serenity challenge on 1st June, the Go Green Cheshire Triathlon (Super Sprint distance). Any support would be more than welcome, I'd even take hecking and jeering to be honest with you - http://www.uktriathlon.co.uk/events/cheshire-triathlon/

Till next time,

DT

Broken clock

Is there any way of getting my body clock repaired so it is working properly again?! 

My typical day consists of waking up at 4am, 5am and 6am, but then sleeping through till about 8am. I then realise it is pointless leaving for work as I'll get stuck in traffic so I eventually rock up about 9am if I'm lucky. The morning passes reasonably quickly until about 11:30 when the day begins to drag. The next hour takes three hours and then the lunch hour takes 25 minutes.

Post lunch drags horribly until about 4pm, usually with some vague attempt by body to get me to go for a nap. Around 4pm I'm suddenly ridiculously productive and the next three hours whizz by in a haze of "getting loads done" before I get turfed out of the building around 7pm. I then usually having something planned in the evening so generally by the time I have done that and eaten it is around 10pm. 

I have a massive yawn and then, once again, my body has another injection of energy and I lie in my bed until about 2am trying various methods of making myself go to sleep such as reading, writing blogs and counting small fluffy clouds with legs. About 2am I finally drift off only to be woken again at 4am - and the cycle begins again.

THIS IS NOT NORMAL!!!!! Please help :-D

Till next time,

DT

So what do you know? On second thoughts....

So I've started my latest MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) called Start Writing Fiction. It's a free course hosted by the Open University so I'm very excited to see what it is all about and hopefully get some hints and tips for my own writing exploits. 

I've always found writing to be a very difficult art form and I am often in awe of people who do it well. We had an assignment today to write two short paragraphs; one with 3 facts and 1 fiction element, the other with 3 fiction and 1 fact. It turns out that writing the factual one and keeping it interesting is a damn sight harder than it seems. They often say "write what you know" so I tried that. 

Well it turns out I know a lot of very, very uninteresting things which sound even more boring when written down and articulated! Thankfully my imagination still seems to be working wonders but wow I hadn't realised how thoroughly tedious some of the things I know are. I feel I should apologise profoundly to anyone who has had to endure some of my fun facts and interesting tidbits.

You see, even this blog about how boring factual stuff can be compared to the blank canvas and wonder that is made-up things has proven to be staggeringly boring itself. I think that counts as irony but I've never been 100% sure what irony actually is since Alanis Morissette had what I shall describe as a pretty shoddy attempt at explaining it. 

So with that in mind I shall waste no more of your time today. I'm off to try and find some genuinely interesting things to try and incorporate (a) into my next story and (b) into my next human conversation!! 

The eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that I've stopped (a) blogging every day and (b) doing my "daily" joke/fact/website etc.. Well the truth is that I've run out of jokes, even bad ones, and I've now shared everything of value the internet has to offer.

OK the ACTUAL truth is that I can't be bothered doing the "daily" stuff every day as it was starting to feel like a chore. I will do it if I find something worthwhile but not just for the sake of it. I'm still trying to blog every day but I've got plenty of my mind to keep me busy so we'll see how we go from now. I've lasted longer than I expected so yey to me!

Till next time,

DT

Still here!

Ok so I know it has been a while. With travelling to Copenhagen last weekend, plus working pretty late for the last couple of weeks it has left me very little time to blog at all. Couple this with the fact that I am writing my travel blog for my trip plus trying to sort out hospital appointments and you can see why I have slipped back a bit.

Anyway, enough excuses. Full Copenhagen report should be up over the weekend and I'll be back to daily blogging soon.

Keep the faith and maybe I might find something interesting to say soon!
Till next time,
DT

Challenge #11 is coming. The MIGHTY DEERSTALKER awaits

Just a short one tonight. I'd like to say I'm being a proper athlete and preparing properly for tomorrow's event. But in truth I'm not in the slightest. But hey ho, I'm sure it'll all work out fine in the end.

So I'm just going to plug the challenge website and the Friends of Serenity charity website. Please take the time to go and read these to see what I am doing, why I am doing it and to learn about Trisomy 13 and the journey some people unfortunately have to go on.

It is only with your support, your help and your generosity that we can make a difference. So anything you can give (whether it is time, money or even just your best wishes) would make the world of difference. Thank you all, hopefully see you Sunday if I survive!

Today's #randomfactoftheday - 3 films have won a total of 11 Oscars; Ben-Hur, Titanic and Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.

Today's #badjokeoftheday - Q: What does a T-Rex use to do DIY? A: A dino-saw.

Today's #websiteoftheday - Ooh ooh ooh. Miniature trees! (http://www.allthingsbonsai.co.uk/)

On this day; 1879, birth of Albert Einstein

Till next time,
DT

Where does the time go?

It's now 2230 and I've literally just sat down having been on the go all day since I gave up on overcoming insomnia this morning around 0645. Why are some days over before you've even had a chance to think about them? I was genuinely planning to get a good long blog in tonight but unfortunately it is not going to happen. Hoping tomorrow might be more fruitful but chances are it'll be another one of those days that passes me by without me really noticing.

I would like you all to remind me of this in a few months when I'm complaining of being bored and having too much time on my hands!! Swings and roundabouts and all that eh?

Today's #randomfactoftheday, #websiteoftheday and #badjokeoftheday will return tomorrow. Probably.

On this day; 1876, Alexander Graham Bell makes the first successful telephone call, "Mr. Watson come here, I want to see you".

Till tomorrow,
DT