The first couple of weeks of August were supposed to be wicked hectic as I came back to work, did a little proofreading and had to mark essays from Birmingham. I thought I would be marking 15 essays, as I normally do, but they never came. It seems that everyone has received their essays, and the woman in charge of sending them off has gone on holiday. I am now short about £400, which is a big downside, but there is a nice upside which is that I don't have to do the work. The proofreading is done now as well, meaning I can focus on my research and my French studies. I am hoping, as I said a while back, that my life will be much simpler come October, when I have finished French and can focus exclusively on limited part-time work and my research. There is some chance the woman did allocate me the reports and then went on holiday without sending them. In that case, I will be able to do the work eventually, but that's a bit of wishful thinking.
Losing the money, coupled with the loss of the £29.99 to the Fast Fit station in Kingston, is not nice though and I'm already fretting about a flood of costs coming in October, between £300-500 for the car, £300 or so for our holiday, and another £60 for a new passport for Naomi. Yoko will also need a new passport and we will have to have the visas moved to the new passports, £170 plus the cost of Yoko's new passport, but this will hopefully be done in November. I am also, hopefully, teaching two classes at Middlesex from October and will also be receiving my yearly raise then too, so it will perhaps be okay.
I am not too bothered about it, certainly not like I would have been two years ago, and I feel like that shows a little bit of personal progress. Not a great deal, mind you — I am still micromanaging the hell out of the finances, but I am less stressed about it.
I decided to invest some more in my bicycle, in new £20 pedals which I have been wanting/ needing for a while. It's hard for me to tell what is a want or a need with my bicycle as it is my primary form of transportation and keeping it in good working order is important, but the things I have bought the last couple of weeks have been more about improving my stability and comfort; that is, things I could ultimately do without. The pedals have not come yet, but yesterday, I refitted the straps on my toe clips and rode on the dual carriageways today. Scary as hell, but I made it to work in 14:14, a new record for me. The stability is really good for my confidence when I ride. Much more control and much less stress.
I'm drinking this smokey tea: very autumn flavoured, very nice.
I am thinking about making a health blog a monthly thing with my charts and stuff, mostly for my own reference, but as I will have been weighing myself for a month tomorrow, perhaps I will put it up then and do the same in September. We have no visitors in August, so I will be able to keep my routine of eating properly and exercising. I'm still not sure what my goal weight is. Somewhere between 75 and 78 kgs, I imagine. I don't know, I'll have to see how I look and feel. I'm still paunchy around the edges, so I think it's probably closer to 75kgs. Hopefully, I will, after arriving there (sometime in the next month) be able to learn how to maintain it. That's the biggest problem: I can eat less than I need with the motivation of losing weight, or I can naturally eat more than I need without thinking about it. But I can't seem to find the happy medium. That will be the work of the autumn and winter: there would be no better feeling than getting to March and realising that I have stayed the same weight through the cold winter months.