Once... in a blue moon

There was a whole bunch of hype about this and as Isla and I stood on our balcony and watched the 1 hour lunar eclipse spectacle I can't say that I was that impressed. Sure, when you thing about all the astral physics involved then it's a pretty cool concept but the end result was... dull (with a redish tinge).

I managed to take this crappy photo but it gives you an idea as to how lame the whole thing was. Incidently, the last one was 7 years ago and there won't be another one till 2011.

The most beautiful morning...

I was on call... The night before I was told I'd have to come into work as one of the Registrars was having contractions which meant an extra 8am - 6pm shift. So I woke up at 5:45am and got my stuff together. A shower later I was on the bike heading up to Hornsby. It was a Sunday morning and there was a thick layer of fog hanging in the air. As the 45 minutes on the bike passed the sun came up and the fog burnt off.

The morning was totally picturesque and the fog lent a surreal characteristic to the lamp-posts, green lights and pedestrian crossing beacons as I turned the crankshaft. What stuck me most was the way that the birds are out at that time. There was pairs of sulphur crested cockatoos, lorikeets and parakeets sitting on all the traffic lights. It really made me realise how great things are here. You'd not see anything like that in glasgow. Ok I lie - perhaps you'd see a Ned in a bus shelter or a junkie lying in a gutter... but it's not the same.....

Is there a God?

Well Richard Dawkins doesn't think so and I'm inclined to agree with him. Not his usual standard of writing but a definite eye-opener to people who are on the fence about religion. He says on the back that his view point is unbiased - which obviously it isn't as he is dead against religion. However, it's got some classic quotes in it like "you'll never hear of someone blowing up a building in the name of Atheism!"

If you are religious then you might want to skip this as he presents a great deal of good/logical arguments about why people shouldn't believe in religion including a chapter called "Why God Almost Certainly Doesn't Exist". The retorts from every religeous person/elder/priest/bishop etc is always flawed (in Dawkins view) and essentially revolve around "I don't need proof - I've got faith".

If you are open minded about the possibility of religion being something that has been superceeded by science then have a read. If not then I suppose it doesn't matter what's in this book as it won't change your mind - as Dawkins says "If I believe in a scientific fact for years and then someone presents data to proove it otherwise then I change my belief. Why doesn't that happen in religion?"

I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry

HAHAHAHA... Adam Sandler's being doing some crap recently but this one was pretty funny. More of a Saturday evening pre-pub with beers and the lads movie but definitely worth watching...

...and Jessica Biel?!?!?!?!

Chicken Oriental...

That's right, after the ordeal of yesterday's 14km nightmare I've signed up for another one!!! I must be on crystal meth or had to many hits from my crack pipe!

The "Bridge Run" is on the 23rd Sept and runs concurrently with the Sydney Marathon and Half Marathon (which Isla is doing) and thankfully is only 9km. Now since I averaged a very poor 7.5km/hour on the city to surf I'd like to improve on that one and try to do it in 55mins or less.

This race should be really accurate (unlike the medieval timing card system of the City to Surf) as you get and ankle timing chip which measures your speed and time via GPS and an activation/deactivation plate at the start and finish.

Actually I am really looking forward to it as the buzz I got from Sunday's race was quite unlike anything else and I think I might be hooked.

City to Surf

Done! Thank goodness. Actually was not too bad despite no training and being a fattie. No blisters and a shockingly bad time of 1:52:22 but without incident except some cramp and a lengthy pee break.

You can read all about it on the 365.

A spot of colour

Howdy everyone. If you have been reading the 365 blog then this doesn't really apply to you. This post is just to give everyone else a little taste of what the scenery was like in Queensland and I hope it doesn't disappoint.

I'm not kidding when I say that the sunsets and sunrises were always as beautiful as this (even if this one is jazzed up a bit with photoshop - the reason that I did that is the camera just doesn't capture all the feelings, smells and sounds that go with something this amazing and unfortunately they add to the visual experience which a regular 2D digital picture just wouldn't do justice to.)

This particular photo was taken at about 5:30pm on from the boardwalk overlooking Noosa Heads main beach and I'm sure that the locals didn't even notice how spectacular it was. I guess they get this canvas every day and it's nothing special to them.

The night before... anti-Christmas

Well it's finally here. The city-to-surf race starts at 9am tomorrow morning and I'm dreading it with an abundance of what can only be described as the complete opposite to how you feel on Christmas eve.

14km of torture and I've only run once in the last 3 weeks (and that was a measely 4.5km coz my feet hurt!). I'm so dead!

Not that any of you get the Sun Herald but if you have some crazy broadsheet collecting obsession and you do happen to read this Tuesday's one then you can find out what place I've come. My race number is 16143.

Argh! The fear.......

Return from QLD

Hey guys. We are back from Queensland and it's taken me 7 hours to write up everything we did. I'm afraid that I can't be bothered duplicating it here so if you want to know what we got up to in the last 2 weeks then click on the 365 Challenge and have a read.

Be prepared as the latest entry is 6,000 words and may take a while for you get through...

...enjoy!