Updates from Planet Kelza! Hurrah!

( NaNo '12, Kelza's New Job, Its Unexpected Health Benefits and the Best Use of £51 Ever... )

It's too early. Jason stayed at mine last night but we had to get up early since he has another work placement, this time transporting medical records around Warrington Hospital. I am le tired, but I'm terrible at going back to bed once I'm awake. I'll just lie there, tired, but totally unable to sleep. Later on, I'm going to his to stay over.

Anyway, yesterday was one of those days where I accidentally and unintentionally got in way more exercise than I had to. First off, swimming. If I go alone, I usually get out after about seventy minutes. But my younger brother Ashley decided he wanted to come along, and time flew much quicker since I had company. I ended up staying in the pool a full ninety minutes, only getting out because I was tired. Then, it takes me an hour to walk to the pool and back, so that was two hours and a half of exercise already. Then, Jason and I went to Sian's later on to watch a couple of films. Dad drove us there but we walked back, which took 30 minutes.

At the end of the day I was so knackered that I actually don't remember getting into bed last night. It usually takes me a full hour to get to sleep but I was out as soon as my head hit the pillow. I'm sleeping much better now that I'm more active.

So, swimming. I wasn't allowed to borrow a float but I'm actually kind of glad I didn't, because I did my usual thing of holding onto the side and swimming with the rest of me, and I noticed a definite improvement - as in, I could keep myself afloat much better, and I wasn't gripping the side as much as skimming my hand along it in case I needed to grab on to steady myself. I just did my usual laps back and forth along the side, from the shallow end to 1.25m (the limit for non-swimmers) and back again, practicing a half-breaststroke with each arm in alternation. I'm getting faster at swimming as well.

And guess what? I swam unaided as well! It was only for about three strokes, but I managed it! So in three sessions, I've managed to swim by myself a little bit. Hopefully I can manage to get a little bit further each time I go.

So, yesterday I managed to burn off 1683 calories. I had to eat 2237 to make sure I actually netted some. Which was easy; I made up for the calories I'd burned at Sian's place later, with all the food I brought to accompany our film. We watched Troll 2, which is so awful it would take me forever to review, and then a DVD of one of Sian's favourite childhood films, based on Through the Looking Glass.

I'm thinking of starting to plan for NaNoWriMo today, and I think it shall just be a continuation of The Great Couch Happening of '69. I need to plan, otherwise the novel will just fizzle out, but at the same time I need a plan which allows for some of the spontaneous craziness that makes my novel what it is. And I believe the best way to do that would be to plan in the form of notecards. I did this a couple of years ago when doing my NaNo '09, Crimson Dawn, which actually turned out quite well - I had a lot of fun writing it.

Maybe I should use notecards for my other project too... I want to revive the fantasy-romance novel that I started working on when I was thirteen - I have the storyline set out quite well in my head - and I've tried to plan it a few times just by typing out a synopsis, to no avail - when I try to write it down in plan form it just gets overly detailed and tedious. If I tried to just write it from my mind, it would just fizzle out. I need to have the plot written in some form before me, like a roadmap. Put it this way, you'd never travel to somewhere you'd never gone before without a map. My novel's the place, the plan is the map. I've never written my novel before, so I need some form of a plan to make sure I don't get lost and give up a couple of chapters in.

Right, so now I just need to find some plain paper, cut it up into eighths and get to work.

I think I'm coming down with a cold - my throat feels all rough and dry this morning. I hope not. Colds suck :(

Anyway, I'm going swimming again today, and I'm seriously nervous about it. Basically, without a float, I'm horrible at swimming, and apparently the huge pile of floats my local pool has just sat by the changing room door is 'not for public use'. I think they belong to the swimming clubs that use the place or something. The life guard last Sunday was kind enough to let me borrow one - but only after I'd gotten into the pool and proved just how awful I was. I'm hoping with every fibre of my being that whoever's on duty when I go today will be just as kind.

Next week should be okay, since I plan on buying my own but can only do so on Monday. But if they turn around and tell me I 'can't bring my own float' then I'll just end them with it. They shouldn't do though, because I see kids there wearing what are quite obviously their own armbands. So if they're allowed to bring their own swimming aids, then so can I.

To illustrate just how bad I am at swimming... without a float, I have to hold on to the side with one hand and sort of 'swim' along with the rest of me, and it looks embarrassing. I just can't trust the water. In primary school and right up to Year 9 of high school (that's about age 13 for those of you with different educational systems) I had swimming lessons pretty much once a week for a term every year, but I never picked it up. My confidence in general was a mess thanks to bullying and whatnot, and I think this is pretty much why I never learned how to swim; because I was too self-conscious around my douchey classmates.

I'm going to ask about adult swimming classes today as well. I hope they have some going, because I seriously need them. I want to know how to swim! I don't want to be an Olympic swimmer with perfect form, I just want to be able to plod along without floats, without holding the side, and without worrying that as soon as I let go of something I'm going to fall over and drown. Plus being able to swim confidently would be a bonus in a situation like a sinking ferry, or a flash flood, or a pool party apocalypse.

Guess what we finally got yesterday, after almost a decade of coveting it? Sonic Adventure 2: Battle! It went up for sale on the XBox Live Marketplace a couple of days ago and we all agreed that it had to be ours. Me, Nathan and Ashley are huge Sonic fans, and Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast is one of my favourite games of all time. Put it this way, we played it for years, almost every day we were on it. Between playing that and Soul Calibur, we actually played our Dreamcast to the point where it no longer works, and those things are sturdy little machines. Sonic Adventure has everything, good graphics for its time, fluent gameplay, a good mix of challenging and easy levels that are excellently designed and memorable, the characters are well animated, the Adventure Field (free roam! Yay!) and Chao Garden are both genius ideas and the music... oh man, I love the music.

So, Sonic Adventure 2 downloaded, we gave it a play...

( ... oh dear. )

Well then! It's been a while! Everybody should thank darkspirited1 for dragging me back. I've been thinking about LiveJournal for a while now, wondering whether it was appropriate to return for the five quintillionth time, and whether or not there'd be a digital angry mob with pixel torches and electronic pitchforks waiting to skewer me for my negligence. As it is there's only a keyboard awaiting me, and Semagic.

What have I been doing these past three months, you ask? After the horrible ol' business that was - er, is - 2012, I've just been recovering, trying to get over my depression, and getting my life back on track. I did keep a non-Internet diary for a little while, which I will probably type up and post here backdated to fill in the gaps, and I have a Tumblr for when I really needed to rant or post cute pictures of my rats... but after nearly six years of LiveJournal, I guess Tumblr and my diary weren't enough.

( Summary of my last three months under the cut for your convenience... )

And... that's pretty much it. I think. These three months have been pretty uneventful otherwise; I've just been going to pub quizzes, chilling out with Jason, playing the XBox and having moodswings. Hopefully I can get more active on here again, because I love my LJ too much to let it fade away. And I love you guys, of course. The time I've been away I've missed you all a lot <3