Doing my 10,000 steps

I had a surprisingly busy, and somewhat energetic day.  I walked in to town today, as I was meeting Mary halfway in, there wasn't any point in catching a bus.  Approximate step count to walk to town = 5000 (my iPod has a pedometer, in case you were wondering how I know this).  Had such a lovely morning wondering round the shops with Mary, and chatting and catching up.  I know it's not been that long since I went to the cat show with her, but it felt like we had so much to talk about!  This is what good friends are all about, being able to talk and talk and talk, and then be comfortable with silences when they do happen.  We were mainly looking at things for Mary, and we weren't that successful in the end, but we did come across some very interesting styles of clothing - when did fashion become so hideous?  It was a fairly girly morning all-in-all, which is a bit strange, as I don't think either Mary or I are particularly girly girls!  Thanks Mary for being a fantastic friend, who I love very dearly!  So I'm thinking walking around the shops for about two and a half/three hours, at least 500 steps.

Then I had an opthalmology revision session.  Opthalmology is one of those little specialities that we do for about a week in the third year, so come round to the fifth year, it's a very distant memory!  So our unit co-ordinator is trying to organise some revision sessions so we can "recall" what we learnt, or at the very least be told what we should remember.  It was a fairly useful thing, but I had revised it a little for finals last year, so I wasn't as rusty as some of the others, but I certainly wasn't slick.  After the lecture, we had a little practical session on using an opthalmascope to look into eyes, and at the back (interesting fact for non-medics, this is the only place in the body when you can directly observe/see blood vessels and nerves/brain matter - the retina being an extension of the brain!  so this is pretty cool, and something that us medics get potentially excited about).  It's a hard skill to master.  And one that brings back bad memories for me - in the third year, when I did do opthalmology, we were looking in each others eyes, and someone found a serious abnormality in my eyes, which lead to about two years of various investigations, e.g. "next we have to do an MRI to rule out a space-occupying lesion" (medic-trying-not-to-scare-the-patient for brain tumour) and uncomfortable tests e.g. lumbar punctures (a massive needle being shoved in you back to get some of the fluid that surounds the brain and spinal sord) and medications (for which I needed regular blood tests and gave me horrid perma-pins and needles in my hands).  I had something called idiopathic intercranial hypertension, and I'm okay now.  So all in all, don't have fond memories of opthalmology.  But on a positive note, the doctor had a look today at my eyes, and they were fine.

And then, I walked home (approximate step count = 4500).  I wasn't originally going to walk home, I was going to catch the bus, reassured that I had already walked this distance today.  But there were a couple of things that I needed to do on the way home, so before I knew it, I was home and had, for once, completed over 10,000 steps!  I feel really proud of that, I usually a fairly lazy person.  It's also good to know that I can do it.  I don't think that I'll be doing it again in a hurry, but it's definitely something I want to try and do more often.  It's the closest thing that I get to exercise!

I haven't really done much in the way of Christmas decorations today.  I've given my polystyrene balls a couple of licks of paint, so they're now looking a little like this:

Still need to do several more layers.  I ignored what I read, and decided I didn't need primer, but I think I probably shouldn't have been so head strong.  It's taking ages to get a good solid colour on them!

I've been powering through with my knitting.  I've done the front, back and one sleeve of the sweater for Connor, so I should have it finished and ready to post by the end of the weekend.  It's coming along nice and fast.  Really need to start thinking about my next project.  There's one pattern that I really want to try, as it's soooo cute, but it would require a trip to the wool shop, as it really needs to be a solid colour, and all the odd balls that I have wouldn't be enough!  And I really do want to try and use up some of these balls.  So I will have to have a long hard think about it!  Either that or go and get a new pattern that would be ok with multi-colouredness.  Oh it's a tough life!