Mixing It Up With Swimming?

Whenever I say to people how boring exercise is I’m always told that it’s because I’m not “mixing it up” enough or I haven’t found something “I really enjoy”. In general, I don’t like anything that is repetitive and boring and that rules out most forms of exercise apart from real sport. One that I haven’t tried though is swimming – until earlier today – but even that was disappointing.

People have always told me that swimming can be a lot of fun. It gets you out of the house rather than exercising at home, works all the muscles in one go and is very good for you joints because it’s not high impact. The problem is that it’s so boring. Running is quite monotonous but swimming is even more so.

It probably isn’t helped by the fact that I’m not very good at it! I’m a terrible swimmer so I end up in the slow lane and it takes me ages to do a length (or that’s what it seems). I can’t deny that it’s a good workout though – you really feel that the muscles all over the body have been worked when you go for a swim. I’ll probably keep it up for this reason but I can’t see myself enjoying it like a lot of people seem to. Maybe I’ll get into it more as time goes on though – it would be a bonus if I did as it would make exercise a lot easier.

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Filed under Summer Time

Time For A BBQ?

The summer is here (sort of) so it’s about time I started thinking of when the first BBQ is going to be. I wish I’d had one a few weeks ago when we were having a mini heat wave, but I’m sure they’ll be other good days coming up over the next few weeks. The problem is that I’ve never been that good at doing a BBQ.

Whenever I start the BBQ I want. This is made worse by the fact that a friend who does regular events like this is very good at doing so and ends up with fantastic food each time. He’s given me a few tips on how to get the most out of the BBQ but I think he’s holding back because I still don’t get anywhere near his meals when it comes to taste. Either that or I’m just naturally very bad at cooking!

I’m thinking of having a few practice runs this year to get into the swing of things for when we have actual guests round. Maybe the big problem is that I don’t get enough practice then rush straight into doing a large BBQ for the whole family. If I practiced with smaller amounts maybe I’d get better at it and would have more chance of a successful outcome! Perhaps this is wishful thinking though – maybe I should just get someone else to do it.

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Portal 2 Review

The recent big game to be released is Portal 2 – and it’s turned out to be a very good choice for people like me who’ve grown bored with the regular games available at the moment. The idea of Portal is that you can fire two different types of portal with a link between them. When you go through one of the portals you come out the other one. It sounds like a simple idea to base a whole game off, but it works surprisingly well.

The great thing about the game is that it stays varied throughout all the levels even though the basic idea is the same. The puzzles are well designed and keep you interested throughout. I wouldn’t want to play the whole game through in one go as it might get a little repetitive, but for a quick gaming session it’s the perfect game.

It didn’t come as too much of a shock to me because I’d played the first version of the game which was a free mod for Half Life. I hope they make more Portal games in the future as they’re the perfect antidote to games such as Call of Duty which require very little thinking!

I’m going to review the new Operation Flashpoint in the next post. For those of you that don’t know, OF is a tactical shooter that’s meant to be realistic. You can’t get shot and expect to carry on, for example, meaning the game is much more tense.

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