It's a good thing that I've got Christmas covered for myself. Where would I get all of these cool things otherwise? Of course, my bank account has been taking the brunt of the damage. I'm sure it will need a bit of recovery time...

While I was in Hastings, we stopped off and visited a friend of Jo's. She happened to have a book kinda half hidden on a shelf in the living room. I saw enough to catch my attention. Furry Logic is a cute little pick-me-up book that looks at life and puts it into perspective, with the help of the animal kingdom. I grabbed a copy for myself later that afternoon, and I'm exceptionally glad I did. Jo and Sandy both kept mentioning friends of theirs who would love it, too.

I happened to be walking past Borders yesterday, and noticed that they, as with everyone else, was having a post-Christmas sale. Everything was 15% off the regular price. New to my bookshelf is The Art Of Looking Sideways. It bills itself as a primery for developing visual intelligence. I've only had a few glances inside so far, but I have a feeling that digging in will give me a continual feeling of "further down the rabbit hole".

The last new thing, and probably the greatest inner controversy of them all, is my shiny new leash. After just over 2 years in New Zealand, I buckled to the pressure and picked up a mobile phone. After looking at a huge range of new models, I settled on a Nokia 6100. It's the only phone that didn't make me want to kill all the people who are designing phone interfaces these days. I haven't had much of a chance to play with it yet. It's been activated for about an hour now.

This counts as my first major slip from my goal of 10% increase in running distance per week. I think it's more of a case of bad planning than not being able to keep up with the pace, though. Yesterday, I went for a long-ish rollerblade ride through Mission Bay, so the thought of running for 45 minutes this morning wasn't overly appealing. I did, however, go for about 5 km (as opposed to 7.5). My pacing and balance was noticeably shoddy, so I called it off in favour of some shoulder work instead.

A slip like this is far from the end of the world. I kinda expected that something would happen over the Christmas break, and I've got a few weeks grace before City To Surf.