This morning was chilly. I actually wore a scarf. I grabbed the first one I could find, one of my Harry Potter scarves, and it was a Ravenclaw scarf. Which confirmed what I've long questioned- that I HAS THE BIG TIME SMARTS!
Last night was even chillier- it got down to 8 degrees Celsius in Sydney. Normal people hurried straight home from work, dashed inside and warmed up. Not me- I went for a jog. Courtesy perhaps of my Nordic genes, I wore running pants, a dance top, a t-shirt so thin I question whether I'll put my fingernail through it when I touch it, and a thin hoodie, and started to feel warm as soon as I'd left my street. (My body receives my Nordic genes loud and clear except when they start demanding I wear sandals with socks, something so synonymous with Scandinavians that I seriously think it's a genetic trait).
I walked roughly a kilometre to the park where I jog, jogged 1.7km and clocked a time of 6 minutes and then walked the kilometre back home, in a fair bit of pain. What hurt, you ask? Legs, feet, core? None of the above. My ears, however, were burning with the force of a thousand suns. Not my inner or middle ear either, but my outer ear. The fleshy parts shaped like satellite dishes which insulate and funnel sound waves and provide a place to dangle pretty earrings. The pain seared through them for a solid ten minutes.
It occurred to me the best things about night time jogging are the ability to see right into people's houses and units (and realise the obsession some folk have for lacy curtains) and the lack of heat from sunlight. You also get a lot of thinking time.
I was inspired to start a blog through my friend, I shall call her Ms Z. Ms Z is a very close friend of mine and she was the one to encourage me to start one just before I left for Prague. I did start one but as I mentioned in my previous post, didn't write a single post.
I met Ms Z at my previous job at a law firm. One particular morning, it was discovered by two unfortunate colleagues that 4 Olympic-sized swimming pool's worth of water had flooded from the roof into one end of the office and mixed with sewerage from the men's toilets where it had also flooded, and had gone through the cement slab underneath the floor and was dripping through the ceiling lights into the law firm on the floor underneath us ("Good morning!! Here's a gift from us to you! Don't forget your umbrellas!"). This was the same end of the office where my desk was now about to set sail, along with the desks of several others. Fortunately my belongings were saved, unfortunately so was my work, and I was moved down the opposite end of the office to share a desk with a colleague I shall name Tee-Dub. Tee-Dub and I did not get along. After a few days of desk-sharing, it became apparent to the office manager, Bill, that if we shared a desk any longer only one of us would emerge alive so in his wisdom, Bill put me in an empty office for the day and the following Monday, I would move to an empty desk down just past the now cordoned-off end of the office. Enjoying my first and last day in my own office, I read an office-wide email which said:
"On Monday we have a new employee starting at *our law firm*. Her name is Ms Z and she will be replacing Jessica D. in working for [solicitor] JA. Please make her feel welcome."
My initial thoughts were "Hmm I think I'm getting a cold", immediately followed by "Now would be a PERFECT time to sneeze all over Tee-Dub's desk!". Biological warfare, right there.
Come Monday, with a nose set like concrete and a forehead you could cook bacon and eggs on, I moved my things and saw Ms Z was my desk buddy, at a separate desk but right next to me. From then on, we were constantly in trouble from our former office manager for talking too much (presumably because she had nothing else to do after having been unceremoniously unseated from her position and was now eavesdropping to pass the hours, in addition to jealously guarding her secret stash of cheap biscuits which people would steal when she wasn't around) and the solicitor Ms Z worked for, also due to talking too much. The straw which broke the camel's back a few months later and tested our former office manager's patience that one time-too-many was when we were busted for laughing too loudly and a complaint was lodged. So I was moved back to my old desk, since the floor had been dried out from the flood, and if anyone thought altered geography would stop Ms Z and me communicating, they had another think coming because EMAIL, PEOPLE! It's a thing!
Ms Z left my work the following year for bigger and better gigs but we stayed in contact and had many adventures. Ms Z oversaw my first trip on a plane, something lesser beings had never attempted due to my being phobic of flying but with her good humour and wit, Ms Z had it down pat, pointed out the cockpit as we boarded the plane and with our other friend Amy, good-naturedly tolerated my gleeful enthusiasm at take off and landing. Were it not for her, I probably would never have ever considered going to Battle of the Nations (BOTN) in 2014, which was held in Croatia, or this BOTN just passed. So in light of that, and the fact this blog even exists, I thought a post to thank Ms Z for it all was fitting!
I just entered my running time into an online race/time conversion tool and my figures for the time and distance run last night indicate that if I were a male, I'd be in the top 67.5% of runners in the world! This sounds pie-in-the-sky to me but hey, who am I to argue! I haven't run since last winter and really need to amp up my cardio for full contact triathlon, about which I will explain soon, so I'll have to put up with sore ears in the meantime.
Until next time!
