Getting around

No, not like 'that'...!
I had my first driving lesson today. My instructor's name is Joy, so I can make funny jokes about her last name being "Ride" to my friends for laughs. She's a good instructor apart from she needs to speak up sometimes! It's no good whispering "brake" to me if all I can hear is the engine running!
What surprised me is how sensitive cars are! I was a bit heavy handed at first, but I got the hang of things quickly. Sometimes I'm a bit irregular with my movements and wow, putting the handbrake off was hard to start with! I thought I wouldn't have the strength to do it but it was just a matter of getting used to how it felt. It was raining intermittently today so I also got used to using my wipers :)
I'm informed that my gear changes are pretty solid, but I over-steer too much. Needless to say I think I'm making solid progress even after one lesson. I can't wait to start being able to drive independently, getting a feel for the car and using your instincts I feel will be large part of it as well as basing all of that off base knowledge of the road and how the car works to drive it. Sometimes I find it hard to keep straight on the road, apparently I tend to verge off to one side or the other when I'm not really paying attention if it's not a dead straight road (lol).
My instructor tends to seem really panicky when I make a mistake such as almost going into a wall, but she has brakes!
I think I remember how to start the car too: (put your seatbelts on!) clutch down, engine on, put into first, bring clutch slowly up and put handbrake off. I might have gotten the second two steps wrong but we'll see what she tells me on my next lesson, next Wednesday.
I can't remember much apart from that which was significant about my lesson.

In other news, I got asked to participate in the upcoming charity fashion show at work. It's all vintage clothing and that's on Thursday with the dress rehearsal on Wednesday. I bought new jeans for it to wear with a top that is on my clothing list, but unfortunately today I managed to get tomato sauce on them already so I'm hoping they wash up alright ); otherwise I've already ruined them.

Further news is that I've started running! I've wanted to get my fitness levels up for a while now. For me it's not about losing weight, because that's really not an issue for me. And my diet is fine. What I'd like to be able to do however is walk up more than a few flights of stairs without feeling completely breathless. Improving my general fitness will be beneficial in general for all sorts of things! I'm on my feet all day which I think has helped because I rarely get a chance to just rest. Tomorrow is just a straight 30 minute walk.

I'm trying to think of things that have also happened recently that I haven't mentioned, other than me and Oliver breaking up but that was almost a month or more ago now. If you punch people in the face and knee them in the balls in a public bathroom simply because you don't like them, I'm not going to stand for that! Whether it was one-off violence or not! It's a fault of mine I tend not to talk about relationshippy stuff mostly because a) I know it gets boring if people talk about it all the time and b) nothing dramatic much ever happens!

On a final note, the new HIM album got released in the rest of Europe today! I bought that this morning and listened to it while running/in the bath this morning. It's pretty good, definitely classic HIM sound which is both good and bad as for the last two albums I've noticed them changing up their sound consistently for that particular album. But I see hints of everything they've ever produced in Tears on Tape. There are a few songs I know are definite favourites right now, but I'm sure I'll come to like every single track and also know all the lyrics.



Not much else to report for now, I think it's dinner time.