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Home Again

A week and two days have passed since my last post. It was a great week where I met some inspiring people who are doing great work. One such person is the owner of Start of Happiness with a value packed blog about finding happiness in life. Well worth checking out. The owner lives in the neighbouring suburb so I'm sure there will be some good opportunities to philosophise over a decent coffee which Sydney has no problem producing.

We had my mother staying for a few days this week who is a primary school teacher. She was visiting Sydney for a reading course through Macquarie University. My mum is on the verge of retiring and it made me think that life is a journey of learning and even in retirement so there's so much to be learnt and experiences to be had.

The fitness regime was on the back burner for the week as I was driving Mum around for a few days and I also wanted to spend quality time with her and with my son and wife while 'Mimi' was visiting. Mimi is a name that my mother came up with because she didn't want to be known as 'Gran' as it sounded too generic and old! I once would have got anxious about not training for another week. A few years ago I'd be training for the next triathlon. These days I'm not racing but I find I bounce back fairly quickly and a 2 week hiatus is great for all minor injuries and inflammation to heal or subside. My workout on Saturday felt great and I saw the familiar faces in my gym. I didn't feel like I had been away for a few weeks. It sure did yesterday though, and today.. However, active recovery is the best approach so I returned today to pick up the bar again along with my love-hate favourites the pull-ups and dips. I tend to rotate my other sets but stick with a default handful which I do every session unless due to a particular injury which is rare.

So, in between gym visits we visited Balmoral beach which sure was beautiful. Ollie and I went swimming. Ollie assured me he can swim but as we approached the water his confidence dropped. Upon hitting the water he yelled "Daddy, I can't swim!". I was expecting this, as a repeat of our previous swim about a month ago so I swirled him around for some 360s at waist height and he loved it. A quick lunch of fish and chips followed and a stroll to our favourite coffee kiosk for takeaway coffees and a babycino and marsh mellows for Ollie.
Balmoral beach

Ollie wanted to copy his Daddy
The glare is "too bright!"
Speaking of coffee, it was time to grind a week's worth of coffee. The bean from Bulletproof coffee is the business and I ended up buying an oversize bag on line which I'm enjoying a great deal. The quality is great and it clears out the brain-fog even more if combined with some good quality grass-fed butter and MCT oil. I'll talk some more about my fitness experiments in an upcoming blog.
Grind time!



Today I took a leave day and we started our Christmas shopping! The only way to keep Ollie happy was to hire the car below for a small fee per hour. He loved it and showed no interest in running away when he could cruise in his car. He was easy to find too in the department stores as I just looked for red flag #2 above the aisles!


 Back to the office tomorrow where I've got some big goals to smash, a midweek catch up with a buddy at a newish Mexican joint near the CBD and another Christmas party to finish off the week. I should mention I attended an end-of-year party last Friday at the local bowls club which sure was fun.
Trying to avoid send the ball in the gutter at pace




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