Smooooooooke on the waaaaaaaaaater...
No fire in the sky, though, aside from a glint of sun.
Pretty standard Lee Valley Road run on Thursday, topped and tailed by social interactions. I was tempted to say "Route B", but I suppose this was "Route A" long before current "Route A" was ever thought of. Curious if one is going to go cycle 20-30k or so on a purely discretionary basis to what extent one is reluctant to go 1k "sideways". Started off by popping into seeing Nic, to see what was happening in CS dept circles. Turned out there was a cup of tea in it for me, too. Rather wide-ranging chit-chat, from everything from Halappanavar/X Case stuff, to that elusive sweet spot in SF writers between "can't write their way out of the paper bag" and "transcends the genre lit-fic wankers". So, being down that end of the road, went over the bridge, out the LVR, and on the Regional Park. There was quite a lot of smoke visible from the little cluster of houses (outskirts of Iniscara, I imagine, unless it merits its own title (that I've never come across)), and it was also very visible from inside the park, where it was blowing across the Lee. Then over Woods Road, and into Ballincollig. Very chilly on the way back. Previous outing I hadn't bothered putting on my fleece; this time I did that as soon as I turned around, and was by no means ruling out putting on my jacket as an outer layer.
On a whim I went into the SuperValu -- I knew I was low on milk, and I'd heard crazy, wild talk of some SVs having meat paste. No luck on either score, but I was ambushed (and surprise mock-rabbit-punched) by Brian, previously of intermittent boardgaming of this parish. (And HQ game that went on for years without ever really figuring on this LJ.) He was looking very well, and trim -- and little wonder, too, as he was shopping for a bottle of wine for his other half, and a newspaper featuring him in the local spoorts section, chucking a javelin in club colours, and, as he put it himself, making a "sex face" at the key moment of, errr, release. Very grey of hair, too, but I can hardly talk on that score.
Today I toyed with a bike run, but the weather was pretty marginal, and the flesh was as weak as the spirit was unwilling. Settled for a "two-store run", notable mainly for getting an infeasibly large amount of biscuits at Aldi, and finding a largely-pointlessly different route from there to Tesco. Only recently discovered that the housing just past Lidl and those across from the Wilton Shopping Centre (more or less) join up. Thank you, Google maps "walking directions in beta", even if your own particular route is wrong in at least two significant respects.