Scales

Instead of doing a weird escapology act to weigh myself underwater, I made an appointment with the sports science department of a local college and had a load of health tests and body composition analysis done. While I'm generally fit and healthy, a full 23% of me is fat, which is rather high. I have to either lower my target weight or increase my muscle.

It reminds me of when I went out with a fantastically thin girl. She lived with me for a year and a diet rich in pasties and red wine allowed her to put on a little bit of weight. She's much more polite than me. When the doctor asked he her weight she gave some impossibly low number, the doctor then asked for he "target weight" she wanted to say "fuck off" but managed to subsititute that with "I haven't got one".

Richard "full fat" B

Dress Code

There are several photos of my late father doing informal activities (lawnmowing, boating, standing outside his house with his family, etc) while wearing a shirt and a tie.

I've just been to a track day with my brother. Thankfully it's not competitive motorsport so we don't have to wear fireproof suits, but we do still have to wear long sleeves and long trousers. The narrow pedalbox in my car also means that we end up wearing "racing driver" shoes. I like to wear a cardigan to trackdays to offset the fact that the racing driver shoes make it look like I'm taking the day altogether too seriously, but this time it was far too hot for a cardi.

Other than the crash helmet and the shoes I was dressed in summer mountaineering clothes. Very lightweight and slightly stretchy slacks and a similar pullover. My brother was struggling to find something with long sleeves that wouldn't be too hot and would stand the rigours of a day of driving. He very nearly chose a cotton dress shirt, and if he had he would also have worn a tie as a tribute to our father.

The chap with whom we were sharing a garage was a distinguished older gentleman, and judging by the livery on his towing car, he owned a Ferrari dealership. Without a hint of irony he was wearing a dress shirt both to drive and to prepare his track cars.

Richard "Brian James Race Shuttle 3" B

Paris Fashion Week

 One of my friends is the most stylish and glamorous woman I've ever met. She works in an office, but she looks like she's going to a modelling job. For an evening of heavy drinking at my house she had dressed as carefully as you or I would to go to a wedding. Just sometimes, however, she looks as classless and ordinary as the rest of us.

I gave her too many drinks, made her unwell and she had to go home. Apparently between the taxi and her front door she exploded into a fountain of vomit. Her husband had to sluice her off with the garden hose before she was even clean enough to walk indoors to the shower.

Richard "over-served" B

Hip Hip Hop and you Don't Stop

 There was a comments thread that I enjoyed. The idea was that your rapper name is "Li'l" + The last reason you were in a hospital. There were some great submissions like Li'l Fracture, Li'l Infection, Li'l I Work There, and Li'l Abortion.

I introduced my niece to the game and said that I was Li'l Stitches. She however is much more exacting about root cause analysis. Rather than Li'l Trauma and Li'l Shock, she said that she and her husband are actually Li'l Fell from a Horse and Li'l Plane Crash.

Sadly this makes me Li'l Climbing Accident, or even more insulting - Li'l Skill Issue.

Richard "Li'l Elderly Father" B

Book Club

 I'd like to recommend a novel, and to tell you a little bit about it.

It's called "Just Stab Me Now" and for the most part it's a fantasy and romance story about a widowed noblewoman on a diplomatic mission to the court of a foreign queen. It's also a story about an office worker and part-time author who's writing the story you're reading. It's also a series of vignettes that take place entirely in the author's imagination as she "talks" to the characters while she's writing her book.

Despite the fact that the real author, Jill Bearup, has invented a whole new way of telling a story, it's not a masterwork of literature. What it is is great entertainment. It's a nice length, it's an easy pageturning read, and it's a whole lot of fun. There are two adventure stories that are thoroughly entertaining, there are two romance stories and one of them is genuinely heartwarming, and the way that the characters rebel against the author is laugh-out-loud funny.

I feel a bit bad for the author. She's come up with something as new and inventive as the epistolary novel, but I think it's one-and-done rather than the start of a whole new genre.

The best bit is that the author and the characters can talk about the tropes and forms of romantasy, but still use them or subvert them. I think it's both a love letter to and scathing criticism of romantasy genre fiction.

Richard "TLS" B

Escapology

 I have a reputation for getting into ridiculous situations. I swear that this one isn't real, just the product of a thought experiment: I'm wet and cold, wearing only swimming trunks and a climbing harness. I'm in a wheelie bin full of water that's balanced precariously on a plank. There's spilled water everywhere. I'm desperately trying to reach the jack handle of an engine hoist that's attached to my harness, to lift me vertically out of the wheelie bin.

I'm a bit worried about my weight, but I don't know what my target weight should be, so I'd like to know how much muscle and how much fat I'm carrying. I can weigh myself easily enough and measure my height, but I'd need to know my volume to work out my density. Obviously that would be done by submerging myself and measuring how much water is displaced. If I had a bath I could make a couple of marks on the side of it with wax pencil - one for the water level when I'm completely covered and another one when I'm out of it. Then it would simply be matter of counting how many buckets of water it takes to fill it back up to the top mark. I don't have a bath, nor waterproof pencil, nor goggles to see where I'm making the top mark when I'm underwater.

I do have a wheelie bin, and I'm pretty sure I could fit in it. It would seem to be much simpler to fill it to the brim, then get in it, and measure how much water was displaced. I couldn't sweep all the spilled water up off the garage floor well enough to measure it, but I could weigh the bin it before and after. My bathroom scales don't go up far enough to cope with a wheelie bin full of water, but that's easily dealt with. We'll put a scaffold plank on a paving stone at one end and the bathroom scales at the other. The wheelie bin will be on the plank 20% of the way from the stone to the scales. A little applied maths will tell of the actual weight.

The only problem that remains is getting in and out of the water filled wheelie bin without tipping it over and without getting stuck.

Richard "apparently a gym can do this more easily" B