Two small victories

1) endurance victories: yesterday, I ran at least 9 70 second intervals (meaning 80 seconds of rest), and today, I ran ten 60 second intervals, with 75 seconds of rest.

2) aerobic health victories: Yesterday, I definitely over-did it. But, it wasn't anywhere near as bad as overdoing it had been over the summer. It wasn't pleasant, but I could deal with it, easily. This was starting to concern me, because I didn't remember being able to overdo it so easily, and have the effects last so long, when I was younger.

Unfortunately, the rains are returning... this was when I hoped to be able to do a slow jog for 20 minutes, and I can't yet. (It's a lot easier to go out in the rain and jog for 20 minutes than to start/stop/etc.).

Fortunately, I still don't melt in the rain - I have proof once again! But I have to figure out what to do when it gets colder.

Breadmaking progress

My sourdough starter keeps being mysterious these days. I can make a sourdough poolish and have it just not raise the bread at all, and it sometimes gets a funny, non-sourdough smell to it.

Yesterday, I'd had enough and decided (at 5:30 pm!) to see if I could make yeast bread.

I put in an extra half-teaspoon of yeast to make sure it would rise fast.

Well... I mixed, it hand-kneaded it, and set it to rise... in about an hour and fifteen minutes, it had more than doubled, so I deflated it, did some quick kneading, and let it rise again. As expected, it rose in about 35 minutes (it usually rises twice as fast the second time).

I formed a loaf, started it rising, and when the time was right, I pre-heated the oven.

Helpful hint: if you're the kind of person who puts tea lights in the oven to use it as a warming chamber, take them *out* before pre-heating the oven.

Anyway:

Yeast bread was a smashing success - it's nothing special, it's "just" a white yeast bread, but, it came out of the oven at 10:20 - plenty of time to get to bed on time if I'm working the next day.

Still can't figure out why my sourdough keeps dying, though.

Careful not to jinx it...

...but it seems that my final gift from Microsoft - a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate - is up and running on my new SATA 3 Solid State hard drive - my other birthday present to me.

I *do* miss being able to buy cheap Microsoft software... ah well.

My home PC now has a 7.3 out of a possible 7.9 on Windows Experience Index... and my disk is at 7.6, it's everything else that's at 7.3 :-).

I felt a bit silly about this. I wanted to buy myself *something* for my birthday, and a solid state Sata 3 disk was the best performance boost for my system, but it wasn't really what I *wanted*. Thankfully, I found a magical tea maker that was perfect as an additional gift.