A Special Time With My Left Hand

There is no doubt that since 2008 I have had a favourite and a least favourite hand. Left has always been weaker, less outgoing, more annoying than right. I know you're not supposed to love one hand more than the other, but at times I resented left, and I think it knew it too.

Last weekend I went to the weights room at the gym for the first time in nearly three months and I may have overdone it trying to squeeze as much bench press, heavy carry and lat pull downs as possible into my allocated 45 minute window. A nagging pain in my right shoulder came on that night and it has persisted over the past ten days.

Unfortunately, you need to book your gym sessions a week in advance in these interesting times, and so I'd optimistically scheduled another weights visit for today hoping my right shoulder would be over it by then. I knew this morning it would need some more rest.

But! Maybe this was an opportunity instead of a curse. After all, left hand was still working. And it had been weak and shy for so long, perhaps some dedicated one on one time might be good for us. Like in a sitcom where two side characters get thrown into a plot together and find a common bond, perhaps I too could subvert some tropes with my left wrist for an efficient pump session on a cold Tuesday afternoon.

So we did one arm dumbbell bench press together, and single arm lateral raises together, and even planks while right hand could only watch on, hovering in the shadows. By the end of the 45 minutes I felt physically closer to left than I have in years. And right - the good sport - then proceeded to burn itself on the lid of a Creuset pot later in the evening like, yeah, that'll teach me to betray me. I'm sorry, right, but it's 2020. Sometimes men and their hands grow apart. At least until the next episode that is.

Cultural Evolution

Over the millennia, evolution has seen us progress from single celled organisms to highly intelligent creatures who know exactly the right ratio of ice, fruit, yogurt and protein powder to put into a blender for a delicious breakfast.

And yet - in what could almost seem to be an insult to all those fittest who survived - I can never resist licking the leftover yogurt from the lid of the yogurt tub despite cutting my tongue on the sharp plastic edge every single time.

You’d think the lesson I’d learn would be obvious. But what I’ve noticed lately is that, instead of stopping, I’ve adapted to use the exact right speed and force when licking the lid, resulting in all the yogurt and none of the cut tongue.

Frosty

_{No Jokes - Climate Change is Real}

The Concepts of Time

Each payday brings me a fortnight closer to death.

On the bright side, there's only twelve more Tuesdays until spring.

Autumn 2020

My Autumn 2020 daily video compilation was almost #CancelledByCovid back in March. The videos I'd been expecting to make - nights out at the Fringe Festival, trips to the pub, the first footy game of the season, the city's transition from shorts and thongs into puffy jackets and scarves - all suddenly seemed very far away.

But as I kept filming I realised what I was recording was snapshots of my life as my society adjusted to a pandemic. The Autumn video was always going to be the season that showed the most dramatic of changes. What I ended up capturing would be a historic record of the transition to a new way of living. Which, in Adelaide, was kind of anti-climatic and the new normal turned out to be a lot of videos of trees.

My MyFitnessPal Pal

The app has a comprehensive, crowd-sourced database of foods and their nutritional information. For common stuff it's very accurate, but for more obscure brands and foods you're relying on the competency of strangers to have filled in the details.

Thus it was tonight when I scanned the barcode on a packet of imported Italian linguine we received in a gift basket, in the hopes I wouldn't need to type the carbohydrates, protein and fats in myself. The result:

Even though I have no idea who this person was, this experience really drove home how similar we humans are despite our differences. And I felt a deep connection across the vast distance that separates us. I know they are a Japanese Brad, with their own Bradisms, they like numbers and they maybe also ate a delicious 59 day old Rogan Josh for lunch today.