16, move every zig

Today's been a productive day.

•  Housework! Laundry, dishwasher, a quick tidyup. 

• Wrote a blog post, State Change, about how I've been going the last couple of weeks. I really appreciate the messages of support, empathy and encouragement I've been getting. Thanks guys, you're all incredibly awesome.
• Talked to my mother on Skype for an hour.
• Had some lemons that were getting to their use-by date, so I juiced them and froze the juice for use in home-made electrolyte replacement drinks (so much cheaper and probably better for me than Gatorade). 
• Ordered the groceries for the week.
• Ate in a timely manner before going to the gym. Hopefully this means I won't hurt too much tomorrow. Fried eggs with lean ham and rosti. Mmmmm. Om nom nom. 
• Went to the gym, and worked out. I think I can safely say I've achieved one, possibly both of my 6-week strength goals. For pushups, the goal was 12 minimum extension knee pushups as a single set max. Today, I did 10 full extension knee pushups on my second set. For one-arm rows, the goal was to do a 7x10kg set. Today I did a 4x35kg, on my fourth set, which is nearly double the weight per hand of my goal. My third set, which wasn't quite good form, was 4x40kg. I think I can fairly say that I've probably overachieved. I'm going to do a formal retest on Wednesday to see how my progress is going. And then set some new goals - again for a 6 week period. 
• Had a wonderful hot bath.
• Finished reading "The Way of Kings" by Brandon Sanderson at the end of my bath. Excellent timing, that. And now, to bed!

Kew Gardens - EPIC photography post

I belong to the London Photographic Meetup Group, and they organised an outing to Kew Gardens today. It was bright and sunny pretty much all day - lovely weather for shooting.

I spent 6 hours there, for a total of 500 photos (some of which sucked and were deleted). The full gallery is here. I used all my lenses, a lot. I didn't use my tripod. Also, thank you crumpler for making super-awesome-comfy neck straps. And super-awesome bags. I got many complements.

Since I took so many photos, I'm only going to put the small versions of the better ones here, with a little commentary. Click go to larger versions. The full gallery is here. As always, feedback, critique and criticism is welcome.

Starting off near Temperate House, some ducks investigated us:


And then a peacock!
   

He eventually ran away, and we moved on to the Japanese Garden.







And then we found some Art. By a bloke called David Nash - apparently he goes around finding dead trees, then carves and chars them into artwork.






Then we strolled up to the Bluebell Wood, where I found pretty flowers and shadows to play with.



And then there were bees!


And then I found the monochrome setting on my camera again, and also some nice branches against the sky.


And then more bees! ... with forgetting that my camera was set to monochrome.



At this point, we went for a restorative cup of tea. It was 1pm, and the meetup had started at 10am, so it was definitely time. After tea was had, we trooped off to Temperate House, where I found flowers.



Of course, being a very old glasshouse (one of the oldest in the world, I was told) there was some interesting architecture.



It was 5pm, my phone was flat, I'd lost all the people I'd started with ... so I went home. It was a great day out, and I only saw a fraction of the gardens. I'm planning on a repeat visit very soon, once my feet forgive me.

Overall, I'm pleased with the quality of my photography, especially considering how long it's been since I've done a proper photo walk.