Everyday life – Life, everyday

So many of our friends have blogs now, which is just fantastic – I love getting a little insight into what everyone has been up to. It’s a great way to keep in touch with the lives of our friends and family around the world.

Still, I wish more people would create a blog. The biggest complaint I hear when I nag someone about it is “I have nothing to write about”. Well I don’t really think that’s true, and hopefully I can prove it – but I’d like to enlist the help of all you other bloggers out there!

“Everyday life” – that’s exactly what a blog is about. And I want to read about it, your everyday life. Show me photos of where you eat your breakfast, and what you have. What your bed looks like after you get up. The bus stop outside your house where you commute to work. I don’t care what it is – but I’d love to see lots of stories and photos about your everyday life. Life, everyday – it’s what you’re doing all the time, so write about it!

I have a tag called “Everyday life” which generally we use as, “I can’t think of anything else to file this under”. Well no more – from now on, we’re re-claiming that category for stories about how we live everyday. Partly this has been inspired by Mom & Dad, who after seeing the movie Prime asked “is that what your lives are like over there?”… I haven’t seen the movie yet so I can’t comment, but hopefully this will go one better. So in that vein, here’s my first story about everyday life.

I’m having trouble sleeping again. Well, it’s not the sleeping so much that’s the problem, it’s the waking up at 6 AM. No, not by choice – but for some reason, my body seems to think that 6 AM (or there abouts) would be a grand ol’ time to wake up. Despite my protests, I can’t seem to do anything about it, so typically I just toss and turn until about 7:30 AM. That’s when I need to get up, and inconveniently, that’s when my body gives in and says, “well ok, lets go back to sleep!”

So this morning, I decided I’d take the plunge, and see what the world is like at 6 AM. Braving the cold, I rugged up in my snow jacket, beanie and gloves, and headed to the gym. Turns out it’s been snowing for the last few hours, and everything is layered in a 2-inch thick, fluffy white blanket. The sun is still at least an hour away, so New York is aglow with the orange incandescence of street lights and headlights. Not surprisingly, I have most of the footpaths almost to myself.

I took the opportunity to grab some photos with my little camera, but unfortunately my battery was almost dead so I only managed to get a few shots. This one of the Christmas Tree in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza was my favourite – covered in snow and all lit up with fairy lights, it clearly illustrates why Irving Berlin was so keen for a White Christmas.

The crowd at the gym was similar to the one on the streets – pretty much non-existent. It’s great when there’s no-one to share the machines with, as you can swap from one to another after each set, hence doubling the speed of your work out. Less than an hour after I started, I was done with weights and a 1 KM row, steamed, showered, and out the door.

Happily, it was still snowing when I left, and surprisingly it wasn’t that cold. It’s only a 10 minute walk to/from the gym, but by the time I got home I was coated in snow flakes. I ran up the stairs to show Kristy, but she was still warm and cosy and tucked in to bed, just like I had left her.