The problem with writing a weekly blog to share the randomness of my normal life when I’m not out and about having fun outdoors adventures, is that some weeks are less random and more, well, busy and ordinary. The Monday to Friday day job continues to take up all my time and energy, as it does for most people, and the chores and commitments at home take up my pre-work and after-work hours, leaving very little time for walking or playing or creativity. I know, woe is me! This is just normal life, though, and that’s the point – some weeks will be way more fun than others. The weekly blog is an opportunity to find the snippets of interest in an otherwise bog standard existence.
Don’t stop reading there, though, I do (as always) have something to say today… This week in my life, there have been two evenings that have been a little different to my normal; I gave blood on Wednesday and went to the cinema on Thursday. So that’s what I will talk about here.
Giving Blood
Blood donations are absolutely critical. I personally know several people – loads even – who have needed to make use of other people’s blood when going through cancer treatment, following an accident, or for various other reasons. For the longest time I was incredibly nervous about giving blood, and avoided it because I was genuinely worried about how it would feel. But as someone who is generally up for a challenge, I decided to re-look at this in the same way as any other bucket list tick, and booked an appointment just to see what happened and how it made me feel. I’m now a reasonably regular donor, which is quite the turnaround.
One of the nurses looking after the centre on Wednesday told me that each blood donation, which takes around an hour of your time from start to finish, can save up to three people’s lives. If you can give blood, I would urge you to book an appointment at your next opportunity. This is one thing a lot of us can do very easily – and painlessly – to help others in their time of need.
If you’re nervous as I was, and are interested in understanding what happens when you give blood, I wrote this post back in 2013 when I went for the first time. It might be useful.
Star Wars Completed
I mentioned in my first weekly blog (head here if you didn’t read it yet) that we have been working our way through the whole Star Wars series of films in the hope that we might get to see the last one – The Rise of Skywalker – at the cinema before it closed. A quick look at our local Cineworld listings last weekend and we realised that the last showing was this Thursday, so we had to get the sequel trilogy watched very quickly (by our standards)! We watched The Force Awakens on Saturday evening, The Last Jedi on Tuesday evening, and headed to the cinema on Thursday to watch the last one (followed by a Five Guys, naturally). I thoroughly enjoyed the sequel trilogy, and I’m glad I got to see the last one at the cinema, mainly because of the sound! I’m only a casual Star Wars fan, and for me the final set of films were equally as good as the first, and I thoroughly enjoyed the continuation and closure of the story. I came out of the cinema satisfied that the franchise had answered all my questions, and enjoyed the storytelling and special effects. Let’s face it, Star Wars, like all other SciFi action movies, are meant as a bit of escapism, and that’s definitely what I got, I’ll take that.
The question is, do we now start re-watching all the James Bond movies in preparation for No Time To Die in April?! Or get back on the DC train ready for the Harley Quinn movie coming out next month?
In the Post
I am fortunate that this week I’ve had a couple of lovely deliveries from PR companies who would like to work with me on a collaboration this year. I’m not going to lie, I do enjoy this side of blogging, especially because the things I receive can be used to help me spend a little bit more time outdoors or be a little more comfortable outdoors. It’s not the reason I blog, of course, it’s a very nice side effect. Talking about getting free stuff if a bit of an odd thing, I realise, and some might frown upon it, but remember that nothing in this life is free, I have worked hard to get even to my place in this world of online reviewing. Also please know and be reassured that when I talk about something here on my blog, any recommendation is genuine and based on real life; I might have not parted with any cash, but I will have tried the thing, used the thing, thought about the thing, and will only write words that I believe are true about the thing. I don’t guarantee coverage, which means I can always go back to the PR and say err, nope. But if I have enough to say about something I am sent for free, I will not hesitate to talk about it on my blog.
The reason I bring it up in this episode of my weekly blog is that I received something that I’ve genuinely wanted for a long time the other day and that made me smile a lot; a Tesalate towel (this one, I chose the banana leaf pattern). These are kind of a midway point between a normal beach towel you’d use at the swimming pool and a microfibre travel towel you’d use for backpacking, and they look ideal for when I’m road tripping by car or motorbike. I’ve always been intrigued by the “sand free” properties, too, it would make a great companion to a sea or lake swim. I’ve not tried mine out yet, but I will be taking it on holiday soon and will be sure to let you know if I think it’s any good.
The other package I received was some new sun cream for my face from by Calypso. We all know that we should wear sun protection every day of the year, not just when we’re on holiday, and this stuff is said to be sensitive, lightweight and non-greasy, and good for under makeup. I don’t have a happy history with sun creams, I only need to look at a tube of the stuff and I break out in even more spots than normal, but after a few days of using this each morning I’m beginning to think I might have found something that actually works for me. It’s too early to tell yet, and I’ve not actually been warm enough to know if it goes greasy in the heat – I’ll let you know after my holiday next month.
Actually, there was another package; a new battery for my car, which I of course bought myself. Nowhere near as fun as the other two packages, but one of those necessary purchases that will prevent me from being stuck somewhere when my current battery decides it’s done with struggling.
This Week’s Question
In acknowledging our recent binge watch of the full Star Wars set of movies, my question of the week for this episode is:
What’s the best movie you’ve seen in 2020 so far?
If you enjoyed reading this blog post, if you think a weekly blog is a good idea, and especially if you got to the end, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below. And not forgetting the vloggers’ catchphrase – please like and subscribe for more posts like this in the future! I’ll see you next Sunday at 6pm for the next in the series of real life on the blog…