He thinks his band will make it

Oh boy... I need about a decade of sleep or something. Just typing this out demands most of my strength. Come on summer holiday! I need you!

At the weekend we were supposed to go to Go Ape! at Bedgebury Forest but someone didn't call ahead to book places/see if there were enough free spaces so, of course, it was too busy for us. Well at least it wasn't my petrol we wasted.

Everyone else then proceeded to go to Brighton for the rides on the pier, however I elected to stay home. While everyone was out I decided to try Rock Band (Nick got all the peripherals on Thursday or Friday) - but since the others have all played Guitar Hero and Nick is taking up the drum set I tried vocals.

Anyone who has met me will probably agree that I'm not all that talkative and when I do speak up it's not exactly the loudest voice in the room. So I don't exercise my vocal chords often and trying the vocals on Rock Band was actually pretty challenging even on the easiest mode. I don't even know the words to the songs on the game and when the tutorial mentions changing pitch and octaves I just drew a blank. Change octave? Wha-?

So why did I even try it? Well there was more than one custom GMod game mode that had me hooked and I wanted a break from fishing, cutting wood, surviving on my own, running from zombies, and building catapults. And since no one else was trying vocals (although Nick went through the tutorial section when he first got the equipment) I thought I'd give it a go just in case we all decided to play together.

Guitar Hero never really tempted me; the repetition of trying to strum all the notes perfectly on the same songs over and over... it just didn't appeal. However the idea of having a band in Rock Band, i.e. playing together and cooperating (I know there's a multiplayer mode on Guitar Hero but it doesn't have the variety of Rock Band) was much better in my mind. And I prefer the visual style of Rock Band too.

Although I thought that my voice sounded pretty damned horrific, the others didn't complain at all. Even when I was struggling to find the pitch for some songs and wailing like a banshee.

I'm detailing a lot of gaming stories and such on my XFire profile rather than here so this doesn't just become a gamer's blog with occasional input about motorcycling and the odd game of dungeons and dragons.

In other news I'm taking a serious look at my health and thinking about my diet - which probably isn't as healthy as I thought it was. Although some might call me mad I but think I'm putting on a layer of fat over my torso. I'm jogging almost two miles (about fifteen-to-twenty minutes) every other day now which was originally just to give me some cardiovascular energy because my stamina isn't the world's greatest; in fact it's pretty poor. But now I'm seeing a layer of fat over everything on my torso.

I don't know; maybe it's some sort of paranoia thanks to seeing a certain colleague of mine wobble by every day (you could call him... portly) or maybe seeing his enlarged gut every day has put me into a false sense of security. I know I'm not overweight but I don't want to get close.

So I'm looking at a healthier diet full of stuff I ignored before as "food for people who don't do anything". Now I think of it as "food that will stop me from becoming a person who doesn't do anything". I think it would be easier if I had a place of my own and therefore could govern my own diet more effectively and with more control.

Mainly the changes will be wholemeal bread, rice, and pasta instead of white bread, rice, and pasta. I'll be swapping Crunchy Nut Cornflakes for Weetabix/Shredded Wheat, porridge, and low-sugar jam on toast. My two lunchtime tuna sandwiches (i.e. four slices of bread in total) will become one lunchtime tuna sandwich with cucumber, tomato, and lettuce and only one spoon of mayo rather than the three or four I usually use. The problem now is dinnertime. I guess I'll just eat less red meat (unless it's ultra lean) and more grilled food. And I need to remember to add more vegetables to my meals since most of the time I'll just cook some rice and forget the carrots, brocolli, etc. that should go with it.

Is this going to be overkill? I don't know. Previously I thought that healthy diets were for people who had weight problems but now I'm thinking that was pretty dumb and that a healthy diet like the one above is possibly the sort of thing everyone should look at if they want to stay in shape. I'll see. I'll post updates of course. The one problem I can foresee is running out of energy because there's a lot of low-calorie food I'll be eating and I'm usually dog tired come five-o'-clock. However, perhaps my diet has been the thing that's dragging me down and I'll have more energy now... time will tell and I'll relate the results here if I manage to keep this up.