Darn it, I feel fat.

 The pleasure of Christmas food (including the run-up and a US trip) without any significant exercise for a month, and I both look and feel like a bloater. My stomach is now covered in a firm layer of adipose tissue, and I have grown moobs somewhat too. Yuk. 

Running might have helped, so too might walking. The weather has done what it so often does at this time of year, and has been almost continuously wet, making walking through the countryside an exercise in keeping balance on the mud, and the only brief walk we did manage was accompanied by lots of slipping and sliding - at least neither of us fell, though there were some times it was a near thing.

Darn it, I feel ignorant.

And we're both learning French. Naturally Chris is much better at it than I am, the language being fussy & full of abbreviations with words changing in some seemigly arbitrary manner (yes I know it isn't, but that's how it seems). It doesn't help that the learning system we're using (Duolingo) only present colloquial English translations of French sentences, and that doesn't make getting the real meaning of the words, nor the means of sentence construction easy. 

This also doesn't help with conversation, which is really what we need. It's likely that the only soloution there is repeated practice in situe, and that won't be happeneing for a few years yet if at all.

Darn it, I feel dull and boring.

My usually creative outlets - music and photography - aren't going anywhere really now. Music-wise I've been surplus to requirements at the church for a couple of years, and that side of things has almost completely wthered away. Gospel Bell had a few gigs this summer/autumn, but covid has put that to sleep again. There's no fun in just woodshedding, and I think the time really has come to begin flogging gear. Photowise the weather here doesn't make for inspiration, and I'm not an indoor photo type really.

Darn it, sometimes it's just good to moan a bit.