another favourite thing

It should be pretty obvious from this blog that music is one of my favourite things, but there are others.

Today is a good day, despite the fact that I didn't sleep all that well last night and despite the fact that I am at work and will be for another two and a half hours. This is because (if the postal service have done their job) my promo copy of the new Mountain Goats album will be waiting for me when I get home. Can't tell you how excited this makes me. John Darnielle is one of those artists who has never recorded anything that has disappointed me; although if I had to choose, 'The Sunset Tree' is still my favourite 'Goats album. I've heard that this album combines the lush production of recent releases with the raw intensity of the lo-fi recordings of old. I'm all for that. Anyway, I plan to write a track by track review of the album as I listen to it. I shall be doing this tonight (post permitting) on my all new laptop, which doesn't yet have an internet connection, so it will hopefully be posted here tomorrow.

Reason 2 for my mellow mood is that I had my swim this morning and it was a particularly nice swim. I swim everyday, at least a mile. It is hard to explain to people why I love swimming so much, so I won't try. But I will say that, for me anyway, there are roughly three parts of a mile long swim...

1. The first ten lengths or so. This part is nice because you get the pleasureable feeling you get when you start exercising and also the water in font of you tends to be quite calm so it is easy to get up to speed.

2. Lengths 20 to 40. This is my least favourite section. Your muscles start to ache and you start to think about how many lengths you've got left. When I get to 26 it normally starts to feel like really hard work. I usually try to think about other things at this stage to take my mind off the swimming.

3. Lengths 40 to 64, particularly from 50. My favourite part. You get to a point where you know you are nearly there and your muscles relax and you stretch out in the stroke more. I tend to just focus on the bottom of the pool at this point because I am less obsessed with getting through each length. It is really relaxing when you see the spray under the water and you can't hear anything going on around you. This happened this morning and it made me feel that the day had started well.

and so I thought I would blog about it.
even though it wasn't a track or a gig.