Category: Random

Fitness Goals

~ Veselin ~ 19 Comments

Sharing your goals on a public blog adds extra pressure to actually complete them. Thankfully, most of my friends and family don’t know I blog, so the embarrassment is not too big. I set some goals last year, and now is the moment to look back and see how well I did.

  • ✅ I’ll try to climb Vihren (2 failed attempts in 2024) – success
  • ✅ I’ll try to keep an average of 10k/day for 2025 as well but increase the difficulty by doing more hiking and less city – success for the steps and mostly for the hiking as well
  • 🚩 I’ll try to add 1h/week of gym time, starting with body weight exercises like push-ups and plank. – failure

Honestly, the Vihren goal was too optimistic and we stopped doing hiking after it. I don’t know what happened with the gym idea. I did a grand total of under 1 hour of exercise. I don’t have an explanation, it was never part of my todo, had zero interest in spending time on it, and just dreaded the idea that I’m going to do that. But, reality is, that I need to find a way to do it.

So, for 2026, let’s try again:

  • 10K steps on average for the year – it is at risk because one of my knees doesn’t feel right
  • Get back to the mountain and post 3 bean soup blog posts. The mountain misses me
  • Make one pull-up

Wish me luck.

Happy Holidays!

~ Veselin ~ 11 Comments

This evening is all about gifts, Santa, and the Christmas magic. On TV, it comes with the movies Home Alone and Die Hard. I already did a round one of the celebration by sleeping until 10am.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, and all the best! 🎄🎁

The Last Days of Kira Mullan by Nicci French

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment

Detective Maud O’Connor is badass. She solves cases with the ease of a hot knife slicing through butter. The problem is that if she were only that good, the book would have no reason to be so long. It wouldn’t go beyond 100–150 pages. So if you were the writer, what would you put in the remaining 300-350 pages?

The first novel from the series started with hundreds of pages of detailing the victim’s circumstances. Wasn’t great. In this one, we get a another storyline, following a woman who becomes an indirect victim of the crime. She tries to help but is treated as crazy by everyone.

The story is strong. However, I can’t honestly give it five stars. The secondary storyline ends up carrying too much weight. The book is supposedly about Detective Maud O’Connor taking down the bad guys. In reality, it’s about Nancy, cooking in her own small, private hell. Hell constructed by her family and friends. Perhaps the book should have been called Is Nancy Crazy? Of course, that’s on purpose. The novel raises important questions about domestic abuse and involuntary psychiatric treatment. I’m sure the 300 pages, dedicated to Nancy, share the same purpose with John Grisham’s writing about unfair death sentences.

Overall, the book has well-developed characters, a solid plot, and a difficult-to-predict ending. I would definitely read the sequel, if there is one. It is not the easiest read, at least not until Maud O’Connor starts slicing the butter.

4/5.