martinlittle.com:thinkThin

Well, yesterday was a whole lot of fun. The plan was to go to bed early Saturday night and then head over to see my parents. What happened was that I stayed up until 4am doing random computer stuff, then slept through my alarm at 7am.

When I finally surfaced at 9am, I decided to take a run. I managed 16.91km (~10 miles) of a slow and rubbishy run. After my right Iliotibial Band (ITB) gave me pain a few weeks ago, I thought I had conquered that one ... but now it is the left knee's turn. Grrr. This running lark is really making me appreciate just how incredible the body actually is!

When I made it back to my flat, I just felt like lying in my own self-pity, but I knew I really wanted to get home to my parents and have tasty food as only they can concoct, so I ordered my leg into action and through a series of minor miracles got a train (x2) and was transported home. As ever, my parents had a delicious menu laid out, very nicely started with Champagne from their recent sortie to Champagne, along with stories of the region itself! They're both looking very well from their holiday.

Somehow lunch stretched into hours and I finally made it back to Edinburgh just before 7.30pm, for a few beers with John (Robbie's dad) and Rich. We planned to watch the Real Madrid vs Barcelona game, then ask the Haymarket bar staff to switch over to Sky Sports Extra to show the basketball (Houston Rockets vs LA Lakers). That fell apart quite quickly, when they decided to show another football game instead, and they only have one Sky box, which means one Sky channel only... The Caledonian was similarly showing the football, so we decided to head along to a real sports bar!

Sportsters (beware sound on site) was such a letdown. We found a table and started to flick through the channels to find the basketball, with no joy. We asked at the bar, and found out they too only had one Sky box, and they were showing the Bilbao game too. Sports bar??? As Rich pointed out, someone should go to the States and see what a sports bar is meant to offer.

So, we headed back up Market Street to a small place called Belushi's, which is attached to a hostel. It looked a little ... dive-y for our liking, but they were showing the basketball, and the guy behind the bar seemed pretty friendly, so we stayed there for the entire nailbiting game which Houston managed to push into overtime, but eventually lost. They're getting the North American Sports Network shortly, so it should be good for all basketball, baseball and ice hockey fans, too.

After that, we popped into Oloroso for a pint and a birthday cigar and then home. All in, a very enjoyable day indeed!