Day 222 – I need help

Allegedly, anyway.
[Spoiler: No, I don’t.]

Long and dull story short, we need a few more points on our medical insurance spin-off programme to earn better discounts and nicer freebies. I’ve all but reached my limit for points earned through exercise for the year, so I started looking at other ways of scoring enough to get us over the metaphorical, virtual line.

And there is was: a mental health questionnaire that I could do in 5 minutes while watching the football. And it promised almost twice as many points as a 30 minute workout with my heart pumping at 150bpm. Easy money.

And so I went for it. As I remember, there were seven parts to it and it was all multiple choice stuff – often the old ‘”I strongly disagree” to “I strongly agree” with this statement’ kind of thing. I strongly agreed with some of them and I strongly disagreed with others. Occasionally, where I felt fairly neutral about the given statement, I clicked “neutral”.

And then I finished the thing and collected my 500 points and it suggested that I speak to a mental health counsellor.

wut?

It also appeared to class me as “at risk” from my drinking habits. But my drinking habits are equivalent to a glass of wine each evening. If that puts me at risk, then the world (including me) is really in trouble.

And I truthfully answered the mental health questions in the same sort of way. Sure, I don’t think I’m 100% happy 100% of the time, but the fact is that none of us is having an easy ride this year, and if you actually are still 100% happy 100% of the time, then I think that it’s actually you that has the mental health issue.

Honestly, this questionnaire seems to be the equivalent of googling your headache and the daily mail dot com telling you that you have a brain tumour. Overkill much?

I’m well aware that denial isn’t just a river in Egypt, but if you feel that my having trouble getting to sleep a week last Saturday demands that I seek immediate help from a counsellor, then you’re
a) being a bit dramatic,
b) wasting my time and (more importantly) theirs, and
c) not a Sheffield United supporter.

I will be good, I will to continue to exercise my mind and body, and really: I won’t off myself anytime soon. I’ll also try and get less stressed about the football, but having narrowly lost this week’s fantasy matchup to that “goal” by Tariq Lamptey – insult added to injury by the fact that the foul on Højbjerg was also counted as a dispossession and further that the two goals scored against Lamptey weren’t deducted from his score – I feel I’m ok to feel a bit aggrieved every now and again.

So yes, football – such a big bit of my life – is still not a good thing for me at the moment.

But I promise: I don’t need help.
I’m ok. Really.

Day 110, part 2 – Dates

A quick admin note.

After several (or more) requests from readers and one request from me to The Guru, posts on 6000 miles… once again display the date on which they were posted.

You can see this reinstated feature just here:

 

Woo… Trippy.

 

This is helpful for readers both when trawling back through the archives to find stuff, and when finding stuff from the archives and then trying to work out when posted it was posted.

Thanks for sorting this, The Guru.

 

6000 miles… Always Listening™

 

Mending

Hi all. I had plans for a big post this evening, but then parenting got in the way and even though the little darlings are now in bed, I suddenly find myself with even more work to do just so that I can assist with their homework over the next few days. Yes, we’ve reached the limit of my knowledge when it comes to certain subjects. And that also means that I’m way out of my comfort zone. And my dislike of History as an academic subject hasn’t changed since the second year at comprehensive school with Mrs Finch. To be fair, I don’t even like it as a concept.

Add to all that the fact that The Guru is doing some maintenance on the blog behind the scenes (without which it would have stopped working in a few weeks time) (the blog, not The Guru) and I think that it’s just better if I take a hint, step away and do other stuff where I can’t break anything (else).

Let’s chat again tomorrow, when (hopefully) I can furnish you with some proper verbiage.

Thanks for your understanding.

The UEFA Nations League

I tried to understand what a UEFA Nations League is and how it worked.

Firstly, I went to the UEFA website: horse’s mouth and all that. And then, when my brain exploded thanks to lines like this:

Due to excessive travel restrictions, any group could not contain a maximum of one of these pairs: Andorra & Kazakhstan, Faroe Islands & Kazakhstan, Gibraltar & Kazakhstan, Gibraltar & Azerbaijan

I asked online for assistance, which came in the form of a link from The Guru. Thanks, The Guru.

Because yes, Football365 seem to have done a good job in attempting to simplify a rather complex format. And am I alone in thinking that UEFA might actually be onto something here? It actually looks quite good.

And there’s more great news for me too: Supersport – who failed to secure the rights for the English League Cup or the Championship – have managed to scrape some cash together to buy some UEFA Nations League goodness.

Tonight kicks off (quite literally) with the following fixtures:

Kazakhstan v Georgia
SS3 HD (4pm)

Armenia v Liechtenstein
SS3 HD (6pm)

Wales v Rep. Ireland
SS6 HD (8.45pm)

Germany v France
SS3 HD (8.45pm)

Slovenia v Bulgaria
SS11 HD (8.45pm)

Czech Republic v Ukraine
SS7 HD (8.45pm)

I know what I’ll be doing at 1800.

New look

Following on and buoyed, I suspect, from his unqualified success in sorting out the Youtube issue on here, The Guru has gone wild on the coding front, redesigning the entire site (but sadly for you, not the actual writing bits). I got my first glimpse of the new look yesterday evening and it looks clean, crisp and professional (even when you include the writing bits).

It’s not quite ready yet. Initially, having read the email incorrectly, I thought that The Guru was going to do some twerking over the weekend. Knowing the sort of guy that The Guru is, I must say that I was slightly surprised by a) this choice of pastime and b) the relevance to the work he was doing on the blog.
Having looked again though, he plans to do some tweaking. This might iron out any slight issues with the new design, but it does nothing to get rid of the frankly terrifying mental images that had unfortunately already been generated.

One thing I need to try and do is make a new banner. I’m not very good at that sort of thing – the last one took 3 weeks. And look at it. Hmm. Anyway, I’ll try and get that done after my belly-dancing class on Saturday.

Look out for a radical new look real soon now, beloved readers.