Chapter-by-Chapter: New Moon, Chapter 6

I normally leave these posts to the end of the weekend, or even later in the week and then hope I get a chance to upload them. I'm trying really hard to be well-organised this year (not just with the blog, but more about that on Monday) so I decided to try writing my posts backwards this week. I'm actually writing this last Saturday and it seems to have worked.

Last week we witnessed Bella's decision to be thoroughly reckless as she picked up a couple of broken down motorcycles and recruited her young friend Jacob Black to help her get them in working order. This will allow her to be reckless all over the roads of Forks.

This week we're onto Chapter 6: Friends.

What Happens?

Bella meets Jacob's friends. Charlie hangs out with his friends. Bella is friends with Jacob. She also sits with her friends at lunchtime. This chapter is brought to you by The Rembrandts.

Thoughts as I read:

I'm guessing the 'friends' of the chapter title will be Bella and Jacob, or perhaps now that she's finally moving on from Edward, Bella will actually start over again with Jessica and the gang. I'm hoping for a slightly happier chapter again now.

Bella and Jacob's plan to keep Billy from discovering the motorbikes pretty much relies on the fact that Billy's wheelchair can't get to the outbuilding where Jacob works on his car. It's a pretty safe hiding place though I do wonder how he's going to explain how both he and Bella have motorbikes to his father, Charlie's friend, when he's done with them.

Looks like the friends in the chapter title might be Jacob's friends, Quil and Embry. Bella is about as impressed with these names as I am. Thought I do like the idea of a name being a 'hand-me-down', that's a nice way of putting it. It doesn't take long for Quil and Embry to show up either, Jacob promptly introduces Bella as his friend. The new kids are way more interested in the bikes than in Bella, though I suspect they don't believe that Bella is just Jacob's friend.

"Bella and I are going to fix up these bikes," Jacob explained inaccurately. But bikes seemed to be the magic word. Both boys went to examine Jacob's project, drilling him with educated questions. Many of the words they used were unfamiliar to me, and I figured I'd have to have a Y chromosome to really understand the excitement.

Despite not understanding any of what they're talking about, Bella is surprised to find that she's enjoying herself. She's slightly baffled by this strange new sensation. This just shows how screwed up she's been recently. In fact, she's had such a good time that she's desperate to come back again on Sunday. Looks like she's just replacing her Edward obsession with a Jacob/motorbike one instead.

Back home, Charlie's as surprised as the rest of us at the change in Bella's mood. If I was him, I'd still be thinking about getting her to speak to someone, but I bet he's just relieved that she's acting slightly more normally now.

Even more surprisingly, Bella sleeps without weird dreams or nightmares. She doesn't feel 'numb' when she wakes the next morning.

I pushed that thought from my mind, and concentrated, as I got dressed, on the fact that I was going to see Jacob again today. The thought made me feel almost… hopeful. Maybe it would be the same as yesterday. Maybe I wouldn't have to remind myself to look interested and to nod or smile at appropriate intervals, the way I had to with everyone else. Maybe… but I wouldn't trust this to last either. Wouldn't trust it to be the same – so easy – as yesterday. I wasn't going to set myself up for disappointment like that.

There's the Bella we've come to know and love. Well, come to know at least.

So she heads back to Jacob's, after having come up with a plan to get Charlie to invite Billy out, leaving she and Jacob alone. And where are they spending their date, I mean day, together? At the dump of course. Jacob explains that this is the best place to find freebies to help save Bella some money, after all, this little venture might cost more than a hundred dollars!

Bella can't quite work out just why she is enjoying herself so much. Maybe it's, I don't know, because you're having fun and not spending all of your time with someone who might flip at any moment and take a chunk out of your neck! In the end she decides that it's actually Jacob who is making her feel this way. Whereas Edward was a cold person, well, vampire, Jacob is a happy person who makes people around him feel happy. His happy-making powers are so strong that they even work on Bella.

There is a funny moment when Jacob spots the missing stereo in the truck:

"Did the stereo break?" he wondered.
"Yeah," I lied.
He poked around in the cavity. "Who took it out? There's a lot of damage…"
"I did," I admitted.
He laughed. "Maybe you shouldn't touch the motorcycles too much."

Hehe. Actually that reminds me, Bella hasn't fallen over or injured herself for at least two chapters. I suspect we'll have another big accident coming up some time soon.

While we wait for that to happen, they drive to some other town to a parts supply shop and chat. There's quite a bit of talking about their age difference. Bella seems to think that Jacob is interested in her. I just want to yell at Jacob: Don't do it! Take your motorbike and run! Get out while you still can! Look at Edward, he had to leave town to get away from her!

Back at the shed, Jacob gets to work. Luckily he doesn't hand her a tool and invite her to join him, otherwise that would've been the source of Bella's next hospital trip right there. Later Charlie shows up with Billy and they have to run out of the shed to prevent Charlie from coming to investigate. The dash makes Bella laugh which is something she still can't get used to. You know things are messed up when laughing feels both right and wrong. Edward really did a number on her, didn't he?

Turns out everyone's been invited to Billy's for dinner and Bella once again, to her surprise, has a good time. She doesn't actually want to leave! She even plans to take her homework there after school the following day.

And I'm right. Jacob is becoming her Edward-patch:

I was nervous when we got to the house. I didn't want to go upstairs. The warmth of Jacob's presence was fading and, in its absence, the anxiety grew stronger. I was sure I wouldn't get away with two peaceful nights of sleep in a row.

I feel sorry for Jacob. She's going to latch on to him and wear him out like she did with Edward. Perhaps Bella's part supernatural being as well. Also, every time she talks about going upstairs to bed, I keep on expecting her to find a vampire there telling her there's something up with Edward purely because I feel like that is exactly the sort of direction these books would go in.

That night Bella doesn't sleep as well as before and she has a pretty crappy night with her weird dream. Except there's someone new there now; the guy who found her when she got lost in the woods. The dream-Sam's shape seemed to change slightly as well. Wooo! Foreshadowing!

Back at school, Bella is practically invisible. Jessica barely speaks to her, can't really blame her really after the way Bella's behaved for the last few months. Give Bella her due, she does try to make an effort, but it basically results in her sitting at the lunch table with a bunch of people eavesdropping on their conversations.

And so it's revealed that Angela and Ben (I don't even remember who these people are) were going for a picnic when they saw a big black thing which might have been a bear except it seemed way too big for one. Other people claim to have seen it too and finally Bella is able to contribute to the conversation by pointing out that there was someone in the shop at work claiming to have seen one too. Everyone seems pretty surprised at her jumping in like this, but Mike covers it well and agrees with her.

Lauren and Jessica seem really annoyed at Bella's decision to rejoin the group but Angela and Mike are nice to her. That's a good thing. It's about time she started hanging around with people her own age, instead of guys who are eighty years her senior and dead. So I guess this chapter's title did include Bella in it as well, she seems to be making friends again.

And it's just as well because she observes that she's been here exactly a year now. It's like nothing has changed.

Except, y'know, all that stuff that happened in the last year.

This chapter's not been too bad. I think I prefer the chapters without vampires and where Bella behaves like a nearly normal human being. I guess that's not going to last for long though. It's probably going to go downhill soon. I know from the movie posters that Edward's got to come back sooner or later. Sigh.

Five Ways To Get Extra Steps

On Monday I shared my review of my super duper brand new Fitbit Charge HR because one of my resolutions for the year has been to get more active.

In the past I've found a pedometer a useful way to encourage me to be a little more active but my Fitbit shares my results with my friends which makes me try a little bit harder to hit those extra steps. I did a bit of googling back when I got it to find some suggestions for upping your step count but these are some of the techniques I'm using now.

1. Be inefficient

I forget where it was that I read this one, I suspect it was in a Fitbit.com blog post. Basically, if you've got a bunch of things to carry from one room to another and you're able to pile them all up and do it in one trip, you might get ten steps; if you carry it in two goes, you might get twenty.

Obviously, you don't always have time to do two or three trips. But when you do have time to be inefficient, it's a good way to get in some extra steps. For example, last week when I was putting the laundry away I stuck the basket on the bed, then I put away a handful of socks, went back to the basket for a couple of tops, went back to the basket for another handful of socks, and so on. My bedroom isn't that big but a racked up a good number of steps doing it that way.

2. Travel further

Some people suggest getting on the bus at the next stop or parking in a further parking space from where you'd normally park. You can do this in smaller ways as well. At work, use the toilet furthest away from you. If you can go up or down a floor, do it. If not, go to the cubicle furthest from the door. It might only be an extra couple of steps, but over the course of a day, they'll mount up.

3. Schedule activity

I am a creature of habit. I've taken to setting my alarm five minutes earlier each day to give me a little more time to get out with the dog. That means I have an extra five minutes of walking time each morning. When the days are lighter I'm hoping to set my alarm even earlier to give me a chance to go even further.

If you know you're going to have a long period of inactivity, try and do something to break it up and get you on your feet. For me at work, this might be a trip to refill my bottle at the water cooler (or given our more recent weather, refill my hot water bottle at the boiler). At home it might be a quick trip into the garden with the dog to let her out. I'm more inclined to do something if I have some sort of reminder to do it; it might be an actual alarm, or just a mental note to stretch my legs once an hour.

4. Share your goals

One of the things I love about my Fitbit is the app which allows me to add people to compete against. I'm slowly adding all my Fitbit-using family and friends and nothing pushes me to get in a few more steps than seeing one of them is beating me. It's one thing to have a personal target but it's something else to share that target with someone. If nothing else you can cheer each other on or commiserate when you've had a bad week.

Even if you're not wanting to compete against some one, just sharing your progress can be helpful. I'm finding the Walk Middle-earth group and Runkeeper a fantastic way to keep track of how I'm doing. We've got different goals and different ability levels, but we're all supporting each other.

5. Just walk

This probably seems obvious. If you want to get more steps in, you need to do the legwork. I've been making an effort to get out morning and evening with the dog, but sometimes the weather, time and other stuff are against you. It's amazing how much you can get in without leaving the house.

Lots of places online advocate walking up and down while you're on the phone. I've become rather partial to marching on the spot while I'm cleaning my teeth. I work a desk job and so often my breaks involve me moving from sitting at my desk to sitting at the canteen. Now, to the bemusement of my colleagues, I may be seen walking round the canteen tables while I text Mr Click. One text can be equal to over a hundred steps and I can send a lot of texts in a day.


Do you track your activity or use a pedometer? What are some of your techniques for increasing your step count?

Wordless Wednesday: Overgrown

Books 17 & 18 of 2015: Nightmare & Nightshade by Stephen Leather

This week both of the books I'm reviewing are by Stephen Leather. A colleague is a fan of the Jack Nightingale series and spent the early part of last year sharing these books with most of the team. After I got through the first couple pretty quickly, he leant me the rest to read.

Warning: Here be spoilers both for these books and for the series.

The third book in the series is Nightmare and it sees Jack Nightingale receiving messages from the beyond about the little girl, Sophie, whose death led to his departure from the police force and saw him starting work as a private investigator. Even though she's dead, she's not at peace and Jack's going to do whatever he can to put things right.

I originally wrote this review last year shortly after finishing the book:

When this one started I wasn't too sure about it and it took me a while to get into it. I was expecting to see something of Jack's sister but there was no sign of her and instead all the focus seemed to be on things with Marcus Fairchild. Once I did get into it, around the halfway mark, I finished it really quickly.

I'm quite pleased that Jack and Jenny finally hooked up. I've been waiting for that one to happen since the beginning of the series, though as this book progressed I couldn't help but wonder if there was some sinister reason for Jenny taking the job as Jack's assistant. I'm glad that she wasn't aware of what Fairchild was using her for, it would have been so disappointing if she was operating under her own volition.

It's really clever how everything got sort of wrapped up at the end. When it looked like Jack was going to sacrifice himself to save Sophie, I couldn't help but wonder how Leather had gone on to write two more books in the series. I like that everything sort of reset itself back to how it was right at the very beginning of the first book.

It's made me curious for how the rest of the series will progress now, whether the devils will continue to crop up and what will happen regarding Gosling Manor, because we've basically gone back in time two years, so will events just repeat themselves in the future? I'm looking forward to finding out.

With that in mind, I moved straight on to the fourth book in the series, Nightshade. Again, this is my review from last year, shortly after I finished it:

Normally I don't go straight on to the next book in a series because I like to alternate with other books to save myself from getting bored with what I'm reading. But as someone at work lent me the final three books in the Jack Nightingale series I wanted to get through them as quickly as possible, especially as other people are also working through them as well.

I think that this one has been one of the quickest reads in the series yet. I've taken to reading in my breaks at work, along with in bed during the morning and at night. I wouldn't have thought that the odd five or ten minutes of extra reading I'm getting in at work would make much difference, but I seem to be getting through things quicker, so perhaps it does.

This storyline was a lot more uncomfortable than the previous books in the series. This one focused mainly on child abuse, which made for difficult reading in places. There was also the fact that Bella was an abducted child who played a very big role in the story as well. I'm wondering what the repercussions of Jack killing her will be

I felt a little like the bit with Proserpine was tacked on. I liked the direction the story was going without the devils cropping up. I could have gotten by without seeing her in this story because I don't think that she added a huge amount to the story, especially as Jack basically called her up to get something done, then couldn't do it anyway, then things got taken care of.

I'm a bit sketchy on where the events of this book fall in relation to the previous books. I'm curious about whether we'll visit Gosling Manor again in the future and if we might see Jack's biological father again, as well as what the repercussions of events in this book will be and what will happen with Mrs Steadman.

Fortnight with a Fibit Charge HR

Two weeks ago my Fitbit arrived and I've barely taken it off since. In the past I've used pedometers and found them useful for tracking my steps but a little impractical. They'd fall off my work trousers, I'd accidentally hit the reset button halfway through the day and lose my work for the day. I did have the Nintendo Walk With Me one but having to sync it to your DS at the end of each day or two was a little inconvenient at times (if you were away from home and your DS, you'd risk losing your total after a couple of days).

Until now I've been using the Samsung Health app on my phone, which is good but only counts steps while you're carrying your phone. As my phone spends its time at work in my locker, and frequently is left in the bedroom or on the coffee table when I'm at home, I knew I was missing out on steps. I did consider knitting a little pouch so that I could carry it around with me when I was home at least, but I'd heard about Fitbits and I liked the idea of having something I could wear on my wrist.

I also liked the idea of something which could track things like floors climbed, calories burned and even your heart rate. There's a fantastic range of Fitbits available. They advertise that there's one for literally every lifestyle. I settled on the Charge because if I'm going to wear something on my wrist, it might as well act as a watch. But it wasn't that much more for a Charge HR which tracks your heart rate and I thought that would be a nice little feature to have as well.

I read online that it's useful to download the Fitbit app and set up your profile before you get your device and I'm glad I did because it meant that as soon as I got it out the box, I was able to set it up. It took about an hour and a half of charging to be ready to wear. A full charge lasts roughly five days and you simply plug it into the USB charger. I kind of begrudge the time I'm not wearing it when I do have to move around, so I try and time my charges for times when I'll be sitting down at my laptop anyway. So far they've tied up pretty well.

I should add a note on the sizing of the Fitbits because, aside from which sort to get, the wristband sizing caused me the biggest headache before I bought it. The Charge HR comes in large and small and I seemed to be at the large end of small or the small end of large. By the looks of things, most places are fairly helpful when it comes to swapping if you get the wrong size.

In the end, I got Mr Click to measure my wrist and compared it to the sizing chart on the Fitbit website. This suggested that I should go for the small, and I'm glad I did. It fits comfortably on my wrist and I normally wear it around the middle hole; if my wrist gets any larger I've got four more holes, and if it gets thinner I've got another five to go. I suspect that if I'd gone for the large I wouldn't have anywhere to go if I lost weight.

I'll be honest. For almost the first week that I had it, I found myself constantly aware of this thing on my wrist. It's not heavy or particularly bulky once you get used to it. It was just a lot larger than the watch I had been wearing before. I also felt the need to keep checking how I was getting on throughout the day. Now I regularly forget that I'm even wearing it.

One of the first things that I noticed was that I do take more steps than I thought I did. The step counter on my phone would count somewhere between 200 and 4,000 steps on the average weekday, depending on what I was up to and whether I had my phone on me. My Fitbit shows that I do closer to 7,000 most weekdays, so it's not that much more of a push to get up to 10,000 from there.

With the Fitbit app you get badges for certain achievements. On my first day I picked up the Happy Hill badge for climbing 10 flights of stairs; the Fitbit is able to tell when you are climbing a slope or staircase and the hill I live at the top of is roughly equivalent to eight flights of stairs. I've also received a 'Boat Shoe' badge for walking 5,000 steps in one go and a 'Sneaker' badge for taking a walk of 10,000 steps.

The sleep tracking function is really useful as well. Have you ever woken up feeling like you've had an awful night's sleep but you're not sure why? The Charge HR tracks your sleep and registers when you're awake and restless. One morning I woke up feeling exhausted and like I'd hardly slept; my Fitbit agreed saying that although I'd only been awake twice, I'd been restless twenty-one times.

So far I've not really used the calorie or water trackers but they're something that I might play around with in the future. I have started tracking my fluid intake in my journal because I know I don't always drink as much as I should. It would be good to get into the habit of tracking it in the app as well.

The feature that I am using quite a lot is the silent alarm. You set an alarm through the app and then the Charge HR vibrates to alert you. I use one at 6:25am on a weekday to wake me up before the main alarm goes off, and one an hour later to remind me to get up and take the dog for a walk. It's the same thing that alerts you when you achieve your day's goal, except the daily step goal is accompanied by a little firework display on the face of the Charge HR.

Being able to see my progress throughout the day is a fantastic motivator for me. For example, on the day I wrote this post, I had hit 8,400 steps so I did everything I could to squeeze in the 1,600 steps that I needed to get that firework display, up to and including walking up and down the living room whilst checking my phone to keep on getting those steps in.


It's only been two weeks so far, but I'm really enjoying it and I'm constantly looking for people I can add on the Fitibit site. I'm terribly competitive and I'm determined to get more floors climbed badges than any of my friends. If you've got a Fitbit of any sort, I'd love to add you on Fitbit.com. You can view my profile here.

Weekly Rundown: Blizzarding!

I'm late with my Weekly Rundown post this week, mainly because I've spent best part of the day uploading almost all of the other posts for the next six days. You'll also be pleased to learn that I've finally gotten around to watching The Desolation of Smaug for my next Hobbit film review set of posts.

So I'm late because I've been organised. Go figure.

I'm also a little bit late because I got distracted reading House fanfiction. Yeah, yeah, I know, it's like I'm a teenager again. What's more than a little ironic is that I stumbled across one that I vaguely remembered and I happily sat here reading it. It wasn't until I got to the end of the second chapter that I realised it was one that I'd written. Oops, hehe. And it wasn't too bad either.

We've almost finished the first series of House now and I'd forgotten how much I love this show. I've seen the first couple of series enough times to vaguely remember what will happen, but not well enough to remember everything, so it's almost like watching a brand new TV series. I can't wait til we get to the later episodes that I've only seen once or not at all.

I'm still reading The Lord of the Rings. I'm not reading a very portable edition and so it's fairly slow going. Especially since my Fitbit has made me very aware of my sleeping patterns. I'm trying to turn the light out earlier to make sure that I'm hitting my sleep targets. Unfortunately that impacts on my reading time. I'm thinking in the next week I'm going to have to have a bit of a push to try and read two chapters a day otherwise it'll be the only book I read this year!

I'm still managing my Middle-earth walking. There's only one day when I've not managed my full 1.2 miles and that was purely because I woke up in an icy winter wonderland on Friday. I was half expecting to need to call into work because the road through the estate was iced over, but we made it off okay.

Yesterday we made up for it by going for an extra long walk, and again in the evening because it had been snowing all afternoon. I love snowy weather, so I dragged a reluctant Mr Click and an excitable Tara-Tup out with me.

There was that monochromatic thing going on out in the world as though someone had turned the saturation way down, and although you can't see it in this photo, there were massive snowflakes falling.

It's almost all gone today, of course, but it was pretty while it lasted.

Film Review: Star Wars - The Force Awakens

I know, I'm delaying my Hobbit film review post again. But I'm already late to the party with reviewing this film and I didn't want to interrupt The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug once it got started.

My little local cinema outdid themselves at the end of last year, when they were able to arrange a midnight showing of the latest Star Wars film, The Force Awakens. I didn't go to it, but I was very keen to see the film. I was half hoping that we might manage a trip to the mainland to see it in a big cinema at some point over the holidays, but the weather was so bad we spent the whole time on the island.

We got down to the final three days of it at the cinema and Mr Click scored us some tickets. I'm actually kind of glad we didn't see it until towards the end of the run because it meant that we weren't seeing it in a packed out cinema. Plus I've diligently avoided spoilers and all my colleagues and friends have been very careful about not revealing spoilers to me (which I'm thrilled about).

That said, if you don't want to be spoiled. Don't read this post. There will be spoilers abounding in the next few paragraphs.

I'm warning you. Seriously, don't read on if you don't want to know what happens in this film.

Okay, read on, but don't say I didn't warn you.

This 'Episode' of the Star Wars saga is set roughly thirty years after the events of Return of the Jedi and things are not going so well in the galaxy far far away. A rather Nazi-ish group, known as the First Order, is trying to take over where Darth Vader left off, meanwhile the Resistance (a new and improved Rebel Alliance) is doing their best to bring them down. An X-wing pilot, Poe, hides an important document in a droid (the adorable BB-8), which then falls in with Rey and Finn (a scavenger and a Storm Trooper deserter, respectively) who must use this information to help the Resistance and bring down the First Order's latest weapon.

It all feels a little bit A New Hope.

And in a way it kind of is. There's an awful lot here which took me right back to A New Hope, to the degree that I came out of the cinema and pronounced it Star Wars: A New New Hope.

But I loved every minute of it.

Seriously, right from the moment that familiar music started, and the text began to scroll. I was in my element. I was almost expecting to be disappointed by the film, because so many people had told me how good it was, that I couldn't really believe that it was going to be that good. Sure, there are bits I could pick fault with, but on the whole, it was a really good story and I like how it's set things up for future films.

I should probably begin with the cast, but I honestly can't start with any of the human characters. They are all upstaged by the cute little droid, BB-8. Move over R2 and Wall-E, I've got a new favourite robot! It's amazing that a large ball with a head on top can have so much character, but he really does. I especially love the way that he hides behind people's legs and then peers out. He looks really scared and you feel for him. I really want an actual BB-8 of my own.

Also, Han Solo, Leia, Chewbaca, R2-D2, C3P0 and Luke! Everyone's there. It's so much fun watching them all appear on the screen and then wondering if any of the others will. And then they do! I'm so glad they did it like that.

I know that some people online have complained about scavenger, Rey's Mary-Sue-ish qualities and I can sort of see where they're coming from. She impressed Han Solo, for crying out loud! She's never had any training in the Force but just picks it up without any trouble and she can get the Millennium Falcon flying without too much trouble. But all the same, she's all kinds of awesome. I love that she's a female character who just doesn't really need rescuing; she ends up in difficult situations or in trouble and then just does what she can to get out of it. I hope that's a trend that continues in the future films.

I also like the character of Finn. Considering he's basically a clone, there's something very human about him. He found himself in a horrible situation and did what he needed to in order to escape, he's a little like Rey in that respect. At the same time, he's ashamed of where he came from and doesn't want anyone to know, so he's prepared to make up things which could potentially get him into trouble. He doesn't want to be a hero, he doesn't want to save the world, he just wants to get somewhere safe without anyone trying to kill him. He's very much a reluctant hero and it's that ambiguity in the character which I really enjoy.

The biggest moment for me in the film was when they killed Han Solo! I'm so glad that I wasn't spoiled for that, it was such a shock that it took everything in me not to yell out 'NO!' in the middle of the cinema. It certainly had the effect it was supposed to.

As for the rest of the film, I'm not sure I was prepared for it to be as funny as it was. I can't wait to see it again because there are some truly hilarious moments. One of my favourite bits was when Rey was trying to fix the Millennium Falcon and is getting Finn to hand her the tools she needs. She keeps pointing to the one she wants while he holds up completely wrong tools, she gets really annoyed with him and is all 'No! The one I'm pointing to!"'


I'm torn between reading online spoilers and speculation about the next films and avoiding it so it's all a big surprise to me when it comes. I'm fairly certain that Rey has got to be some relation to Luke or Leia. I just can't wait to see it again.