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I've been exercising quite a bit today. Around 2 1/2 hours of pretty constant drumming during open day, then on to the Ulster Secondary School's swimming. I always enjoy these galas for some reason. Winning intermediate 100m freestyle was good, but what surprised me was my time of 56.95. I was pretty surprised seeing that one on the board. In July, i did a 57.1 in a relay (relays are always faster) before taking off to Limerick, so i don't really know how i managed to pull that one off. Probably what i like about these galas is the decent spirits between teams. You may be surprised, but the Inst and Methody teams get on very well at these things. The people from 5th year and up in their team are all decently sound, and they didn't even take it badly when we beat them in the relays. That's cool, i like it.

Anyways, what's been the deal with the weather lately? If you haven't realised, in the last 24 hours, 175mm of rain has fallen in places, winds have reached up to 130mph gusts in the Scottish Highlands and up to 100mph gusts in the Irish Sea, 100 flood warnings have been put in place (some severe), Cardiff has seen the worst flooding for 30 years, snow has fallen in places, thousands of houses have had power cuts, trees have been uprooted, lorries have been overturned & a P&O ferry has ran aground in Cairnryan. Meanwhile, in the US, ice has brought down power lines in Ohio, New England is snowed in, Southern Indiana is flooded, and people in Chicago have been dodging falling icicles (except that isn't as bad as it sounds, because it's just the snow is thawing there). Anyways, that's all crazy!