About Schmidt was useless [mild spoilers coming up]. Well ... not useless per se, but I really had issues with it. My first issue was that it's sole purpose seemed to be to provide a blank canvas for Jack Nicholson to play a virtuosic loser retiree. He was very very good at it, granted, but I really wanted more from the film than to watch him doing that for the duration. My problems with Jack as Schmidt have two roots. Firstly I can't get past the fact that he appears in real life to be a rather arrogant obnoxious man - always with a babe on arm - always with a smart-alec retort to whichever interviewer's head he is currently biting off. This disconnect between snidey real-life Jack and heartfelt character Schmidt was really hard for me to accept. My second reason is similar - I just kept expecting Jack to raise an eyebrow and say 'Heeee're's Johnny!' with a sneer. And he didn't. I guess he's been type-cast so much that I just couldn't get beyond it.

Aside from my frustrations with Jack, I have another couple of quibbles to add to the list. Firstly the propensity of the director to overplay the 'humour' to the point of farce, and secondly the cringeworthy caricaturing. On the one hand we're presented with this deeply-felt lonely retired male protagonist, but on the other we're abused by the frustrated hippy divorcée, the mullet-and-stone-washed-jeans wearing white trash son-in-law, the devoted but boring wife with a penchant for Hummels bla bla bla. These characters were taken out of a dictionary of stereotypes somewhere and thrown into the plot to provide an alleged balance for Jack Nicholson to play something sincere. What they really did was help the film's genre slide from sensitive portrait to empty farce. Gah.

I enjoyed it though. Really. I don't think it was a bad film, it just didn't come up to my expectations, and I obviously have preconceptions about Jack Nicholson that couldn't be altered.

Definitely enjoyed copious quantities of popcorn, m&m's, tea and pound cake with Yi Shun though, and hearing about her hilarious faux-pas at work (involving that old classic of email sent to the wrong person).

Meanwhile it is finally above freezing in NYC. Instead of sub-zero temperatures we now have rain so I'm not sure if we're better off or not. The ice on the Hudson was quite amazing to see though, and I didn't even catch it at its worst.

Nothing much planned for the weekend - we might finally see Gangs of New York on Saturday, but other than that it's just catching up on household stuff and hopefully doing a bit of exercise.

Oh, and congrats to Dave for getting through the metal-removal operation successfully. I'm sure he'll be running marathons in no time ... before me anyway. Gah!

Good weekend. A bit dull for the rest of you, but still - this blog isn't about you is it!!!

Went to the gym for a reasonable workout on Saturday morning, and then drove over to Ikea in a hire car to shop for a desk and other general office furniture that will make working at home a little more comfortable. Sad to say I quite enjoyed the experience despite queueing up to get round the showroom, particularly the Swedish meatball meal which was as it should be - hot, tasty & cheap!

Got back via more chores in the early evening and went to the diner for buffalo burgers. Home via Starbucks hot chocolate (and gratuitous weekend cakefest) for some typically awful telly.

Did 3 flights of horribly slow stairs on Sunday morning followed by almost a whole day of self-assembly furniture, starting with my new Poang chair, which is unfeasibly comfortable (and therefore not particularly conducive to getting any more self-assembly furniture done - thank goodness for a handy husband!) Felt very satisfied at the end of the day having set my whole office area up very nicely with everything pretty much within reach. The only drawback is that my second-hand chair is a surreptitious sinker so every half an hour or so I end up with my chin on the desk. Am resisting the temptation to feel that this is purely due to my substantial weight gain!

Couldn't really be bothered to haul ourselves to the cinema for Gangs of New York as planned, so did a necessary supermarket trip (via more Starbucks hot chocolate!), to pick up goodies for homemade pizza which we digested in front of The Salton Sea which was unexpectedly excellent, if a little strange to start off with.

This week I look forward to the second session in my antenatal classes (learning how to adapt an existing exercise program to that incredible expanding belly!), About Schmidt with Yi Shun, and hearing how Dave's nail-removal operation goes (after the weeklong delay due to lurgied ward closure). All good fun!

Laraland is one year old today. The Blog and the Photo of the Day are a bit older, but the full site launched this time last year. It doesn't feel like it's been a year already - but I suppose it hasn't significantly changed from day one, and although I've tried to take photos most days, and written every few, it hasn't really been a constant effort. I'd love to do a whole lot more to it but it's always one of those things I procrastinate about - last on the list - you know how it is.

As a year in review, 2002 was a pretty good one. I was disappointed not to be able to chase my 4-hour marathon goal, but 4 months of groin injury early in the year put paid to those plans. The adventure racing season was average to good, culminating in great success with September's Efix - strange to find out later that I was already pregnant at the time. Our training has been occasionally sporadic, but some sessions deserve an honourable mention - the 100-mile cycle ride up to Bear Mountain, the 4 flights of our apartment building's stairs carrying 20% body weight, and the running commute to and from Wall Street to name a handful.

Outside of training, we've done a few good trips this year that've fed our appetite for adrenalin as well as showing us new parts of America - the snowboarding in Lake Tahoe in March was phenomenal, following the brief weekend I spent in LA with Rowan. The Dominican Republic windsurfing was disappointing but provided a much-needed break, mountain-biking in Sun Valley in autumn was beautiful, and I couldn't think of a better way to spend Thanksgiving than sailing in the British Virgin Islands. We've even been back to the UK enough to catch up with most people - Will & Pippa's wedding was lovely, if a little fraught, and the two weeks I spent in the UK in July was a fabulous opportunity to catch up with London friends, even though I had to go through 6 months of visa hell to get there in the first place. It was the right decision to take 2 full weeks off at Christmas, even though we still spent too much of it whizzing around the country to find it very relaxing.

I have been disappointed not to see my parents or my brother and Charlotte out here this year, but Olly, Zoe, Sam, Rowan and Camilla have all been welcome guests, and hopefully will make repeat visits this year.

Work has really been the only significant disappointment of 2002. Bluewave continued its reluctant downhill slide over the 12-month period - a degeneration marked by numerous redundancies and lost opportunities. The core team was eventually reduced to only those essential to maintain success on the handful of remaining projects and keep the office ticking over at survival rate. Not the career I was hoping for, but with any luck things will steadily improve in the coming year.

So mixed blessings to look forward to this year. Clearly the major one is birth of Taylor Tot #1 in June, which will inevitably stand my life on its head, determined as I may be to return to an acceptable level of competitive fitness. A change in work pattern is another significant change, but not one I'll take reluctantly, since my approach is that anything will be better than the last 6 months have been. Roj and I are staying in the US for the time being, but at some point in the year we will be making the decision of whether to stay for longer or return to the UK in December. We'll see how that one pans out. And a little further afield, but still rather momentous, is the all-too-inevitable possibility of the US going to war with Iraq; Blair following Bush like a puppy dog and goodness-knows-who following Saddam ... the result does not bear thinking about.

Whatever happens, I will continue to make small irrelevant comments in laraland and hopefully add to the visual journal of Photo of the Day - if intermittently. Though relegated to support crew for Roj, I will be endeavouring to stay in touch with the adventure racing world so that I don't lose the plot entirely, and I will be making suitable progress with work (of one kind or another!) whenever the opportunity arises. All that remains is to say a heartfelt thanks to all those who deem laraland worth an occasional visit - I am constantly astonished at the level of commitment to my site and only hope that I can keep you interested enough to stick around in 2003 ... despite the baby pictures!!

Did a very nice 5-hour hike on Bear Mountain yesterday. Went to a part that we don't usually go to, and considering the fact that it was also covered in 6 inches to a foot of snow, it was barely recognisable - and also very hard work! It's apparently the coldest winter here in 6 years, and we were having problems yesterday with the water in our Camelbak tubes freezing up if we didn't suck on them every 5 minutes or so - not entirely conducive to hydration. Bitterly bitterly cold, but we just wore our entire stockpile of winter snowboarding woolies and we were fine. Very nice to get out of the apartment into the fresh air and very nice to see Bear Mountain looking a bit different.

Today's gonna be slightly more boring - cleaning the apartment, laundry, paperwork. The usual rubbish that I've managed to allow to build up over the last few weeks. Maybe make it out to the cinema ... maybe just watch a lot of cable as usual. Dull dull dull!

Well I've finally come to the point of confessing the first of the three momentous items I've been keeping from the blog for the last few months. Seems silly really, since I have the presumption to call this section 'laralife' and yet I've been very careful to not talk about some of the most important things that are happening in it (Lara's life, that is). Even in a place which professes to be honest and open about what's going on, it's often (frustratingly) impossible to be honest and open. I could have been I suppose, but I have felt the need to let people know in the right order, if you know what I mean.

Anyway ... the news (to some, anyway) is that I'm just over 4.5 months pregnant. So to those of you who have seen me looking uncharacteristically fat recently and those of you who are puzzled at my lack of competitive ambition for the year, I finally confess my excuse. I am training exclusively for a rather painful event in early June. Birth of Baby Taylor #1. Scary huh!?

Well not that scary. Roj and I have always known we wanted kids, and while we acknowledge that we could easily spend the next 15 years training massively for silly adventure racing events around the globe, living where we want and being utterly self-indulgent, we both know that if we did that, we would get to the end of the 15 years and say 'now what?' So 2003 seemed like a good year and that's the end of the story really.

It didn't sink in for a while, and a distinct lack of symptoms in the early stages were probably to blame. I feel utterly sympathetic to those who spend the better part of 3 months with their heads down the loo, but for me I was fortunate to escape with only mild too-much-tequila-the-night-before tummy. Easily exercised-through. In fact this second trimester is proving harder in that what small amount of sleep I could rely on before has disappeared out of the window and I spend most of my days in a state of zombishness. There are good bits though. I don't think you can really understand what it does to you to feel your progeny wriggling around inside your belly until you experience it first hand.

So there you go. Lara is up the duff. Weird huh!?

Went to see The Hours last night with Yi Shun. What a fab film! Not one for the boys though, in my opinion. At the end of it I felt like I'd been dragged through an emotional mangle a couple of times. It wasn't a tear jerker as such, but so intense and so depressing (for the most part) that I ended up feeling almost exhausted at the end of it. Brilliant acting from all the cast. Very close to the book (although we agreed that it wasn't quite as subtle, and that Meryl Streep's character wasn't as strong). Overall just an excellent display of virtuosity on all counts, and definitely worthy of its copious Golden Globe nominations.

Good to see Yi Shun again, if only for a brief period of time (she was rushing off to expend energy on more deserving causes). Next film will probably be About Schmidt which apparently has some bizarre deviations from the original book. Still mean to see White Oleander too ... continuing the theme of film to book comparison that we seem to have adopted.

We were planning a hiking day at Bear Mountain on Saturday but it looks like it's going to snow all day tomorrow which may throw spanners in the works, both for getting and being there. The apartment deserves a bit of attention though, so it might be a good thing to stick around as long as I don't go nuts from cabin fever, which is a serious possibility as I'm working from home at the moment. Perhaps I'll think of something more exciting to do at the last minute, but judging from my current absence of imagination, I'm not so sure.

A week back in New York and things are going well. It took me a couple of days to get back into a routine after the holidays, but doesn't it always? Besides which, as it's a completely new routine, it was hardly going to feel normal.

Did a set of 3 stairs last Monday which killed my calves for the week - repeated them on Saturday but thankfully didn't suffer any of the consequences. Otherwise been going to the gym for weights and a bit of turbo training, but nothing frantic.

And the photo is proving difficult. Partly I'm not spending enough time outside (beep freezing out there, and I don't really have the excuse), and partly I'm otherwise involved doing lots of other stuff. However I'm still determined to keep it up, particularly seeing the renewed interest from one or two people.

There's lots going on but, frustratingly, nothing I can really talk about here (general diplomacy). It's part of the reason I've been so quiet recently because it's difficult to do subject avoidance when you're talking about your own life. I'll have to invent something slightly more interesting later this week though - it being the one-year anniversary of this little site (doesn't time fly when you're being so pointless?!!)

Meanwhile thinking about Jon who is going through some family upheaval, Dave who is going into hospital next Tuesday for a radical weight-loss plan involving the removal of his leg metal, and Mike who is snowboarding. The git.

I thoroughly recommend a two week break. It's been the first time we've taken so much time off since our honeymoon in 2000, and I really appreciated the extra time to unwind. I think my parents got a bit sick of me by the end of the visit, but I'm sure I can be held entirely responsible for that so under the circumstances they did an amazing job of making me feel at home.

I did manage to catch up with a couple of people in London and elsewhere in the country - although never for as long as I'd have liked. I'm already constructing a list of people I want to see in March, if we get our wotsits in gear to do another trip (and if Mr Bush the Wondrous holds back on dropping bombs on all and sundry).

Saw the Two Towers last night after flying home and I have to say I wasn't as impressed as I thought I'd be. The action and effects and scenery were faultless but I still felt that the whole film was a bit empty and lacking in the area of character development. Of course most of the characters were introduced in the first film, but I still felt that they may have gained more by spending a little more time with some of the characters introduced in this one. Seemed to be all action and no substance really, Gollum aside.

It's snowing in New York now, which is very nice (and makes a change from constant rain and flood warnings). Seems that there's been quite a bit of snow while we've been away so the snowboarding slopes are already calling. We've got quite a bit to sort out in the next few weekends though, of one sort or another, so whether we actually go or not is yet to be seen.

And I've even been taking photos this year, so the Photo of the Day is soon to be reinstated. Also going to have to fiddle with the MP3 player Roj got me for Christmas, as well as unpacking and generally spending quite a bit of time on clearing up the apartment, which looks like a bomb hit it while we were away (hectic December to blame for that).

My definitive resolutions list is still in the process of being refined (and is really not that interesting!), but suffice it to say that 2003 is going to be a good year. Definitely.