Jabs

So, K and I headed to the doctors this lunchtime to get our jabs ready for the trip to Peru. I was a touch nervous, I'm really not keen on the needles thing. It's not a major issue, I just don't like people stabbing my in the arm with lengths of surgical steel.
When the doc was walking out the door to retrieve the THREE sets of injections we'd be needing (Yellow Fever, HepA + Typhoid, Tetanus) he asked if either of us was likely to faint, we laughed, said no.
We were wrong.
K had her jabs first as she reasoned that watching me be nervous about having mine would make her more apprehensive, so she had hers like a little trooper. I watched the door, you know, in case it decided to attack while we were distracted. No problems. My turn. He pulls out the needles for my set and asks again if there's a problem, I tell him no, it's not that bad, I'm just not that keen. I go back to watching the door as he swabs my arm (you can't be too careful, Killer Doors can attack at ANY time!). Jab 1, Yellow fever, no probs, barely felt it. Jab 2, Hep A and Typhoid, really stung. Jab 3, no probs, but hurt when he pushed the stuff in me. All done, everything is cool. The doc gets up and throws the needles in the needle bin and we chat for about 1 minute about how that wasn't so bad. Then I get this feeling like a head rush from standing up to quick. I manage to say "I don't feel so good" before I'm transported away to another world where I'm riding on a train through the African Savanna (I met someone in the waiting room who was telling me about this trip he was going on next year). Next thing I know I'm lying on the floor sweating profusely, feeling extremely hot, K is looking very worried and the doc is leaning over me telling me not to worry, to just relax, it's just a reaction to having 3 jabs at once.
Yeah, I totally blacked out for about 20-30 seconds. Soon afterwards that brief respite was just a happy memory as the adrenaline my body had kicked into my body in response to the loss of blood pressure (hence the sweating) kicked off a bunch of other reactions including a moderate amount of vomiting. In the end, the lovely doctor had to give me a 4th injection just to stop me from throwing up.
In all, it took about half an hour before I felt OK to leave the place and have K escort me home on the train. It wasn't a pleasant trip, the last 2 stops were torturous, as I started feeling sick again. When we got home, I slept for about an hour, and I'm feeling human again now. Not a well human, but a human nonetheless.
K bless her has been fantastic all afternoon looking after me. I think she got a bit of a scare. She even cooked me lasagne for dinner tonight.
I think I'll avoid future injections where feasible.

Fitness is overrated...

So, yesterday, I got up, and thought "I'm going to go for a run", and I did, and I ran further than the previous runs, so this is a step up. When I got back I went through a set of press ups, sit up and dimly remembered kata (kama no kata and the kion hapo) from Ninjutsu years ago. And alot of stretching. It felt pretty good.
Then, we were walking around Southland, and I thought to myself, hey, I'll get myself some weights, so I can do some weight training, sort out my shoulders and strengthen my back a little in the process. I find a cheap pack of weights, 20Kg, that looked about right for me to get started with.
I hurt my back.

I didn't even make it to the cash register.

The weights are sitting in our spare room now, pristine and ready to be picked up and put down multiple times. But I can't bring myself to do it just yet.

At least today I can bend at the waist without grunting. Still, I think I'll be giving my chiro a call to see if I can get an appointment this week.

Oh, and I've racked up about 5 hours of gaming on GW this weekend, what with Kye's bridesmaid duties on Friday and Saturday night. Nice.

UPDATE:
I got my chiro appointment yesterday. It was actually the most painful treatment I've ever had, even worse than when I fell down some stairs, or injured myself doing gymnastic while drunk (both pretty serious injuries). Some muscles in my back (apparently I do have some) had spasmed and Kevin, my chiro, loosened them up for me by driving his thumbs into them. Paaaaiiiinnn. I couldn't even do my usual trick of breathing through it because the pressure he was putting on my back kept forcing the air out of me. When I got home I put an ice pack on it and had a beer (s'ok, alcohol is a muscle relaxant). Felt much better after that! I can resume my ewxercising Thursday apparently.

All links Friday.

Not much going on at the moment, I managed another run one morning this week, so I'm kind of keeping up with that, though probably not at the rate I should be. I've noticed that my legs feel a bit chunkier when I'm walking after a run, it's a strange sensation, like someone just strapped a bunch of water bags to my thighs when I wasn't looking.
I've got a big gaming weekend lined up, K is off to dinner at a friends tonight, and a hens night for the same friend on Saturday night... Rather than spend my time rounding up some mates and going out on the lash, I've decided to spend some time grinding away on Guild Wars instead. OK, it's a little sad and geeky that I'm spending Friday and Saturday evenings sat in front of the computer, however, most of you would probably have got a movie out and sat in front of the TV. At least this way I'm actively exercising my mind a bit.

So, I've found, in my daily trawls, a number of interesting sites (well, interesting to me anyway), so I'm going to add them up here.

Comic: Looking for Group - Fantasy/Roleplaying themed comic. Very amusing, looks to be WoW based mostly.

Comic: Extra Life - General computer game/geek culture related comic.

General Interest: Damn Interesting - Random articles that really are pretty damned interesting.

Geeking out.

I'm spending today, my birthday day-off (almost a week late due to work pressures and obscenely hot weather where I figured it would be better to be in the office than melting at home) playing Guild Wars and geeking out in a fairly big way. Though I did go riding in Lysterfield park this morning so I don't feel like I've totally wasted the day.
Yesterday ended up being a pretty full day, despite the almost unbearable 38 degree heat. It's been damned hot the last week or so, with virtually no let up, and over night "lows" hanging around the high 20's. It makes pretty much everything tiring, and there's no escaping the heat unless you feel like spending your days hiding in the shopping centres. K and I hit the local shops and bought blinds, 2 roman blinds for the back doors on the inside to block the sun there, and a external roll up blind for the kitchen windows. I then also bought more blinds to go on the outside of my study windows, as the temperature in there was unbearable by about 8:30am on Sunday morning I installed all of them. I guess some people back home in England would kill for weather like this, but trust me, it starts to take it out of you after a while. :-)
Lysterfield was fantastic this morning, it was cool, with a fine drizzle coming through towards the end of my ride, I saw tons of Kangeroos, some very large ones, standing only a few feet back from the path as I rode past. One was almost as tall as me and stood looking me in the eye as I stared back. I really wished I'd taken my camera along (I'll remember next time, and there'll be no kangeroos). At one point while riding through the trees, I heard a crackle next to me, turned and saw a kangeroo crouched no more than 2 feet from the path on my right feeding. It barely glanced at me before it carried on eating. Absolutely beautiful. It's amazing how they blend in with the dead grey tree stumps and fallen branches. Definitely a great start to the day.

Happy Birthday.

Yes, once again, another year has rolled past as they do. Traditionally this is a time for navel gazing and trying to work out ones place in the universe, and the wisdom of various decisions taken thus far in life. I'm not really into that sort of thing myself. I made the decisions I made because they appeared the best choices to make at the time. I always make sure that at every fork in the road, I take the path that seems right over the one that seems wrong, the one that seems fun over the one that seems boring, the one that seems rewarding over the one that seems empty. This leaves me no cause to go back and say "If only..." because with what I knew then, I made the only choice I could make. No point digging up old ghosts.
Yes, some of those decisions could have been handled better with more information, and with the benefit of my now much longer experience, but hey, if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't be in a position to make those choices then, and now I wouldn't know whatI know now, having not made those choices and learned those lessons.... I think.
Besides, I'm happy where I am right now, and changing the past in any way, would probably not lead me to where I am now. I'm in love with a wonderful woman, who loves me right back, I have a nice house, a job that is actually reasonably rewarding, a hobby that keeps me occupied in between, without costing me all my money, and a number of good friends with whom I can share my happiness. Really, there's nothing else I need in this world.... Everythign else is just "stuff".

I did have cause to ponder on some deep and meaningful thoughts this morning, while packed into a train bearing the wonderful aroma of stale urine, presumably from last night. I thought back to a conversation with a guy from work about single friends and potential matches for them, which occured yesterday afternoon. He asked me what my friend was like, and I had a hard time explaining. How do you sum a person up in a few sentences? You really can't. I thought more about that this morning, and about labels people apply to other people, and how ridiculously futile that is. I describe myself as a geek, but that isn't all of me. It occured to me how often we describe people by the groups they are in, by their religion, sexuality or culture, but really that's like describing Constables Hay Wain by saying "It's a bit brown".
I think we'd do well to remember that, when casually slapping a trite label onto them and also when describing ourselves. We're all masterpieces, not just "a bit brown".

I promise I'll avoid such philosophical musings for the forseeable future.

PS - In binary my age is now 100000. OK, that's my geek bit out of the way.

There are days when I question the sanity behind my "choice" of career. Days when I find that no matter how fast I run at the goal, whenever I get to where it was, I find some bastard has moved it elsewhere, or tagged it with a note saying "This is not the goal you are looking for" or have decided to play a different game entirely.
Today is just such a day.
I've had more false starts on this current project than real ones, everytime someone gives me data, it's always followed by an update, everytime I think I'm done, someone says "Hang on, that's not right, here's the proper data" and I start again.
I'm due to deliver some data to people in 1.5 hours, and the data providers are off checking things on the input data.
It's looking like it's not going to happen.

Third run...

I went out again running this morning, still didn't feel that comfortable, but better than Tuesday, not as stiff, still not as fluid as I remember.
Perhaps my mind is playing tricks on me, but I remember running through the countryside like a graceful, lithe gazelle, whereas right now I'm running like a poorly animated Pinocchio. Maybe running first thing in the morning isn't the best move, my back is always pretty rigid in the morning, it takes a while for it to loosen up.
Currently I'm running for a bit short of 10 minutes, then doing some press ups, sit ups, weights for my shoulders and stretching, I'm planning to up the stakes this weekend with a bigger run. I'm hoping I'll get my stride on with a longer run and not look like I'm running in a back brace. This will depend how I feel after Saturday mornings chiropractor appointment. If have a major adjustment, then no running.

I have already noticed an improvement in the bulge though, it's easier to hold it in, and flatter when I'm not concentrating.

By coincidence, The Biggest Loser is currently on TV, it started this weekend. This gives me plenty of opportunity for feeling superior as well as laughing at the pain of the beached whales rolling around in the gym sobbing because they've been asked to push their bodies for the first time in years. Really they get no sympathy from me. I love the program, because, unlike most other "Reality Shows", EVERYONE gets something out of this. Even if the participants don't win, they get put on the path to a better, healthier life, and viewers get motivated to try to improve themselves too. However, the ones who crack the sads before day 3, because the trainer is pushing them to exercise their fat, flabby arses harder than they've ever exercised before, who sob uncontrollably every time they get on the frikkin walking machine, well, I just have this to say "Cry me a river tubby. If you hadn't been eating enough food each day to sustain a third world family for a week, if you'd got off your fat arse 20 years ago and done a little exercise, you wouldn't be there now, sweating, screaming and crying on TV, just so you can lose enough weight walk through a doorway without having to turn sideways. Suck it up!".
I hope that one day these words don't come back to bite me in my expanding arse... Judging by my progress thus far though (183 cm tall, under 70Kgs, 31cm waist and just shy of 32 years old), I think I'm pretty safe.

Edit: I should point out, that it's only a few people on the show I'm being this spiteful about. For the most part the people sweat it out and make a personal commitment to improving their lives, and most continue to do so, even afer being voted out of the house fatties house. They sometimes still sob, but I'll accept that, being the magnanimous, big hearted person that I am.

Battle of the Bulge

Managed to drag my arse out of bed this morning and go for another run. If I can keep this up a couple of weeks, maybe it'll become less painful to do.
It didn't feel as comfortable as Sundays run, I was still aching a little I guess, feeling very stiff and inflexible.
I'll have to check my weight tomorrow morning and make sure it's not having too much of an impact, I can't really afford to lose weight, I just want to move it around a bit and get fitter.

Exercise Scmexercise

We (K and I) are off to Peru in a few months to hike the Inca trail. It's 4 days hiking at high altitude, so I'm thinking I need to do something to get my fitness a little ways above it's current level (which is to say my "baseline" fitness level, carefully honed by spending extended periods sitting still in front of a computer both at work and at home, I'm really dedicated).
To this end we've done a couple of short hikes up in the Dandenongs to get used to the idea of walking in hilly areas, and this Sunday I went for a short 10 minute run around the block followed by some push ups, sit ups and weights. I felt pretty good after all that and ended up doing a number of small chores around the house without prompting.
Last night Rod came over for an impromtu BBQ and we had a few beers (South American beers for me, got to get in training for that too!) and a bit of a natter over our burgers.

This morning I woke up with a double whammy hangover. A sore head from the beer, and a sore body from the exercise. I've been monitoring my recovery process and found that I have gotten over the booze faster than the exercise. Proof that it's better to go out drinking than it is to go to the gym!
You read it here first people!