Sunday 29 January 2012

Bring on February

29/01/2010 - January, as I alluded to in my previous post, has been ... well .... crap. My wife eventually needed to have a tooth pulled, fortunately a molar at the back, to deal with the abscess in her jaw. My chesty cough was in fact a lung infection and I got told off by both my wife and the doctor for the 5 mile run I had completed earlier in the week - oops. So cue two rounds of antibiotics and though my lungs are a little clagged up I'm now clear of infection and allowed to run again - it's good to be alive.

Glad to be alive!
So today I went for a run. Four and a half miles at under 5mph. Impressive? No to be honest, but I was just so happy to be outside and running. Later I joined my karate class for a couple of hours training and while I found myself getting breathless quickly I managed to finish on my feet.

Not on my feet.
On the up side I repaired the ceiling in the kitchen after it was ripped down due to the water leak of the new year. On the down side I've still got to repaint the damn thing. January, and consequently 2012, has so far been a mixed bag. Even my daughter's not been immune to the ups and downs. Anyway she loves Benedict Cumberbatch and the BBC's Sherlock so she wrote a tune in his honor. I really like it and the fact that she composed it in January trumps everything else that's happened and makes January overall a good month. Though not as good as February - that's my birthday month :-).



Sunday 15 January 2012

Signs of the Apocalypse

15/01/2012 - Well all the signs of the Apocalypse are there to be seen. Christmas was great, so good I had no time but to do anything but have fun. It all started to unravel after the new year.

I had been picking up on my running and keeping it up over the Christmas break, even running on Christmas day, so I had high hopes for my progress in the new year. Then on January 3rd, my first day back at work, it's 06:00 am and I'm all suited and booted and about to leave when I hear, "Stuart there's a leak in the kitchen, waters pouring through the ceiling." Rushing in I see water not only dripping from the ceiling but running down the walls - bugger. So it's a quick change of clothes and the removal of anything that might get water damaged from the kitchen. We lost a couple of photo's which was a real shame but nothing too bad. So I set about removing a section of the false wooden ceiling and bashing out a couple of big holes in the plaster one above. A quick revels a mains water pipe has burst so I turn off the mains stop cock and leak stopped we have a bit of a cleanup.

A hole in the ceiling!!
Next thing I need to let work know I'm not going to be in and that I'll take it as a days holiday - great :-(.
I know I've got a bit of 15mm copper pipe kicking about so I dig out my plumbing gear at set about replacing the burst bit of pipe. Eventually the pipes replaced, that kitchens cleans and re-cleaned and we're just left with the nasty hole in the ceiling. As it's soaking up there I decide that it's best not to patch the hole for a few days to allow it all to dry out.

Next day it's back to work and I'm not feeling well. By the end of the day I'm wrecked so go home and pretty much go straight to bed and there I stay. I've got some sort of check infection and it knocks me off my feet until the following Monday when I decide to get myself back into work. I've not taken any time off sick as I worked from my bed though to be honest I really should have. One hour into work and I'm told to go home, I'm in a right state and no one, quite rightly, wants what I've got. So I'm back home, back in bed and feeling sorry for myself. I work from home the next day but by Wednesday decide I really need to be at work.

As I write this I still have a nasty cough and I can feel my chest bubbling but after nearly two weeks I'd had enough so this morning I went for a run. A slow five miles that I really enjoyed. Time will tell whether it comes back to bite me on the arse as my chest is not feeling great but sod it I really could not take doing nothing any longer. All good things come in threes and while I seem to be slowing recovering my wife's in agony with an abscess in her jaw. 2012 has started just how the Mayans predicted - sort of.

On a lighter note I was the official photographer at my karate associations Christmas party. We have a bit of fun training the juniors then we have presentations for new belts and end of year achievements - all good fun. My daughter is nicely surprised when she's presented with a lovely silk black belt, embroidered with her on one end and her nick name on the other.

So that's it for now and fingers crossed things start to get better in 2012 for us and I hurry up and get this chest infection cleared. I really need to be banging in the miles as it's only a couple of months till I do a marathon - eek.

p.s. I got a Kindle for Christmas and it's bloody great :-)