today a year ago....

Today a year ago, I was lined up to go under the knife.  It was supposed to be a day procedure op, but I ended up being operated on for 4 fours and in hospital for 4 days.
There was so much nastiness inside me that the surgeon had to cut a proper hole in me and pull bits out of me to do the whole job.  He ended up being very happy with the job he did and has remained positive that everything should work properly.
I was lucky enough to be involved in a pre and post research project to check how the surgery affected me. The results of this showed there was an effect, as expected, but not a totally detrimental one (ie: a pretty good result given the mess they found and how invasive the surgery was)  Regardless of these positive (ish) results, not everything has gone completely to plan.
I feel very ambivalent and conflicted about the whole situation.
Life, why is it not easy?

The stargate

Today I happened to be up and Melbourne Uni closing a bank account I not longer use and they wanted to charge me money on. I went past this

It's a stargate

it reminded me about a cache I did that used this art installation as part of the clues. I'd had Neil drop me off at this end of town. It was, from memory, a fairly cold and wet day, I know I had my rain coat with me.  I collected this cache and some there's in the area and made my way south, picking up caches all day in the city.  I ended up down by the Yarra, I was completely soaked and totally exausted. I'd been caching all day.

A few weeks latter I realised I'd managed to loose a travel bug somewhere during the day. I know I'd had it at the start of the day, as I had a photo of it at the final to this Stargate cache. But I couldn't find it anywhere. I was dreading emailing the owner to say I'd lost it, so I just pretended I still had it, and randomly visited it to caches.  

Nearly a year latter, I found it!!! It was in the pocket of my rain coat, but over summer I'd had no cause to use it, so never found it.  What a relief.

weight

so, I'm a bit fat and, like most of the rest of the world, trying to loose some weight (boring)
Anyway, I got this cool pedometer (on speed) and it's matching set of scales (cos I'm an uber nerd). Go here and investigate if you are interested, and let me know if you get one, cos then we can be friends!!
And on to the reason for this post.  I'm feeling a bit better today, so I decided to weigh myself and guess what!!?!? Feeling awful and not eating very much for a day or two is a great way to loose weight! (sort of joking)

Ah har!! I took the numbers off so you don;t know exactly HOW enormously fat I am!! (you are meant to be looking at the big down at the right hand end of the graph)

Also, just a note for people who are interested, trying to loose weight when you essentially can't exercise, like me, is really a bit hard.  You have to do it the boring way, by watching what you eat, generally eating less and by drinking less (I have been doing two of the three).

And in a fantastic bit of universe karma, I think I have worked out what has made me feel so awful.  It's the only thing I can think of that only I ate.  Peanut M&M's.  Which I bought while I was at officeworks and SHOULD have been at work, that I shouldn't have bought anyway (see graph) and that might be WELL past their used buy date (it's a bit hard to tell the number could be a 1: bad or a 4: fine)

*sigh*

I have to make these

I found this photo on (bleh) Facebook, and needed to remember about it. These are totally for my birthday this year!!!

They came from here originally. 

bleh

So, some how, I managed to get some sort of 'stomach thing'.  I was fine when I left work and wet out for a few ciders, I was fine when I got on the tram and came home.  I was sitting in front of the tv and realised my stomach was really quite sore.  I decided a small dinner was in order and Neil was heating a sausage roll, so I just had one of these.  It didn't help, I still felt awful, so I went to bed.  I had a shit nights sleep, cos I was uncomfortable, no matter how I was lying.  When I work up, I still felt awful, and that had been the continuing theme for the day.  About three I decided soup would be a good idea.  It wasn't.  Back to bed, still feeling awful.

Without going in to too many revolting details, things are slowly moving down and I feel like I'm slowly improving.  I got so brave, I decided to have plain dry biscuits and lemonade.  These went down so well, the after a while I decided to try the soup again.  There was nearly a set back, and I had to have a quick lie down, but in the end. I think it went down ok.  God I hope I feel better tomorrow.  I've already cancelled the day of caching I had lined up :(

86 tram

I don't think I have ever told you my favorite 86 tram story. I mean technically I have probable told each person who is likely to read this blog the story, but I don't think I've told it ON the blog, to that counts.
Once upon a time, I was heading home on the 86 tram. This tram travels from right outside my work, up smith street, then high street and eventually all the way to bundoora, where at the end of the line is a 'mental' home. Now I'm sure there is a more PC term for this, but I have had two pints of cider, so at this point I don't really care.
Anyway, half way along the smith street section, two fairly merry seeming 'ladies' got on the tram. They were talking loudly and generally behaving like the usual crowd you get on the smith street tram. Anyway, not long after boarding, just before the next stop, one of the two quietly threw up in the stairwell. Her friend, full of sympathy, as they were exiting the tram was heard by me, and most of the rest of the tram, to exclaim: "I told you you shouldn't have had that stollie* before your methadone!!"
Ahhh, what a nice story. For me, personally, this story totally sums up the 86 tram. Kind of drug addicted, a bit fucked in the head, but mostly friendly and harmless.


* alcoholic white wine spritzer.

FINALLLYYYLYLYLYLYLLLLLLLLYYYYYYYY

Can I just say...... I have been looking at this puzzle since just after I started caching back in 2009.  At that point there was less than 300 active puzzle type caches in Victoria (there are now 915 of which I have found 151 and own 4).
My obsession with puzzle caches started with the second puzzle cache that I found, which was a 16*16 sudoku puzzle (as apposed to the usual 9*9), I'd been working on solving it for WEEKS.  I even had neil helping.  One Sunday afternoon in August 2009, Neil and I were both sitting round working on this puzzle when I finally had a breakthrough and got the co-ords out.  It was fairly late on a sunny but cool day.  I was able to persuade Neil we should go out and get it straight away.  It still remember the excited feeling!! I had solved it, we rode to the location, took a stroll, hunted around and found the cache, all that work paid off, it was sooooo much more satisfying than a 'traditional' cache.  I was hooked.
This first puzzle success had me looking at others around Melbourne, and I found the one above.  I had no idea what to do with it. I looked at it again and again over the next little while (few years).  I was given a tiny pointer a while ago, which didn't help.... oh no!! What to do!! A cache 51 other people have been able to solve (or have had the answer told to them) and 48 of those had been since I have been trying to solve it.
Today, I finally found the tool I needed on the interwebs (had to use the way back machine - accessible!!) and with some stuffing around FINALLY got the answer.  I want to go now and get it!! Oh well, add it to the list of 70 odd other caches I have solved and are waiting for me to visit!
Yay!

My path tags have arrived :)

ooops. So accident prone

I might have bought some things.

Look, geology at work

I saw this today, it's a bank collapse.

What the?!?!?

The Herald Sun (Shitest of shit newspapers that it is) has changed the format of their daily quiz!!! They have changed it to just 12 questions, instead of 15 in batches of 5 worth 1 2 and 3 points and WORST OF ALL!!!! They have decided not to put the "Who am I?" in!!!

Evil of evils.  Not happy Jan.

caching with the nephew

I had a nice day today, I went caching with Felix to an event called Geo Comp.  Some guys had placed 30 odd caches in a park in Brayside.  We teamed us with Mark, who was just there by himself, but he has two girls, so got along with Felix fine.  We ended up collecting 20 caches and walk about 9km, which was way further than I was expecting to walk.  The physio has said I should try to keep my steps to around 5-7k.  Today I walked nearly 15k.  oops.

Anyway, as I said, A fun time by all and we came 5 or 6th or something.  Not a bad effort for team "Crippled by a laser explosion" (guess which half of the name was mine and which half was Felix's)

Here is a picture of Felix and some dead trees

12 on the 12th July

Wow, it's been nearly a year since I have posted here....
I was inspired but 12 of 12 on the caching forum though, and since I was actually somewhere interesting last '12th' I decided to indulge.

Where am I? 

A cache I found

Self-us

Snowman we made - on top of a cache, after we re-buried it

Some moss

Me at chess

Arty chess :)

ooooo fountain

arty signal box

an afternoon nap

a sea horse

steam crane