Hospital

So, my potential over night stay in hospital after some day procedure turned into 3 nights in hospital and turned into a fairly major bit of surgery. The very experienced doctor who did the operation described my case as 'the most serious case he'd seen in years'. Go me. Anyway he is very happy with the work he has done and most importantly (from my prospective anyway) I don't have to have a second operation.
I am looking forward to the next two or three months to seeing how much difference having all the 'gunk' removed makes to my general levels of tiredness and I hope I notice a difference. Next on the list after that is a holiday, so we can both just chill out and relax. It has been a very stressful few months waiting to get this sorted out. I am glad to be home.

Towel Day

Today is Towel Day! Which was invented as a tribute Douglas Adams.  For that day, you carry a towel around, in a reference to the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.  Here is a quote:

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in "Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is." (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

And here is a picture of my towel (purchased at the Salisbury branch of Marks and Spencer) at work:

Not sure why the photo has a greenish blob in the middle....

12 on the 12th of April

Today I was reading the Geocaching Australia forum today, because as you know, I am a complete nerd. I found a post called 12 of 12. I had a bit of a read and this is what it's all about. You take 12 photos of your day each month on the 12th. By total random chance, today IS the 12th, so I decided to participate. Below are the photos of my day today.

Me discovering the 12 on the 12th challenge

My cool socks today, even if they are really tight at the top and tend to cut off blood circulation, but only a bit!!

Me waiting for lunch time, tick tock, tick tock

A bit tree out the front of the College of Surgeons near my work

My lunch spot, Madam Brussells Lane

My lunch

Me walking down the street in the afternoon sun

My foot with two acupuncture pins in it (Thanks to Jeremy for talking the photo, I personally can't look!!)

Can you see what is wrong with this picture.  I've always loved this building front

This is a bit of art on the side of a house on my walk home from work, I think it's really pretty

Two of my dogs running towards me in my usual insane greeting on returning home this evening

Not many of these chocolates to go now, but boy they are tasty!!

My decoration for our site at the mega

Neil has done a great job on the dish

Boys, you just cant take them any where

And apparently this stuff doesn't wash off. Neil has tried everything. He eventually rang me to read the instructions. Oh well, I hope he has nothing on at work that's important.

permissions

for all you hooked in and connected people out there, it's well worth following this link and cleaning up your permissions, it's amazing (and scary) what you will have given access to your 'stuff' and forgotten about.

Love

I know it's not facing the handle, but I can cope with that :)

Brag time

I have been involved in project managing a web application for a while at work. It is a Portal that has 5 different applications inside it. One of them is for the 20 odd Victorian water corporations to log into and do their annual dam risk reporting. The project was nominated for an award and, how exciting!?! We won :)

Baby craft

Here is some baby craft

backlog

I've meant to post for ages, so I have a bit of a backlog of things to catch up on. Lets see if I can remember them all.

• We finally had a blind/shutter installed on the west facing lounge room window. Today has been the first really hot day since it went in and so far it's making a massive difference and i think it has proved very worth while.  
• The scottie club had the black and white match a couple of weeks ago, it was a good day, the weather started off a bit shit, then it turned fairly warm. Guthrie won a ribbon, with some competition, and actually beat another dog! Go Guthrie :)
• Mum had a birthday party, the first for a very long time, it went off very well.
• I had a massive day of caching down Hastings way, with Neil. We found a lot, it was very very hot. (ooo that rhymed, I am a poet)
• I was very clever and worked out how to sync my work calendar to my google calendar, which means it also syncs to my phone!! Yay I'm so clever, Lotus notes sucks.
• Mum and Kate and I went down to Port Fairy to do glass bead making for mum's birthday present, we all made some pretty beads and and now have a greater appreciation for the ones other people make. it's harder than it looks.
• Dog school has closed it's indoor venue and is moving to delivering classes in a different format :( not sure how I feel about that yet.
• Bronwyn and Sarah (my two pregnant friends) are now 2 and 6 weeks weeks away from having their babies, i had really better get knitting!! 

The dogs have been being good. Neil is outside working on someone else's car, on a 37 degree day. Mad.  I have also been good, but my hip hasn't.

Water restrictions are off

So I might have had a bit of a height advantage, but I promise I was as wet as the other two (Felix started off with the hose, that was a mistake)

Possum

We had to drive to the Burnley DSE depot today. We were nearly there when we say a tiny possum in the middle of the road, being dive at by indian minors (got I hate those birds) The car in front of us nearly ran over it doing an illegal U turn, but we pulled over and grabbed the blanket out of the back of the car. I picked it up. I was a ring tail, but I surprised how tiny and light it was. I took it off to the edge of the road. I was awake and didn't seem to have any injuries. We offered it it a bit of water, but it didn't seem interested. I think it might have been 'clipped' but a car or fallen from a tree and was a bit daised like birds get when they fly into a window. Any we, we left it in the shade where it was quite hidden away and hopefully it will have been ok. If it was in a really bad way and going to die, it was still better off where we left it, rather than in the middle of the road, where it was only a matter of time before it was run over. So that was my wildlife experience of the day.

Mad as a hatter

Christmas Animation

I made this animation for my/Neil's nephews. I had gotten them some vouchers which are for a cool thing, but the vouchers themselves are ugly and don't explain what they are for very well.

Anyway, I made a nice card for the boys to open on Boxing Day with the url written on it. After a tiny argument about the best method to access said url, they both watched it. I must admit the reaction was not as ecstatic as I would have liked, but they are only 10 and 8, so it's a little hard to compete with slim at that age (that was definitely the favored present of the day) Anyway, I'm sure they will love the session once they go, and I'm looking forward to seeing the film they make. Their mum says were will be a premier!! Will be fun :)