Looooong Time no post

Wow, it's been so long since I've been here that I'd forgotten my blogger password. Sorry.

I've been quite busy lately and have been filling in all my spare time with madly attempting to finish a couple of knitting projects - a jumper for my neice (which she will probably grow too big for before it's finished, at this rate) and a cardigan and pants suit for a friend's little boy who's due very soon.

A potted history of the last couple of months.

July - I turned 33, The Man went to Perisher for a week with a friend, and with Lalla looking after The Boy for the weekend I took the opportunity for a whirlwind trip to Sydney for two days. I took Mum to the theatre to see Company (loved it), had dinner with the family in J & D's new flat, which isn't actually so new but I hadn't seen it, visited Uncle George in hospital, visited Grandma and Grandad and drove Mum and Dad down to Dad's hangar, where he took the Chipmunk, which he'd just sold, for a final flight, involving me in the back seat feeling uncomfortable during the extremely tame aerobatic maneuver he managed to do before I sheepishly asked him not to do any more. (For those who know about such things, I couldn't handle a wingover.....I'm such a wuss)

August - We planned and packed and headed off for our trip to ski in Queenstown in NZ (12th-19th August). We had a great time and despite some difficulties and a little bit of a tantrum one morning, I did manage to improve my skiing over the week. I keep meaning to write a great long report, but I haven't got to it yet, which means I probably never will. (My road to hell is well and truly paved up to about knee deep by now with all my good intentions!). Anyway, if you want to see some footage from the first part of our trip, including me skiing slowly in a state of great concentration, here it is.
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Things have been up and down with Uncle George - they moved him out of the high dependency ward into Rehab, then he got pneumonia, but Dad told me today that yesterday he was the best Dad has seen him since he went into hospital. He is cheerful and eating well, which is really great news.

I've been in my new job for nearly 14 weeks now. Gee time flies! I had my first performance review last week and it was quite good. I'm soooooo glad I left my old job. I've got an appointment to have afternoon tea with a couple of the people from my old team on Friday. I miss them, but not the job. I'm so much happier now with my work, and it's amazing what a difference that makes to your general well-being.

My personal training sessions are going well - at least I'm increasing the amount of weight I work out with (up to 7kg in each hand for squats and lunges) and there seem to be some muscles making an appearance! Who knew! I'm getting more and more convinced that all personal trainers are closet sadists, though, because my pt pushes me until it really hurts on the end of each set.....but that's nothing to how much it hurts the next day! Thank goodness I'm starting to see some benefits in my strength and body size (jeans are getting a little loose) because it's not easy to go back for that pain every week!

We just popped outside and checked out the start of the lunar eclipse. I thought the moon would be below the hill across the road for most of the start of the eclipse but it's well and truly above the hill. Not much to see yet, and it's a little cloudy so not as easy to see as it could be, but we'll keep looking!

Happy Birthday to Sharon, Uncle Peter, Grandma, Aunty Pam, Uncle George and Jill, who have all registered one number higher since I last posted.!

Disappointments

Up until this evening, Uncle George had been doing really well. They drained the fluid from his lungs last week and he had improved a bit almost immediately. He had slowly got better little by little each day, and was sitting in his wheelchair. But we got bad news today that he has got a bad infection. I don't know anymore but it doesn't sound good.

And, in what now seems to be incredibly trivial news, I found out this evening that the new Doctor Who companion for the 4th season will be Catherine Tate, reprising her "The Runaway Bride" character of Donna. I guess I can understand the idea behind it, going from a companion the Doctor fell in love with (Rose) to a companion who fell in love with the Doctor and he just liked her (Martha) to a companion who is so blinking annoying that I can't imagine anyone being prepared to stay in a room with her.......(good thing the TARDIS is really really big inside). I'm just really disappointed - I actually found her character annoying enough that it might just turn me off watching the show - and this is a show that I am obsessed with, and have a withdrawal-like reaction to the end of a series...... The Man reckons that I'll watch it anyway, and I have to admit he's probably right, but I don't have to like Donna, do I? I won't do it, I won't! (pardon me while I pout, suck my thumb and find my blankie...)

Oh, and I see the Gastroenterologist tomorrow morning. He now does earlier appointments so I'm able to have an 8am appointment and get to work earlier (up until recently the earliest appointment was 9am, which usually meant it was after 10 before I got to work).....

Let's hope next week is better.....

It's not been such a good week. My Monday blood test showed that my neutrophils were still only 0.6, so my haematologist asked me to have more blood collected yesterday. The results today show that the neutrophils are up to 0.8 (not brilliant, but we'll take any improvement we can get at the moment). My haemoglobin is still low, so I'll be going in for a blood transfusion next Saturday. I know that it's all incredibly routine and everything, but I'm a little apprehensive. I said to Mum this evening "they should keep the blood for the people who need it". She said "If the doctor is recommending this, you're the people who need it!" She also said that it's for this reason that she donates blood - to help people who are unwell. I wish I could just request a couple of units of her donations....

But even worse than that, my wonderful, special Uncle George had an operation earlier this week that didn't go according to plan and now he's in hospital, very sick and possibly at risk of dying soon. I feel so bloody far away from my Sydney family right now. I looked up flights for this weekend but they're very expensive. At the moment I'm waiting for news as it comes to hand, and hoping, hoping, hoping that he'll be okay.

Uncle George last October at Jill's wedding. (I know the corners are missing but for some reason this photo was taken on an angle so I had to rotate it and crop but it was still missing bits.....)

Helmets, babies, water restrictions, birthdays and bone marrow tocixity

All of these things are a part of my life at the moment.

The Man and I decided to buy helmets to protect our little headsies and brainsies when we ski. I selected a size small, which seemed right in the shop but when we got them home and tried them on with goggles, it was too big so I had to go back and get an extra small. Good things come in small packages, like my tiny head, obviously. We got a helmet for The Boy a little while ago, so we will all have lovely protected heads for our upcoming ski trip to the land of the long white....ski run (hopefully).

Our good friends A and M had a little girl last weekend. I am madly trying to finish a gorgeous little rose-pink jacket that I've been knitting for a while....my fault that I've been procrastinating and working on other things, but there's only one sleeve to sew in and the buttons to sew on, and to give it a good wash and block and it will be done. Photos when it's finished, I promise.

Our technical writer at work is on tenterhooks because his partner is 5 days overdue with their first baby, another little girl. Aaargh.....I'm running out of time to knit booties.....

We are well into level 5 water restrictions and some recent rain hasn't been enough to really affect the dam levels at all. We are all being encouraged to use 140 litres or less of water per day per person, with full dishwasher and washing machine loads and 4 minute showers. To assist with this, the government recently had a massive mailout of 4 minute shower timers. I'd already bought a timer, so we had one in the shower already, but we put the new one in the shower and it fell off the wall and broke after less than one day. Damn. I was looking forward to being allowed to have 8 minute showers. *ha ha* Now it's back to attempting to get finished in 4 minutes. (I try, I really do, but it's hard to get the water to the right temperature and wash your body and shampoo and condition your hair and comb the conditioner through and wash your face and rinse off in 4 minutes....oh well, gotta keep trying.)

It's birthday time here at the moment - My niece's 2nd birthday tomorrow, The Boy and his best friend at the beginning of July, our friend Nicky is turning 40 in the middle of the month, and my birthday is later on in July. The Man and I are finally managing to get out for the long-awaited dinner at Gambaro's seafood restaurant in a couple of weeks and we're going to stay the night at the Sofitel in town. The Boy's Grandma is coming down to take care of him for the night. I can't wait...I haven't had prawns in sooooooooo long, not to mention oysters, crabs, moreton bay bugs......

And in health-related news, the Puri-Nethol (6-mercaptopurine/6-MP) I was taking for my crohn's disease has started to make me sick. It had started to be toxic to my bone marrow, my haemoglobin had got down to 71 (should be 115 plus) and my neutrophils were 0.5 (should be 2+). So I'm tired, pale, have a tendency to nearly black out when I get up too quickly and have lowered resistance to infection. I'm off the drugs for the next week and a half and having blood tests once a week, so I'll have to see how it all goes. The gastroenterologist thinks that I will recover on my own without treatment so fingers crossed. I should have some idea tomorrow when I call to get the results of today's blood test.

Anyway, I hope you're all well, you didn't wash away in NSW's recent storms and that your winter isn't too chilly. :)

I love long weekends

I love that it's Sunday night and I don't have to go to work tomorrow. Love the new job, but love Mondays off too!

We went shopping today to get new long-sleeved shirts for The Boy, and we went to the movies and saw Shrek the Third as well. I realise it's been getting some less than favourable reviews but I kinda liked it. It wasn't fall-off-your-chair funny, but The Man and I both giggled in parts. The Boy was pretty good and only occasionally made his own commentary ("Why do these ads have to go so long?", "He's a nasty man, he's a nasty man!").

And in work-related news, my new company got sold on Friday to an American company. No idea yet what they're going to do with everything, but I've got to hope that my bosses, knowing they were selling the company, wouldn't have recruited me if they knew it was unlikely I'd have a future longer than two weeks! The Man keeps telling me that I've just got to go with the flow, and I'm trying, but it's a little difficult to go from a not-so-great job to being unemployed to finding a great job and then having this new uncertainty. Oh well. We'll know more on Tuesday when the new bosses come in to meet us.

It's 10:20pm and I'm about to go to bed.....

I'm enjoying my new job. I haven't been there two weeks yet and haven't really done much yet, but everyone is really nice and I like the atmosphere. I'm madly cramming Java training into this little old brain of mine so I can actually be useful at some stage.....Some of it is coming back but some of it is taking some really hard thinking.....hopefully it will all start to click once I actually start doing some coding for real. Fingers crossed.

On the knitting front I've almost finished Tivoli. Only about 11 rows to go.....I might get it done this weekend, just in time for the weather to turn cool enough so I can't wear it......how's that for timing? :)

So long, Dr Phil

I GOT THE JOB!!!!!

So I won't be staying at home watching bad daytime television anymore.

Yay!