Sleepypete's Pillow

Because of a youth spent running around doing healthy stuff without putting in the training work to prepare for it, I’ve been left with a few legacies … I’ve injured pretty much every piece of my body, the last one to go was my head, which was Wake Up Call Number 2. I’ve had broken, cracked or dislocated bones coming well into double figures now and I’ve torn or pulled or cramped most of my muscles.

Most days, I can ignore it as I’m only feeling 2 or 3 of my more long term injury legacies. Others are more of a struggle though, like today. There’s a bug going around work at the moment, which I think is why some of the other aches have crept up on me and said “hello – you’re going to pay attention to me today”. Being run down tends to lessen the resistance. I could take painkillers but refuse to, the drugs act as a mask which would make me feel ok. However feeling ok would be rather dangerous for me because I’d put those unhappy bones and muscles through things they wouldn’t like, they’d get worse in the long run. So I avoid painkillers, partly cos I know what I’d be like on them, partly because I have no intention of getting hooked on any drug except caffeine or cocoa.

It’s not been too bad a day though, I got to see the person who helped me out almost 3 years ago when I had a confidence crisis. Shame she was getting coffee with some bloke. I didn’t actually stick around but I did get a wave, which cheered me up. Plus we had some good fun banter going around the office. The team I work in gets on really well together, we are comfortable enough that we can banter and not poke wounds that would lead to unnecessary irritation.

Was a busier than average day too, gotta get a staff report done, plus the monthly finance numbers (why do I nearly always put fiance instead of finance ?) needed doing. I’m a victim of having a good idea there – I did some graphs for my finance area to help me figure out what was happening and before I knew it, Da Management went “that looks good, can you do them for the rest of the team too please ?” It lets me keep an eye on people so I’m ok with running those numbers.

Tomorrow should be interesting. Hopefully we’ll get enough interested people for hitting the canteen for a bacon breakfast. My boss’s boss leaves the project and we have a tradition of giving people a certificate summing up their more comical misdeeds when they go. Guess who makes the certificates :-). I can’t show an example because they’d give away too much about what my work is, which would get a few people irritated with me. I have a few worky type things to do but after that I’ll be looking to disappear as early in the afternoon as I can get away with.

The rushing around today actually helped – it gave me an adrenaline charge that helps me with ignoring the various half healed injuries. Doesn’t make standing up or starting to move any easier though ! Plus I get strange looks when I start cussing myself when limping down the corridor. I’m cussing myself for limping usually or as a distraction from the feeling of being poked in the ribs with a carving knife.

So – a day of trying to ignore pain as much as possible. Will hopefully get back into a more positive frame of mind soon, instead of the tending towards depression track that I’m in at the moment.

PS Valentine card check – empty. Quite possibly another cause for me feeling run down. Maybe next year 😉

thanks for the visit
it was as short
as life can be
sometimes

very clever:-)

Something different
Today a blog of haiku
To drive you insane

It will not suspend
Until your brain does explode
But read on yes please.

I thought of poems
But lacked the inspiration
Alas my mind, blank.

Chinese food all gone
Excellent dinner for me
Stray cats still around

Now watching Shadows
Film of Ninety Four. It has,
Neelix in disguise.

I had better stop,
Film is warming up. Readers,
Pain ends soon, promise.

Wednesday is pizza,
And a film to follow it,
Crazie company.

Thursday is special,
Hordes of Valentines chasing,
In my dreams, oh yes.

Friday will be sad,
Two people leave, moving on,
See again maybe ?

Brain whimpers in pain,
Too much Haiku done today.
See you tomorrow.

Picking up on something I put on Michele’s not too long ago :
“Had nervous breakdown watching Italy vs England rugby”
Why do we do that ? We can’t change the result so why do we get stressed over something we can’t change ? Sure, if we’re in the crowd we can cheer on our team but the players aren’t going to hear us when we’re shouting at the telly.

So why do we get so worked up about it when we’re watching at home ? Maybe it’s because we figure we could do better than the professionals. That’s the most likely root cause. Especially when rebellion against the state (the other traditional rallying to a cause) doesn’t really achieve that much any more.

There’s a few times, many years ago, where I have seriously thought “Can I do better ?” And a couple of times where I’ve thought : “Yes I can” and not out of arrogance too. Think of a combination of how badly England have played in the cricket and a person who came in to the men’s team at the halfway point in the season and proceeded to break the team record for the number of wickets taken in a year. Yep – that was me at 16. It had a cost though, I had to slow down during the last few games due to hurting my back. The back injury is still with me 17 years later. (It comes and goes with maintenance and it’s mostly ignorable)

The really frustrating thing for me is that with my Big Plan for getting into the England team, I’d had two things blocking me along the way :
1 – no scouting by the Lincolnshire county people. There were a few players of my age in the team (better players than me) who could have gone on to bigger things but my team never, ever got looked at by the county staff. It’s probably no coincidence that Lincs have never approached getting out of the Minor Counties like Durham have successfully done.
2 – Beer Monster Mentality at uni. I was the most successful bowler in the nets trial in my first year (only one on the day to get someone out bowled) but never got picked. I reckon there was a connection between me not getting picked and me not socialising with the team selection people. Curious that the fella I bowled out a couple of times in the trial did actually get picked for the team as a batsman, same bloke loved hitting the bar.

As it turns out, I wouldn’t have been a help to the England team, even if a few miracles had happened :
Miracle 1 – my bowling speeds up 20mph
Miracle 2 – I grow in height by a foot (I’m 5 foot 8, which is ok but you need to be 6 foot really as a seam bowler to get bounce)
Miracle 3 – my body holds together !

No – 2 years after that trial which effectively ended any chance I had to progress to higher levels in cricket, I suffered a career ending shoulder injury which I’ll talk about another time. It’s that “Wake Up Call Number 1”. I’d like to think I could have done well but when the experience talks instead of the youthful “I CAN TAKE ON THE WORLD !!!!!!“, the 3 Miracles above confirm that I’m better off playing at the Non-Serious Fun level instead of the semi-pro level. Cos even though I had a few nasty weapons with my bowling, my lack of pace means I’d have been taken apart without mercy.

I can bat too but my batting is the “useful” and “solid” type, definitely not the spectacular that a semi-pro would look for in an allrounder. Cricket’s fun but I think I’d have got bored years ago. I like the mental challenges and variation that come with the job I do, I’d miss that if I was running around a field for a living. Bit like I get bored with doing the same thing over and over again in Warcraft.

Back to the original point before I went all cynical 🙂 Shouting at the telly when your team plays rubbish does make you feel better sometimes 🙂

PS It wasn’t really a nervous breakdown. It ended up being far too close a finish than it should have been but rugby isn’t a game that lasts long enough to make you really nervous … No, it has to be England cricket for that.

I’ve made a few changes to the Blogroll, normally I wouldn’t mention it

I’ve made a few changes to the Blogroll, normally I wouldn’t mention it but I’m making an exception in this case …

My Warcraft guild’s website is now off the list and I thought I’d better say why. You should be able to vouch for all the sites you put in a blogroll but because of security holes in the Mercs site, there’s a very high chance that there will be something naughty in the General Chit Chat area. Too many spammers have the address and we have to delete probably at least 10 spam messages a day. Most of the spam is porn spam too. I usually delete it fairly quickly, if there’s an “Iceangel” in the recent visitors list, that means I’m on the lookout. I gotta sleep occasionally though and it looks like the other moderators on the site don’t bother deleting the spam.

So I’ve taken the link off the blogroll due to concerns over the content. We are testing a phpbb3 upgrade to the site but due to configuration trouble, we can’t deploy it. The configuration trouble causes what we call “White Screen Of Death”, where posts get rejected out of random. We can get around that on the phpbb2 version but not on the phpbb3. So we can’t deploy phpbb3 with its security enhancements.

PS Also looks like my internet is knackered … Will have to give Virgin Media a snotty phonecall in the not too distant future.

Lo Jean-Luc 🙂

Lol – that showed how much the Crazies cared. They were very happy to keep an eye on me, plus they knew that light mickey taking would cheer me up.

And it did too – I needed a lot of support around the nose break time.

You should have seen how quickly I could make the boss’s secretary run after leaning over the desk with Vampire Eyes !

That’s the fun of playing cricket.

Michele sent me.