Friday 24th July 2015

Wednesday

And here we are, back on the treadmill, nose to the grindstone and all that stuff. I am now back in the groove, that is until it comes to switch on the computer and work, at which point my get up and go leaves. I noticed as I switched down the computer the night before that some eejit had arranged 5 hours of meetings for Wednesday morning: did they not realise the time difference in the UK I fumed, starting at seven in the morning for heavens sake! So, I grumble my way through coffee, pointedly ignore my mobile chiming 15 and 5 minutes before the meeting. I will be deliberately late I thought, and when they ask why, I will point out the time.

Anyway, ten past seven, I switch the computer on, and look at Outlook only to see who the arranger of the meetings was: me. Yes me, the big hairy eejit. And the two other people who had asked me to arrange the meetings, and who were to join me for the 2nd half, were both on holiday, and there was no chance they would be attending. So I went from having a morning of meetings to none.

So, how to pack the morning full of stuff now it is empty? Well, I will just try. There is always the radio, the cats and coffee machine of course.

On Tuesday evening, Jools had thrown down the challenge by firing up the cross trainer. I can claim with some justification that I have been busy, but now I am hopefully not travelling so much, that maybe I will find time to pump some lard. In preparation for this, I charged the i-pod up, and so once the last of the day's mail came in, I was able to switch the laptop off and put on an old t short and get pumping.

In truth it was not the torture I thought it might be, in fact I quite enjoyed it, and I would have carried on beyond the 20 minutes I did, only it being summer and it was hot, damn hot. So, 20 minutes it was. And all the time Mulder lay on the spare bed, washing and looking at me like I was mad. Maybe I was.

Jools came back, and I let her go back on the cross trainer, and I cooked chorizo hash whist she pumped. It worked. Then we undid all the good work as we both had booze with our dinner, but then it was good, and we had pumped, so some good and some bad, makes us about even, right?

I can't say for sure whether is was the cross trainer, but I was about to encounter a bout of back pain, although that would not arrive until I went to bed and wanting so sleep.

Thursday

Oh yes, back pain. Well, a combination of that and some old fashioned night cramps meant I felt like I woke up feeling like I hadn't slept. Hoorah! What could be better. However, once up and about, I felt better. That is until I sat down at the dining room table for coffee and where in a while I would be working, only to discover that the angle of the wooden seats, my seated position meant that no matter how I sat, I was in pain.

Well, that is just peachy.

So, I have regular breaks between bouts of gentle moaning, drinking coffee before giving in and going for the drugs.

I struggle through the day, swapping the dining room chair with the sofa or the bed, anything to take the pain away. In truth I don't much work done, certainly in the afternoon. But before then I had to wrangle with a spreadsheet and then turn it into a PDF. I mean it could not be that hard, could it? Well, I had to shrink the spreadsheet to fit on one page wide, to do this I had to shrink columns or remove them. And then the really tricky part, I had to add a header and then upload a picture to it. And finally, make the header larger so the picture, of our logo, could be seen. Two hours later, I had it done and could convert the spreadsheet to a PDF and job was done.

I was drained. And in pain.

I gave up for the day and switched the laptop off, but in a show of either extreme bravery or stupidity, I thought that maybe some exercise would help, and maybe make the muscles in my back stronger, thus making the pain less. I can say, that although it did not make the pain worse, neither did it make it better either. But, hey. I did some Phys.

Dinner was sausages and lentils. As you do. It was very good indeed. And to follow there was a massive dose of nostalgia with more pop music from 1980 on Top of the Pops, best watched with a coffee and a tub of Ben and Jerry's cookie core ice cream. Not as nice as you'd think it is if I am honest, and our resident ice cream expert, Jools, has stated she is not going to eat any more of it, so its all mine, mwah ha ha.