A challenging week

No blogging for a few days from me. Sorry about that. I seem to have been a bit to preoccupied with being dizzy to blog, and it all just seemed like more of the same, so I didn’t bother. Basically the story for the past few days has been the same — mild nausea and dizziness with occasional bouts where it becomes too difficult to walk/work/do anything. I went home from work on Tuesday and just had to sleep. Last night I didn’t have any symptoms until about 9.30pm, when I started to feel bad, and I just went to sleep early. Woke up feeling okay at 8am. The rest of the morning wasn’t so great, but I’m feeling mostly better again now.

Meanwhile the builders continue to cause havoc, but are progressing quickly. They’ve now put ducting under the house and today seemed to be shaping up to paint our newly repaired hallway wall. This is a very good sign because it hopefully means that there will be less dust around the place — no more sanding back the new plaster. Until they start work on the other walls at any rate. Lotte picked a good time to have two night shifts because yesterday the dust was all the way to the back of the house (including completely covering one of Lotte’s red shoes, turning it white).

Yesterday after some relationship troubles Ursi booked herself on a flight home to Zurich. It was sad to hear that she was leaving early, and when I responded to her message we arranged to meet up for a coffee to say goodbye. Unfortunately Lotte couldn’t come because she was at work. Anyway she was in reasonable spirits — quite philosophical really, and we talked about meeting up again in Herrang. She’s still deciding whether she’ll come back and study here next year. I hope she does.

With one thing and another this has been a challenging week for us and a lot of our friends. The Swede went in for surgery yesterday on her hip. I spoke to her last night though and she was doing really well. Sounds like the surgery was a big success, but only time will tell for sure. I hope next week will be a better one for everyone.

Sea Legs

This ear thing is really not a lot of fun. Just when I thought I was feeling really great I had a pretty bad afternoon. This morning I woke up and felt absolutely fine, with no symtoms at all. I got through till around midday before I started feeling bad. I probably had about half an hour of feeling like crap before I cae good again. Then Lotte and I met up for lunch and just before we got there I started feeling bad again. It’s really hard to describe the feeling. It’s a bit like you’ve been away on a ship for a week and you’re trying to find your land legs again. On top of that every now and then there’s a big swell. Only problem is, nothing is actually moving! My stomach feels constantly on the edge while this is happening and I get this sensation of being out of control. If I’m walking, I feel compelled to immediately slow down and have to fight the feeling to continue walking at all.

For the past couple of days I’ve also felt a dull headache that goes all the way up the back of my neck to the crown and behind my right eye. I decided this was one thing I could try and fix and booked in for a neck massage with our favourite massage therapist, Bernie. He is a true pro, and concentrated entirely on the magic spot in the right side that was sending a shaft of pain along the exact path of my headache. So now at least my head feels a little better.

On a positive note, last night was my first try at dancing since Monday, and I found I was able to dance with absolutely no feeling of dizziness whatsoever. It really seems as though the dizziness is not related to what I’m doing at all. In fact I seem to be more likely (or maybe I notice it more) to suffer a dizzy spell when I’m sitting down for a while. I reckon I’m also more likely to start getting the spells when I’m feeling tired, which makes sense too. Until I start feeling better I am going to try to rest up as much as possible. But I am going to try dancing again tonight.

Recipe for extreme sleepiness

Ingredients:
1 Friday night dance night (5am or later)
1 Renovation preparation box-moving exercise (start 10am or earlier)
1 Saturday night birthday party (4am or later)
1 Breakfast with friends (start 10 am or earlier)
1 Contact improvisation class (2 hours or more)
1 Mother’s Day family meal
1 Host film premier with extremely fast dancing involved (12 am or later)
1 Early morning commencement of renovations (7am start)

Instructions:
Take all of the above and stick them together in one weekend. Garnish with the remains of a cold and swizzle.

Life is good

Life is good today. I had been feeling a little sorry for myself this week after having suffered for at least 10 days with the effects of the Hullabaloo ‘flu (a cold, really). It’s not one of those debilitating colds — just one that’s hard to shake. Anyway yesterday and today I have been feeling decidedly more upbeat, and I put it down to the receding effects of the virus. Last night we invited Ursi from Switzerland to join our troupe training. It was an excellent decision as she inspired us all. Watching a professional dancer of her calibre is intimidating to be sure, but it challenges us, and we are often struggling to find new ways to bring our dancing to a new level. She showed us a very short routine to a slow jazz track from a Starbucks compilation CD. I’m having trouble tracking down the track name, unfortunately. Anyway the routine focussed strong, slow movements combined with fast ones, and it was incredibly difficult to infuse with quite the same feeling as Ursi.

I think I was able to do it all the way through on the correct time, but I was struggling with pretty much all the nuances of movement. For one thing, body rolls are something I just don’t seem to be able to do with my computer-stiff back and neck. I fantasise sometimes about the idea of dancing all day every day, and wonder how my body would be transformed. It would be really interesting to find out just how much flexibility and strength someone like me could get with the kind of daily regimen that someone like Ursi uses. She told us on the way home that she has trained 2 hours a day while she’s been here, and she has felt like she has been slacking off dramatically. I’m sure that if I trained for an hour a day for one week I would imagine that I was an elite athlete. It’s all relative I suppose.

15,000 and counting

A couple of days ago I backed up my blog just for the hell of it. I was amazed to find that I’d written more than 15,000 words in a little over a month here. That sort of workrate would mean I could write a PhD thesis in under 9 months. If only it was as easy as writing in a blog.

I do believe, however, that having a blog builds the habit of writing. My other blog — the one I use to compile my MA thesis — has been proof of that. While it’s been quiet there lately I found that while I was writing stuff leading up to my progress report, the blog was a huge help.

Today was a really good day for a whole bunch of reasons, particularly after having such a crap day yesterday. The main thing about yesterday was a silly work related issue, and today that issue became resolved in many ways for me. That was a very positive start. Then, when I was having coffee with my boss he brought up the new iMac G5 that I’d put in for. He’s approved the purchase, so hopefully I will be getting that some time soon. I also got some other really good news that I will have to report on in a later blog entry. All in all, a brilliant day.

The only downside was that Lotte left tonight for Hullabaloo and I won’t be leaving until Friday night. It’s going to be pretty boring at work for the next couple of days waiting to get over to Perth myself. But it will be a great weekend.

Filed.

When are taxes fun? Only one time that I can think of — when you’ve just finished them, and you’ve been told that you will be getting a healthy return. Yes, finally I’ve done my tax returns for 2002 and 2003. And guess what? Last year’s one is due next month. Anyway the pain of going through an awful lot of records and receipts was worth it.

Lotte the Radio Superstar

How cool. Lotte was interviewed for SBS Dutch radio last November, and today I found the interview online in MP3 and RealPlayer formats. Dutch-speakers might be particularly interested.

A Very Good Day

All in all I’ve decided that today was a Very Good Day. For one reason or another I’ve been very productive at work this week and today was no exception. It’s always a good feeling when you know you’re really on top of things at work. Sometimes coming to work can be a drudgery, but this week I seem have quite a lot to do and that motivates me. So I’ve been turning out work by the bucketloads.

Tonight was dedicated as Tax Night, due to the fact that I have an appointment on Friday with my Accountant to put in my (now very overdue) tax returns for the past two years! Whenever I tell people about this I feel really guilty. Accountijng is my least favourite thing to do in the world. But the funny thing is just about everyone says that they get behind on their taxes pretty often too. That always makes me feel a bit better!

Strange that I hate doing accounts but I’m really enjoying the accounting project I’m doing with Business Information Systems. I guess it’s just teaching people how to do accounts, not actually doing it myself. Even better I get to try to think up ways to make it more interesting for them, which has got to be a benefit to society, don’t you think?

So anyway the other good thing about today was that I got my tax done. At least, all I need to do before seeing the Accountant. Yeehar.

As if that wasn’t enough, just an hour or so I got an email from someone who was organising the gradual repayment of a long overdue sum of money — sponsorship money that fell through — for an event in 2003! I’ve been waiting a long time for this to happen and it finally looks like it will. This means we may be able to keep up with uni fees without going a long way into debt after all. Phew.

OK, I have an early start and I should be in bed. I just thought I would post something trivial instead of a huge long super-pretend-seriou s thing about DJing or something. I’ve noticed nobody comments on the long boring blog entries!

Meetings

Phew, today was a busy day. It started with a meeting that didn’t happen. Second time I’ve been stood up by this particular client — was it something I said? Anyway that meant I could go and get a cup of coffee, which wasn’t all bad. Then straight to a planning meeting, after which I met up with Lotte for a hurried but enjoyable lunch on Lygon. Lotte had been to the doctor for about the third time in three weeks — this time for a weird rash behind her ears — some kind of allergic reaction. She’s been having bad luck lately. Then I had to rush back to the office for another project meeting. I try not to schedule 3 meetings in a day because they generally go for 1.5 hrs each, so it leaves little time for preparation. And sometimes meetings go over-time. It’s not that I don’t really like meetings, though. Truth is, a lot of my work centres around meetings, and when they’re good, I’m in my element. The third meeting today was like that. A good project meeting can achieve a lot.

The Pope’s Dead

It’s quite strange reading about the Pope dying just after having finished reading Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons. The basis of the storyline for the book is the death of the Pope, so it goes into minute detail about the rituals associated with the election of a new Pope by the Cardinals. Quite a canny move by Brown to concoct a storyline that was likely to be of interest within the few years after it being published, you might say. Actually the more I think about Brown’s work, the more I see it as having commercial, rather than artistic, intensions. For instance, the controversy surrounding The Da Vinci Code (and no doubt Angels and Demons too) is surely welcome exposure for the publishers.

Anyway, due to the remarkable background research Brown does on his novels I know that Cardinals from around the world will now assemble in a ‘conclave’ in the Sistine Chapel in Rome to elect a new Pope. Once they enter the conclave, they can’t leave until the election has been completed. The voting rituals are quite interesting too — after an unsuccessful ballot an appointed cardinal burns the papers with chemicals to produce a black smoke that can be seen from outside. A successful ballot burns white, alerting the world that a new Pope has been appointed.