My Year of Meaningful (2011)

One of the great things about keeping a blog is clicking back through memory lane (which I truthfully hardly ever do - but know I should) to see where your head was at X point in time. Mine tells me that in February, I was on target for self improvement and already the curse of the New Years' Resolutions were getting those around me down:

"People are slipping, all around me! Seriously, what's up with that! Just because it's February and no longer "the new year", doesn't mean we get to go back to the same tired old negative jive. Suck it up and get it together, people! Focus! Is this 2010 or 200-Moan!!?? Positive shit, NOW! Move it!!"

Ha! Well I think on the whole I kept up pretty well for 2010. My pushup regime lasted the whole year at least, with only a handful of missed days (probably less than 15 over the whole 365 (minus the 31 in December which we havent had yet)) due only to illness and a minor attitude slump for about a week after the big USA trip in July. I'll have to go back and really see what exactly it was that I did and didn't acheive... but on the whole, hey, I'm coming out of 2010 feeling like there was all around success. Stuff got done, triceps were developed, Masters degrees were gotten (I know that's presumptuous since I haven't heard any results from the other side of the globe yet, but I'm remaining positive!) and no, I have BUPKIS in terms of when I might actually find out. So no point in stressing.

I have been really sick with some nasty G.I. virus this weekend, but somehow managed to pull out a good one anyway. Friday The Mr. surprised me (sort of) by announcing in the afternoon that we would be organising Mrs. Doc to watch LJJ while we went out for a dinner & movie date (we haven't been to a real live movie in a real live cinema since pre-LJJ). So we went to the fancy-pants Portuguese place and enjoyed BW's only decent seafood and some Portuguese white wine prior to going to ye olde cliche date movie ("Life as we Know it") which was actually really funny and chock full of totally perv-able hottie male actors (the 2 Joshes). When we got home, we settled in for some PVR catch-up on the TV just before The Mr. nearly got his ass kicked by some thug neighbours who were drunk & high on speed or coke or meth or something. Back story: round about midnight when our windows were just about to get rattled out of their frames from the vibrations coming from the stereo speakers at the house down the hill (imagine an ampitheatre, where our house is at the top/back row and said stereo speaker-house is on the stage... that's how our little mountainside neighbourhood of wilderness & tranquility is shaped). The worst part is, it was like "The Best (in WHOSE opinion I have no idea) of the 80's" that was blasting... seriously, like Karma Chamelion and Take On Me and shit. Ugh. People! The Mr. had enough and decided to walk down to the neighbours that we THOUGHT the noise was coming from and politely request that they try a little tenderness with the poor speakers & everyone else's ears. However, it turned out it wasnt even the dudes that we thought it was, but rather some other house that we'd never seen the tenants of. So anyhoo, he walks into the yard and sees about 10 people lounging about (clearly out of it) and some chick sprawled out spread-eagle directly in front of said blasting speakers (smart!). So he goes up and politely asks, with words like "please" etc., if she wouldn't mind turning it down, and she immediatly jumps up and flies into his face and slaps him and starts F'ing and Blinding and carrying on about 2 centimetres from his nose. At this point, he realizes he's dealing with a chemically jacked-up crazy person and very clearly tells her that if she's not going to turn it down, he'll do it for her. At this point, he gets jumped from behind and finds him self on the ground with 3 guys on top of him, one Crazy White Boy who has apparently pulled a clump of his hair out and is trying to wail on him, except for the fact that he's being held back by 2 other guys. When he can finally scramble up to his feat he realizes that this nutter is obviously on something too, as well as drunk, and tells the other dudes to let him go, because he knows he can pummel the crap out of him. They don't, however, so it turns into a verbal altercation and eventually The Mr. walks away. Frakshow dude then proceeds to maraud through the neighbourhood trying to find The Mr. (no one saw which way he left, since they were A) too drunk and B) trying too hard to restrain Psycho-Ass and have no idea where we live) screaming threats and violent jests, etc etc. It was kind of worrying until the part where we realized by the sound of his voice he was going in the complete opposite direction...

Anyhoo, The Mr came back with eyes ablaze and fists a-clenched because he's not only pissed at being jumped from behind, but now he really does want a piece of action and begs me to let him go down and set Psycho-Ass straight with a good old Frisian Thumping. Which, i forbid of course, because I know that since the majority of the thugs involved in any bruhaha will be locals and will therefore be treated favourably in any resultant police report that gets filed and it'll be us that end up the bad guys. Particularly since when Crazy White Boy came flying out of the house and on top of The Mr., what he probably saw was The Mr. yelling in his wife's face. Anyway, the next day we made sure to make a full report to the Landlord, who let us know this was the 3rd episode of violence attributed to CWB & his band of asshole friends since they'd moved in. So he was served with a warning, at which time he said to the Landlord in no uncertain terms that The Mr. was threatening to beat the crap out of his wife, and if he ever even sees The Mr. again, he'll beat his head in. Classy. Landlord doesn't have an immediate dismissal clause in his contract, of course, so he can't really do anything about it. But. They're moving out in 6 months. Whatever.

Saturday was the ginormous annual craft market where we volunteer to work the Animal Peeps' stand. Even though I was feeling like ass, I still made it through. Luckily my assignment was running the leashes & collars & used paperbacks part, with Soo, which was pretty easy, and LJJ behaved very well, over 4 hours in the zillion degree heat, sitting with me and charming a few sales out of a few Grinches, mainly in the squeaky-toy department. The Mr. had to cook sausages with DD, which he survived. By the time we got home I was DYING. But with a few good jewellry bargains that I picked up at the market to make me feel better, and a couple brilliant xmas pressies.

The rest of the weekend I was incapacitated but somehow managed to help building the legendary BW's first and only cornhole set with The Mr and Doc & Mrs Doc on sunday, which is coming along nicely. We were supposed to decorate the xmas tree after they left, so we can enjoy it for the 17 days of December that we're actually here, but that just did not happen as I was literally dying from this bug. I suppose the good part is that LJJ gave it to The Mr., who I maintain gave it to me, which means now we've all 3 had it so hopefully now that it's done with me it will be on its Merry way out of my house.

The Insane Crazy Season has well and truly started, with a big-ass Thanksgiving for 20+ at Doc & Mrs Doc's last thursday, plus the Hash xmas on saturday this week, plus Soo & Mx's xmas dinner on the 11th plus my Chinese themed Gormet Girls on this friday, plus the Sinterklaas party a la The Mr. & Mar on sunday... ay yi yi. It's a good thing this weekend of sickness bought me some serious couch time and a couple less kilograms around my waist!

Funnily enough I've had such a couple of scatterbrained, stressed weeks, I forgot entirely about the new wave of excitement sweeping through la casa de wayward... the kind you get where if you come to our door and ask: "is there a vas deferens in the house?" you get a resounding "HELL NO!!!"

hee hee hee.

I'll lay off the predictable punchlines like "is that the sound of crazy unprotected monkey sex I hear?" etc, etc.

Sure enough, The Mr. got his reproductive capabilities wiped out a couple weeks ago, and today he goes back to get the all-clear on the stitches and general post-op bill of health. Ok, sure, the crazy unprotected monkey sex doesn't get to happen until a certain number of, uh, how you say "swimmers" are... how you say, "released".... under.... how you say, "controlled circumstances".... but that's no biggie considering after 10 years we've gotten pretty good at "controlling" said "circumstances".

I asked The Mr if he was going to tell his parents (so far only Doc & Mrs Doc know about the procedure considering we know about half the doctors in the new private hospital so the liklihood of one of them actually walking INTO his surgery was too high to try and hide it) and he was like "OH GOD NO!" because apparently they would freak out and actually (he reckons) consider him less of a MAN!? I'm like, why, because ONE of the many TUBES in your urilogical makeup has a small INCISION in it?!?!?!? And he's like, yeah, not only are they irrational about God making Man in His Image and all that nonsense, they are also too dumb to understand anatomy and probably think that the surgery involved some sort of mojo-ectomy, where some guy literally extracts my MANHOOD and chops up my HORMONE-MAKER into a bazillion pieces, and replaces it with a WOMB or something. HAR!

But really, the poor baby has been a wee bit uh, tender, lately from the incisions but it was only like 2 stitches and very little else, all wrapped up in a neat and tidy 20-minute outpatient surgery and voila! He highly recommends it.

This weekend was pretty good. I'd give it a couple stars.
Friday night we finally watched "Julie & Julia" which I really enjoyed. Stayed in, ate pizza, lounged around. A very much-needed quiet evening. After my poor sleeping the past day or two, I needed one, especially since I had to get up early the next morning for SPA DAY!!!

...which was SO great. I have never ever in my whole life actually taken that much time (and spent that much money) on just doing something for a whole half a day, that physically benefits no one but ME. What a freakin' treat. And of course as I was laying there on the massage table getting all the stress thumped out of me, I made about 30 promises to myself about making the effort to make this a monthly if not bi-monthly exercise... of course that'll never happen but DAMN it should! Started out in the morning at 9am where the three of us girls (S., who I have now decided to christen "Starchy"... gluten joke... ha) and Polelo rocked up and were promptly thrust into soft fluffy robes and slippers and divided up amongst the various stations we would be enjoying for the day. Massage, facials, manicure, pedicure, foot massage, waxing, steam, and I dont even remember what else, it was such a dream. We shared a bottle of sparkling wine and a fruit platter and relaxed in the garden for about a half hour after the final treatment. O.M.G. paradise. I was floating around like a zombie for the rest of the day. Left at 2pm and can hardly remember the drive home because my brain & body was just like jelly.
PLEASE someone remind me to do that again. 800 bucks and worth every thebe!

Then saturday night I did a practice run-through with my pork dish that I'm doing for this month's "Gourmet Girls" (the cooking club thing that Mrs Doc started last month) which is at my house in a week's time. The theme is Chinese and I have decided rather than the old reliable KungPo chicken, I'm doing my take on Dong Po pork (I have christened it "Miss Jirr's Dong Po Pork" only in consideration of some of our not-so-adventurous of the chicks, will be using pork shoulder pieces instead of the traditional pork belly. Needless to say it was magic and I believe that if everyone can follow their directions properly, December will go down in GG history as the highlight of our year. :)

Sunday we did some long overdue grocery shopping which has pretty much gotten ignored since October, followed by some 4x4'ing and picnicing with Jac & Mar in the afternoon. Then I spent the evening making a massive chinese soup for myself to last the next 4 days. This week I'm putting myself on a liquid diet, you see, what with a Thanksgiving dinner (organized by Doc & Mrs Doc) on thursday followed by next week which includes a big dutch party, the Hash Xmas party, as well as GGG. Then it's only 2 weeks or so til we head off for NL for a couple weeks of holiday madness, so I REALLY need to get rid of this sneaky extra 1.5kg that latched onto me over the last couple months. No more messing around. Just some mild torture. So soup and smoothies it is.

back to work now.

...to calm down/before I sleep!"

Honestly, if this is the way everything is going to be after finally digging myself out of that academia hole, I might as well just get back down there in the hole and stay there. At least then I had an excuse to close my eyes and ears to everything going on around me and say "I'll think about it in November!"

So even after doing DOUBLE workouts yesterday (exercise class at lunch and then yoga after work), I STILL end up wide awake at 4am, staring at the ceiling and stressing out about the world around me. THIS, man, is why it often SUCKS to be a Pisces. This NEVER happened when the only thing I was worrying about was the degree of external validity of my thesis construct, triangulation of data, and the relevance of my literature review and whether or not the outcome would be frowned upon by a bunch of hard-asses in the UK. For some reason, no matter how afraid of failing I was, I could still sleep at night!!!! AGGHHHH!!!!

And the worst part is that I need sleep SO BAD, I have been cramming too much into too little time over the last couple weeks... This was the first night of the week that I was actually ABLE to get in bed on time! And then I just lie there and simmer!

Aside from the weekend finishing on a high note, it was a really "time to be over" kinda weekend. Those weird friends of ours (we'll call 'em the Bizarros) and their high-maintenance non-sleeping 16-month-old were here, as I mentioned before. WHY is Mr. Bizarro so WEIRD? He always tries to get out of sharing any bills, which I know is because they're strapped for cash but only because of HIS bad financial decisions. He also manages to not only mooch, but literally "accidentally" walk off with things like LJJ's lotion, or a watermelon, or contacts from work (he's in our field and his company down south has been poking around for work up here). Case in point - Mrs B (who is NOT weird, but still married a weirdo) gave LJJ a book that another friend had hand-me-downed to their boy. It was a snow white book. She clearly gave it to LJJ in front of Mr Bizarro. As we were helping them load up their car to go home, I see him take it back from LJJ and bury it in the back of their car... ? WTF? And Tuesday, when our house alarm started acting all funny and going off randomly because it appeared to be out of battery.... what did we discover about a day later? That the base to said alarm, which happens to be in the guest room, had been completely and totally disconnected and unplugged!!! Along with every other electronic device in the room! Lamps, utilities, everything. WHY!?!?!??! African plugs have an "off" switch at the base that you can just turn OFF if you don't want any power on.... you dont have to go around unplugging everything!?!?!? And our HOUSE ALARM?!
It's just the little things that make a difference when you have houseguests.... the odd offer to wash some dishes or something. Nevermind nothing like that happened, but he also goes and invites my LEAST favorite mutual acquaintence of ours over for dinner at MY house on Saturday night. OK this one can also be co-blamed on the Mr., but still. Then wouldn't you especially offer to supplement some of the responsibility/food/hosting duties, etc?

THEY ARE SO BIZARRE!!! Not to mention no WONDER the kid doesn't sleep through the night (yet another reason I have been so sleep-deprived this week - it all started out with a bad weekend of sleeplesness due to screaming child in the room below), they're still giving him two naps a day and entertaining him/giving him bottles in the middle of the night! Of COURSE he's gonna want to wake up 20 times to have fun & games & drinks all night long! Gah!

Monday was crazy at the office but was also our first monday hash of the summer. Which was FUN! A short 6km run in really nice, cloudy evening weather. Doc & Mrs Doc's friends from DC were in town visiting so they were there and we showed 'em a good time and stuck around for a few rounds after it was over and had a laugh. But got home late and had to argue about a bunch of work stuff that I wont go into. Bad end to a day.

Tuesday was likewise crazy at the office - meetings, yelling, lots of aggro, but I still managed a trip to the gym at lunch, thank goodness. Then Doc & Mrs Doc and their visiting mates wanted to do thai food at the secret underground lair-restaurant in the ghetto so of course we had to do that after work. Then they came back to our place to drop some stuff off and ended up staying for a nightcap that went TOO LATE but at the same time, was bittersweetly TOO much FUN.

Then last night, again, what else? More craziness at the office, more files missing, more aggro, more yelling, more stomp-stomp-stomp, only to be broken up by a pretty lame and unispiring workout class at lunch (I'm having second thoughts about this new gym in our office park - i'm only going because of it's location but you can only do classes and unfortunately these seem to be drawing a few old ladies who can only do low-impact. ugh) and then more of the same. Then off to yoga where, upon receiving bad news right and left all day, all I could do was ruminate and chew on the cud of bad mojo and frustration that I managed to build up all day! AGH!

Today I had to go BACK into the office (notice I have not yet had one work-at-home day this week, which I realize now more than ever that I NEED just to maintain my sanity) for a meeting that someone never showed up for and about 12 I just said screw this I'm going home so I'm working from home the rest of today. If I'm LUCKY, I might be able to tomorrow too.

Aside from work nonsense, now that I'm back in the real world and can actually have friends again, make the odd phone call again, have the odd gchat or FB chat or whatever again, I'm realizing that while I was out of service the damn world lost its damn mind!!!! What is it, the change in the weather? My worthless brother moved in with this girl that he neither genuinely loves nor even respects and I am pretty sure he's feeding her all sorts of lies about marriage and babies (which she's desperate for). My favorite boyfriend-in-law is about to get dumped for reasons that make me want to poke my eyeballs out, Uncle A. keeps me on gchat for 2 hours begging my advice on three topics that appear to be matters of life and death only to log off and do the EXACT OPPOSITE of what we all know he should do... half my friends are dating people I want to instruct to take a long walk into oncoming traffic, and on top of everything, the cooking club I mentioned before of us gals around here is at my place in 2 weeks so I planned EVERYTHING and all the assignments and now 33% have dropped out (coincidentally all the ones who insisted we move the date to a LESS-convienient one for me!!!) and I am pissed!

The only light on the horizon was Saturday, when my gluten-free gal, S., had organized a spa day for me and 3 other of her amigas. Massage, facial, mani/pedi, sauna, etc etc for half a day. Bliss. But of course she sends an email today that the Power Company has informed the spa that their power will be cut between 9am and 2pm (the EXACT hours we were booked in for) which means we can still come, but no sauna or steamer.... ~sigh~. Not the end of the world, i know, but just bloody appropos for the week. Hell who cares, I just need a massage so bad I'll be willing to take one out in the street. My arms & shoulders were KILLING me all day yesterday and today. The pushup/weights/yoga combo has been extremely intense lately. Not to mention all the hours I've logged behind a keyboard over the last 6 months (which hasnt stopped yet, what with all the deadlines i've come up against in just the last 10 days, for work).

Pep talk time.
Ahem.
"Self, listen up and listen good.
There are many things that you can't control in this life and what your friends/family/collegues/whatever decide to do, who they decide to go out with, who they decide to break up with, promise to have babies with, have secret babies with, string along, let-be-strung-along-by, travel to other countries for, or what they decide to blow 50,000 dollars on, or when they decide to get up off their asses and join the real world, or what nonsense ludicris bullshit they choose to let come out of their mouths, etc. is all part of that which you cannot control nor should allow to keep you awake at night. You need sleep, self. If you don't get sleep, you'll look older faster and get more wrinkles than you already have. You'll keep the love of your life awake with all your bloody tossing and turning. You'll never be able to calmly address the rest of your colleagues nor stay physically fit. Come on, dammit, turn the damn brain off and learn how to tune out the white noise of other peoples' problems that ultimately have nothing to do with you."

Segue into "what makes me happy", for a change....

ahem.

WHAT MAKES ME HAPPY! :-)

- Watching "Modern Family" and "Cougar Town".
- My 2010 arm & shoulder muscles!
- My new yellow pup who follows me around like a shadow and is SO sweet
- Knowing that the new Keith Richards autobio is almost downloaded on my iTunes
- The thought of having xmas break for 2 weeks, in a little cabin in the forest
- Bob Dylan
- Winning pretty much every Words With Friends game that I play on my iPhone
- The Hash
- The thought of getting a massage on saturday
- Discovering "The Punch Brothers" on David Letterman the other night
- Nelson Demille books
- LJJ behaving at restaurants & singing/dancing/making people laugh

So this is old news already but I am officially FREE!!!

Free from the shackles that have bound my brain for the last three years and culminated in completing 10 months worth of thesis-writing in 5. Assuming they don't fail it outright over yonder in the UK, you may now call me Oh Wayward Master-Master One. ~curtsey~

Re: what I finally decided to say in my Acknowledgements, it materialized as follows...
-ahem-

"ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My deepest gratitude goes first and foremost to Mr. Jonathan W..., without whom this research would likely have been given up on and never pulled out of the black hole for which it was bound. It is only because of his willingness to help, patience, genuinely supportive and constructive input that this dissertation could be submitted. Without a doubt, there is no imaginable way I could have done it without Mr. W... as my advisor.
I also must extend much heartfelt appreciation to [The Mr.] and my colleagues at L.E. for not only helping and supporting my research, but also for leaving me alone long enough to finish it.
Many thanks to Mr. W. Yuan, Mr. E. Xing, Mr. S. Chidziba, and Mr. M. Skelton, all of whom played integral parts in the data collection phase of this endeavour and very kindly assisted me through not only participating, but helping to convey an understanding of why things happen as they do in the Construction Industry.
Finally, I am very grateful to Vicky W... and Lauren J... at the University of P.mouth EDMDL office for their reliable and rapid-response time in answering emails, re-sending files, and being generally nice people to work with over the course of this MSc programme. Their assistance has made the challenge of distance learning manageable."


I'm not letting it get too laurel-resty around here though, primarily since I can see that one of the lessons learned through all of this was that even when you THINK you can do it all, you can't. Things will suffer. Space will be made on the proverbial table of life by sweeping other similarly-worthy items off. Now I gotta pick those ones up and glue some of them back together because clearly the table of life sits on a damn hard tile floor. Like I dont even want to KNOW how bad my banjo-pickin' & piano ploinkin' skills are anymore these days, and it's clear that my diet and exercise regimen has been thoroughly compromised (you can tell by the extra 1.5kg on the scale), and the fact that The Mr. keeps making it VERY CLEAR that he feels he's running our business all by himself and it's driving him bat-assy. There's a dozen books who're getting nowhere fast on my bedside table, and 2 dozen friends on my gchat who done gave up on my ass.

BUT, hey, it's done now. The truth is that I made a decision 3 years ago to commit some time into doing something for the academic Me, and now that that's done and checked off, I can leave it alone now and do something for the other Me-s. Feels good. Hard to prioritize though, for the next step. I realize that in order to be the good wife-Me, I need to also up my game for the work-Me, because one of the best gifts I could give to The Mr. right now would be to relieve some of his burden at the office for him. I can catagorically state I am NOT looking forward to that, but hey it'll be 10x easier than what I just managed to accomplish so I gotta keep reminding myself of that, and I guess ultimately Love is helping out when & where you're needed and it's Not Always All About You.

So, with that said, I guess I gotta stop this diarizin' and write that damn report that The Mr. asked me to have done about oh, a week ago, and which the Client is currently riding his ass about not having done. This weekend was relaxing enough (friends from Joburg up for the weekend which was ok., and making cornhole beanbags with Doc & Mrs Doc which was ok, nothing exciting or interesting) so I guess it's a good time to hit the ground running now & start ticking more boxes.

Labels: school

Thoughts running through my head at the moment:

1. OMG
2. I never thought I'd ever get here
3. This can't be real
4. Surely I'm going to bomb
5. It CANT be good
6. It Cant be OVER
7. Holy shit!

I have officially "written" the whole thing. My MSc dissertation, that is. All the words are in (actually I'm nearly a thousand words OVER the limit so there's still lots of work to do) and the basic formatting has been finished, the References have been cited, put into Harvard APA style, and I THINK all my figures, tables, etc are labled accurately. I still want to spend quite a bit of time revising my conclusion & discussion because I feel like I kinda just schlepped it all in there in a fit of midnight oil burning but hey, that's cool.

Now all I have to do is write the abstract and the acknowledgements sections. Ahhhh, acknowledgements! I've been looking forward to this part for nearly a whole year. Who to thank, who to use words like "deepest gratitude" when mentioning, vs. "sincere thanks". Hee hee... this stuff is my crack.

All I know for sure is that Jonathan gets the creme de la creme of my acknowledgements. Honestly, I don't even know what that guy looks like but he's the only human being at University of P.mouth that has been even remotely supportive and constructive and helpful and basically pulled my research out of the black hole it was bound for, after that horrible experience I had during last semester with MISTER BUTTER. Fecker. I still hate that guy. He wasted a whole semester of my time for me. Thanks, asshat.

I also gotta thank the guys on the case study sites of course, but I don't want to use their real names because their input actually could reflect very badly on their organisations so maybe I'll just call them "Mister so-and-so". And then I'll have to thank The Mr. of course, and the guys at the office. Other than that, I don't want to make it a big weep-fest of insincere crap for people who didn't really do shit for me during my year of slavery so it'll probably be short and to the point. It is a freakin scientific publication after all, not an Oscar speech or a Dan Brown book.

But like I said, there's still a good chunk of work to do, just editing what's already there and then all the binding and CD writing and Fed-Exing (which is gonna cost me an arm and a leg since they want THREE BOUND COPIES. I need to get it out roughly by tuesday or wednesday - thursday at the very very very latest, and I still need to find out what the hell to do about my Ethics Form (getting it signed by my advisor, who is in the U-friggin-K) and all, but DAMN. I think I've pretty much rounded the last bend.

This week has been pretty good. I've been punishing myself physically lately, by running on sunday, doing Mrs. Doc's crazy insane workout video with her on tuesday, going to this new gym which does a lunchtime fitness class on wednesday (strangely very similar to Mrs. Doc's crazy insane workout video) and then yoga last night. All the physical activity is helping me to justify dropping out of just about every other avenue of my life at the moment (mainly work) due to the crunch-time that I"m in for school. I was PLANNING on celebrating big time with a super-happy-fun-time camping trip with us and the Docs this weekend, but Mr. Doc got bitten by a cobra on wednesday and isn't really feeling up to it, go figure.

Funny story, he was just sitting on the loo and BAM! Got this feeling that someone had just stabbed him in the shoulder blade with a knife! Some damn fool snake had crawled out of a void between pipe & wall behind the toilet and just, as I like to put it, "bumped into him with his fangs". whoopsie! But the funny thing about being an E.R. doc is that you just calmly get up from the toilet, walk to your camera and your cellphone, snap a few photos of the snake while simultaneously phoning your wife (who is on her way to the hospital for work) to turn around and come back to get you so that you can admit yourself into your own E.R. and order your own vials of antivenom and instruct your staff exactly WHOM is to be tasked with your intubation, etc etc etc. All the while, ensuring to collect your passport (and hers) to bring with you in the event that you may need to be heli-vac'ed to South Africa for emergency-emergency treatment, prior to taking a seat and sitting calmly until your ride arrives.

They had to give him NINE VIALS of anti-venom once they figured out which snake it was (thanks, photos!) at 1,000 bucks a pop (still cheaper than getting treated back home of course)and what I find very interesting is that when they drip you up with this stuff they're actually injecting you with HORSE tissue, which is how they make the antivenom - they inject horses with it, which then produce the antibodies, which then they take out & put inside you. His whole left side was pretty numb and he couldn't talk for a good half a day and of course he had to spend the night in the hospital but last night he came around while Mrs D & I were at yoga and hung out on the couch watching "The Big Lebowski" with The Mr. and eating pizza so I think it's safe to say he's surviving just fine. Some nasty looking black, dead tissue around the fang-wound, and he says he can feel gravity pulling the venom down, down, down his body so now the pain is generally around his hip area, but "should progressivly settle out sometime in the next few days". Huh. Doctors. Nuts.

Still no camping this weekend though. I think that's due to Mrs. Doc, who had to pretty much bitch-slap him into NOT going to work today. Which actually, although it breaks my heart because we had gotten the Sent.Hill campsite booked (the one with the "loo with a view" we went to a couple years ago and had rhinos walking through our campsite) and I was so looking forward to some peace and quiet and beers around the campfire, is probably a good idea because I NEED to finish this damn document up so I can get back to living life.

So I guess it might be an easy-going round of sundowners at the yacht club tonight, which it's been FOREVER since we've been there on a friday night. Then who knows what on saturday and this new monthly cooking-eating-drinking party idea that Mrs Doc dreamed up for some girls to do on sunday night that she's been planning for the last month. We'll see how that goes. I hear chicken parmesean is on the menu, so hell yeah I'll be there.

Labels: BW-general, school

It's go time! It's crunch time! It's.... it's.... shittin' bricks time!!!

So in 7 days I aim to submit my thesis. Let's see what happens.

I be nerve-ridden.

I just realized I missed a week here on ye olde blogge. So a quick run-down of the events which transpired....

Greek night last weekend was great. We got our eat on, drink on, plate-breakin' on, dance on, dress on, etc etc etc. A good time had by all. Which it better have been c'z those tickets ran 450 bucks each!! So that was an extremely fun, late night, followed by an early morning hash which came too soon, but the 8km run in 4000 degree sunshine woke me up somehow. This was followed by a braai, of course, and then home to sit around in the pool and try and cool down just a wee bit. Mission impossible.

Monday was a hell of a party at Doc & Mrs. Doc's which made Tuesday and all the days after it a little strained because well, I's tired.

Thursday was my first night back at a yoga class in over a year and then some. I had just recently gotten a tip from a fellow hasher about this new german gal in town who does (as I like to call it) "yoga with balls", which I thoroughly prefer over the more typical-to-G-city-style "Zen and the art of snoozing" type yoga that they offer around these parts. So I had phoned her up and inquired about her classes, she gave the the details and myself and Mrs Doc headed over to try her out. Well! We were the only ones there but so WHAT because it was fantastic! She also combines some nerve-stretching into her Ashtanga-style class and it was challenging and fun and strength-building and everything i look for in an hour and a half 40-buck class. We shall definitely make this a weekly thing.

Then Mrs Doc & I came back to our place where we agreed to have one glass of wine and chat to The Mr. for awhile which turned into Two (of course) and a mini-TV marathon (2 x 30min sitcoms - "Modern Family" and "Cougar Town") because she & Doc don't have TV so was curious as to what's on these days. It was lovely & relaxing even though i got to bed too late for a school night. But THAT my friend is why it's good to have good neighbours. Random acts of simple socializing that doesn't involve hiking across town and anything else complicated like designating drivers and what not.

Friday was hella fun at the Oktoberfest - totally cheap and cheesey for an Oktoberfest (well it IS the Dark Continent) but it worked. We went with Soo & Mx and left the LJJ at their place with their little'un and their babysitter. Headed up the hill to the Game Reserve where this thing was taking place (our old local watering hole from when we lived on that side of town) and got a free beer mug, a free teeshirt, and one free shot of Jagermeister. All this freeness for only 150 bucks!! HAHA! What kinda free is that? Everything else (food, drink, funny hats, etc) was pay-as-you-go. That is so BW. Anyhoo the proprietor of the restaurant/bar there is german so he had kinda taken this old german beer-hall concept and run with it. There was an oom-pa band (playing Neil Diamond and all that other party music shit) and long tables and giant 2L glasses of beer shaped like a boot. There was Eisbein and Warthog to eat and saurkraut and potato salad and all that nonsense. Doc & Mrs Doc and a whole bunch of other docs also joined us and it was fun fun fun. I was on DD duty though, so I did not indulge as much as the rest did but nevertheless being not a HUGE beer obsessive, it didn't really matter. Plus, the monthly Farmers Market was in the morning and it was gon' be HOT, so I was glad I didn't purposefully dehydrate myself.

Sat. AM found us up at 10:30 to have a go at whatever would be leftover at the market (hardly anything by that hour! those dudes move their stuff FAST) but we went with Doc & Mrs Doc and of course bumped into every human in town that we've ever known, which is always nice. Met the nice german couple who we'd had our last party at old-neighbours K&H (of up and disappearing fame)'s several months back, and they too were totally bamboozled about what the hell happened to those guys. I found out the girl, Nine, also does yoga with new amazing-yoga chick, so we'll see her again on Thursday which is nice as she is totally entertaining. I also managed to buy hundreds of bucks worth of olives and tapenades and pickled onions and ate a crepe and drank espresso and chatted & it was all fun.

Coming back there was just enough time for a jump in the pool and a 1 hour nap for the LJJ before we had to be back down the hill at 4:30 to Jac & Mar's for their kinda-late-housewarming braai and watching of the very important rugby final (which our beloved team ended up winning - wahoo!). They had also invited Doc & Mrs Doc and the 6 of us turned the evening into a rather serious eating/drinking/poker-playing late night which was a wee bit detrimental to our hashing at the stupid-early start time of 9:30 the next day. But what the hell.

Funny antecdote about having good neighbours again: The one about the halloween party that Doc & Mrs Doc were supposed to go to. So yeah, all the medical professionals were having a big halloween blow-out on saturday night that D&MrsD were fully intending on going to. They had decided on costumes and were even busy coloring in said costumes during the drinking/poker playing part of the evening at Jac & Mar's. The whole evening I had been saying to them "you're not going to that party" and they were like, "ah, we can go late, it's ok, we'll still squeeze it in". Come 10pm they still had this wacky idea they were going to go. But when you have good neighbours and you're having a good time with said good neighbours and it's so much fun that you keep accepting that extra glass of wine... come 12:30am aint nobody driving the 20minutes back into town to go to some half-over party. Oh hell no. you pour yourself another drink and play another hand of cards. Silly Doc & Mrs Doc. so much to learn.

Nonetheless their homemade silly costumes that they made didn't go to waste because we agreed to wear costumes to the hash the next day (even though it hadn't been the agenda of the hash but wtf). Which was a fine exercise in sweating out the remains of too much indulging the night before... as the sun was brutal, the temp was higher than 40C/105F and I had to run 8km. Ay chihuahua.

But it was worth it because the hosts had a giant taco fest and tequila to celebrate dia de los muertos or diablos or whatever the hell it is, after it was over and them tacos was guuuuuuud. The hostess mail-ordered them from the States apparently, and they came in a box of about 200 or something. HA!

The rest of the day I was just exhausted. The Mr. and I and LJJ came home, jumped in the pool, took a nap, and then did virtually nothing else. Nothing. I watched some catch-up on the tv from all the shows I've been missing, and we ate cheese sandwiches for dinner. I honestly could not MOVE. The Mr tried to be productive, but ultimately gave into the couch as well and we lazed around and it was great. In bed at 10:30 and zonked. the F. OUT.

So this week my objectives are to write the hell out of this damn research, dry out entirely, (at least until thursday anyway - the post-yoga glass of vino is not something to sacrifice during times like these), get to bed on time, and after the 7th of November.... move on with the rest of my life. New focus, new energy, new.... well, I'm not sure what else (damn, it's almost gonna be "new YEAR"), but here we go.

Labels: goin out, school