Back to work - do I have to ?

Muahaha - there's always a bit of wistful thinking on the last day of a period of annual leave :-)

I enjoy what I work on and enjoy working with the people on the team but I definitely end up feeling the need for a bit of time away every once in a while. And while I am away, I'm normally telling myself off at least twice for thinking werk when I should be chilling out. I'm back tomorrow and I'm looking forward to it for a few good reasons :-)

I get to see Miss KT again and raid the canteen for Muffins and Teacakes
(I've been teacake-free for over a week now, plus I've not done any muffin-hunting)
I'll be catching up with the Snow Queen, Wild Thing, The Boss and Lady Sunshine
(I work with some great people but those 4 I enjoy talking to most)
Seeing how The Rose has been getting on
(I got a smile from the subterfuge with the nametag but apart from that, she hasn't been in much)
And I get to catch up with what's been happening over the last week
(part recreation, part serious as I compile in my head patterns of what's been happening with the kit)

So - back to work tomorrow, what have I been up to while being away ?

Shoulder and back seem less sore, these are stress related long term injuries anyway. As I get stressed, my muscles tense up which tends to kick off the back and shoulder issues. But I've had good movement in the shoulder, which is always a promising sign. I've also been keeping the RSI away through regular gaming :-) Seems a contradiction that doesn't it ? Gaming = less RSI. Seems to be working true though, if I stay away from the games, my right wrist starts to hurt. If I have a few evening sessions on a "twitch" game, my right wrist settles down.

It just goes to show - if you're troubled by a long term chronic injury or pain, then examine all possible causes to see what bearing they have on the effect. With me, my muscles like to get used or they start to complain, hence the unhappy back from not enough exercise in that area contrasting with the RSI getting better from me using the wrist to play those "twitch" computer games.

Hey - enough of pain. I try not to think too much about pain, as it gets in the way of my main "Feel Good Motivation". That one came to me a few years ago when I was desperately trying to catch up to a very pretty pair of ladies in the car park. I had a choice - I could either mope, let the pain control me, not catch up to the pretty ladies and feel "ARRG", or I could say "is it really that bad ?", block the pain and give them a big grin as I caught up. So I now try to show as little outward sign as possible of the inner pain issues.

It's all about knowing how best to motivate oneself and some days I find it easier than others. Like I'll be looking forward to getting in tomorrow morning because I'll rather quickly go hunting for a teacake ;-)

What else ? Kinda failed in one objective, which was to replace the flush lever on the loo. However, the old one is now kinda working as intended in that it returns to its start position after a flush. It's getting pretty old, so the bits that are supposed to rotate are kinda welded to each other, which is why I've not been able to replace it. The Lifter-Bit is welded to the Rotatey-Bit, so I can't switch it for the new Lever-Bit.

Tried Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO) on the urgings of a mate ... and then promptly reactivated the WoW subscription. DDO isn't such a bad game, I particularly liked the progressive quests and instancing. It falls down though in the D&D part - D&D is an excellent table top game where the pace is much slower but it can be very tough to translate that system to a computer game. WoW is just a faster, simpler, better game all round.

Bit of a shame that me heading back into WoW means I'm much less active in Eve. They're both excellent Massive Multiplayer Online games and I play both of them because they're different. WoW is a "twitch" game, Eve has a much slower pace. My interest in games tends to switch between fast pace and slow pace and I think I'm needing the faster pace at the moment.

Cricket !

It's Ashes time again, hence me seeing this week as a good one to take off :-) We had an extremely tense and exciting finish to the first Test, with National Hero Monty Panesar holding off the Aussies at the close at the other end to James Anderson. England did well to draw that game but it's looking very promising that they'll take a 1-0 lead in the series at Lords.

I have been out of the house ... honest :-)

Tuesday had me heading into the centre of Bristol to see what I could see at Cabot Circus. Not sure what it is with me and shopping at the moment, the only money I spent was lunch plus car park. I must own all the dvds and cds that I'm interested in having at the moment, although with the demise of Zavvi, HMV have put their prices up to the point where I'm not interested in the impulse buying. Or maybe it was the atmospheric conditions in the competing shop - if a shop is hot and humid, that kind of atmosphere has me walking out quickly.

I did make one other rather rapid exit from a shop on Tuesday ... I spotted someone pretty bearing down on me with what appeared to be a rather determined expression and legged it. Ok, ok, it was the Apple store, she had the long, dark hair that I'm a sucker for and I felt in danger of spending a lot of money on something I really don't need :-) I think I'll be looking into trying to turn my desktop PC into a Hackintosh to allow me to check out Apple before committing to it on my next laptop.

"YEESSSSSS!!!!" goes the cry as England take another Aussie wicket. 5 down now as Swann sends one through the gate left by Marcus North. Looking forward to England winning this one today, so I'd better get back to watching the game :-)

PS It was also good to get out of the house on Thursday to watch Ice Age 3. Not the best film but enjoyable. And it was another Crazie Movie Outing and the company on those is always great :-) We're a good bunch of intelligent oddballs and I always get on well with intelligent people.