Looking forward to a break ...

Looking forward to having a break soon. It's booked for a fortnight's time and I definitely need the downtime. We've got a few big events coming up in the project in the next couple of months and it'll be good to get a bit of recharging in.

I have a few things that are causing me stress at the moment :

Ankle is still bad.
Very busy at work.
Too darn hot.

And when I get stressed, the things that would help me calm down a little don't work so well. Like games, I could normally bury myself in one but which game ? Must crack on with Forza and all the other Xbox games. I've fallen back into an old favourite in Moo2, partly because I don't want to expend the mental effort in masterminding a JA2 or XCom campaign. Music definitely helps, I now have just over 4000 tracks in the iTunes library. One of the newest is the third Dubstar album with one line : "Sarah makes it better". It's a better album than I remember.

Ankle is still bad. I can walk on it and reasonably treat it as ok but as soon as I break into a running stride on hard ground, it'll crunch up again. Will have to keep a close eye on it in case I need to take it to a professional to check it out. Cricket was fairly ok with it, I just need to turn and then hit the gas. It cuts my fielding range down a little but I've compensated for that by coming a little closer and diving around more.

Busyness at work is normal and I prefer it that way. I've been where I am long enough to have not just The Knowledge but Deep Knowledge. Comes in handy when we need to collect information on something rapidly. Deep Knowledge lets me apply a bit of quality control to the forest of information we have available on subjects to just select the most appropriate for the argument.

But every so often, I'll feel the need to escape work for a while so I can chill out. There is a downside to that though, work has very special people like the Snow Queen, Lady P & The Angel, Sunshine, Little Canteen Girl (and her mates) and The Boss when she gets back. I miss having the chance for a natter when I'm not in.

Oh it's also very warm in Blighty at the moment.

I don't do too well in hot weather. I tend to kick out a lot of heat when I'm doing stuff, so when conditions are hot, I tend to wilt. It's not been nearly so bad this year though. Hot weather provokes the allergy stuff, so people tend to hit the anti-histamines. That doesn't seem like an option for me though, as the anti-histamines I used to use have been giving side effects ... Think 36 hour chemically triggered grumpiness combined with absolutely no power available in my legs. Not good when I'd take an anti-histamine to prep for cricket and the first sprint I go for, no petrol in the tank.

I've been better this year by avoiding all medication and tackling causes instead of symptoms. Like eyes that stream because glasses are filthy. Clean the glasses, the eyes settle down. Not much I can do about the sneezing though :-)

Always in 2 camps with hot weather. I enjoy the sunshine but suffer if it's too warm.

Gaming has been interesting lately. I've been tempted by another look into WoW but that'll wait until Eve has calmed down a little. Cos of an incident where a pair of spies inserted into our alliance caused a muppet to lose his expensive supercarrier (he was pvp'ing on another character while his supercarrier was earning him cash).

That led to us leaving our deep space home to return to Empire, where the usual problem is "what do we shoot ?". Not so much of a problem at the moment, as a griefer alliance declared war on us. Pity for them, we're now organised and know where their expensive stuff is. It won't be there tomorrow :-) We've found that the most effective way to get griefers to drop a war dec is to blow up their stuff.

Oh, there's also a little something called the Curse Of Volt, where alliances that have taken a shot at us tend to not last that long afterwards. We're rarely the ones pulling the trigger (we're not really big enough) but it's been a curious pattern so far. Wondering if it'll continue with our ex landlords who are currently making themselves look silly by claiming we've done stuff that we've had nothing to do with.

The editor team also pushed out the latest Voice of Volt, which tends to keep me quiet towards the end of the month because I work on content as well as trying to jump on all the typos. If you look in the link and download the pdf, I'm the one in there called "Keela Danne".

Go read VoV ! And if you find anything that goes over the Too Geeky line, drop a comment and I'll try and de-geek it.