Weekend projects

Still sick of muscle stretching! Have probably done more of the "plie" stretch than the others because it's easier to do when I'm out and about; simply angle feet outwards slightly, turn legs out at the hip to align all the joints, and bend at the knee making sure to hold the alignment.

Anyway.... Sarah and I've arranged to fly down to Sydney to celebrate the new year before flying back early on NY Day (and sleeping!). Partly because accommodation in Sydney is impossible to find at a reasonable price this late in the year. If I can buy a dress, shoes and bag for less than my half of the room costs then the room is too expensive (particularly if I'm not going to be in it) and I'm better off keeping the cash for the aforementioned dress.

Bought more plants at Bunnings today in my latest attempt to prove that I must be able to keep a plant alive for more than a few weeks. Will see how that turns out, but for now I have a small garden to the side of my house with some strawberries and coriander. I also added a meshy barrier along the base of the fence (it's actually a gutter guard for which I paid about $2 / 8m rather than $30 / 6m for a "proper" garden barrier) to keep my nicer potting-mix infused dirt off my neighbours side of the fence.

Also started cleaning the BBQ (which I don't think my ex-tenant had ever cleaned) - will hook up some gas later in the week and switch it on for a while to try and kill all the good cleaning chemical germs and anything else I missed. It's still a little icky but tons better than it used to be. I'm sure one day I'll buy an actual BBQ, but when my parents take theirs back, I'm going to need to use the already installed version and I'd rather know that it's not covered in crap.

Can't run, can't walk...

I had my parents, Greg and Lisa over for dinner last night therefore had a "proper" dinner with actual courses: basic green salad (to kill time while waiting for mum and dad), pad thai, corned beef with vegetables, and cheesecake with cream and liqueur-soaked strawberries. As always, my favourite was the cheesecake. Surprise crowd favourite was the pad thai which, despite informing the boys that it contained tofu, went down an absolute treat.

I had another physio appointment this morning which basically reaffirmed my suspicion that we're going to work on my ability to turn my leg out from the hip in an effort to resolve the knee issues. So now I don't know how I should walk because the way I'm used to is wrong, and the correct way feels all kinds of uncoordinated. I'm hoping that I become more used to it because I have enough trouble concentrating on turning my legs outwards while walking; I have absolutely no chance of doing so while running (so it's just as well I've been advised against it for a while). I'm basically left feeling irritated that I can't run because of the niggling knee aching, and annoyed about re-learning how to walk. The only way I know how to fix that is to run or eat so I suppose it's just as well that I have half a cheesecake in my fridge!

I suspect I'm going to have to delay that half-marathon training program...

There's twisting, and then there's...?

Went to see a physio today for my recurring knee issue.  Apparently my knee hurts because when I walk / run the upper part of my leg twists in and the lower part twists out (I'm sure there's a technical term for this, but I didn't ask what it is).  Sure, it sounds odd (actually, it sounds like "knock-knee", although my knees don't look anything like those over-exaggerated demonstration pictures), but at least it's less scary sounding that ligament or cartilage damage...

The next work "conference" event is at New Farm Bowls; that's right, the dev centre is going barefoot bowling :)  A little reminiscent of the 2004 Christmas party, perhaps, but should be fun nonetheless.  Will have to remember to pack sunscreen and a hat given that last time we all ended up tipsy and sunburnt!

It's Always Won By A Brown Horse

Melbourne Cup Day today. I entered one of the office sweeps and my horse finished somewhere in the middle of the field (doesn't everyone's?), although I was informed that it's always a brown horse that wins (whatever). The winner was a very disputable shade of brown/clack/grey. Lunch was pretty decent though, and was followed up by some entertaining post-champagne-lunch foosball.

I spent pretty much all of today hacking codebase to move to a newer exception strategy. My original plan of a series of small changes pretty much fell through about ten minutes in when I realised just how many interdependencies we really have. It wasn't helped by the methods that are declared as throwing an exception without actually throwing it. Maybe tomorrow it'll all just work :)