Happy (poetry) days

My friend Angela is having a very happy time having won an Arts Council grant that sent her on a 6-week stay in a cottage somewhere in Ireland to write poetry! I've been following her blog - http://light-trap.blogspot.com/ which is full of misty photos of Irish scenery and happy poetry readings both in Ireland and London ...

She's not actually coming back to Australia (and work) till next January - lucky thing!!

Breaking the silence

Don't know why I haven't been posting - nearly a month now since I last posted. Life is carrying along happily, and pretty mundanely to be honest! No big exciting things happening ... :) I did have a very nice yoga class on the weekend, and feel pretty good about that side of things. Work is going well - though I'll be really glad when it gets to be light at the time I have to get up (5.30am). Did some gardening on the weekend - planted some tomatoes and another strawberry plant. And other veggies planted are doing well.

I've got a couple of garden 'projects' that I'm hoping to finish, or at the very least get underway before Christmas. One is to mosaic an old round cement slab that's sitting in my front garden. It's about 1.2m in diameter. I know I need to do it before summer gets to its height (January/February) as it'll be too hot to work outside then. I went to the library on the weekend and got some mosaic books out, looking for a design/ideas. Then I can work out how much I need in the way of different coloured tiles etc, and start to collect them.

My other project is the swimming pool. My swimming pool is an above-ground one, that is decked in around most sides, and only accessible via the house verandah. A few months ago it started leaking a bit (again!) and the people who look after it told me that the tree roots that have been trying to get in from underneath are too much of a problem and I needed to replace it (and remove the tree-roots). About $1000. Then it turned out that I'd have to replace the supports as they were rusting away ($$$), and the pump no longer works properly, and ($$$$$) ... So I decided the swimming pool had had its day; stopped paying the pool guys to come and clean it every month and just left it (covered).

I had the idea to convert it to a garden pond, but it seemed like it might be too much work. And then someone else said to me that she'd deck it all over (having removed the pool itself plus water) and have a large entertaining area there. Now that seems like a good idea, at least for when I sell the place (which I will do eventually). But right now I'm saving to go on an overseas trip next year and I don't want to spend money on something like this. So, after consultations with another friend, for now I'm going to encourage frogs etc. into the pool, get a few low-maintenance water plants into it and see what happens!

I find it's good to put a kind of deadline on things - gives me something to aim for. I don't know how far I'll get along with these projects, but I'm pretty sure that if I didn't say to myself - do this by Christmas when you (I) will have family and visitors around, it's quite possible nothing would happen!

Hmm - seems like I did have a few things to write about after all !

Swine Flu in the Help Desk!

I work in one corner of a big room that contains the University's ITS (Information Technology Services) Helpdesk. I and one other guy do (among other things) the staff support for the use of Blackboard (the University's Learning Management System to deliver online courses for students). We don't answer the phone like the others in the Helpdesk area, but logged incidents (see my ITIL training coming to the fore!) relating to Blackboard are passed on to us.

Don't know why I felt the need to give that great explanation!

Anyway - on Friday afternoon, one of the casuals who works on the helpdesk (answering the phone) got the results of tests that said he had Swine Flu! I guess I ought to be a bit worried by this, considering my somewhat compromised immune system - it might be thought that I was particularly at risk. But - maybe I'm being foolish, maybe it was just a big Friday afternoon-type feeling, but my main emotion was amusement! We were all jumping around, keeping him at a distance while he tried to wipe his desk and headsets with some anti-bacterial wipes, all the time proclaiming how embarrassed and sorry he was! We just kept on joking and wiping things that were anywhere near him! It just seemed a great distraction for a Friday afternoon!

But really - I do feel my immune system is coming back now. I've actually stopped counting the number of weeks since I've had to be on antibiotics! (Last count was 7 weeks - maybe last week, maybe the week before!) And also - they reckon that kids and young adults are most at risk. Neither of those descriptions really cover me〈grin〉. Also, I've read that 'older people' (!) may have come across some type of flu remotely relate to this one, which would give 'them' some immunity to it!

Whatever - I am 'over' the big fear/concern about Swine Flu that we all had a few weeks ago. Now my main feeling about it is that maybe it's good to get it this time around when it seems to be really mild, in case it does mutate (as the 1918 flu epidemic did) into something much worse. I do intend to get vaccinated against it when the vaccine comes out - if I haven't caught it in the meantime!!

And I've had a lovely weekend. I've been working on a website, and doing a few things in the garden. I've felt strong and well - it's a very nice feeling!!

Yoga Practice Musings

Ever since I got lymphoma 2 years ago, had to spend time in hospital and had to give up yoga for 6 months, I have struggled to get my practice back to anywhere near what it was before.

I guess I can point to various reasons, or excuses! Like there've been quite a few times when I've got sick and haven't been able to practice for weeks at a time. Like I seem to have put on a bit of weight which is proving very hard to move off again, sigh! Like how I moved jobs this year which also meant moving campuses. A great new job and I'm very happy in it. But, apart from the extended amount of travel it's involved, at the old campus I had a great set-up to practice (by myself or with others) at lunchtime. That has been very much harder to organise here at St Lucia.

But, whatever the reason, my practice, and I guess my body, is very different to what it was B4! One of my hips has seized up and just won't 'open'! I have no hope of doing bakasana (OK, I probably only got that once before, but still!) And I'm even finding it hard to bind in Marichyasana A and B ... (hardly/never did in the other two so I won't be mentioning them!) And just general weakness, lack of flexibility issues ...

So anyway, when I went to class last weekend I was musing on this to myself (I felt it was a particularly weak practice on my part!) And then as I was leaving, this amazing thing happened. My teacher saw me going, stopped what he was doing and came over and told me he felt my practice was really moving ahead!! My mouth dropped open in utter surprise ... he carried on in this vein for a little while and then said goodbye and went back to helping someone!

There's obviously something else going on that I have no idea about! I guess I/we focus and stress on certain things but a 3rd party can stand back and see a completely different picture. I still don't quite know what he was talking about, but I do know he has inspired my practice this week, and let me feel that it's OK to be weak in areas that I was strong(er) in before. At least for the moment!!

Great news on health front!

Had my 12-monthly CT scan today and it came back clear! More details are on my Lymphoma blog.

I am very happy this evening!!!

Holidays ...

My Colourful Washing line! I wear lots of colourful clothes - and when I hang things out on the washing line I love the way they look! I even make sure they look good on the line - try not to hang two things the same colour next to each other! All for my own benefit of course, but ... :)

That was down in Bowral actually, my Mum's house. I'm back home now after spending a few days down there. Lots of eating (as if I needed that!), good wine, family and good books (among other things)! Not a huge amount of yoga - it is very hard to get warm/flexible enough down there in winter! - but some ...

Now I'm sitting in front of the fire at home, with Jedda curled up in a ball beside me. Very cosy! Tomorrow I must get onto a website for an ex-workmate, which she's already paid me for. And then back to work on Monday ...

an unwanted bath

an unwanted bath
Originally uploaded by tlong

My Google homepage has (among other things) a list of photos of cats recently uploaded to Flickr. Just look at this one - I couldn't resist posting it here. Never seen a cat and a rat together like that!

And talking of cats (and cat-owners) - guess who was climbing up a ladder in the middle of the night trying to entice a very naughty pussycat down from a tree! Yes, it was me!! Jedda pussycat (or kittycat as she's not 9 months old yet) only goes outside on the weekends, and never at nights. But I had to go out to visit a website client and then onto yoga at about 2pm yesterday and of course she was nowhere to be seen. And when I got home around 6.45pm, ditto! I kept calling her, to no avail.

Finally at about 10pm when I went onto the back verandah to call her yet again I heard pathetic squeakiing (she's good at that!) in the distance, and eventually after much wandering through the undergrowth with a torch, I realised she was above my head and spotted her! But would she come down? No, of course not! I brought a ladder around and climbed up a bit (only halfway) but it was never going to be high enough and she wasn't going anywhere. I gave up for a while and when I came back again she had of course gotten herself down quite happily and was still 'busy' outside! Very naughty pussycat!!

This post is full of cat-stuff - in case anyone cared, I managed to fix my MySQL issues, upload the CMS website, fix a few email problems and my client is happy! And I have ordered a new Macbook Pro - Yesss!!

(And of course, yoga was wonderful, as always!)