Continued Flatmate Drama

Ok so this one is very low drama as compared to the last one. However I am bummed to say the least.

My flatmate - Katie - who has been absolutely fantastic to live with, has moved back to Brisbane. This is brought about by missing her family and being offered a job back home. While this is sad and I think she should give it more than two months, I realise the desire and she hasn't been a jerk about it.

Luckily, I've had a great response to my post of the flat and found a new flatmate this weekend. So thus we start the cycle again. Hopefully my next flatmate, Anne, will last a bit longer.

Busy Busy Busy

Right so I'll try to cut through all the un-fun stuff (aka working way too many hours than reasonable) and highlight the key things from the last couple weeks.

Where I left off I had a weekend of a pub crawl with friends and coffee fest... that theme has continued for the last couple weekends.

Firstly there is a fantastically eclectic little pub in Darlinghurst called (very fittingly) The Local. Two weekends ago they had a Moose and Mounty beer fest on which myself and another friend supported our neighbor to the north in. Some of the beers were quite tasty, however some were just down right disgusting. The worst was one which was a smoked amber which smelled like a camp fire and tasted like a fire mixed with bacon... yuk!! The worst thing is that the taste stayed with you.

Afterwards, we headed to a couple of the local trendy bars after some yummy Mexican food. :)

The next week added some spice to the mix with my flatmate who moved in two months ago deciding she missed Brisbane and is moving back... more on that later. The work week was crazy busy with 3 major workshops and meetings which I helped with.

On Saturday we continued our AGSM drinking culture with a pub crawl through the Rocks. Saturday and Sunday were spent relaxing in the sun, showing the flat, and being completely useless. After busy weeks I get the urge to sit around and to nothing at all on the weekends - it's a nice thing to be able to do every now and then. I managed to balance it with a dinner with a group of friends on Sunday night.

While this blog makes it seem like I have at least a mild amount of alcoholism... while I wouldn't deny this I am taking at least a week off to just let my body recover a bit.

My next blog will hopefully be about more happy topics. :)

Roller Coaster Week

This week has been a doosey. It started out with a weekend of great weather and fun times. Last weekend was the Aroma festival - which is a essentially lots of coffee, lots of chocolate, and other things which are very good to eat but bad for the waistline. :) They were also making a mural of Marlyn Monroe with different types of coffee so we were able to get a bit of art with the good eats.

Just some of the yummy stuff

The making of Marlyn

A great view - the Opera House and Camels... :)

After a great weekend the work week was a bit of a nightmare but I won't dwell on that - am moving onto the great weekend weather we had AGAIN.

Now I must say that it almost feels like the weather can't make up its mind. Today I was in a t-shirt and jeans, whereas during the week there were a couple days when I had to wear my big wool coat because it was so cold. However I'm not going to complain too much as long as the weekend weather is nice. :)

Yesterday I went and did a pub crawl with some friends from MBA school. We checked out an area of town which I've never really been to so it was good fun. As you do on a pub crawl, I drank more than expected but was luckily able to stay awake till past 10 - so a good 8 hours of moderate drinking. I must say I'm happy I can still hang some what like I used to.

Today I went to Bondi and had brunch with a couple girlfriends from work. Afterwards we walked along the beach and while we were very tempted to get in we didn't. If we had we would have missed the whales which were playing just off the shore.

Now more on Spain... as many of you might know my neice is going to study abroad in Spain from August till January. I've decided to go visit her over the Christmas and New Years break - YAY! :) I went to Spain back in the day but I think we spent maybe a total of 6 days between 3 cities so it was pretty hectic. As the details play out I will keep everyone posted, but for now am super excited!! :)

Knee Update

Right, so I realise it's been a while since I've done a update on my knee so here goes. In summary - all is going alright. Not fantastic but good.

There is still quite a bit of fluid which is limits my range of motion. I'm allowed to take my brace off when I'm at home or just around the office but still have to wear it in public or when I sleep. But I've become more ruthless with my physio as I'm past the point of caring and just want it to get better.

My physio is limited to 6 different exercises focusing on muscle strength in my quad and hamstring, but the thing that is really limiting me is the range of motion (hence the new approach). I can tell my physio isn't too happy about the lack of progress, so am taking the approach that as long as it doesn't hurt after I do the physio it should be all right.

I'm seeing the physio once a week and will see the surgeon next week - so hopefully I'll hear that all is going well.

On the work front things have been busy, busy, busy with me doing the work of a couple people until a new team member joins me. But I'm doing some really cool stuff which is exciting.

There are a couple other updates - Spain and Aroma festival on the weekend - but am completely knackered so will blog about those later.

Quick Trip to Melbourne

As a reward for a good year my team was flown to Melbourne for a day of some business and lots of play. After an early flight 6:20 AM we made our way to central Melbourne and a conference centre at Federation Square (think Trafalgar Square but in Melbourne).

During the day we were able to hear from the curator of the Tim Burton exhibit which is in town from the MOD in NY. After the talk we were allowed to go visit the exhibit which included many drawings, models, pieces and film strips from his variety of movies. While that type of thing is typically just up my alley - it's winter holidays for the schools so the exhibit was packed with kids and I was more afraid of getting a good bump and being knocked over. (My brace makes it easy to walk straight but any kind of sideways movement is increasingly more difficult.)

Later in the day we had an even more fascinating talk from Professor Mark Barry who is the architect working to finish the Sagrada de Familia in Barcelona. Now to provide the back story - I loved, LOVED this building and this architect when I was in Barcelona. He thinks so off the wall and creates things which you will never see anywhere else. Professor Barry spoke about how he is trying to work to determine what the original plan was for the building and then spoke about how they are going about putting that into place. With some of the modeling they are doing they are actually using aeronautical engineering programs.

The current schedule is for the Pope to officially open the main space of the church in November of this year, however there is a large central spire which isn't completed so the full building won't be completed until 2016 or so...

An inside picture of the church

After the day we had a great night out on the town only to realise that we were staying in one of the best hotels in the city. While we were sharing, the rooms were still absolutely amazing. We had a large bathtub which had a TV and windows to the outside. If only we weren't sharing rooms it would have been a great way to end a drunken night. :)

The Park Hyatt in Melbourne

I am now trying to figure out when I might be able to do another short trip. I'm trying to crunch the financials to see if I can make it to Spain for the holidays... but right now the potential outlook of being out of a large part of my debt by then is very appealing. Hopefully I'll be able to find a way to pinch some cash somewhere to make it happen.

After coming back yesterday I've had a relaxing and productive weekend. I finally bough a deck brush to clean the balcony - which was looking more like part of the bird's home than mine. I've also bought some paints and finally have an idea of what I want to paint for my living room and potentially my bedroom. :) Tonight I'm going to dinner at my friend Gloria's place, so will be trekking back to Kingsford - then it's back to work I go.

The Drama that is My Life

Oh where to start. I guess my knee is an obvious place to start.

Things with my knee are going well - my surgeon was happy with progress and said he'd didn't need to see me for another month and that I'm in the hands of my physio. This was good news to my physio who was bit daunted by the initial list of very prescriptive directions my surgeon provided. I'm still doing the initial set of lying down exercises but have started doing a series of lunges and other exercises to start getting the strength back in my muscle.

I'm no longer using my crutches and am able to walk around home without my brace on - which is awesome!! I can't wait to have the brace off. My new nickname at work varies between Robo Cop and the Bionic Woman depending on who it is (personally I prefer bionic woman). Oh well - at least I'm making progress and slowly getting back to it. Now I just can't wait for the wounds to heal so that I can get back into the pool - or once I have 100 degrees of bend and can ride a stationary bike.

Now to the drama with my now old flatmate... So I thought everything was all good with my flatmate, however things got a bit weird. Following a couple of small things that just didn't sit right he told me on a Tuesday night that he had just signed a new lease and would be moving out on Saturday (4 days!). He then proceeded to demand his full bond in return, regardless of if I was able to find someone to move in following his timeline. After telling him in so many words that he wasn't getting his full bond back and wouldn't be getting a penny till I received the bond from the new flatmate - he proceeded to take the keys hostage after he moved out.

I've now changed the locks and now have a new flatmate who has just moved in today. She is really nice and I think will be a much better fit.

This has all be going on while I've been completely drained with my first week back to work, so I've been exhausted on all fronts. Hopefully things will settle down a bit in the next couple weeks and I can focus on getting my knee back to normal. Fingers crossed!!

Progress is Slow but it's still Progress

It is now Day 5 after my surgery and progress is slow but somewhat steady. The swelling continues to go down, however my knee is still quite large. The oh so important range of motion is getting a bit better. I have a couple exercises to work on this but what I can do is mainly move my leg as far as I can until the swelling makes it uncomfortable.

The maximum I can do for my exercise to pull my heel up as far as I can along the floor

The weather has been amazing (60 degrees and cloudless skies) so we've been trying to get out to the local park when we can to soak up a bit of vitamin D. When we're not doing that we're confined to my flat and have been playing a number of games - Uno, Scrabble, and Battleship have been the main games so far.

One thing I find a bit weird is that I was prescribed more anti-inflammatory drugs than pain killers... so when I go to the doctor next week I'm going to have to ask about that. Its not that the pain has been all that bad during the day, but at night it's a killer as I have a whole 3 or 4 positions I can sleep in since I have to wear my brace, so the pain just compounds the uncomfortable factor.

From the surgeons instructions it looks like I'll be in the brace for at least 6 more weeks and potentially with the crutches for nearly as long. I'm not too excited about the prospect of this, but it is what it is and I guess all I can do is be a good little patient and try to beat the odds and get better quickly.