Weekly Roundup 9/1/12 – 13/1/12

Monday

Up early and off to the pool this morning for a swim. Was quite busy this morning but enjoyed the 1km swim. Only thing was my left ankle was a little bit painful after the swim. Didn’t think any more of it though.

Into the office for the day, then home a bit later than usual.

Read a bit this evening, and then an early night. My left leg was a bit swollen for some reason and I seemed to have a bite (or scratch) on my left leg that hurt somewhat.

Tuesday

Woke up this morning to find my left leg was all swollen. Quite worried as I’ve never had anything that felt like this in my leg before. I think that I may have either caught it on Sunday on a thorn on a climbing rose, or else maybe been stung by a wasp. I did pull some sort of barb out and the sharp pain stopped, but nothing has ever had this kind of reaction to me. Thankfully I had some antiseptic spray, so I sprayed it onto my leg.  I went to the doctors who gave me some antibiotics and told me if it went even more red I should go to A&E.

WFH and then took the first step in doing something I should have done years ago – I went and joined a Buddhist Meditation group. I’m sure I’ll end up writing more about this sometime soon, but it was brilliant. One of the things I resolved to do was make sure I made space for daily practice.

Wednesday

No swim today as I wanted to give my leg chance to heal a bit more. (It still feels a little strange). Felt very calm and peaceful today. Into work today. Home and cooked a rather lovely Lamb Tagine which was wolfed down by the kids. Cool. Had a TV free evening and read quite a bit, and chatted too.

Thursday

Up at 5:45am for a daily practice. Quick breakfast and then in the car early and over the pennines to Manchester today. The new BBC site at Salford is just amazing. It’s enormous and just is such a flagship site for our main broadcaster. I never thought they could re-create the feel of Pebble Mill or TV Centre, but this is pretty close. Once my meeting was over I left after Lunch and came back across to Leeds. Driving on the M62 the sun was shining and the views are beautiful. Round Saddleworth you realise what a pretty part of the world this is. If I wasn’t having to get back into the office, it would have been an ideal day to dip off the motorway, get out the tripod and camera and take some brilliant pictures. Such good light today.

Back to the office and then made my way home. We watched Dara O’Briain’s ‘TITS’ (This is the show) this evening which was fab.

Friday.

Up at 5:45am for daily practice. I was around 15 minutes through (I reckon – I can’t really tell time when I’m meditating! The whole point is to push away all thoughts so the time sort of isn’t relative to my consciousness) when the cat pushed the door open to the lounge and started meowing at me. It’s hard enough when things are testing you like the Hard Disk spinning up in the Sky box or the boiler making the radiators tap (I remembered on Tuesday night at the group session, the whistling radiators in the Friends meeting house). But I’m trying my best to keep my meditation going with what I can only presume was the cat sat directly in front of me meowing. Label it as distraction and pop – it evaporates. After a minute or so of trying to get my attention and realising he wasn’t going to get anywhere, he jumped onto the sofa and curled up to wait for me. My alarm went off at 20 mins and I went to feed the cat as he’d waited patiently!

Then quick change and off to the pool for a swim. This morning it was brilliant – the laps lane was only just the two of us swimming – myself and another regular I see there pretty much every day I go. The 1km went by easily and I felt more refreshed and happy.

Off to work and then home. The chip supper neutralised the lack of lunch + the swim in the morning