Category: Life

BIKE!

OK, my maturity and delayed gratification ethos may have had a bit of a blip.

I was obsessing over that Kwak W650, but delaying buying one until we’d paid our debts. I was doing lots of window shopping though. Lot’s of 1999 or 2000 bikes for sale, about £3,500- £4000. Then I found out in 2003 they upgraded the front brake and put lower handlebars on. Obviously I then wanted the newer version. Less time to rust, better spec.

I also realised I had enough credit on my credit card to buy one. Once I’d realised that the die was cast, really.

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Finally!

Been a while since I blogged, it’s just been same ol’, same ol’. Things are changing now though.

Wendy has been off work for about 9 months with that gall bladder thing. Since the operation, and the post surgery infection, she was getting a lot better but last week she had some bad pains again. Not the agony of the previous condition, but painful enough to force her to go back to the doctors. They suspect that some of the gall stones were missed when they removed the gall bladder. They’ve booked her in for another ultrasound scan to see if that is the case. If so she’ll have to have more surgery down the road. For now though, they have provisionally signed her as fit for work from a week on Monday. She’s itching to get back. The longer it’s dragged on the more she’s been worried they would sack her.

This is good news for our bank account as well. Bloody SSP is a pittance. Normally that would not be a concern, my wages, although up and down, have been keeping us going (and actually paying off some of our debts! This job ROCKS!)  but I now have an exciting new obsession; the Kawasaki W650 motorcycle.

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Ups and downs.

Wendy is on the mend! Yay! She had her operation but had unrealistic expectations of how minor it was going to be. The operation itself was around 4 hours long, the woman preceding her took 45 minutes, so it mustn’t have been plain sailing. Then they have to fill you full of gas to inflate the guts so they can make room to move about. Her guts were sticking out a bit and she’d put on 8lbs. Devastated. Then her wounds were a bit manky. Started having green puss and puking up and such. I told her I’d had worse and to stop being a mardarse. She went to the doctors and they said it was “infected” and she needed “antibiotics”. Pah, nanny state. Doctors, what do they know?

Anyway after that she soon started getting better. She’s on her feet now, did the shopping with me today and went to church. Her stomach was hurting a bit afterwards, but not crippling her like last week. She reckons she should be able to go back to work a week on Monday.

This is good as last week I only got two days work.

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Grip got.

It’s been a hell of a week. Operation #10milesaday has been a killer. It’s shocking how quickly you can go from ‘can I run a fast 20 miles?’ to ‘can I complete 10?’

My first ‘run’ was painful and slow, the second with my GPS watch merely quantified *how* slow by the third I’d buggered my tendon, it was stiff and painful, took me the first mile to loosen it up. It wasn’t enough to stop me so I did a third, while on my diet. I only had 300 calories then set out to expend 1,240. I crashed and burned like the Hindenburg. That was dreadful. Approaching 7 miles I was dying, by 8 I had to stop for a few minutes. I shuffled home in a very sorry state.

Since then I’ve been having 500+ calories before I start. So far, so not too bad.

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Getting a grip.

The times they are a changing. Had Wendy’s parents over for 10 days, stopping with us, for Wendy’s niece’s wedding. While I was working nights. And they are deaf. You can imagine how much fun that was.

Added to the usual quotient of their god-squad bigotry.

*in with calm*

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