Lockdown Diary - Tuesday 12th January 2021

Work today with the added excitement of a trip to the doctor's surgery to liven it up a bit.

Work is busy at the moment, though I'm finding it quite interesting as I'm having to learning about and understand all my client's systems - what they do, how they fit together etc - and as it's a retailer I can also relate what happens in the real world with what happens in the systems as a consequence. It's very complex, which adds to the interest. I get a great deal of pleasure from understanding complexity, especially where you can relate the real world, macro level view to the micro level.  It's why I enjoy meteorology, it's why I enjoyed being an IBM Mainframe systems programmer and Assembler programming, why I liked debugging and tuning CICS systems and, in a non-work sense, why I find 'Finnegans Wake' endlessly enjoyable and fascinating. Enough of that, back to work and point of sale transactions. (Oh, and I guess that qualifies me as a geek, fully paid-up)

Back to actual work.

Time flies when you are trying to make sense of things - time now to get ready to go to my GP, but not my normal GP nor my normal surgery, which means I need to allow longer to get there.  Fingers crossed.

Back from GP. Apparently I have a hernia, specifically an inguinal hernia. The doctor couldn't see the hernia by examining my nether regions, however when I coughed, she could feel it (much restraint writing this). It's in its early stages, but could get worse.  She's referred me to the hospital for an ultrasound scan and I guess we'll see what happens as a result of that.  In the mean time I should avoid lifting anything heavy, sitting down for too long (she said my job and lockdown aren't helping), which is counter-intuitive, because it only hurts when I'm standing for long periods, or doing any exercise that puts pressure on my abdomen, and quite a few more things I'm too cheesed off to list. Looks like some or all of yoga is out, though I'm going to speak to my yoga teacher and see what she thinks, and most of the exercises I was doing, including weights and press ups, leaving me with walking and upper body and leg exercises that don't involve weight lifting, FFS!  The boys are going to have to pick up some of the things I normally do, which won't make them happy, though I know they will be making sure I don't misbehave. A final nail in the coffin: in the meantime if it gets worse, especially if the pain worsens, I need to call 111 and most likely get sent to A&E. I feel like there's an axe waiting to fall.

Back to work.

The health news has floored me slightly, time passes and now I need to start the dinner. One other change I've been asked to do is to eat earlier, ideally not in the evening - easier said than done.  The best I think I'll be able to manage is to eat earlier in the evening.

Which reminds me, the oven doesn't seem to be working properly, it gets much warmer on the left than the right and seems to be struggling to maintain the desired temperature.  Another job for tomorrow!

Dinner is made and we sit down together to watch the second episode of 'Mr. Robot', which is - so far, at least - about hackers / hacking in the US. It's one of those series where it's hard to see where the plot is going to go, which is a good start.

Still trawling through 'best of' music lists for last year and came across something rather wonderful, from a band called Mourning [A] BLKstar and their album 'Circles'.  This is 'If I Can If I May'

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