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657 days ago
A couple of days ago I mentioned that the future might be looking a little rosier, and indeed at this juncture it certainly seems that way! M has been swapping emails and texts and the tone has improved markedly. Needless to say, I feel much better about life all-together. I've been asked by my priest to get involved with the running of the Alpha course, with a view to taking over the leadership along with another lady (Bev) who is also quite deeply involved in the church. I agreed although I feel quite apprehensive about it because my strengths are not administrative! Anyway, I've decided to give it a go and try my best to help further God's kingdom. The leadership of our church are heading out for a retreat this weekend, and I'm in charge of the music. So far I've got exactly nowhere in choosing the songs, and I just know I'm going to blink a few times and discover that it's Friday! I bet the weekend will be a high point for me, but I can't say I ...
661 days ago
What it is to live in Africa ... If you live somewhere other than Africa, you've probably not experienced much in the way of power outages. South Africa is currently suffering from a combination of reasonably rapid economic growth, coupled with bad planning at high levels of government. Our new (well new-ish by now) government was so eager to get rid of white faces in para-statals that they chased away most of the experienced engineers - especially in one particular company known as Eskom. Eskom is our one and only power utility, and they have an absolute monopoly. With the influx of new blood during the ousting of the old guard, empires were on the make, and the main focus was cost containment with a view to garnering fat bonuses for the top executives. Most of this cost saving was achieved by cutting capital expenditure - in english: "These fools haven't built a new power station since 1994!" So here we are in 2008 with an ...
662 days ago
I went to visit my dentist yesterday. He did a filling about eight months ago which "caved in" after a couple of months. I kept meaning to go back, but you know how it is: There's always something else more important, and visiting any health-care practitioner involves taking time off work. Anyway, he decided to make use of the opportunity to take a complete set of x-rays and do something called a "scale and polish" (I think) - can't remember the exact term he used. The filling turned out to be quite a major job because he needed to make it thicker and take a little off the top molar to try and reduce the heaviness of my bite. He did a lot of stuff in there and whilst I couldn't feel anything, I just knew it was going to ache later! Sure enough, my jaw had a throbbing ache later that evening, and I was glad that I didn't have to go out anywhere! The most irriating thing about it all is that I have to avoid pressure on the amalgam ...
666 days ago
I had a pretty dark weekend, mostly because I was missing a certain lady terribly, but also because I was pretty tired. (Events last week contrived to rob me of some much-needed sleep.) Anyway, on Saturday I finally made it out of bed around 9:30, and then took until about eleven to get out and about. Feeling like doing nothing at all, but needing to get out of the house I headed over to my folks' place and spent a few hours with them. My mother is an angel, and she smeared on the sympathy nice and thick - just the way I need it :-) Still, even the ministrations of my dear-sweet mother were not enough to keep the blues away for more than a few hours. I finished Saturday curled up on my bed with two "chick flicks," hoping to ease my own pain with someone else's. It worked to a degree and I felt quite a lot better on Sunday. There was decent cricket on the TV so I settled down to a day of being a couch pototoe! True to form though, sitting ...
670 days ago
Some days start badly and get worse. Today was such a day. It started when I attempted to gain access to a laptop I've been fixing up for a friend who needs one. After trying various options I decided that I was going to have to reinstall windows, so I settled down to the long task. That's when the laptop decided that it had had enough of life, and gave up the ghost! One minute it was doing its thing, the next it was dead. Stone dead. From there things just got worse. The users decided that today they would spend the day submitting tasks for us programmers to complete. I would not be much surprised if that's all they did today, because the list of tasks has grown to an alarming degree. Of course completing the actual tasks became more difficult today as well, because things that normally work out relatively simply decided that today they were going to "dig their heals in." Mind you, it's probably not as bad as it seems: Much ...
