Monday/Tuesday 19th/20th December, 2011

Keeping Away from People
 

Today marked the start of the week before Christmas and coincided with my low week in the chemo cycle, where my immune system is most compromised. Apart from an appointment at the hospital on Wednesday for a blood test, my plan for the week was to avoid mixing with other people to minimise the risk of being ill over Christmas.

I had plans for the week, but tiredness might affect them.

On Monday, I wanted to work, to complete the new course materials for Architecting the Enterprise.
On Tuesday it is the same again.
On Wednesday, I have to go to hospital for a blood test, so that the doctors can tell me how many injections of the immuostimulator drug to take.
On Thursday and Friday, we will be preparing for Christmas and other than a potential trip to Savill Garden, I will be staying the house.

Monday

As usual, we were up late. Physically, I was not in top shape, rather tired, very stiff in the legs and suffering from some discomfort in my digestive system. However, these were minor problems and didn't distract me from getting on with some work.

I also embarked on a major new project. I have lots of boxes of bills, bank statements etc. I was also getting hassled by the taxman to complete some outstanding tax returns, which require information from all this paperwork. So, I have embarked on a project to scan and organise all of the paperwork. To complete the task will take quite a while, but will release a lot of space in the house. To enable me to start work on tax returns, I have started from now and will gradually go back further in time. (In the recesses of my filing cabinet, I have bank and credit card statements dating back to the late 1960s).

You may ask, why I haven't thrown them away. The reason is that these statements are in many respects the mpost accurate record of what I have done in my life and enable me to answer questions like "When did we go to Hawaii for the first time".

In the afternoon, I hosted the Architecting the Enterprise weekly teleconference, which also involved preparing meeting notes for the benefit of those on the call and those not on the call.

In the evening, I made the mistake of watching Birmingham playing at Crystal Palace on the TV; a depressing game and a depressing result.

Tuesday

Sue was up relatively early on Tuesday morning to go into town to finish off Christmas shopping and to have her hair done.

I stayed at home and spent much of the day in front of my PC, finishing the work needed for Architecting the Enterprise to launch a revised set of course materials at the beginning of January.

Sue phoned to say that she would not be home for lunch, so I was able to cook myself some tomatoes on toast for lunch (something that Sue is not keen on). Sue got home in the middle of the afternoon, by which time I was too tired to do much more work.