Wednesday/Thursday/Friday 21st-23rd December, 2011

Getting More Exercise
 

Wednesday

Wednesday started with a visit to the hospital for a blood test. I was expecting a phone call from the Basing Unit to tell me how many doses of Lenograstim I needed to stimulate my bone marrow to restore my immune system to a reasonable level.

The weather forecast was not too bad, so Sue and I decided to go to Savill Garden.

I was not feeling very fit, with discomfort in several places. I suspected that one of the problems was a lack of exercise. So, the primary reason for going to Savill Garden was to see whether a walk would help loosen up the muscles in my legs.

It worked! I walked further than I expected and felt better when we finished than when we started. To minimise risk of picking up an infection, I sat at a table in the corner of the restaurant while Sue queued up to get us some soup for lunch.

Another source of discomfort was my digestive system. I began to suspect that one of the laxatives I have been prescribed is causing more problems than it is solving, so for a trial, today I halved the dose.

Back at home, I spent the afternoon in front of my PC, including a teleconference to plan for the next Open Group meeting in San Francisco in February.

By the end of the afternoon, I was pretty tired, so the evening was spent in front of the TV.

I phoned the hospital and left a message, but did not get a phone call back. I decided to start the Lenograstim injections anyway. Looking at the information about it on the web, there did not appear to be any problem if I did not need it.

Thursday

Sue had ordered most of the food for Christmas via the internet through Ocado. We took delivery at 8:30am. The major task for the day was finding somewhere to store everything until we need it. As usual, the amount of food we ordered would not all fit in the cupboards, fridge etc.

I also wanted to get out for a walk to build on the benefit of the visit to Savill Garden. We decided to go for a walk in Eastrop Park (in Basingstoke). The weather was glorious, bright sunshine and mild for the time of the year.

Normally we park near the children's playground. Today we parked at the East end of the park which has been landscaped to encourage wildlife.

When we arrived in Basingstoke in 1973, Eastrop Park had not long been open.

Almost 40 years on, the park is mature; the trees have grown to maturity. The park is a real tribute to the vision (and patience) of the original landscape designers. I don't think Sue and I really appreciated the park until today.

We walked around both ponds, again a little further than I originally intended.

Back home, after lunch I felt so tired that I needed a rest. When I got up out of my chair, I was stiff again, so it was time for more exercise.

I went for a walk to deliver Christmas cards to neighbours and to repost some cards that had been delivered to the wrong address. Again, I walked further than I intended and again, it had the desired effect.

Friday

I got up feeling really well and decided that I needed to keep up the exercise regime.

Immediately after breakfast, Sue and I had a quick excursion to take some cardboard and aluminium foil for recycling to make room for more over Christmas. We ended up at Eastrop Park again.

The weather was very different to Thursday, heavy overcast with rain forecast. Sue had the idea of walking through the park to the town centre to get a coffee and back again. That worked out very well. On the way to town, I "braved" the stepping stones across the stream through the park, something I could not have done just two days previously.

Back at home, I had some fairly unpleasant stomach cramps, which went away once I managed to pass some wind. So I was able to spend the afternoon and some of the evening in front of my PC, putting the finishing touches to a presentation introducing the new version of TOGAF, which I planned to deliver at The Open Group meeting in San Francisco at the beginning of February. The urgency was that this information is needed by Architecting the Enterprise instructors, so that they can deliver the new course materials in February.

Entries for the Basingstoke Bluefins New Year Meet closed at the end of the day. Although all of the detailed work checking entries and reconciling fees is being done by Michelle Egerton, I still had to import the entries from the web site to the meet database. This is largely automated, so did not take a lot of time.

An initial analysis of entries reveals that the event is heavily oversubscribed. We would have to reduce the total amount of swimming by 25%, to fit within the time available, and reduce the number of individual swimmers by about 30%, because of Health and Safety limits on the number of swimmers we can have in the pool hall.

Michelle was going to have to deal with a lot of unhappy people, all of whom will be trying to convince us to make time and space, which we simply can't do.

Just before going to bed, I closed entries. Deciding on who to reject would wait until Saturday morning.