Wednesday/Thursday/Friday 23rd-25th November 2011 An AGM and starting to think about Christmas

Wednesday I was quite tired today, so interspersed periods of work with periods doing very little. A short sleep in the late afternoon worked wonders. Stopping the morning morphine dose does not seem to have caused me great problems. I got some discomfort from my hip, but no actual pain. If anything, the discomfort from my digestive system was worse. In the afternoon, I participated in a teleconference discussing the future evolution of TOGAF. As always, getting engaged with work provides very positive feelings. The biggest challenge of the day was the Basingstoke Bluefins Swimming Club AGM. This went on for well over 2 hours and the chairs were a little too low for me to be comfortable. By the time it finished, I had had enough. If anyone is interested, the club had a good year. Finances are stable and performance in the pool exceeded targets. In fact performances went beyond the pool as there is a small group of Masters swimmers who swim long distances in open water. The AGM did not finish until almost 10pm, so we resorted to McDonalds for dinner. We are getting in to the habit of watching something on TV just before we go to bed, in an attempt to switch our minds off. Tonight we started watching The West Wing from the beginning. (Sue has seen part of it before .. for me it is a new experience). Thursday I enjoyed a slightly better night's sleep, especially towards the end of the night, but still woke up  very tired. The main task for the day was a drive to Eastleigh to take the Basingstoke Bluefins start box (the thing that goes beep to start a race and sends a signal to the timing system) for repair. Originally, we were told that Swiss Timing was very busy and could not repair it until the New Year. Eventually they agreed to try to fix it this week. It takes around 30 minutes to get to the Swiss Timing office. On the way back we stopped at Costa Coffee for lunch and spent some time planning our approach to Christmas, which we realised is only a month away. We talked about visits to see my dad and Sue's brother and agreed on some presents that we would buy. We also decided to go away for New Years Eve to a hotel that offers dinner, entertainment and fireworks and then to stay the night. Although I was tired, I did manage about 4 hours work at my PC. By the end of the day we had ordered a number of Christmas presents and felt that we were beginning to make progress. However in our daily prayer time, Sue did pray that we would not lose sight of the real meaning of Christmas, celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, among all the commercial preparations. Friday A relatively uneventful day, a lot of which was spent working. Sue and I went to Pizza Hut for dinner.