Week Notes 2

When I said I was going to experiment with week notes on this blog, I didn’t intend that the blog would only consist of week notes. But as we’ll see below, other things have been taking my attention this week and I haven’t felt much like blogging. Hopefully normal service will resume very soon.

Health

This is the big one. A few hours after posting my last week notes I slipped down a small flight of stairs in my house and fell badly. Something went ping in my ankle and it hurt like hell. I shuffled onto my bed where I lay for twenty minutes or so before deciding it wasn’t getting any better and I should probably take myself to A&E.

Four or five hours later I left A&E with a diagnosis of a spiral fracture in my fibula, a temporary cast, crutches and an appointment to go to the fracture clinic on Friday.

I spent the week hobbling about the house on crutches and went back to the hospital on Friday. They replaced the temporary cast with a more permanent one in sexy black fibreglass which I’ll be sporting for the next five weeks or so. They also took another x-ray and confirmed that although there’s definitely a fracture, everything is still in the right place so there’s no need for surgery, pins of any of that nonsense.

Going back to see them again next Friday.

Speaking and Training

The downside of having your leg in a cast is the doctors don’t like you flying – the pressure in the cabin can lead to blood clots. So I’ve had to postpone the trip to Romania. It hasn’t been rescheduled yet, but I hope to get there later in the year.

Counting the weeks, it looks like the cast will be coming off just before my other currently scheduled classes – the public courses for FlossUK and O’Reilly at the end of February. If I don’t heal on schedule then I expect I’ll be giving the classes sitting down.

Incidentally, those lovely people at O’Reilly have arranged to give away one free ticket to each of the two courses. Full details on how to enter are in an advert in the new issue of Linux Format. There are also runners-up prizes of copies of the new camel book.

Writing

Having spent the week sitting around at home, you’d think I would have had time to do plenty of writing. But, to be honest, I just haven’t been in the mood. The most I can report here is that I’ve got an agreement write four more articles for Linux Format over the next few months. I hope to finish the first of these (which isn’t about Perl!) today.

Reading

I have at least managed some reading. I’ve picked up Bruce Tate’s Seven Languages in Seven Weeks which I started reading in August but never quite got to the end of. And I’ve started reading Build Your Own Wicked WordPress Themes because I can see myself getting deeper and deeper into WordPress this year.

Gigs

I had a ticket to see Ani DiFranco at the Union Chapel on Tuesday. But my limited mobility mean that I couldn’t get there. I sold my ticket to the very lovely (and talented) Kal Lavelle. Luckily there are lots of videos of the gig on YouTube so I’ve been able to at least see some of the show.

Film

I had a ticket to see The Iron Lady last Sunday afternoon, but I was in A&E at the time. Later in the week I finally got to see In Bruges, which I’ve been planning to watch for ages. Oh, and one morning when I was sitting on the sofa feeling a bit sorry for myself I watched Sixteen Candles. Can’t beat a bit of Molly Ringwald to cheer youself up.

TV

Sherlock was another ninety minutes of delight, of course. And I was pleased to see that The Good Wife returned to More 4. VirginMedia have half of the fourth series of Big Bang Theory on their video on demand service, so I’ve worked through that and am waiting for them to add the rest. We’re working our way through a DVD boxset of Lost – we’re currently close to the end of series two.

But the big surprise has been American Horror Story. We’ve watched all of the first series. Sure, it’s a clichéd in places, but part of the fun is spotting all the references to horror films. We love it.