Off to climb a mountain

I have packed, I have printed route maps and I have updated the iPod with the latest podcasts. I am now ready for my trip to North Wales to climb Snowdon.

With any luck, by this time on Friday I will be sitting in the hotel bar marvelling at how wonderful the climb was

See you all on Sunday!

The week in brief

The best thing about this week is that it’s Friday and the work week is officially over. Yes, it’s been like that.

The other good thing is that I only have two weeks left as an employed person with my current company. Except that I still have to get through the next two weeks. Thankfully a colleague is organising my leaving do for my last day so my boss should be letting me leave at a sensible time that day. I suspect that my colleague will hurt him if I miss my own leaving do!

The other good thing is that I am not at work Thursday and Friday next week. The bad thing is that I am climbing Snowdon and really don’t feel like I’ve had enough training.

Still, I have a lovely new toy (Canon Powershot A470 - gorgeous and dinky) so it’s not all bad.

This weekend is manic like woah, but most of it should be fun

In other news, Doctor Who appears to be on track for being the highest rated show of the week. Yes, at its peak more people watched the Wimbledon final (including yours truly), but the average across the show was still higher than the average Wimbledon audience. I don’t think DW has ever been number 1 for the week, even in its heyday, so I’m feeling really quite pleased.

Also, fandom is busy dissecting it and tearing itself apart, which is always fun to watch. Things will settle down soon, but it has been a fun couple of weeks to be a Doctor Who fan. The daily newsletter at who_daily has had to put the list of reaction posts into multiple entries due to the sheer volume. That says everything about those last two episodes, I feel.

Oddly, I apparently wrote a “more serious and indepth” review of the last episode than someone else. At least that’s what the pingback says. I don’t think anyone has ever used those words in the context of me before

Doctor Who 4.13: Journey’s End

I am still more than a little in shock, so I can only hope that what follows is coherent.

All systems are go!

Today I had my echo cardiogram to make sure that my heart is functioning correctly. I set out very early because the traffic around here usually means that you’ll either arrive hideously early to town or incredibly late.

I went for the hideously early option and spent a pleasant half hour sitting outside with a caramel latte before walking up to the hospital.

Usually my appointments at that hospital are in the orthopaedic outpatients department, which isn’t a part of the hospital that I ever visited as a child. My orthopaedic guy was based at a different hospital. However, I spent a lot of time in the vision and audio section of the hospital getting my sight and hearing checked and visiting the ENT guy. It turns out that the cardiology investigations department is right next to that part so I walked through some very familiar corridors and waiting rooms.

Oddly, I find that part of the hospital comforting and familiar. I find most hospitals quite intimidating and nerve-inducing, I suspect because they’re usually associated with discomfort and bad things. Even the A and E department, familiar as it is, hasn’t got the best associations because I was always there with some injury or other. But up in that part of the hospital, with the big windows, sunlit waiting room and calm bustle, it was comforting and I felt quite happy.

The actual scan wasn’t fun, but the news is good. My tiny murmur is nothing. There are no defects, it’s beating strongly and the valves are all clean and normal. Phew!

The technician knew about EDS, knew why there was a risk and was very comforting. She said that she would have told me immediately if there was anything there. I’m a happy girl now. Most importantly, there is no reason for me not to fly or move to Canada. There had been a tiny, illogical part of me that was afraid they’d find something and stop me going. Knowing that everything is fine is a huge weight off. Yay!

I celebrated by nipping into HMV on my way back to the car. Dirty Dancing was on sale on DVD and having discovered to my horror that I don’t have it when I was packing (it’s my favourite movie and I didn’t upgrade from video for some reason) I couldn’t resist. Heh. Now I’m working from home for the rest of the day and I’m feeling quite content.

Except my remote server for work has just gone down. Gah!

Doctor Who 4.12: The Stolen Earth

Multiple spoilers beneath the cut. Trust me, you don’t want to peek if you haven’t seen the episode yet!

No DW for me yet

I had family round yesterday for the first good-bye party and so I couldn’t watch Doctor Who. Unfortunately, my parents have been busy all day today and Da will possibly kill me if I watch without him, so I still haven’t seen DW.

Hence I am hiding from the Internet.

Instead I am writing and trying to pretend that I’m not really impatient.

I may have also watched Parting of the Ways from season 1 in preperation for the DW season finale. I have Army of Ghosts/Doomsday downloaded to watch in the week, too.

This morning I did not go shooting because my neck and shoulder were playing up. This turned out to be a wise decision because I partially dislocated my shoulder during my shower. The same shoulder that is playing up. Yuck. So it’s now rather stiff and sore. I did go out for a long walk, which isn’t that great a plan post-partial dislocation and ended up calling Da to fetch me when it started raining on me half a mile from the end of the walk. I’ve spent most of the afternoon writing with breaks for watching TV and reading, which is fun.

I’m not impatient, really, but where is everyone? I want to watch Doctor Who!

The BIG announcement

There is something that I have been keeping from you. One might even go so far as to say that I’ve been lying at times about something. It’s something huge in my life but I’ve not been able to tell anyone about it.

Well, I made the big announcement to my department at work yesterday so I am now free to talk openly on here about it. With several colleagues knowing about this blog, I would have been breaking my word to Da Boss to breathe a word of it here.

So here it is:

In six weeks from today, on 9th August, I will be flying to Canada and never returning. That’s right, my emigration is finally upon us. I will be leaving my current work place on 25th July so there will be a couple of weeks for me to potter about, see people and generally do the gracious exit thing. Then I fly out, hope that the Embassy has been right all those times that I contacted them to check my paperwork was OK for emigrating, and with any luck I will be installed as a Canadian resident by that evening.

It’s so exciting.

It’s so terrifying.

I’ve unlocked some journal entries relating to the move that I had marked as private. It sounds odd to post things privately, but I wanted to have a record of the process even if I had to keep them secret for a few weeks. You can now read all about the trauma of packing up all my belongings and putting them on a ship, the stress and exhaustion and relief when it was finally all done. For anyone who remembers how shattered I was a couple of weeks ago, that was why! I will be posting the photos in my Flickr tomorrow.

It’s going to be such a relief not hiding all of this. And best of all, the next time a colleague says “so when are you planning to move?” I can say “Well, 9th August sounds good!” rather than the usual vague hedging.

Today I am having the first family good-bye party. This one is with my father’s family because several of my cousins are jetting off to foreign climes for uni and gap years so we had to do that one early. It’s going to be fun! I went shopping in the morning with mum for food and then let her tote it all home in the car while I walked, 3 miles and it’s mostly uphill. Not as long as previous Snowdon training walks, but at least it’s a bit of walking that I wouldn’t otherwise have had. This is shaping up to be a busy weekend!

Now I must go and make cheesy herb bread. Family arrives in two hours and I feel the need to be pretty and clean before they get here.

Archery and state of me

I have been shooting two nights in a row. I went along on Wednesday because I knew there was a competition last night that I probably wouldn’t be able to get to. Shot 50 yards for only the second time and actually managed it this time, only missing 3 out of 48 arrows. The main difference, I think, is that I have wound my limbs up 1 pound sice the last time. That extra power got me to 50 comfortably.

While I was there, various club members worked on me about trying to make it to the Chairman’s Shoot last night. This is a competition within the club designed to give the novices some experience at competition shooting rules without the stress of a real tournament. I was promised that we would be shooting a Warwick (four dozen arrows) so it wouldn’t be a late night and I said that I’d try.

So yesterday I bought a sandwich in work coffee shop, high-tailed it out of the office as early as possible and stopped along the way to eat my sandwich to tide me over until supper. After all, it was only going to be a Warwick. I’d certainly be home before 9pm.

Hmmm.

It was a National (6 dozen arrows) with lots of novices. Hence lots of lost arrows and scoring problems. Don’t get me wrong, it really was fun and I’m proud of my score on a Short National. But it was loooong. I finally trundled home at 10pm. The last two ends were shot in lighting conditions best described as poor. I had to eat something when I got home so I had some beans on toast (light, yet slightly filling) but on reflection it was a bad idea to eat and to stay up to let it settle.

This morning, my IBS was playing up so much that I had to take my anti-spasmodics to get out of the door. Bleh. Feeling much better now that the medication has kicked in, but incredibly tired. And I have a packed weekend ahead.

The good thing is that I’m going out for lunch with some girls from work so there was no need to construct lunch before I left. I’d never have made it otherwise. I have a plan to fall into bed the moment I get home tonight.

Next time, I need to remember that nothing is ever ‘quick’ in archery so I really shouldn’t attempt to do any kind of post-work competition!

Doctor Who 4.11: Turn Left

Spoilers beneath the cut:

Doctor Who 4.9 and 4.10: Forest of the Dead and Midnight

There are lots of spoilers for both episodes below, so they’re kindly hidden from innocent eyes beneath a cut.