blogger support replied on my mail with the ingenious idea to create a second blog and just link to that. i will give it a go, and soon my did wanna do list would be published. hopefully it would give me some motivation towards a better future?

arrived at the hospital early enough to make sure everything is in order and have time to fill in the necessary forms. i forgot the damn referral form. that yellow piece of paper that originally diagnosed me with arthritis. it was still on my table, at work. the last place i wanted to go back to, not that i had the time anyway.

at the ortho-guys reception it was simple, she said it would be fine if i just fax it to them in the morning. x-rays was another issue. after about fifteen minutes of pretending that there is no issue they decided to bend the rules for me, and have me take it to them in morning.

the tail of the tale, the heck of it or as some may know it: the bottom line came down to them not being able to do anything for me. the doc tried to explain to me what is wrong, but says that nothing can be done for me at the moment, apart from taking an inflammatory every night, and walking with a walking stick or knee support device. i immediately got the image of forest gumps support structures in my head. will have to see about that one.

evening came and i harbored a slight feeling of irritation somewhere inside me. i still have no idea why.

been talking a lot about the prospective project. the photographers app. i have decided to give it the full go ahead today, as i really need the money for that camera. this was all initiated by the sudden realization that i won't be able to generate money with a camera i don't have. spending time learning more about lighting using slow shutter speeds. also fooled around a bit with some more experimental pictures. this one was taken with the shutter exposed for thirty seconds. the idea was to have the water lines more visible, but unfortunately, there was not enough water available.

i eventually encouraged myself enough to format my home pc. it would be great to have everything in order again, like after cleaning the house. so peaceful, so calm, so relaxing. a new start, first day of a new school year, waking up in a new town, day after a great first date kind of feeling settles in slowly.

suddenly i am interrupted by my phone going wild trying to remind me of my doctors appointment tomorrow afternoon. as if it almost forgot about it and now just woke up realizing i might already be late. i am kind of excited to go, i have not been in a hospital like place in ages. hope to bring some pics.

decided to mail blogger support today about adding another static page to the blog. hope it is possible, i don't like hosting one site on multiple servers.

weekends. i live for them. more than most people. usually when talking about the ever so often discussed topic of what you will do when winning fifty million bucks, i say that i would just keep on working as normal. to everyone i said that: i lied. to be honest, after thinking about it for a while, i would quit my job as soon as the money has been verified in my bank account. i would come in to work every now and then, but for no other reason than to remind myself of why i am not working.

however, i would not sit at home all day.

had a great weekend. did some experimental photography on saturday night, using slow shutterspeeds of down to thrity seconds. also watched the rugby, believe it or not. the most disturbing factor was that towards the end of the game i actually started enjoying it. it brought back some memories from a bygone era, a time in my life that went by carefree. or rather carefree looking back now, then it was a whole different ball game.

we did the usual, my parents had a braai in the street, with all the neighbours there. i missed the fairly large amount of children running around, doing whatever it is they feel would not be allowed if they were seen by the responsible adults. who, by themselves were too occupied painting bulls and south african flags in the roads, and waving traffic off in order to let the paint dry.

grand prix came to an end this weekend. i unfortunately fell asleep around lap thirty seven. (oh, about the pole, there was a bird on it, but when i took the photo it had already flown away)

dvd shop opened up at the new shopping centre, as well as a funky camera shop called universal image.

i got myself into spinning again tonight. not really feeling up to it, but i am sure it would be most enjoyable when class starts. again my bike helmet, gloves and no-one-knows me attitude would accompany me, and keep me motivated right to the end. will report back tomorrow.

got to work, followed the usual ritual. messenger. outlook. axa.. and then suddenly, i see it. there in my inbox, an e-mail from the scott murphy. it really made my day. reply came a bit late though, about five months, but still.

was bothered by something i forgot about yesterday afternoon, still don't know what it was though.

i sent an email to the very discouraged she, alana. from the link. it got me slightly remotivated though.

i spent a few hours online last night getting some training on the atc. i have not been online in a while. i sucked, the training was good though. i dunno why i get all nervous online but feels fine in the real world. i guess pilot side is waaay easier. just acknowledge and do. nod your head and agree.

with a new found respect for beautifull women, i walked out of spinning class last night. sweat dripping from the tip of my nose, even my jawbone. i was wrong in trying to prove a point to my sister. thinking i would out run her six love with my cycling experience. spinning is like an earthly hell. with the head slave master sitting, and too often standing on his own device of torture. suffering to sound of music.

i will do it again, i think to myself. easy to think that the morning after. just as easy as women deciding to have another child. the pain agony gets blocked out by the human mind. funny we are.


last week they had an eye cataract removal marathon at the local hospital. they attempted to surgicaly remove over one hundred cataracts from patients eyes. i don't know if they made it, but it got me wondering if i would really trust someone so close to my eyes that are trying to work as fast as possible. especially during the last dash to the end.

joined the two twenty kilmeter cycling routes to form on 30 kilometer route. i know, the maths don't add up. nearly killed myself trying to finish with an average above 20k's per hour. it never happened and i had to settle for 19.9 - still good fun though. if only i worked as hard to get my average up when i was at school, life might have been different now. again, getting an above twenty average was not so hard at school

saturday morning a major cleanup operation was started and i cheerfully started in the master bedroom. the master bedroom is only the master bedroom because that is where i sleep. the master. it is actually no bigger than the other bedroom as with most m&t upper class mass production housing. upper class my ass.

little progress was made restoring the relationship between me and klip, my leopard tortoise when i came to his rescue after getting stuck trying to get out of the garden. as i put him down he started running, with his head still retracted he wall stoppped his daring escape. he extended his head, looked back at the half meter that he just covered. he had that expression on his face of relief, thinking that he lost me while running like a headless rock.

to try and invest in the progress made between us, i also put in some effort in his little hideout, trying to make him feel a bit safer.

this got me into the mood to do a little garden work. i glanced at the heap of rocks i raked up in the garden and left there in the corner, with the best intension to get rid of it the comming weekend. it never happened, actually, it never happened twice. i did not feel like doing it this weekend either, so i built a subgarden, garden-in-garden on top of it. chucked in two small palms, they will have to do until i find something better.

the afternoon it was me and the garage, and after i hosed it out, i decided to bolt hooks into the wall for the bicycles. it was less successfull than expected, and i had to go back to the hardware store to buy pollyfilla and coverup first three attempts.

sleep walking sexcapades was the title of a backpage article on news24 today. according to the good doctor there is a phenomena of people having sex with strangers in their sleep. that is what i thought too. anyway, just wanted to mention it, incase this ever happens to me, everyone knows that i am sick, not mentally. the dream felt so real.

have been spending more work on the todo list. this week really went past faster than a minibus taxi through ventersdorp. funny enough, friday is almost here and i do not feel as excited as i should. as with most things in life i am not really sure why this is, and i lack the enthusiasm to try and reason with myself. this happens all too often these days.

completely forgot about the stocks i bought on student village monday. trying to log in proved quite a challenge as my usual password would not grant me anything more than the invalid password message. luckily i remembered my secret question and answer, and although my poodle have passed away quite a few years ago, she has helped me from the grave to regain access. since monday i have made 2,721.00 rand. that same feeling i get when packing away a monopoly game suddenly fills my chest. that saddening feeling of futile wishing that this was real money.

head ache.

it is all overcast and rainy here today. my car window still does not close properly and this caused a damp kind of wet upholstery smell in my car. i immediately picked up the stench when i got into my car to leave for lunch and again halfway through, after i breathed fresh air for a while. the window needs to be fixed. asap.

most of last night was spent trying to salvage some workable parts from a piece of junk metal that someone used to call a state of the art personal computer. parts dating back to 1989, which in dog years would be 70 years ago, and in tech years probably closer to the time moses' mom mirriam decided to build him that funky little basket boat. i don't know why people still try and fool around with stuff like that. pc's aren't that expensive anymore, and even if it is just outside your budget, it will be worth the frustrations saved.

the builders next door have finally put a number on their little shack. hopefully their mail will come through now.

looks like the clouds are slowly starting to dissolve. blue patches are appearing here and there. i don't mind if it rains like this, just nothing more than two or three days at once, and prefferably not over weekends. the rain did do most people good though, and i guess it would have a positive impact on the road rage factor. i'd bet the temperatures in sa is a primary cause of road rage. apart from the minibus taxi risk your life public transport system.

left is right and right is wrong

also phoned the orthopedic surgeon therapist guy to make an appointment. got it set for 27 octoboer at two thirty. i have deciphered the doc's handwriting and can now report that i have been diagnosed with arthritis. getting old before my time i guess. i have never been a big fan of knee surgery, or arthritis for that matter. or any disease or anomally for that same matter.

ah, the first good day in ages. went to the doc in lunch, after postponing the visit every week for the last two years. he did not know what was wrong with me. referred me to a orthopedic therapist. i shall go and find answers there he said.



traffic was hectic this morning because of some cyclist that got ran over by some not so much paying attention motorist. this happens more often these days and surprisingly enough people are still cycling. i guess it has to do with that whole "it will never happen to me" syndrome. either that or the fact that motorists cant help targetting those egg shaped cycling helmets. the only thing worse than those helmets are the men in tights problem.

it just started raining, which reminds me that i promised myself i would fix my car window before the rain season.

i deposited my tax money today. now i am slightly less in debt.

the active immigration program, aka the i want out project is now in full swing. during the next few weeks i will be doing extensive research on job opportunities, living costs and where the local mcdonalds outlet is located. i will in the meantime try and pronounce all english words with the strange tounge and lips position the american and canadian people use in sacramento and vancouver respectively.

a headache slowly approaching from my upper jaw brings a high rate of deterioration to the forecasted amount of happiness in the day. mondays. i have said so much about mondays in the past that if, somehow, it could be of any value on my cv, i would vertainly excel in the pro-longed weekend sector. a few interesting facts about weekends. all mondays are equally seperated by six other days of more or less exactly equal duration. in a good year, they will occur fifty one times, and of that fifty one, an impressive 89.4 percent will not be welcome, enjoyed or wished to have again. days following mondays increase in popularity up to friday where it reaches a climax and kind of stays on that level until late sunday afternoon.

certain groups of people start their weeks on a sunday. personaly i have never seen the use of this, as it only tears your precious weekend in half. on the other hand it might be nice to have two weekends every week, even if they just last one day.

this weekend, like many others, was spent doing anything related to anything else, not relating to work. saturday morning brought it's air share of south african customer service, but at least after a small rant my car seems fine. apart from the missfire problem that suddenly arose on saturday morning.

sunday morning i went cycling, and discovered a new route. it would be possible to join this with another route to form a magnificent 40 kilometre route, with morethan 90% dirt roads. i also went to check on the cache, and to my surprise i learnt this mornaing that someone was there after me.

headache still there, but being ignored by me. i am still not quite sure whether the weekend was a success. it feels like i might have missed something while living it.

i was thinking about creating a list of things i have experienced, and things i still want to do.

money can't buy happiness. but money can buy things that would make you happy. even love. my tent, my hiking shoes, my backpack, a canon 20d, nice range of lenses and accessories, a toyota rangerover, a cessna 150 with floats, decent laptop with sattelite connection and my hat. i am sure i would be one of the happiest people living on this planet. the knowing in the back of your mind that you have an endless supply of money vertainly would ease the mind aswell.

watching the national geographic special on their photographers got me all pshyced up again. i remember a time where becomming a photographer for them was the only thing i ever wanted to do. until that autumn afternoon back in 1989 when dad said he wanted to buy a computer. that and the discovery of the fairer sex, although, by then i was probably already the horny bastard i grew up to be.

i have been negleting the journal the last couple of days due to a major increase in workload, and nothing interesting happening here. got this one in lunch yesterday. taking a nap next to the road at the local gas station, or garage as they call it here. i guess a truck broke broke down or sumtin.

just got a phone call from the notorious stylish kitchens again. "unfortunately we will not be able to make the appointment with you today, we have new buildings that has work to be done on today". so being caught completely off guard and totally surprised that for the first time they actually phoned to cancel and did not leave it to me to make the deduction that they aren't coming anymore, i say it is ok, we can move it to next week.

it took the thought roughly sixty to eighty seconds to find something in my mind to settle down with before i phoned them back. upon informing them that i am sorry, but they would have to come today i was told that it would be impossible as their people wont even be in the vicinity. so again this thought had to go through the same process of finding something to settle down with in my head. it never did though. i started explaining with enthusiasm that my appointment has been canceled more than three times and postponed once, leaving me sitting at home with finger in my arse. after getting to the conclusion of my remarkable story about wonderful experiences with stylish kitchens, and why i am not packing everything back into the cupboard just to pack it out again, she said that it is fine, they will be at my place as was originally planned.

the appointment was for half past one, and when no one was there by ten to two, i phoned them again, half way through yet another enthusiastic telephone conversation with ellen, i realised that although she can do something about it, she is not the person i should be talking to. i abruptly stopped, and asked her to put me through to someone who would loose money if they did not do business. a while later ettienne was on the line. upon asking him what his position at the company was, he informed me that he was the senior manager. how true that is, i don't really care. after i worked him through my weeks of misery and discontentment with his company he tried thinking of excuses. the pathetic reasons did not impress me. an hour later my cupboard was fixed. now, why did it take so much for them to please a customer?

on a lighter note i finished space quest ii, and will start its sequel pirates of pestulon some time today. at the moment my primary concern is survival and i need to find some food. i also thought it nice to get my car steam cleaned as a stranger asked me whether i live on a farm. i certainly hope cleaning the engine wont unplug the bits of dirt that presently do the miraculous job of covering all the small leaks.

alex sent me a url of a scheduled public pillow fight they had in london. i will be sure to post the photo's if he got any. the idea was to show up at a designated spot and at exactly five past five pull out a pillow from your bag and start beating the enemy. you are not allowed to attack anyone without a pillow, unless they want it.

there is something seriously wrong with my car, an i have decided to take it back to menlyn cv and autoglass to give them a piece of my mind. it would be an old piece, one that i do not use as often anymore.

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.

i spent some time on the bulkmailer again today. the anomaly of mail being sent almost close to perfect on my machine and almost close to not perfect at all on the clients machine have been found to be a connection type problem. for some reason it would not work with a dialup connection. and since the telkom adsl has been the latest craze for south african companies, it renders most of the clients problematic. one of the two worthwhile things they have done in the last couple of years. the other being the tower decorations they put up last week.

i will continue on my quest to make this application fail proof. i will also continue on my quest to finish all the space quests in sequence.

had my spare tyre fixed in lunch today.

the painfully enjoyable weekend came to an abrupt end this morning, as every other weekend, being painfully enjoyable or not. with an overwhelming desire to stay in the horizontal state of relaxation for just another few minutes, i force myself into the shower. adjusting the taps to avoid any water warmer than 37C saving myself from feeling the sunburn feeling all over over again. i actually got off well, just missed a few spots on my arms, which have now been declared as disaster areas, and kept clear from any friction.

the show was put on the road utilising rob's landy. a lovely little vehicle. getting there just before dark we almost managed to set up base camp before sunset. almost. a fire is started and we started talking crap for about an hour, then some more for another hours or two, before discussing the essence of ones left eye. for supper we had the best blue bull steak i ever ate, and between the three of us the two kg steak stood little chance.

early next morning rob had to depart back to the factory as there was work to be done. it got me thinking. there was absolutely no way i would go back to work on a saturday morning voluntarily. i would however, having been offered the job of test pilot. putting myself in his shoes, i would not have known anything like a weekend.

with just the two of us left there we were skiing for probably most of the day. we met up with a few drunken students that have a brilliantly home built, well, floating device. we towed them back to their campsite after their engine had given up, and their swimming were not helping them. at all. in the process the ship took a bit of a dip due to weight and balance miss calculations and they lost their precious and rather expensive braai to the depths of the rust de winter damn. waiting to be recovered by puzzled geologists in ages to some.

saturday late afternoon it was decided that we would cut the weekend short, being in pain, and being dropped by almost everyone except the great jf, whos car broke down halfway there, and was on his way to be towed back home to fetch another car. we were too sore to ski the next day and thought we'd go pick up some people and go for drinks at my place. it proved to be great fun, up to and including me laying my head to rest on my own beloved pillow.

with sore muscles and dreams of my knees hitting the handlebar while i'm cycling i got up, and went cycling. the rest is life as you know it. i wanted to end this entry with an exerpt from a mail that i sent the webmaster of www.weathersa.co.za about adding a auto sign in feature on the site, but due my lack of overall concentration at work, i lost it.

aaah, wait, here it is.

I really enjoy the cute litte iconic display of the current and forecasted weather. I also do not mind registering to view forecasts in excess of 2 days but I do not however wish to log in everytime. Is there anyway you could add a "sign me in automaticly" or a "Remember me" checkbox, that would send me a nice little cookie containing my username and password so that i do not need to type it in everytime. You are more than welcome to adjust the caption of this checkbox to whatever you like, these are just sugguestions.

Thanx for the good service, and the great weather we had the last couple of days.

will be sure to post any reply i get, apart from the automated one i just received, statingthat they are looking into it.

having the opportunity to catch a lift with a guy going to the menlyn area, i phone the company working on my car. he said it would be fixed at ten, still another twelve minutes to go. they are still busy with it. no problem. just before eleven my phone rings, hidden caller id, it is the guy from the workshop, they are done with the car but it still needs to be sent for wheel alignment. will it be done before one?

i got to work early today, with the idea of leaving early in my head. i did not inform my boss about my intentions, not sure why, i am sure he wont have a problem with it, he never does. still, i feel that i should.

can't wait to just get to the place, pitch my tent and start to actively relax. i have not been water skiing in about a year, also not been climbing as much as the last time i went skiing. already preparing myself mentally for the large volumes of lactic acid that would without a doubt take its toll on me after the weekend. it still excites me.

let's hope this one is dropless.