Checking in to murder rehab!

Yay, Torchwood’s back!

Saw the start of series 3 tonight, and am now eagerly waiting for ep2 to be broadcast.
It feels weird saying this, but Torchwood S03E01 had a certain Doctor Who quality to it. Exciting to the end!

While I’d much rather have the Doc specials run now rather than late in December, I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with Cpt. Jack Harkness. I hear exploding may be somewhat painful.

Tomorrow is time for rehab (no. not murder rehab!) again, and after that I’m going to call up my handler at Försäkringskassan to inquire about “Jobbträning”, i.e. being able to work less than 25% on the government dime.
On the other hand, I’d prefer being back 25-50% for real ASAP, but oh well.

Song of the day: Default – Deny.

Sweaty summery goodness

2:30am on a Thursday.

Tried going to bed around midnight. No such luck.

Sweden’s biggest newspaper claimed the midnight temperature was around 10 degrees celcius — they were wrong.
In reality, it was more like 20c, and we’re now down to 15.

The sun goes up in an hour, as does the temperature.

Given that AC systems are incredibly unheard of in Sweden, this presents a slight problem in that sleeping when it’s warm/hot outside is difficult. How difficult? Three liters of icewater and I’m still sweating. That’s how difficult!

I’m not complaining though! Tomorrow (well, in a few hours) we’ll have 30c in the shade, so somewhere between 35 and 40 in the sun.

Another month of sickleave

Right.

Today I went to see my doc again, and we came to the conclusion that I need to recover more before I go back to work.
Last week I tried attending one of our regular company meetings, but barely lasted an hour (the meeting was three hours).

In other words, I can’t even work 25% yet.

I have two or three weeks left of physio now, and after that I need to start going to a gym or so, as apparently da gubbamint doesn’t want to pay for me to get healthy.

The reasoning is something like:

• Before the surgery, I was ill
• After the surgery, I was recovered (lol)
• Invasive surgery gets three months of rehab

I’d like going to the same place as I’ve gone so far as it’s close and convenient. We’ll see, maybe I’ll get a summer gym card there.
Personally, I’d consider my rehab to be roughly 50% done (hey, I was bedridden 24/7 for three months straight, and close enough t 24/7 the four preceding months.. recovering from that takes time!).

Anyway, the song-of the day is: Tsunami Bomb – T.B. vs. The Monster

Awesomeness!

Yesterday’s BBQ was excellent, and the food was simply brilliant.
Definitely going to use Taylors’ for future BBQ supplies.

One thing that wasn’t excellent was me waking up at 4am this morning.

It’s weird, but I simply can’t sleep when I’m hungover, no matter how much I try.
It’s my curse.

To make matters worse, every decent brunch place around here opens at twelve, so I had eight hours to kill before I could cure my hangover.

Eventually, I managed to walk down to Sickla and the always-good Texas Burger Co. there.
Did I mention it’s 25 degrees in the shade, probably around 35 in the sun?

God, I love summer time.

BBQ Time!

Today is an epic day!
When I woke up around early o’clock, it was already 18 degrees outside.

Right now, it’s probably 30-ish in the sun.

What does this mean? It means it’s BBQ time!
Went by Tayors and Jones to pick up some sausages (real ones; not the flour & potato flake sausages  we’re so used to in Sweden, but real proper 80% meat ones!), and now I have to head off to my uncle’s place.

Perfect weather, beer & bbq.
Does it get any better?

p.s., Song of the day is: Blindside – Shekina.

I’m Gonna Be (7 miles)

Ah, another lovely overcast day.

I set out to meet my cousin around lunch today.
After consuming our very healthy and nutritious food, we headed off for what would turn out to be a walk of epic proportions.

Most of the time, Stockholm feels like a very small city (and indeed, it is), but there are a few areas that lay off the beaten path, so to speak. We walked from the CBD over to the university and back into town.

Roughly 11 kilometers, which isn’t necessarily the easiest thing to do with a somewhat messed up back.
At the very least, it feels like a pretty decent accomplishment, so this is me, patting myself on the back.

Edit: that’s like, 21 miles (34km in a week!)

In the spirit of epic accomplishments, the song of the day is The Proclaimers – I’m Gonna Be (500 miles).

I love rehab

You know, for someone who rarely does something which could be considered strenuous (the odd server move, helping someone move etc. might count, but it’s not too often!), I find myself loving my rehab sessions a lot.

Afterwards, that is.

When I woke up this morning, I didn’t quite feel like going, but since it’s kind of an important part of my recovery, I of course made my way there and started my workout routine.

I did manage to bump a few exercises up to more sets or more weights, exhausting myself completely.. but I finished all my sets, and I felt good afterwards.

In the beginning I used to be knocked out for the rest of the day (often catching a few hours of sleep in the afternoon and evening), but today I’ve been pretty OK, though I did catch a brief nap around 4pm. On the other hand, I had increased my workout, and had spent a while cleaning my apartment (ugh!) on an empty stomach.

I’d venture a guess saying the empty stomach, more than anything, was what killed me.

At least I’m looking forward to Monday’s rehab session, and I’ll see about doing 20 laps in the pool on Friday.
Reminder to self: While it’s good that you eat breakfast before exercise, don’t forget about lunch

Getting back to work

Right now I’m on sick-leave until June 4th, after which my doc wants me to start working 25%.
Can’t wait, though I think she may be a bit too optimistic

Basically, sitting or standing for more than a few minutes messes with my spine, and that doesn’t fix itself unless I can lay down flat and stretch for a while.

Either way, I’ll try to go to the monthly company meeting etc. to see some familiar faces and see what my body can take.
I don’t particularly feel like spending my vacation days when each day is a mere two hours.. we’ll see what happens, hopefully two hours isn’t a problem, and anything that helps me get back to work 100% is a great thing.
I’m simply way too bored with my apartment as it is!

On that note, my cellphone just beeped, informing me that it’s 9am and I should be getting up and prepare for rehab.
I’m sorely tempted to lay in bed until the last minute, but I know what happens if I try exercising without having had breakfast first

In other words, I’m outtahere!
p.s., Song of the day: Chevelle – Closure

Bloody foreigners!

Like I mentioned yesterday, my Aussie relatives will be coming over soon.
By soon, of course, I mean a few weeks. Less than fifty days until they arrive!

Now, while it’s true that I’ve been over to Australia twice (2002/2003, 2007/2008), most of the family hasn’t seen them for.. 20 years. Most exciting will be the chance for grandma and her sister to reunite, possibly for the last time.

As it is, they’ll be here for two months (July, August), and we’re trying to figure out what to do with them — no easy task!
While they should probably have a week or so to recover from the jetlag (80 year old woman flying for 30 hours straight, landing at 6am? Good luck! Hell, I barely survived that without serious jetlag!), and everyone in the family wanting ‘em to come over for food at least once, I have a feeling they’ll spend the majority of the time with the oldies (Grandma, great-aunt) to visit distant friends and family.

Other than that, I’m hoping they’ll get at least a week out in Landfjärden where one of my uncles and his family live. It’s a great outdoors place, and I have a gut feeling there’d be BBQ every day of the week (yum!).

I’ll be trying to organize all my cousins into taking grandma and them bloody Australians out to a nice restaurant as well. Possibly something incredibly Swedish like Tranan.. though Garlic & Shots have some really super garlic infused meatballs.. We’ll see

On Virtualization and the Mac Pro.

A while ago, I was looking at getting a new machine for my home “lab”, as I felt that my at-the-time iMac didn’t quite cut it.
I was hoping the latest iMac update would’ve included a Core i7 CPU and not cost a fortune with 8GB of RAM, but it seems that’s still in the future.
Shame, really, as I like the idea of an all-in-one.

Instead, my eyes turned to the Mac Pro, which was also updated recently.. and boy was I underwhelmed.

A huge price increase for modest performance improvements made me look at second hand options, and I managed to snag myself a nice 2008 MP (Two quad 2.8GHz CPUs) and upgraded it slightly to 10GB of RAM.
Now, storage is still slow, but I’ll continue working on that sometime soon, but at least I have a kick-ass platform for developing the storage solution.