... The Career-Ending Injury

No I'm not talking about some heinous injury to the two fingers I use for typing things into these infernal computing devices. Rther something more unfortunate has arisen.

In the dying minutes of last Thursday's soccer game my knee decided to half-pop for no reason other than my running full-tilt to beat another player to the ball.
It was a bit of a night for carnage as SoccerBuddy aggravated his hamstring and another player left early with an injured calf.

My knee gave only momentary pain and I was walking fine by the time I returned to my car with just a bit of a "twinged" feeling about the joint.

Alas my physio, however, had other ideas.

After some examination he pronounced it to be a most rugged and manly sporting injury - ruptured anterior cruciate.

Finally I am alongside the top athletes of our day.
Unfortunately I don't have the resources or time to devote my days to rapid recovery so I shall have to make do with almost no impact on day to day life and, should I return to soccer, being relegated to only goal keeping.
There will be an assessment in six weeks and we will see if any surgery will be necessary for general usage but the good doctor seemed quite the optimistic fellow.


As staying in goal lacks a lot of the running to position and playing the passing game that I enjoy this most likely means that I shall have more free time in the future.

This free time may well be time to write and I do have an idea for a fascinating first novel - completely made up of course.

This is the opening line. What do you think?

Bill, having suffered a terrible elbow injury playing badminton, decided to become a famous writer of novels.

.

... The Near-perfect Return

Last night I was back in action on the soccer field.

After a short warm-up I was into action in my Svetlanaland national jumper.
The knee was a bit tender and I had to nurse it along, but for the last third of the match it had really warmed up and was working quite well - I even had a shot on goal thanks to a great pass by SoccerBuddy but, no thanks to the goalie, there was a deflection and then it bounced off the post. Sigh, I suppose you can't have everything.

Afterwards the real action began in the clubhouse with beer and snacks. My knee survived that with flying colours too.
.

... A Proper Level of Service

Finally it was here, the day I'd been waiting all year for, Xmas Eve, which also happened to be a much more important date this year - the day of the free Xmas lunch courtesy of the council!

After disentangling myself from the perfidious RFID machines at Beaumaris I made my way to the Corporate Castle to partake in the feasting.

Upon arrival I was informed that due to my slightly late arrival I had missed out on the turkey.
As disastrous as this was I was able to keep it together and hold out my plate for the ham, potatoes, and salads that remained. It was all made better by this years twist to procedures that had the Senior Management Team serving us and one of the seniors was Supervisor Grand Chief K herself. I took a moment to revel in receiving the kind of service I should be receiving all the time.

After fetching myself a nice glass of red I found the library table joining The Administrator, AntagonisticAl, and Devil's Advocate as they finished off their repast. In an unnerving repeat of several weekends ago the dessert was whisked away from our table before I could partake.

Strangely consoling myself with work I went to harass SoccerBuddy about network issues. After growing tired of that I decided to head back and try my luck with obtaining dessert. Luckily there was another library table in the second sitting and I seamlessly joined them and had some wonderful hedgehog and conversation.

After the excitement of lunch there was not much left to the day and I wrapped up my day with a quick trip home and a quiet night in.
.

... A Horrible Discovery

Ironically thanks to the work of ArchEnemy my attention has been brought to Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.

It is the latest work, nay masterpiece, of Joss Whedon.

And it has the added bonus of making it through the anti-video net of SoccerBuddy and the fun police down at the corporate IT department.

Do yourself a favour and go view it now, I'll be waiting when you get back.

...

...

Bah, I can't be bothered waiting any longer.

It will give you a good idea of how my Thursday night gaming group's super hero game went... except without the singing... and the dialogue was probably worse... and it probably made less sense... actually it's not very much the same at all.

Anyway, other horrible things that happened this week include:

• going all the way out to BestFriendSincePrep's country mansion only to be beaten soundly at my own games
• my Tuesday gaming group deciding (eventually, oh the indecision) that Deadlands' supernatural western setting was what we'd play next
  
• Innocent Em beating me to the end of 2.0
• my falling for the latest ploy of Torchwood - taking me out for lunches and dinners to make me fond of her
• making a cameo appearance at Sandringham, my home branch, after being on desk at Hampton
• the return of The Bastard for the Pirate Dave birthday edition of Thursday night gaming
• having The Great Sandro over to watch the Collingwood vs Nth Melbourne game debacle
  

... A Trio of Triumphant Returns

The Man in the Corporate Castle
The first triumphant return was my week at the corporate centre in the IT department hanging out with SoccerBuddy - my first time there for a very long time.
I was preparing new PCs for various library branches and making sure that the abundance of morning teas about the centre did not go to waste.


Facing the Field Again
The second triumphant return was my once again taking to the soccer field. It wasn't quite as triumphant as it could have been if I'd scored a goal but the field was crowded requiring little running and the knee held up well - on the night at least, it's been a little stiff since then but as the footy parlance goes "he pulled up sore after the game but will be playing next week".



The Jumper Redeemeth Itself
A last minute phone call from The Great Sandro had me dashing home last night and rushing off to the footy to see Collingwood and Geelong clash. As I expected to be beaten I wore my Collingwood jumper as I figured it couldn't do any harm.
Well...
what ensued was an amazing performance of pressure from the pies, that led to a thrashing of the cats - and more importantly the curse on my jumper has been lifted so I can freely wear it everywhere now (I can't wait to attend my next wedding).

... Pop Goes the Knee

Tonights soccer game gave me the delightful opportunity to hear something in my knee go POP-pop.

I may have been trying to get a little too fancy in my attempts to stop another player and was left hopping around in a bit of pain. Luckily SoccerBuddy gave me a shoulder to replace my injured leg and, despite a shoulders inappropriateness as a leg, I made it to the sideline for some quiet time with a bag of ice.

What I think happened is that the joint popped out and then back in - over-stretching the surrounding muscles in the process. The current pain is one of tenderness and overstretched muscles but I shall see how it is in the morning to check for swellings or "bad" pain.

I think I'm lucky and will just have to spend a few weeks off from soccer to let the muscles recover - which is going to play havoc with my goal scoring average.

... Another Weekly Round Up

Well it got away from me again. It being spare time of course.
I blame ElfBoy who's insistence on gaming on Monday night took away one of my regular blogging/doing stuff nights. (Although since we were playing Magic I did get an 80's child thrill out of SMSing everyone It's Another Magic Monday...)

Gaming Tuesday
Tuesday was a day at Brighton with some printer related meetings and odd jobs before actually getting home early for Tuesday night gaming. In contrast to a few weeks ago we only had three players instead of the massive seven. Much easier to handle - although with all the Libraryland meeting experience I've gained over the past few years a bunch of gaming geeks isn't really that much of a challenge. Okay I've talked about gaming enough that Supervisor Grand Chief K will have skipped over to the next paragraph in her dismissive manner, and I can safely mention that I managed to fight off the dose of flu she blatantly tried to infect me with by giving me a big hug in the workroom. Of course it was just to distract me from pointing out how Torchwood, (currently displacing me as favourite child), had failed to live up to her position description yet again - probably because she spends most of her time plotting how best to torment me in a variety of manager-condoned ways.


Wednesday at Holiday Hampton
Needing a break from it all I spent the morning hiding out at Hampton branch on it's closed day. I upgraded some computers for appearance's sake and then had to leave as the branch became surprisingly busy for a closed day with a book club and Days of our Libraries showing up to pretend to do some work emptying the book chute.

My retreat to Sandringham for some peace and quiet was mostly successful although Innocent Em was at it again - asking me to stop playing with my balls in the workroom. How am I supposed to de-stress if I can't bounce the stress ball off the wall next to my desk?
In any case it was lucky only Mr Prada overheard otherwise the smut level would have gone through the roof!

With the loss of my Monday time my shows had stacked up on video by the time Wednesday night rolled around so I spent a bit of time catching up on my tv before commencing The OpenOffice Experiment da da DA! That was meant to be dramatic. I downloaded and installed OpenOffice.org (yes the .org is part of it's official name) to be the office suite that I use at home.
Colour me impressed - whatever colour that would be... hmm google is no help, maybe it's a thoughtful powder blue? Anyway I digress, OpenOffice opened all my simple word and spreadsheet files and appears to have all the functions I want and a fantastic export as pdf function. Suffice to say I fiddled about with it until late in the evening and unforgivably neglected you my loyal audience.

Corporate Thursday
My Thursday was spent at the corporate centre making preparations for the arrival of our new printers next week. I had a lunchtime break for some bus-driving practice with Supervisor Grand Chief K for reasons that you shall find out about in due course. My work afternoon was cut short by SoccerBuddy who insisted that since I was giving him a lift to the game then we had to be there for the kick-off. It was a strange experience being there when they picked sides, and in the end I had to play 70 minutes instead of my usual 40 since nobody kicked us off at 7. No wonder I didn't score.

Freeloading Friday
Now this was more like it.
Thanks to a corporate colleague leaving I had access to a morning tea and a farewell afternoon tea. The pub lunch was at my own expense unfortunately but the evening was the social club's cultural diversity happy hour including such diverse international foods as nachos and sushi - I guess we're spoiled for internationalism here in Melbourne.
Due to my dedication to work I arrived after the international beers had run out so I opted out of drinking rather than face the prospect of having to down some VBs (sorry Svetlana but the stuff is horrible).
I made it home for an evening of footy watching and, as the game slipped from our grasp, I began to regret my choice to not drink.

Saturday Pyjama Day
With nothing on my calendar I decided to spend the day in my pyjamas (read old t shirt and drawstring pants) catching up on all the little computery and housy things that had been building up over the last few busy weekends.
I did shut almost everything down for Earth Hour and tried to read by an epileptic-fit inducing candle flame - it's a wonder libraries even exist given how painful it was trying too read that way.
My very late evening was highlighted by an international call from Svetlana herself.

... A Whole Lot of Waffle

Contrary to what the title might suggest there is no tasty light batter cake content to this post.
It is merely a convenience for Supervisor Grand Chief K so that she knows that there is no need for her to bother reading my musings as they will, like she commented on my last post, just glaze her eyes like a freshly cooked waffle.



No sooner had I whinged last post about not having anything to blog about than it all starts to happen.

Thursday Morning I finished reading Across Realtime by Vernor Vinge. It's actually two books - The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime - that explore an imaginary stasis technology and it's ramifications. I really quite enjoyed them both - so much that I bought the company, that is I'm basing my short Thursday night roleplaying game on it while I fill in as gamesmaster for The Bastard who's out with a back injury and having as much trouble standing up straight as a syrup soaked waffle.

That night I continued on my pathway towards eclipsing Ronaldo as I blitzed my way to another two goals at soccer (12 goals in 17 months). The extreme heat kept the numbers low so we joined with the other field of regulars for an us versus them game. I was obviously one of the stars of our team in my Svetlanaland national team jumper as they were shouting at each other to "guard Svetlanaland" when we went into attack. Unfortunately we seemed to be the much better team with a 13-2 scoreline, crushing them like a waffle in a waffle iron.
Technically they actually won due to the "last goal wins" rule in effect when the nasty hockey players kick us off the field.


Friday was an extended session of setting up new public PCs at Beaumaris branch and simultaneously trying to solve one of those wonderful intermittent printing problems that said new PCs were having. I think I've worked out the cause but with SoccerBuddy away at training there was nothing I could do until Monday.


Today I took a walk over to Rugrat Twin's to help get her mobile broadband working only to discover that Evil Twin had already got it working. I was a bit miffed that a mere Doctor had done my job and felt like going out and operating on people to show him what it feels like when someone else does your job.
Anyway Rugrat Twin and I decided to walk into the city and do some shopping. Whilst there we ran into Doom who is living the gamergeek dream and working in the city game store.
Walking home was a little harsh in the afternoon sun and I was feeling a little like an overcooked waffle, but eventually we were home and it was time to take a quiet Saturday night and relax around the house.

... The Long, Long Day of Decision

AKA the Election that stole Soccer
Yesterday I worked as a polling official on the federal election. I'd signed up to it on the belief that the corporate games soccer would only be on this Sunday but alas they had double the entries and then scheduled all our pool games for Saturday - bastards.
Ahem, anyway I had to miss out on the games to work on the election.

And what a long day it turned out to be.
I've been doing this at elections for nearly 20 years and it was definitely the worst run booth I've worked on - not terrible but a smidgen below acceptable.
Not only did our working day go from 7.30 until 10.15 instead of the usual 9 - 9.30 finish but in all that time I was only given two breaks from the hot classroom we were working in. Granted it was a new team in charge who maybe needed to learn the ropes but how hard is it to keep rotating the staff around?
While I was getting the absent voting area sorted out the rest of the group were taking what seemed like an inordinate amount of time to sort and count the house of reps papers. In the end the Officer in Charge finally decided to let most of the staff go instead of continuing to make us watch as she tried once again to balance her figures. I have to admit that there was a little bit of schadenfreude (or zluradost) at seeing the formerly chirpy and bubbly OIC being brought almost to tears by not adding up properly but in the end I just wanted it over and done with and to get home.

Oh and SoccerBuddy and the others failed to qualify for todays finals.

... The Grab bag of Things

There's been no real focus to what I've been up to the last few days - except for being overworked of course.

Thursday's day of meetings began with a surprise visit from Supervisor S and the introduction of Mini S who limpeted to S the whole time they were visiting.

My next "meeting" of the day was my attempt to order some custom blinds for the flat since summer is rolling in and the natural light can get a bit much at times. In any case it took a good 25 to 30 minutes for the sales girl to input the order for my 5 different blinds into their computer system. I did multiple circuits of the shop admiring there many plastic plants and painful looking couches while it was all entered. The least they could have done was supply some coffee and/or cakes while I waited. I don't want to think about being the IT staff supporting the use of that application software.

This caused me to arrive late for my next meeting, which was with Torchwood, and provided more fuel for her systematic workplace bullying of me to continue.

I did finally make it to soccer only to have it not run overtime as another group kicked us off for their own session. I was forced to call Svetlana in order to de-stress and then headed of to gaming for the rest of the evening.

Friday morning was hijacked at the last minute with customer service training - which was in itself not too bad but did include homework! And people wonder why I don't have time for things like stats and 2.0.
I did manage to install new LMS clients at Beaumaris in the afternoon. This latest version is supposed to have improved speed for issues and returns - so fingers crossed that the freezing monkey will finally get off my back.

I spent a few hours of my quiet weekend afternoon wrestling my VPN into action with the help of SoccerBuddy. My remote spying from home is now enabled so I can be all ghostly and move the mouse when staff have the temerity to call me while I'm on call.

... The Long Weekend Beard

Another week and a bit has flown by and been consumed by floorboarding with Handy Dad (finished last Monday - finally) , work, and a little bit of play.

The Queens birthday long weekend, a broken shaver, and lots of tradie type renovation work, have combined to provide me with a beard.
Said beard has elicited much response from the librarians with the stand-outs amongst the "oh my gawds" being Big J's dismissive "well it looks scruffy" and Bomber Babe pointing out that I must be glad that Svetlana is in Croatia and not here to punish me for growing the beard!

Growing the beard is one of those things that happens every five years or so and the last few times it's been quite interesting to see how many more white patches there are.

In any case here it is and you be the judge: Scruffy or Rugged and Manly?? (hint: Rugged and Manly)


Last Tuesday I was back at the Corporate Castle holding the help desk together while SoccerBuddy and CC had training on a day off for The New IT Geek. The evening's gaming was a week four hodgepodge of various games with BestFriendSincePrep traitoring his way to victory in the wonderful cooperative game Shadows over Camelot.
Wednesday I was back again and trying hard not to answer any corporate calls even to the extent of attending one of my IT Team meetings with Mr Prada, Genealogy Jane and Vikki. In the evening I had dinner and drinks with CC and friends at the local.
Thursday was a morning at Bea, plugging in a broken computer to miraculously make it work, and then marveling at the efficiency of Mr Prada as the tasks I'd delegated to him came back completed before I'd even had a chance to progress much further in my myriad post upgrade jobs. Afternoon was a meeting about the public IT training. Some last minute calls re wireless hotspot setup for the library caused my soccer appearance to be at half time.
Friday was more wireless install prep and a marathon session with Sister Serials trying to sort out Ogonek magazine in the library catalogue - go borrow some now to make it worth our effort.
And today was the finishing touches to the floors (except for a couple more spots). I also went for and fixed Freeloading Mum's computer and scored a free dinner!