Monday 7 January 2002

?Todav?a faltan 360 d?as!

For those of you who don't speak Spanish*, the title of this entry means "Still 360 days to go!", an altogether appropriate message from my page-a-day calendar on my desk at work from Saturday the 5th of January. What a start to the year it has been. A matter of days into it and I wish it was 2003 already, I really think it is going to be a bad year.

To start with just after the New Year was born Lorraine's brother Greame gave her a call, firstly to wish her a "Happy New Year" and secondly to say that he and girlfriend Sandra were now engaged.

This would normally be cause for a celebration, except that some other people had already told Lorraine this was happening. Lorraine and I felt quite hurt, and had to bring the matter up with them when we went around to Lorraine's parents for a New Year dinner on the 2nd. Greame and Sandra explained why that had happened, we accepted the explanation and said they were sorry we heard about it the way we did, and then (thankfully) we moved on from it.

Moving onto the 4th... well, I should have just stayed in bed. Having parked the car ready for work I proceeded to slip on some ice, falling backwards and somehow hurting my knee and my upper right-arm. Once I got into work I proceeded to have a nightmare of a day (including hearing that we're not supposed to use the internet anymore!). At one point I looked at my watch and couldn't believe it wasn't even 10am yet! Really not funny, and with a few personal insults thrown in for good measure work was the last place I wanted to be. Not a good professional start to the year, and it meant a second call of the year for my Weird Al Yankovic DVD, rarely a good sign.

And for the fifth? Well Lorraine didn't just have one but two hypos. Then we went for dinner with Lorraine's parents and Greame and Sandra to celebrate their engagement. On Lorraine's first day with new, fast-acting insulin she knew she had to eat within fifteen minutes of taking it, and the hotel we were eating at proceeded to make us wait a heart-stopping fifteen minutes. Indeed everything about the dinner that could have gone wrong did, which was a pity for such a special occasion.

On the sixth Lorraine was back into work, and starting at 7.30am. By this point I was knackered and I had another week of work facing me, filling me with dread. To top things off I called my best friend Neil and it turns out his nasty neighbour is trying to create trouble for him, so he isn't having the best of times either.

And just to make things even better this morning I caught my foot in an uneven Glasgow pavement and made a very good attempt at twisting my ankle. Thankfully I was able to walk it off, and it feels fine now.

To finish off this entry let me give you a little history lesson in regards to some years in my own personal life, and how the following year went. See if you can spot the developing trend:

1987 = Good year
1988 = Bad year

1990 = Good year
1991 = Terrible year

1994 = Good year
1995 = Bad year

2001 = Good year
2002 = ?

Let's hope it doesn't turn out the way I'm expecting it to.

*One of my goals for the year is to learn Spanish, and a page-a-day calendar with tips is very useful for this.