So, given the relative quiet nature of the past 3 years or so, I think the world is trying to balance things out again this year.

• We start off with food poisoning or something around middle February. Leaves me nearly incapable of even just sitting up by myself for nearly half a day.
• Soon thereafter, flu. In March. March is still summer in South Africa. This sucked.

Now earlier this year I’d started with a good gym routine, and was actually making progress. Although I didn’t quite have the right shoes for running and that ended up causing some blisters on my heels. Which was fine, those just take a while to heal up and weren’t too bad, so I just switched over to a heavier focus on cycling for a while. Then:

• Walking down the stairs in the office one day (while wearing sandals), I slip on the steps (tile), manage to shift my weight quickly and prevent landing on my ass. But at the cost of having a short period of high-speed collision between my heel and the edge of the steps. Cue the entire section of post-blisters calloused skin being shifted loose, bleeding, emergency self-applied patchwork from the office medkit, and a trip to the clinic across the road.

• Some weeks pass. Reasonably uneventful, short of spilling some hot water on my hand at one point. Ride in to work one morning, throttle cable gets stuck while I’m approaching a slipway with moving traffic. I’m going 40km/h, I basically have two options, and 5m within which to take action. So I brake hard and go down. Didn’t hit traffic, but my left knee got most of the force, and against some broken tar to boot. Ride in to the same clinic (oh and by the way, fresh air on a new wound stings like a bitch), have the nurses laugh at me.

• On my (more or less) last week of wearing the bandages for the knee, I’m busy packing stuff and moving stuff outside. Carry my server rack outside, start removing panels and doors so that it’s ready to be carried down the stairs. Wiggle the stuck door, tip the rack over. Flail fast out of the way of the rack that’s now following me down the steps, managed to avoid getting crushed, but have my whole toenail ripped out on my left toe. Go to the same clinic (again, since by now I also know they do a good job ;)), have the nurses just burst out laughing. Get that patched up, and over the next few weeks learn just how annoying it is to ever loose a nail. I also now understand how it was used as a method of torture. I could scarcely feel the pain in the first 10~15min after it happened, but the adrenaline burn was so hot that I needed 2 cans of coke and a full mix sundae from an icecream shop near the clinic before I could stand without hugging walls.

• Tonight, on the way out to see the new Spiderman movie, go around a circle (this one, west to east on Senior) and sideswipe out over a torrent of water. Literally. Half the road was covered with a stream coming downhill. Thankfully just a bit of swelling on my knee, and that should go away in about 3 days.

It pretty much feels like the year is trying to kill me. ‘cept it’s July and I’m still here, so let’s see what can happen further.

If a few people are feeling up to it, I’ll even start a betting pool ;)