Matthew's News and Gossip

Well it's again been a while since I've been here, but this time I have some photos to share with you from my birthday, which was a few months ago (August 1) Worth seeing as there are some cuties in there (well, me and some others).

It's been a quiet few weeks on the social front, partly because I didn't drink for a month and also gave up eating red meat. This was to assuage the gout which comes and goes. In the end it didn't seem to make any difference other than I really missed bacon!

I've done a fair amount of paragliding, I had about 15 really good flights a while back (end of August early september) although not much in the last few weeks as about 10 days ago I twisted my right (ACL-less knee) on a take off so gave it a rest for a week, followed by a week of bad weather. Yesterday (Weds) the weather turned and I sneaked out for a quick flight. I was helped off in very hairy conditions by excellednt pilot Arnell who gave Sarah a great 40 minute tandem flight a few weeks back. Well 1st takeoff I was dragged back behind me into a bush (and later found that I'd put a hole in the wing doing it). 2nd take-off went fine, but it was really windy and I was easily soaring about 30-80ft up, but very timid about going much higher as the wind seemed to be picking up. Coming down was very, very hard, as was approaching in a tight spot and landing was pretty scary, as the wing didnt want to come down once I was on the ground and it ended up in the bush again. On looking at it closely afterwards I had a fist sized hole in the leading edge! Not enough to be dangerous but needs fixing. It certainly took my mind off the the parking ticket I got earlier today!

I'm bein tested on Monday to see if my knee is more or less reparied and good enough for snowbaording this winter. I've been putting it through some paces at the climbing gym, so hopefully it'll get the all-clear. But it's not as good as new by any means.

Meanwhile today is Halloween. I'l probably be a pirate. I think Sarah is whatever this thing on the right is.-- apparently it's THING 1 from Cat in the Hat.

And then my sister said, wot are you up to?, so I told her something like this:

1) Working (I ghost wrote some technology columns posted elsewhere)
2) Writing the excellent The Health Care Blog, although speaking of family I've tried to get my father the Gynaecologist to weigh in on the odd issue and got nothing out of him as he's busy building this housing estate.
3) Twisting my right (already ACL-less knee) paragliding, although I did have several fabulous flights on the days before the twisted knee, and the very lucky Sarah got taken on a long tandem by brilliant pilot Arnell.
4) Avoiding rock-climbing cos of a) the gout and b) the twisted knee-- I did go to the doctor today to go on apurrinol which is supposed to get rid of the excess uric acid in my system and make the gout go away. I bloody hope so!
5) occasionally going out with numbers of my friends but more often staying in with Sarah cos she works all the way down in San Jose and comes home ridiculously late at night
6) Getting depressed about the election results....etc
7) Being a vegetarian and a teetotaler (apart from one beer on election night) for 2 weeks (and it sucks!)
8) Getting up relatively early tomorrow to watch England get stuffed by Turkey (probably)