My week has been really disjointed. I feel like I’ve been a hamster spinning in his wheel all week. Doing seemingly lots, but not really getting what I want and need accomplished.

I missed Thursday’s aqua aerobics again because I overslept. Tuesday I went, but developed muscle spasms and cramps midway through and had to go be on the side of the pool, just being quiet and watching. I did the light stretches at the end though.

All of my ankle weights finally arrived … I ordered a set that came about a month ago but it was only for 1 ankle. Duh, so I had to get the rest in too. So I started doing the bone and balance strengthening exercises this week. These will be for Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. It takes about half an hour to do.

My best thing this week was recycling my old laptop into service out on the patio, where I take most of my breaks. This gives me the chance to do fun/extra stuff that I would feel guilty for doing on my work computer. So that’s where I’m typing this blog entry. The laptop had Win2K on it and was slow. There was nothing on it that needed keeping, and no useful purpose I could come up with for keeping Windows on it. The driver for the wireless gizmo was so old it didn’t even include the more secure connection method that’s used by our phones for Wifi so instead of spending hours sorting that out, I tried a live Ubuntu CD (amongst a few others) and found that this not only worked fine with the wireless but also gives me several other advantages as well. All I really want to use this laptop for is web applications so as long as it has WiFi and FireFox 3, I’m happy. So with a lot of trepidation, I opted to clear the tiny 5gb hard drive and install Ubuntu 9.04 — and it just worked. The installation was done in well under an hour, and I haven’t looked back since.

I do need to make a few rules with this ‘new’ gift though. No laptop after midnight when I should be in bed. Wait to turn laptop on in the morning until I’m fully awake. Don’t spend all day (or more than half an hour) on laptop when I should be doing other things inside. That’s enough rules, and if I can follow them, it should be a nice way to be ‘unproductive’ on my own time, allowing me to feel more enjoyment in doing other stuff on my inside computer.

Life is about balance. You can’t just keep your nose to the grindstone all day long, nor can you play all day long. This gives me a bit of freedom to enjoy both sides of the balance scale.

Today has been a rather peaceful quiet day. No need to be anywhere, no rushing around trying to do 10 things at once. I wish I had more days like this.