Up, up, and away

I'm typing this at work on my laptop. The network has gone down. My company produces cutting edge software for the banking industry. We're world leaders in our field. That is not sarcasm, I truly believe in the product. Astoundingly however, we don't appear to be able to keep our own network up.

My dodgy knee picture seems to have raised a few comments. Mr Punk thinks I have a cartoon knee. Abby is waiting for an alien to burst forth. Little Chloella only managed, "youch, youch, youch". I can see her covering her eyes as she says it. And January Girl settled for , "Holy CRAP, man!! That isn't normal!" I particularly liked that one.

Well you'll all be pleased to know that I visited the specialist yesterday and he's going to open me up later this month. He gave me three options:

1. Don't do anything. It may go away by itself after a while, but it may not.
2. Drain the fluid off, but that is unlikely to work because it didn't work last time.
3. Open the baby up, cut out the fluid filled sack and repair the damage.

So I went for option three as my insurance appears to cover it. I was surprised at the efficiency of it all actually. When I got to see the specialist he already had a letter from my GP in his hand, so he knew all about me before I even got there.

So, if you don't hear anything from me after 28 Aug, it's because I have died on the table. The surgery will be performed under a light general anaesthetic apparently. I am blissfully ignorant of things medical through choice, and when I was told that it would all happen under "light general anaesthetic", for some reason I thought that meant I wouldn't be knocked out. Seems I was wrong. I can go home the same day though, but I'm not allowed to drive or operate heavy machinery, and I have to starve myself.

We ventured out to the Bristol Balloon Fiesta this weekend. There were lots of things about it that were frustrating. For instance, traffic management was appalling, roads were closed all over the place and there were no signs. There were 20 minute queues for the latrines. The beer tents were also overworked and required 20 minutes of queuing. And the schedule of events was all over the place. However, for the first time in living memory I went to the balloon festival on a day when balloons actually flew. I really saw them fly!






This may not seem like much to you dear reader, but I have been so many times only to hear that it's too windy, too wet, too foggy, or too something else to actually send up balloons. This year they actually flew, and the little guy was almost wetting himself with excitement. Such is my past experience of this annual event, I wasn't even very keen on going.

Some balloons were interesting shapes, but not many of them flew.



In addition to seeing actual balloons, the Red Arrows were there and did a top display that must have lasted a good 30 minutes. I don't have any Red Arrows pictures. The damn things move too fast. The Red Arrows are really worth seeing. Again, the boy was almost beside himself with excitement. Other highlights included dodgem cars, which I thought would scare him but didn't, several merry-go-round things including one with flying space ships, and a parachute display team. I have a video of the dodgems which I'll put up at some point.

All in all, I still don't like the event because I've been let down so many times. This weekend was a let down in some ways too. We waited until 9.30 for the night glow display to start before realising it was going to be at least 10pm before anything happened, so we went home. However, in general it wasn't a bad day, and I left feeling less disappointed than all the other times I've been, but I'll still be cynical about it next year.