So...

I've not blogged in a little over a year. Where the hell do I even start in trying to summarise the last year?

We lost Katinka at the start of the autumn. She had a long struggle with the lumps. The vets would take them out and she'd be okay for a month or two, then they'd be back and they'd be taking them out once again. Eventually she had a lump removed from near her tail which turned out to be huge (only a small portion of it was actually visible from the outside) but it was back just as big as before within the month. The vet said she was ok to have the surgery but when we brought her in they weren't happy with her breathing. They changed their minds about the surgery and we rescheduled another checkup a week later. This time they had changed their minds completely and argued that they didn't think her chances of surviving another operation were good, and that they argued the tumour was likely to come back very quickly. So we opted to make her comfortable instead and let her live out whatever time she had left. She went on about a month and a half after that.

At the end of February (2008) I had a strange problem with my foot. I was taking the train into work at the time and jogging to the train station in Newbury, then from the train station in Theale to work. Then repeat in reverse at the end of the day. On this particular day I had jogged to work (via the train) as usual, had pottered around a little at work as usual. Then while I was sitting working with my foot flat on the ground I had an annoying ache. I had to keep shifting the position of my foot to stop it aching, eventually taking all the weight off it and leaving it perched on my other foot. A short while later myself and a colleague went to get tea; As I stood up I nearly screamed in agony. After a few days of hobbling around in excruciating pain I went to the doctors who told me it was Plantar Fasciatis. It's taken me until the end of 2008 to fully recover from it.

Back in July we adopted another rat: Jas. She was named "Princess Jasmine" by one of the staff at Pets at Home, as she was a bit of a Disney nut. We hated it and wanted to change the name, but while we were thinking of another name we were calling her "Jas" (or "Jazz" to be more accurate). In the end it stuck. She's our first dumbo rat and she's a lovely little scamp. After Amy died we managed to successfully introduce her to Leela and so they now live in a cage together. After losing Katinka that leaves us with just two rats in one cage. We're downsizing for the moment as we plan to move at some point.

I managed to crash my bike in August. I rode straight through the entrance barrier at work. It was wet and I was going into work half an hour early. I'd forgotten that the barrier is not lifted until 8:30 and rounded the corner too quickly. I didn't notice the barrier until it was too late and ploughed straight through it. The result was a big old nasty bruise on my left arm that took weeks to go away, limited mobility in my left shoulder, a bruise on my leg where the bike landed on me, and about £250 of damage to the bike. I'm still having problems with my shoulder 6 months on...

On the same day of the crash I bought a new car. The old Astra had been having problems and kept suddenly bunny-hopping viciously while I was driving down the motorway. Then it started cutting out completely on the motorway every now and again. Sometimes I was able to simply restart the engine (while coasting along at 70) and carry on. Other times I'd end up ringing the RAC who could never find anything wrong with it as it would always run just fine when they came out. So it had to go. I bought a newer Astra: a 2001 1.8L 16v 5 door Astra SRI coupe in silver. It's done me well so far, although I have to admit I am already thinking about my next car.

After Christmas I woke up one morning with a bit of a sore lower back. I paid it little attention and got on with things thinking it would go away. It didn't. According to the information I had read a sore lower back should sort itself out after 4-6 weeks. After an agonizing 7th week where my hips started to hurt too I decided to go to the doctors again (why do I always end up in the doctors surgery in February?) and they gave me a leaflet with some stretches on it. I'm still struggling a little but I've been working to improve it and it's not as bad as it was.

We joined a gym at the end of February with a "swim membership". I've been trying to get plenty of swimming in as I've been seriously unfit recently and I wanted to get fitter. Plus I need to be fit for our snowboarding holiday later this month. So most days at the moment I can be found down the gym swimming like a mad man to try and get a little bit fitter. But it's good to see progress: When we first went swimming I barely managed 30 with the last length being such hard work I was barely managing to keep my head above the water, and I could hardly walk when we got out. By contrast, this is how the last week looks:

Monday: 42 lengths (just wanted a gentle warm-up for the week)

Tuesday: 62 lengths (building up the distance)

Wednesday: 82 lengths (that's a mile in this pool)

Thursday: 3 pints. -What? We all need days off.

Friday: 108 lengths (pushed myself a little further)

Sunday (today): 200 lengths (2km, or 2.49 miles)

Today's swim was a hard slog. I did the 200 lengths in about 2 hours and 10 minutes. Admittedly that's a crappy 1.15 mph average speed, but I swim breaststroke and have never been a particularly fast swimmer.

And that's that. The year in a nutshell.

Yeah I know you skimmed it. If you even read it at all...