Over the limit

Gary limit

Tonight I learned about the Gary limit: past three pints there is no going back, only forward. I appreciate the message but I do not like generalisms of this kind, so I plan to defy that. A strong coffee should do it.

Why should I even approach the Gary limit on a Monday night? Well, we were sending Chris Poskitt off back to Zürich, using a cheeky beer as the means. And to quote a pretty meaningless Dutch saying: one egg is no egg, two eggs is half an egg, three eggs is an Easter egg.

In the ordinary course of events I would not be susceptible to the lure of a beer today, not even a pint or three of Grolsch at the Glasshouse, but fate, or is it destiny, would have it so: the limit I do seem to have overstepped is what my body will endure in the name of health. Playing horse on Saturday appears to have revived a chronic bursitis in my hip. This started to play up yesterday: at first I assumed I had been sitting too cramped behind the keyboard, but when I couldn't sleep half the night I remembered having had exactly the same symptoms some years ago. Diagnosis: bursitis; cure: diclofenac. So the first thing I did this morning was to google for "prescription diclofenac", and then "pharmacy york": to my relief they do sell this stuff without prescription here, and there is a pharmacy very close by. The word is stressed differently: rather than the Dutch "díclofenác" it is "diclofénac", but after stern looks and severe warnings I was allowed to buy a small cure.

So there you have it: although our body pump instructress, Emma, practically invited me to gatecrash today's session when I told her on Saturday that that would be my last time, because today's class was fully booked, I could not take advantage of that offer and had to make do with the Glasshouse instead. Starting the celebration of my own goodbye in style, as it were. In that regard it looks to be a very interesting week anyway: tomorrow night for the first time in the history of the Enterprise Group there will be communal bowling, and on Wednesday night I've invited everyone to my own farewell dinner. There were even some rumours of a pub crawl on Thursday. In one week I will undo all the hard work of four months running, spinning and pumping.

Also in the spirit of saying goodbye, I gave a final presentation in the Enterprise Group seminar today, under the header "The adventures of a Dutchman in York". It was partially serious - for the first time I tried to explain wat I've been doing this month, I hope it came over - and partially some random thoughts and observations based on my 4-month stay here: the sort of thing I have also been posting about in this blog. More ominously, I received a mail from Jaco van de Pol, head of the Formal Methods and Tools group at Twente, setting up a skype call for tomorrow to discuss the tasks and duties I'll have to pick up again from next week on. During my absence he has become head of the Computer Science department as well as interim director of the allied research institute: it is not to be wondered at if some of his past responsibilities now glide down upon my shouders. Which does nothing to increase my already pretty low level of lookingforwardnesstogoingback; but let's face it, I've had a fair run, all good things come to an end, and all that.