Just Sad

Headaches and stuffy nose started on Wednesday - surely it's too soon to be sick AGAIN!

The smiley monster was the vomit and poo monster last night, every hour from 9pm until 4am, then he lasted an hour and a quarter and then an hour an a half before starting the day today. He is much better now, drinking and keeping it down with a few pecks on some food, but totally exhausted, poor little fellow. He's snoozing on the lounge at the moment so hopefully he will not have a relapse and will wake up feeling much better. He's been quite chatty, but without real energy and just wanting lots of cuddles. He had no temperature or any other symptoms but hasn't eaten anything different to anyone else so I have no idea what the cause is and I'm hoping that no one else gets it.

Got a call from old work friends this morning with very sad news. One of the guys I used to work with died last night. I sat next to him for about a year and a half and worked pretty closely with him on a number of projects but we also got along really well, which was saying something as he was not known for his friendliness or amicability. His nickname was Mr Surly and he had a terribly wicked sense of humour and absolutely no tolerance for idiots or the weaker aspects of human nature but revelled in his own dark aspects. Doesn't sound like a very nice person so far, does he? Well, he actually was incredibly nice and very, very humane, but in a tough love kind of way. He would do absolutely anything for people but as long as they were also taking steps to help themselves and he was very straight down the line and told things like they were.

After I left Sydney I fell out of touch with him but reconnected somewhat through facebook, although he wasn't much of an updater there. He was a fairly big man and had been working hard for a number of years to lose weight, which he did quite successfully. He would swim several times a week and walked a lot, he didn't drink or smoke but he did have a sweet tooth that he loved to indulge. He died at home of a heart attack on his treadmill at age 43. I'm sure he would have something ironic and entirely inappriate to say to make people laugh right now but I can't think exactly what it would be so I'm just sad.