This morning, Emily and I were doing a bit of housework - tidying up, dusting, etc, and getting ready to do some vacuuming. Nothing too strenuous. I stopped for a drink of water before getting the vacuum out, and suddenly started to feel ordinary. Very ordinary. I was a bit light headed, and a bit short of breath, and noticed that my heart was racing.

I told Em I wasn't feeling too good and she suggested I lie down for a bit. After a few minutes I started to feel a bit better, but 10 minutes later I started to get the same feeling. I've not had anything like this before, so I didn't want to take any risks and given I didn't feel like standing, let alone walking anywhere I suggested to Em she call an ambulance.

The ambulance guys were really good. By then I was feeling better, and they checked me out and found everything seemed normal. I was still not feeling near 100% so they transported me to Greenslopes hospital where I was given a bed in the emergency room.

They hooked me up to a few devices and took some blood and told me they probably won't know what it is unless they can catch it on an ECG.

Maybe an hour later, while all but sleeping, it happened again. My heart rate hit about 120-130bpm while they frantically plugged in an ECG to see what was going on. By the time they had me connected it had returned to normal again. They left me plugged into the ECG for about another 2 hours in case it happened again so they could catch the whole thing from start to finish.

At a bit after 2pm, maybe 4 hours after arriving, they told me everything looked okay and I could go home. The blood tests were all fine (except the thyroid test, which they don't do on weekends), and my heart rate looked fine, even when it was really high - despite being fast it was still regular.

So I'm back home now with a referral for some more tests this week to see what's going on. The diagnosis is that it's some kind of Tachycardia.

I think part of whatever is happening may be attributed to me almost going into a panic attack whenever they happen. Having a fast heart rate after exercising feels perfectly normal, but when it starts to happen while you're sitting still feels very very wrong indeed, and it's quite scary.

The perfect end result to this would be that they find I'm just allergic to housework, seeing as that's what set it off :P

Em and I were visiting friends at their new house at Redbank Plains yesterday and got caught in one of the wildest storms to hit Brisbane in the last few years.



The house and cars seemed to survive unscathed, but some parts of Brisbane have received substantial damage. No real surprise given the wind!

Not sure what sort speeds those gusts were hitting, but Amberley (20kms away) recorded 60km/h winds with gusts over 80km/h.

Labels: storm, videos

We had a really active electrical storm go through last night, and instead of using the dslr, this time I thought I'd go with the video camera. Here's the highlights from about 25 minutes worth:

Labels: lightning, videos

I'm off down to the Gold Coast for a buck's weekend, and the mother nature decided to have some fun at our expense and it's supposed to be a wet weekend.

Oh, well - good weather for staying indoors and drinking :)

But before I go, here's yesterday's photo:

Emily got some roses the other day and I figured they'd make a nice subject. Unlike most of my photos, I've done a bit of colour adjustment on this to make it more interesting. Unfortunately I couldn't get Photoshop to play nice with the colour profiles, so it lost some of the reds when exporting :(

I'm trying to get back into my "photo a day" routine that I started (quite) a while back. (You can see past ones over at my photo blog.) I don't know how well I'll stick to this, but I'll try my best to pick up the camera as often as I can and find something to take a photo of. With our new view I'm sure that won't be too hard :)

First up, yesterday's:

Believe it or not, this was shot with the lens on backwards. This has the strange effect of turning a zoom lens into a macro lens, meaning super close up photos. I can actually get closer than this to the subject, but didn't want to get the lens too close to the flame. I'll probably post a few more like this in the coming weeks as I play with this technique.

And now today's:

Nothing too special about this - just a plain old shot of the sunset from the balcony. I missed a great sunset a few days ago, but today wasn't too shabby. Again, I'll likely post more photos like this. I'll try to find different things to shoot, but I'm sure it will be tough to resist.

It's been good to pick up the camera again after neglecting it for the last few months. The achilles really put the brakes on all my photography work as I couldn't get out and about to do it.

Oh, speaking of the achilles, Monday was the 1 year anniversary of the injury. I can't believe how quick the last 6 months have gone compared to the first 6 months!

Labels: photoaday, photos

I'm trying to ride my bike to work most days, but on the days I don't
I catch the cross river ferry and have to put up with views like this :)

We moved in on august 9 and are well and truly settled in and
unpacked. It's been great so far, other than a couple of extra
financial burdens thrown in at the last minute.

The first of these was a rates increase. We're still not sure how much
they're going up by, but the suburb as a whole is going up 27% - among
the highest in Brisbane.

The second was an interest rate increase before we'd even made our
first payment. They've since dropped the official rate, but we haven't
received that cut just yet.

But after Riverfire a fortnight ago it is all worth it :)

We had a fantastic view of everything and had a great night all up.

That'll do for now - Wipeout is on :)

So that it might inspire me to get back to blogging I have set up
blogging from my iPhone :)

I have lots to talk about with lots going on lately so I'll do a few
small updates in the near future to get caught up.