Monthly Archives: March 2009

Mixed bag!

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So mixed bag today.  Once I realised I didn’t have any appointments today, I thought I’d try and get a phone appointment to get my blood results.  Rang the surgery and asked for one, and they told me my doctor was working out of a different location today and I should call there – after it took me about 20 minutes to get through.  Still, I called the other surgery, and after another 15 minutes asked for a phone appointment – they don’t do them – but he could see me at 10:30.  So, I ended up with a visit to the GP today anyway.

The good news, from the blood test my kidney and cholesterol results are fine.  My liver results are ‘off’ but they’re always off and this time they’re off by less than they ever have been before.  My HbA1c test was 5.8.  That’s pretty good, and the biggest indicator of diabetes related health.  It could stand being a little lower, more like 5% maybe and I still need to make sure day-to-day control is maintained.

The bad news is that my urine test showed protein, which means although my kidney blood tests are ok, my kidneys are allowing protein through.  Essentially this is caused either by diabetes, or by high blood pressure or by both.  The treatment is ACE inhibitors, which means another daily tablet.  Yay me – see the NHS did get me something new for my birthday – a surprise!  I get to take them for a week and then have more blood tests so now I have another appointment next week to give more blood and then I’ll need another GP appointment 3-4 weeks after that to review the results.

In other bad news – the car needs a new rear silencer (it sounded really bad today), and the MOT is due next week (which we’d kind of forgotten).  I guess I know where the money I’ve managed to save is going this month.

But in other good news, Wickes sell mini-trip switches which are the exact right size for our old fashioned fuse box.  I bought one 5amp one (after being caught out recently buying low energy light bulbs in bulk only to find out they didn’t fit, I thought I’d start with one thing this time and expand if it was the right option) and it fits perfectly.  So hopefully if the Annoying Hallogen Light Bulbs from Hell in the kitchen trip the fuse it’s a quick switch flick to get things back online and no need to power down the entire fricking house.

So tomorrow eye test, Wednesday nurse appointment, sometime between then and next week, car in for MOT.

Then I’ll probably need a holiday to get over all this stuff.

Another glorious day in the core

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Fantastic bright spring morning today.  My hands don’t ache anywhere near as much as I feared they would after an hour of wood action yesterday, so that’s good.  I may get out if the weather holds and see how much more I can convert from branch to foot long stick.

Chopping wood

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I sat down earlier to play some Lord of the Rings, I thought maybe I’d try and catch up on some deeds.  If you’ve not played, each area has a number of different deeds which end up giving you titles or small improvements to your character.  Among those deeds there are kill deeds, both basic and advanced.  So you may have to kill say 100 goblins for the basic deed and get a title, and then another 250 for the advanced deed and a virtue reward (character improvement).  In some locations, the quests you do end up ensuring you kill plenty of the relevant creatures, so the deeds come naturally, but if you group with a few people or move through an area quickly you find you easily move on before the deeds are complete.  Even on your own, some deeds involve creatures that are small in number, hard to kill or just out of the way – so there’s always a reason to go back and do them.

But it’s tedious.  Killing 250 wargs, especially on low DPS characters, is not something that takes a few moments.  This is doubly true in areas where the creatures still give XP, since killing them is still an effort.  Not life or death perhaps, but you still need to take care and avoid too many at once.

So it was with all that in mind that I set off to Eregion to kill wargs, half-orcs, and assorted other creatures.   I didn’t have more than 60 kills in any of the deeds and they all needed 250 in total.  I think I had maybe 15 wolf kills out of the 250.  After about 20 minutes I realised if I was going to be doing something tedious that made my hands hurt, I may as well go into the garden and chop the wood that got left over from my pruning a couple of weekends ago.

And now I can’t make a fist with either hand.  Chopping, sawing, cutting and piling.  Probably got half, or maybe just over a third of the wood chopped into less than 1 foot sections.  Some went into our brown wheelie bin (collection on Thursday), but most is piled up in the grass next to the remaining huge pile still to be sorted.

Still it feels good to make some progress with it and we’ll see how my hands are tomorrow – I may try and get some more done.  Typical British spring weather out there – windy, sunny for 10 minutes, overcast for 10 minutes.  Constantly taking my coat off, putting my coat on, taking my coat off.  Enjoyable being out in the fresh air however – and it always amuses the cats when one of us is in the back garden.  They’re not really sure how to respond when we’re in their domain, so they tend to run around being scatty and amusing.

Bubbles spent 15 mintues sitting on the shed roof staring down at me – with a sort of ‘yes minion, chop the wood, clear my grassy playground’ look on her face.

Pizza!

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We bought pizza from tesco (along with a lot of other stuff) to cover us until Monday while Tracey is here so we don’t need to go shopping.

And then got pizza delivered instead.

It’s just that. much. better.

I think I just ate half the European jalapeño mountain.

Vay Kay Shon

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So, I’m off work for two weeks!  Other than being prodded by the NHS, no real plans.  It’s been a rough three weeks at work, covering a lot of call out, being the person in the office who gets asked all the questions you don’t want to get asked, but I survived, just.  It seems to be a common issue in March with lots of people taking holiday.  Last year was similar I remember.

It’ll take me a few days to get over it all and really relax.  The oddest thing happens first though – I get really down and pretty angry with the whole world, which is where I am today.  I’m lucky that Grete understands and doesn’t get too pissed off at me.

So a few days of this feeling and then I’ll be able to enjoy not being at work.

Got my letter this morning saying the blood test results are in, but doesn’t list what they are.  I may find out at the nurse appointment or I may need to ring the doctor.  I’m sort of hoping the bit where it said ‘this appointment is non-urgent’ means they don’t think my medication needs reviewing and hence the results are okay, but that may just be wishful thinking.

I really am not a nice person to be around when I’m in this kind of mood, I think Tracey may regret her choice of weekend for visiting.  Ah well.

And another thing

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While I’m moaning – why the hell did the previous owners of this house put different light bulbs in every damn room, I know I’ve moaned about that before.  The kitchen lights are really pissing me off though – 50w halogen spotlights, two sets of 4 (we run them with 1 or 2 in a most) and the lamps last about 8 weeks before popping.  They blow the old fashioned ceramic fuse wire in the old fashioned fuse box, and we have to power the whole house down and re-wrap 3amp fuse wire in the dark.

Yes, one went again this evening.

So, I need to 1. replace those damn lights, the sooner the better and 2. see if I can find a resettable fuse thing to replace the cermic ones.  I need to go to B&Q.

It’s March

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My birthday is in March, and the NHS gets me the same thing every year – a set of annual diabetic check-ups.  I get some retinopathy checks (they dilate your pupils and then photograph the back of your eyes).  I can’t see very well for a while after that because everything is too bright.  I get a visit to the nurse who checks my feet to make sure I can still feel them and that I didn’t cut a toe off without noticing, she tends to also nag me about not losing weight, having high blood pressure, and then asks me if I’m depressed.  Before all that I also have to have a blood test and provide a urine sample, did those today.  Bled pretty easily, was awkward last time but the nurse suggested it was because I hadn’t had a good breakfast.  This time I made sure I ate early and I sprayed the inside of the two tubes quite happily when she stuck the needle in.

Then I get to wait and see how my average blood sugar was over the last three months.  I’m not expecting a good result this time – I’ve had bouts of being ill on and off which messes with my control and emotionally I’ve not been strong enough to exert enough control either, so I suspect I’ll be having a talk with the doctor.  I’ll resist attempts to change my meds – I can control my sugar when I’m strong and I just need another kick up the arse.  I guess his concern will be that after too many kicks I’ll be blind and missing a foot.

On the virtual move

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I’m tired of Gradwell’s slow performance, sloppy change management, undelivered promises and apparent change of direction.  The final straw oddly though, was an unsolicited sales call, only days after total failures of their infrastructure.  I may have stuck around longer if not for that call.  In an attempt to not store my eggs in the same basket, I’m moving domain registrations to gandi.net and hosting to a virtual private server with 1and1.  I’m sure their support is no better than Gradwell, and the net result is that it actually costs me a little bit more per month, but I get full control over the server where my sites are hosted, can host as many sites as I like and don’t have to put up with being told ‘things are fixed’ when they’re clearly not.

So far, www.bookthing.co.uk, www.onelinemoviereviews.co.uk and www.gemmellmania.co.uk have moved across.  The .com’s are a little more annoying, for various reasons so they’ll be going more slowly.  I’ll be moving darkstorm last because there’s a lot of mail forwarding happening on that domain and I don’t want to mess it up.

I’m really happy generally with gandi.net and 1and1 are ‘ok’.