Cold you say? (Picture heavy)

Some of these are a little out of focus, sorry about that, it was cold and I was in a rush (to get the car sorted and get to work).

Our tree – looking like someone dusted it with icing sugar.

Our poor willow tree – small but feisty, looks so sad despite the natural decorations.

Couldn’t get this close-up (of one of the last remaining leaves on the willow) to work well – my hands were too shaky in the cold.

Nature’s natural Christmas decorations – frozen spider webs.

Spider webs up-close (sorry for the terrible photography).

Back from roleplaying

-5 celsius in Mansfield and -3 celsius in Nottingham (western edge).  Pretty damn cold.  Mansfield still has a lot of snow on the ground and any ungritted roads are really dangerous – the road down to our friends’ isn’t owned by the council yet and was slick with compacted snow and ice.

Made it in one piece though.

Gonna be a cold night.

It’s early and cold

Been awake since 06:30 when the cats declared war under the bed and spent the next hour fighting it out to see who could be the most annoying.  Finally unable to cope at 07:30 when I got up and let them out.

Boy it’s cold this morning. Yeh I know, curious during winter.

Gradwell’s shared hosting seemed a little quicker yesterday, maybe someone fixed something, although they still haven’t updated my support ticket (technically they weren’t in the office after 1pm yesterday but it seemed to get a lot quicker after 4pm, I just wish they’d update the bloody ticket so I knew what was going on).

The weekend already!?

Been a bit of an odd week, was on holiday last week obviously, then working this week but from home every day other than Monday (the office would have been deserted) with holiday Thursday breaking the week up.  Was on call from Tuesday to today as well.  But didn’t really get started and then everything sort of fizzled out.

Which means it’s the weekend again already, got back from C&C’s place about 40 minutes ago after D&D, and we’re currently waiting for Bubbles to grace us with her presence after we let her out (she looked desperate) before we head to bed.

And it’s cold.

Back to our normal routine as of tomorrow with breakfasts and shopping and work and TV and life and stuff.  Hopefully more wii fit as well, and less carbohydrate.  No new years resolution from me, just a promise to myself to try and be more me, and more positive in general maybe and do the stuff I enjoy.

blurgh

So the cold’s back, and I didn’t get any sleep Tuesday night/ Wednesday morning due to being paged at 2:15am and working through until about 5:30am or something.  Took today off sick, I needed the rest, and probably tomorrow too unless the cold miraculously clears up over night.  Hence no blog posts today (or yesterday since it’s now tomorrow), but there’ll be an auto-posted blog post tomorrow while I’m (hopefully) still snug in bed about another movie memory.

Colds

Grete’s cold has hung on for nearly 5 weeks now (maybe longer?) and I think mine is coming back or I’m getting a new one.

Thought I’d share.

Sodding cold

Still coughing, still getting annoyed by it.  Have another headache today from the coughing.  Feel as though the cold is coming back which would be an officially bad thing[tm].

Grete had her dentist checkup today – and has passed with flying colours.  It’s the first time she’s had a checkup in five years and she was pretty worried.  On top of being worried about visiting the dentist anyway obviously.  So she was pretty relieved to find out she doesn’t need any work.  My wallet was equally pleased she didn’t need any work.  So just the £180 for me next week, and then probably another £100 or so when I can find the time and energy to go back.

We’ve got guests this weekend so we’re tidying (extra-tidying honest) the house – which means basically Grete is tidying the house and I’m blogging about it, but it’s like a shared experience.  Friday we have Tracey and her mum who are here until Sunday.  On Saturday they’re going with Grete to a craft fair in Birmingham and meeting Grete’s mum and aunt there, who’ll be coming back on Saturday late afternoon.  Lynda’s going with them, so she’ll be here Saturday morning.

The BBC news site has a story which strikes a chord with me and my NHS experiences.  The comments are well worth reading (even though they didn’t publish mine yet). Here’s a (long) quote from the article,

Last year a friend of mine had an appointment with her doctor. Her local bus route was disrupted by road works. So, she left half an hour before she really needed to so as to make sure she got to the surgery on time.

As it turned out, there were no delays so she went to the reception desk prior to intending to sit down with a magazine to await her turn to see the doctor.

When the receptionist spoke to her, this was her loud greeting: “You’re early. You don’t expect to be seen early do you?”

In front of a waiting room full of strangers, my friend told me that she felt embarrassed and belittled.

In a health service that treats thousands of serious illnesses every day and has been a foundation stone of our society for 60 years, this was no life or death matter.

Yet, it is highly unlikely that a member of staff in a store such as John Lewis would address someone in this way. The people served there are customers. The people served by the NHS are patients.

It’s worth reading the whole thing and the comments.  I can’t say enough how I agree with the general points made, and in the comments section many people agree with me that it’s not usually the medical staff that are the issue, it’s the administrative staff in the way.

Of course, sometimes it can be the medical staff, like the GP who told me to eat less cake and stop taking sugar in my tea (neither of which I did at the time) because I was now diabetic.  You shouldn’t have to fight both your illness and the establishment to get good treatment.

I could rant for hours about the terrible treatment Grete has had over the years with her depression and associated issues in the hands of the NHS.  I think the idea of a national health service is fantastic, and I wouldn’t want it to go away, but the processes and people around it need to understand more clearly that their role is to get people help, and that those people are already vulnerable, scared and in need of assistance.

Another day nearly done

Played a bit of Lord of the Rings Online tonight (and last night), been a while since we played any MMORPG’s so was quite nice to kill a few orcs and goblins.  The cough is still bugging me, the tail end of the cold and the part I hate most really.  Coughing gives me a headache and just annoys me in general.

Weather has been pretty bad last few days, windy, heavy rain, the cats have given up all hope of spending any more time outside until the early spring and settled into winter mode.  For Bubbles this essentially means trying to find the warmest place in the house to sit – and that includes on me or Grete.

Remind me to write a blog post about Fringe and/or Burn Notice.

No Connection

No Internet connectivity from work today due to a mess-up with a user ID expiring.  I managed to survive though.

In the car on the way in this morning I thought up a couple of story directions for the NaNoWriMo story, which is hopeful.

Grete’s absolutely terrible today, both a cold and some kind of sickness bug it would seem.  I’ll be working from home as much as possible this week.

Motivation

Not long got back from a delicious Sunday lunch out with friends, really enjoyed it.

Both myself and Grete are still feeling pretty grotty, Grete’s got the cold full on now, I’m on the tail end.

Don’t feel very creative, only just over 6 hours to go before I need to have written another 1600 words, think I’ll sit in the other room for a bit and try and absorb some ideas from the TV.

Well you never know, it might just work.