Another quickie while I have time. K&K are out today, off to Wotton-under-Edge again to explore the escarpment. Should be good views, if a little hazy.

I've sorted the kitchen cupboards (few more bits to go to charity: I think I'm now down to only the stuff I actually use), put a wash through, organised dinner, written up some notes for the Dystopia project and edited three more chapters. Oh, and next!Poppy is started too. Not too bad.

It's not easy at the moment though. Don't know if it's the new meds, or I'm doing too much, or whatever is wrong with my back is getting worse (won't know about that until I see the dr on the 12th Sept, earliest appt I could get, so I assume it's nothing too serious...) My Skype convo with Lutra last night pretty much expresses it nicely though.

Joules: Y'know, it's a bit bloody much when just raising a glass to your mouth sends shooting pains through your hand and elbow! I want to send this body back and demand a replacement that works, please.
Lutra: Gah! It is! Is it still under warranty though? Even so you'd expect a minimum level of service.
Quite! And it's supposed to have a lifetime guarantee, or so I understood.
There's probably some tricky 'reasonable use' clause, which no one can 'reasonably' do.
[GRUMP] I'd try and find it but the warranty is 50 million pages long... in VERY TINY SCRIPT. On organic material.
I'm sure there's enough dissatisfaction a class action against the manufacturer isn't unreasonable! I mean, the time and money expended on these, and it's not like they're a luxury you can do without!

Can one sue evolution for incompetence?

It's not quite so bad today, but the pain is still constant, and painkillers don't seem to do much...

Eh well. Have a pretty to end on!

Definitely a flower spike! More photos as it flowers.

My little lithops has flowered this year too, twice!

Labels: busyness, Lutra, medical matters, orchids

Wut? That's over a week zooomed past again! My haddock are escaping!!

Better do the quickest of all catchups before I completely forget what's happened...

The meeting with Marie went fine, she settled on a domain name and is going to play around with WordPress to see how she gets on with it. I have to reluctantly admit it's improved since I last checked it out.

31 photo albums to go (that's including the 6 Ken brought down from his study which weren't included in the original count). The first 4.7 gig DVD has been burned and archived.

It's been too hot (or too wet) for Kai to go out much during the day this last week, so he's had several evening walks with both myself and Ken. I've got quite a lot done in the garden, and the plans are coming into focus. This is good!

And that's basically it. We finished watching The Omega Factor (and I'm honestly not sure quite how I feel about it. Several of the eps were brilliant - Child's Play in particular - but some were disappointing. It generated a fair bit of discussion here though, which is always a good thing). We're now rewatching Trigun, probably my favourite anime of all time. It just gets better and better with each watching!

Off to chop veg for stir fry...

Labels: anime, busyness, client sites, gardening, Trigun

On Saturday Kai and I went back to Radstock to explore the Colliers Way walk...

This would have been less alarming if we'd been able to see the bridge before stepping onto it...

... this is the bridge...

The (cycle)path runs along the old railway track.

Yes, you can ride tandems along here too!

It's number 24 of the national cycle network. Number 3 goes past our house, which is mostly very nice, except when inconsiderate groups cycle past at 6 a.m.on a Sunday morning shouting to each other ...

These were most puzzling...

... until we found out what they are!

Heh. An instructional cycle path! Whatever next!

There are quite a few bridges, both above and beneath,

And inside each of the ones above were strange signs with hands...

This is a bench, for children and adults, we think. There are seats and benches all along the route.

More hands...

Sign.

This is the sidings, as far as we got. Kai worked out later that we walked 6.8 miles in total. Legs were burning by the time we collapsed onto the bus back in Radstock, but to my surprise I was fine on Sunday. Very happy about that!

More hands!

It's an absolutely beautiful walk. Going to go back in the autumn and enjoy the colours!

On Sunday Kai had another venesection session. His ferritin was up a little last time, which does happen, we're told, but the overall trend is still downwards. It was all terribly dramatic though: the centre of Bristol was closed off by the police - on what is probably the busiest weekend of the year, the Balloon Fiesta. Getting a bus back was a nightmare, as the traffic was in complete chaos: ended up getting a no 2 to Broadwalk and walking down the hill.

Later on we found out it was a bomb scare outside Bridewell police station (which is where Ken works). Somewhat alarming...

Ending on a prettier note, there were haloes on both sides of the sun on Saturday evening.

I've stitched these together in photoshop as my little camera couldn't manage to capture both with the sun that bright. Pretty sun dogs. We quite often see one, but I've never seen two!

Today is a rest day. Ken has a couple of days off so has gone exploring something historical the other side of Bath, while Kai recovers from blood-letting. I have to go instruct a workmate of his in how to set up her own website tomorrow afternoon, so have Prowl recharging in preparation. It's too hot and sunny to do much today in any event.

Labels: days out, medical matters, photographs

Well, six albums done - 40 to go...

Have some pics!

Twin Towers from the top of the Empire State Building.

Central Park lake.

Shy smiley plant...

Remember when I said I didn't think my original orchid would flower any time soon after flowering continuously for a year? I may have been wrong...

Labels: orchids, photographs

Fly-by update...

Contents of both dog-chewed albums scanned by lunchtime on Monday (450 photographs) and today I've scanned all the 1984 America trip. There are 80 pics in each of the other albums (haven't counted how many we have: will do that tomorrow) and I'm hoping to finish the last double handful of the first one tonight.

12 Kingdoms now finished. Before we move on to the next project, we're watching The Omega Factor, which I borrowed from Sue. (I think it was Sue? If it was GoodTwin, my apologies. Brain not firing on all cylinders atm.) Saw the first ep tonight and it's terrific! Low-key, understated, excellent acting and a most intriguing premise. Just hope the rest lives up to this fine start!

Labels: anime, British drama, IMDb, photographs

Levothyroxine was ready for me at Tesco pharmacy on Saturday, so started taking right away. K&K went out for the day, to Radstock, and took the other path and found all manner of interesting things, including a quarry full of fossils... Kai and I are planning to go back for a repeat performance soon.

Meanwhile I got a lot done at home, including starting clearing the middle bed ready for the greenhouse.

And on that subject... Almondsbury strongly recommend their own freelance greenhouse construction "professional", so I emailed him with the details of what we'd like done (a concrete base larger than the greenhouse so I have a solid platform for the waterbutt, pots and a small potting table). Two and a half weeks later, despite receiving his confirmation that he'd got my email, I'd heard nothing (not the most professional of business practises, in my opinion) so emailed again. He came back saying he only builds concrete bases "locally" (what the hell does that mean? Almondsbury is only just outside the Bristol city limits!) but will happily come and check the base is OK for him to erect the greenhouse once we'd had it built. He charges £50 for the privilege, mind you, which I believe is non-refundable.

He also charges nearly double the going rate for the construction, as I discovered when I did a little research.

I am not impressed. Luckily, being webmaster of the BCP site (and webmaster and sec. of APAG, even though it's now on hiatus) I have made a lot of contacts in various trades, so organising someone else to do the work for us shouldn't be too much of a problem. I shall, however, be taking this up with the garden centre, as they really should not be recommending someone who isn't prepared to do the work.

BRI Neurophys appt this morning. Most uncomfortable having repeated electric shocks in both hands and arms. It appears I have carpal tunnel syndrome in my left right hand - and it's more than likely a side effect of the hypothyroidism. So for now, I'm to keep taking the levothyroxine, get blood tests to check the dosage is correct, and when it is, if I still have the problem, we can investigate further. Keeping fingers crossed!

Labels: Almondsbury Garden Centre, days out, greenhouse, medical matters

Later later edit: Dr rang, and apparently I have hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid). This explains a lot, and strange as it sounds is a real relief. It's common (15 in every 1K people have it), easily treatable with hormone tablets, and it's one of those conditions that allows me to get free prescriptions from now until... whenever. Might have to take it the rest of my life. Main thing is it's copable, and now I know what it is I can deal with it.

Heh. Hopefully pick up the first lot of tabs (low dosage to start with, then another blood test in two months to check that they're doing what they're supposed to and the dosage doesn't need to be changed) tomorrow and start making a difference.

Later edit: letter has arrived from BRI: Tues appt is for the nerve induction tests to my right arm and hand, not about my back, so that's reassuring. Shall stop worrying now. A bit.

On Wednesday Kai and I got the bus to Snuff Mills for a stroll along the Frome Valley Walkway...

It's absolutely beautiful there, a flat path along the gorge with the river flowing beside us. Ducks, fish, and Kai saw a kingfisher...

We think this is a Calopteryx virgo damsel fly. There were two of them dancing: Kai was lucky to catch this one at rest!

Weir at the mill.

It's positively Middle-Earthish in places!

Weir on the Oldbury Court Estate

We ended up with 175 photos (most of which Kai took. He has got to get his own camera!!) We plan to go back at some point: there are paths everywhere just begging to be explored.

Yesterday was quieter: the forecast rain never arrived, so I did washing and Kai came to Tesco with me - via Victory Park,to keep the exercise theme going. Altogether very pleasant.

The phone engineer arrived at 8.15 this morning. Said the problem was with the cabling outside: he thought water had got into it, and replaced the damaged bit. Well, it's been in place for nearly 25 years, so I'm not surprised. It sounds OK now, but I won't know for certain until the dr rings this afternoon.

My appointment with the Neurophys team is 9 a.m. next Tues. Little worried as to why it's so soon. Hopefully they just aren't too busy right now.

In the meantime I'm continuing scanning photos. Got to the start of my second year at uni now (1978. I feel old...)

Labels: days out, medical matters, photographs

Another quick catchup...

It's been busy. Continuing the overall 2016 downsizing and clearing out, I bought a new scanner (Canon neglected to make a driver that worked with the old scanner and Windows 7...) so I can scan and archive all our old photos. And I do mean old. I have some black and white ones going back to the late 1960's, when my grandmother gave me my first camera (I was 8, I believe), and a whole load of Uni ones taken with inferior film which are degrading horribly. Only it's a huge job. Ken estimated he has about 2,000 upstairs in storage, we have roughly 1,200 in albums in the lounge, and there's more in the old albums that Quyn chewed. The scanner is only a little cheapie and while it works really well - top resolution 4800 dpi!! - it overheats if I try to do too much. So it's going to be, scan 10 photos, let it rest for half an hour, rinse and repeat. Endlessly.

Going to take a while...

We also have new phones - finally! Our old ones were Freecycled waaaay back. These are great (and come with 15 different ringtones. I have a very popular snippet of classical music which I cannot for the life of me remember the title of as mine). And being able to walk around with it is terrific!

I treated myself to the new IDW Thundercracker figure with an unexpected refund -

He's splendid! But I now need to find a tiny Buster for him. Shall check out toyshops next time I'm in town...

Had a call from the surgery (coincidentally just as a knock came at the door: Royal Mail delivering TC - nice to be able to take the phone with me!) and my doctor wants to discuss my blood test results. Which is a little worrying, although there's no rush, she's going to ring me on Friday for a phone consultation. Also had a letter from the BRI asking me to ring to book an appointment with the Tech Neurophysiology team, Not sure if that's about the MRI results or my hand... I continue to fall to bits.

In other news: Kai's latest cold is slowly going, Ken's is still in full swing. So far I've been able to escape it, rather to my surprise. Hayfever is bad this year though!

No doubt there's lots more (K&K went to Wotton-under-Edge last Sat while I did some major shopping/wheeling stuff to charity shops; Kai and I took an evening walk to the nature reserve last Thursday; I still haven't managed to go for a swim, absolutely must try to make time for it asap; next!Poppy has been started...) but that's the essentials. In a moment I shall update my template to add all the IMDb ep summaries I've done to the sidebar, as I've yet to find a way on the IMDb to look up specific contributors' work!

Labels: busyness, medical matters, photographs