Go on, pile it on.

Now that Hazel is improving rapidly, Corey has a very bad chest and has entered hospital for some TLC. It never rains but it pours, as they say. My father used to say that all the time and I never found out who 'they' were.
To the right are Hazels knees. The staples come out on Friday and within a couple of weeks they should both be the same size again. Personally, I can't wait. Hazels legs have always been one of my weaknesses.

Talk about a wild week.......

Ok then, I will.
Hazel went in for her knee joint replacement on Friday 18th in the end. I had her in the building by six am and she went down to theatre at exactly eight am. I had to go for a field test at the Royal Eye Infirmary at ten and I was back to see Hazel at two pm. The rest of her time in hospital was very much the same. Lulu managed to get in to see her but Sally and Ian were too tied up at work to be able to get that far out over a weekend. I brought her home on the following Wednesday and, from then onwards, things got a little easier. The pain that she was suffering before the operation has almost completely gone and she is progressing well with her exercises. I came back to work today for a rest and I also felt the benefit almost immediately.

First you're up..

Then you're down.

          Various problems of a personal medical nature in my close family are casting a shadow over us at present. Hopefully they will not prove to be as bad as they could be but it is still a bit of a downer to us all. Hazel is looking forward to having her op tomorrow still and has discovered that she will have to be at the hospital by six am! I sent a short email to NHK congratulating them on their English language programs and have just received a very nice reply from them. Not much more to record today, feeling a trifle shell shocked and need to work it off.

All things come...................

to she who waits.

Hazel has finally got her date for the knee replacement. After the two cancelled dates in January, she is now booked for this Friday, the 18th of March. We are both very glad it's happening sooner due to someone else having to drop out as she has increasingly been in pain since before Christmas. Ian has re-painted the walls in their lounge now and, by this evening, most of the house should be back to normal. Samuel will only be staying for one day this weekend because of Ians work times and Hazels knee op so I may not see him at all this weekend. Corey continues to delight us. He has reached the stage of laughing at the slightest provocation, sometimes just because someone walks into his field of vision. This provokes much laughter among the older persons present which, of course, increases Coreys laughter.

Image by TheGirlsNY via FlickrAfter looking around on the web for more information about this surgery, I discovered this very helpful photo of before and after knees. This gentlemans right knee was operated on about twelve months before his left knee. The photograph was taken just after surgery on the left knee and shows the stitches from that operation. The right knee has an almost invisible scar left from the previous years surgery. Most encouraging.
(I now know better, of course, they are staples and not stitches.)

The most tiring week of my life?

So far, at least.

Last week, I was up late almost every night and, most evenings, I was working too. Of course, it goes without saying that I was busy at the university as well with a lot of walking to do. So I was glad to be taking a day off and driving to Dorset for a family weekend. Well, the journey up was terrible, we had to leave Plymouth late because of Ians work commitments and the second half of the journey was in the dark with headlights glaring at me all the way. When we arrived, we went straight in to the club and spent quite a while there. I began to feel a bit umpty so I went back to the lodge and slept through to the next morning.

The joys of your own house

Ian and Lulu, although paying rent to us, are encouraged to think for themselves about house repairs and go for what they think is required. So it was that their lounge has just been re-plastered. Simple job, we pay and everyone is happy. Except that it took two days to complete and, whilst the work was proceeding, Lulu was cooped up in a bedroom with Corey and Alfie. In addition, the workmen kept demanding mugs of tea which meant Lulu coming down to the kitchen trailing Alfie and carrying Corey. She is fed up, and I don't blame her, so she has moved up to our house today in order to have somewhere to sit and be able to leave Corey in his bouncer for a while. janis is now cooking with gas again and is back to being a joy to drive so the trip to Dorset tomorrow is beginning to look a lot brighter.

A good nights sleep?

Not! When we left work yesterday, all we had in mind was going home and having a nap until bedtime. Not the case! We had a call from Lulu, the plasterers were coming a day early and had demanded that all the walpaper be stripped before they would start. This sounds worse than it really was, they are going to PVA the whole room before they plaster so they do need to have all the paper off. The day early is not such a terrible thing either 'cos Lou wanted them earlier originally and they found the time for her. So we stopped off at Wicks and bought a steam stripper and scraper and went straight to the house. And spent the next seven hours stripping the front room walls. We didn't eat, we just worked.. We kept telling ourselves that Ian would be home soon and he would not have to work until the afternoon. No! Ian came home late and had to work early because the head chef threw a wobbly and quit. This is about the fourth time he has done this but it looks as though he means it this time as he emptied his locker before he went. So we all continued until about one in the morning. I was too tired to drive so we, Sal, Hazel and I, walked home. Then we had to get up early so that I could walk down and pick up the wagon and Ian and drive back up to our house to pick up Hazel and drive us all to work.

The good news is that the Redhat install was a pig to configure the way we wanted it. It transpired that the original registration had lapsed and we were getting nothing for free anymore. After a conversation with the end user, I removed Redhat and installed Ubuntu. Sweet as a nut and worked first time. I did have to manually set the partitions but that only took about ten minutes to get my head around. Once I had finished, I felt so much better and went to get some food. The Dell goes back this afternoon and I go back to normal. Yay!

Workin' for, The Yankee dollar

Cover of The Andrews Sisters

from The Andrews Sisters hit, Rum and Coca Cola. c1940s

And it has nothing to do with my weekend.
I spent the day installing and configuring a dual boot system (Win7 and Redhat 5.3 on an dual 4 core Dell. The only problem is making a data drive viewable to both.

Our wonderful health service!

I have glaucoma, not badly - just have it. I am supposed to see the consultant every twelve months. I have seen a consultant about four times in the past twelve years. I have had as many field tests in that time as well. For my last appointment, I had to ask my GP to organise it as the Eye Infirmary hadn't bothered for a couple of years. At that time, I was told to make certain that the appointments dept got me in within three months as it was important. When nothing arrived, I called them and requested an appointment. No problem, I'll do that for you. Another nine months have gone by and I am due another consultants inspection. So I call them and ask when my appointment is going to be............................ Well we are very busy sir and you haven't reached the top of the list yet......................... I, once again, explain about what has gone before and how they have missed more appointments than I have had in the last twelve years. I now have my two visits, in the correct order, before the end of the month. They could still postpone, they have done that many times before, but they cannot cancel. Success!

Don't believe everything you see on TV.

It's that Dreamies thing. Fluff did take some from my hand this morning as per the commercial but Titch steadfastly refuses to lower herself to such a thing. I am concerned as they have not punched any holes through the walls yet. The commercial must lie! This is the same commercial with a different product name.

And here's another thing..................

Well, I read the first few chapters of "The Card" in bed last night and, what a great book! The movie was fun but the book is magnificent. Also, from reading the synopsis in Wikipedia, the movie leaves quite a lot of the story out. I must try to read more Arnold Bennett.
Ian and Lulu went out for a meal yesterday evening so Hazel and I looked after Corey for a few hours. He's growing so fast, last week he "found" his hands and, now, he is forever grasping and pushing things.
Prompted by the current advertising, I bought a couple of packets of Dreamies for our cats. Fluff was prepared to eat some if they were thrown on the floor but declined to take them from my hand and Titch wants nothing to do with them at all. This, from cats who will normally steal food from your plate if not pushed away.

Books you always wanted to read but didn't

Cover of Mark TwainImage via Wikipedia

I finished "Innocents Abroad" by Mark Twain yesterday. I had wanted to read it for over forty years but it was either not in print or too expensive whenever I went looking. Finally, it turned up in a Twain collection for the Kindle and I got the whole set for free from Amazon. I very much enjoyed the book and now have the rest of the collection to look forward to. By way of a change, I have now begun Arnold Bennets "The Card" which was  made into a film starring Alec Guinness many years ago.


My colleague, the one with the wicked sense of humour, couldn't contain himself when I simply ignored his actions of last week and just had to ask whether I had been fooled or not. I told him the truth, which did not please him too well, and left it at that. Within sixty seconds he was asking me what sort of revenge I would be taking. My reply worried him too as I prefer revenge to be taken cold and with a lot of thought beforehand. I shall now consider my options. A friend has given me several good suggestions but I have it in mind to take a long thoughtful pause now and see what I can cook up that doesn't involve his PC. This will worry him more than anything else.