I don't know whether to be proud of you for knowing where your passport it, or vaguely disappointed that there are no more garden shed dramas Have a good trip and I'm watching the postbox already


My Monday was intolerable I tells ya, absolutely intolerable .... having said that, I tolerated it, so I suppose it wasn't intolerable, but it was almost intolerable.... sort of It was all to do with work and I won't bore you with the details, but suffice to say, I was moderately grumpy at one point but laughed my way through it as I don't like them to see they're getting to me. Upside of the "intolerable" day was I got a few extra hours which will mean a few extra dollars next week, so a happy ending. More or less. Give or take. Tomorrow is going to be a Nanook of the North day as I will be spending my day in the freezer. Oh woe with extra woe on the side!

In other news, we had a bit of excitement this morning and a stroke of luck saved the day! I had just started the engine in the car, and YoungPlum was just closing her door, when she realised it hadn't shut properly..... and this is where the good luck came in, so she opened it again to reclose it only to find DestructoPup next to the car trying to get in! The gardeners had been in the morning an hour or so previously and obviously hadn't shut the side gate properly and so DP was on the loose If YoungPlum had closed her door properly we could easily have driven off totally unaware that DP was roaming the streets, and no-one would have been home til late evening to know!

What breed is destruction pup, out of interest.

Robins have moved into The Shed.

Robins are nice

My leg is Not Nice - I have probably torn a muscle in it while vomiting the other night (I was sitting on the side of the bath with my feet up on Melony's stool so I could lean over to the sink, and the doc thinks I shoved down onto my leg and damaged my calf muscle.)
However, there's also a small chance that I have a DVT from lying in bed whimpering in the aftermath, so tomorrow it's off to the clinic to be checked.

Honestly, what a cowing rigmarole, as they say in the Black Country.

oh good luck Handy,,,,,hope its not a dvt fingers crossed

Destructo is (probably) a Rhodesian Ridgeback cross Staffy, there might be other bits in the mix but those two breeds are clear in her. She's built like a tank and is solid muscle, between the ears too - actually, she is quite bright at times and is an extremely nice natured dog, she loves everyone, a bit too much sometimes


Knocking down The Shed was a bad thing in some ways, many happy memories from there, but that's progress.

at handy, I've decided my sore leg is not like your sore leg after all, I don't want a torn muscle or a DVT. Hope you get it sorted soon - who knew that vomiting could be such a hazard to ones legs of all things!

Here it's grey again and I don't want to go to work. Really. I really really don't want to go to work. It's rare that I feel that way as I've always just accepted that it's a necessary evil and it's usually ok when I get there but today, I don't want to go! I might even stamp my foot in a moment At least they can't talk me into working late today as I'm taking my friend to the airport this afternoon. I usually appreciate extra hours but not on a freezer day.

I thought we'd only mothballed it

snowy - thanks, me too!
Still - appointment is 10am, so by lunchtime I'll either know it's not, or be on the way to having it sorted.


I know - only I could do something like that..

Good vibes for work - hope it goes/went better than you feared!

BTT

Nearly on page two, handy hope all is well.
Hello to all other GOW's past, present and missing in action, hope all well and not to busy with real life. KJ I miss the shed, nothing different this end still plodding along.

yoo hoo Laura

It's nice to hear from you laura, keep on plodding. I don't want to disturb the robins by rummaging around but we've seen much flying in and out of the (missing) door.

*waves at Laura* Good to see you around my dear, hope that's a good sign?

Am slightly concerned about our Handy - am hoping no news = good news. Sending get well leg vibes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ah, that shed.... *sigh*

Must.Go.To.Bed. (p.s. jra - this is because I'm knackered, sorry mate - not an invitation. Plummie'll be along in a mo )

Sorry, Sad, didn't mean to scare you!
Looks like all is well - ultrasound clear. Waiting for blood test result just to confirm as apparently it's hard to scan the calf properly, but looks as if it's muscular.
Paracetamol keeping the worst of it at bay but when they wear off it REALLY HURTS - I keep getting cramp!

Laura, good to see you

Going back to sleep now...

Handy, glad to read that the ultrasound was clear and hope that the blood tests come back clear too.

Laura - great to hear from you as always. Hope that things are picking up for you now

Here, all is fine - I'm ok, YoungPlum is great, but I'm absolutely knackered. I was up at 6.20 this morning and have been on the go ever since then and now that I've stopped (at just after 8pm) all I want to do is go to sleep. Too early for bed though, so I'm going to have to prop my eyelids open with cocktail sticks for another couple of hours! Fortunately they've switched my shifts round so I've only got a 4 hour day tomorrow, but then two 9 hour days on Friday/saturday. At least I get a bit of a break tomorrow, not that I'm whining about getting the work as it's meaning that I'm getting to save for a couple of big bills that are looming soon.

Hope you had a nice sleep, Plums!

My blood test came back with a tiny positive, so I have to have another ultrasound next Tuesday just to be absolutely sure there's nothing. The clinic think it's probably a false positive from my endometriosis (apparently it's such a sensitive test you can get a false positive from a very heavy period!), but they like to be certain and I'd much rather they were!

Leg a lot less sore today but retaining lots of fluid - back to having one fat leg!
I plan to go back to the GP on Friday and get some advice on whether to rest it or exercise it or what to do and try to get some idea of what's causing it... it can't be a coincidence that it all started after the vomiting session. I can understand the pulled muscle part, but goodness knows how throwing up can interrupt the lymph drainage in your leg....?

In other news, it's trying to be spring here!
A few more degrees of warmth and a drop of rain and we'll be off...

I'm blushing again.

=

A BT Openreach engineer came around today to fix me up with FTTC (not the same as FTTH, e.g. Virginmedia), and I've got the full 40 meg down and 10 meg up for £20 a month. I changed a couple of settings in the Sky hub to make me more secure, i.e. do not respond to ping requests and disable UPnP, but otherwise for a FTTC wired connection, it pretty well runs with no setting up, once the installation has been made.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_to_the_x

Beautiful New Bat Discovered in South Sudan Click on the images and they're huge!

Bats in general are cute IMO, but I wouldn't want one to suck my blood.

Vampire bats are teeny things, jra, and mostly bite cows and horses.
Big bats tend to live off fruit.

I had to rescue a bat that was flapping around the ceiling of an old house once - we were on holiday there with friends and the bat found his way in and couldn't find it out again.
Everyone else was to scared to touch it, so I caught it in a shirt and let it out of the door.

Such fantastic little beasties!

Occasionally, you'd see them hanging upside down from the wooden beams inside my dad's former boathouse. Also, on one occasion, I was having a crafly fag by sticking my head out from a bedroom window down at my dad's place in Devon and this bat flew towards me and took last minute evasive action using it's ultrasound, but came close enough to me to feel the air disturbance caused by it's flying.

Apparently we have about 20,000 spectacled flying foxes living in the CBD. Bat shit is horrible but a common thing to have on your car here. It took me a while to get used to realising that the large flocks of "birds" each evening were actually bats. It's also common to see them frazzled on power lines and then it's a case of betting how long before they get removed.

Bats here in the UK are often having hard times population wise, it seems.

http://www.bats.org.uk/pages/uk_bats.html
http://www.bats.org.uk/pages/species...on_trends.html

=

Hugs again to handy.

=

Robins.

Cute birds, but very territorial.

During winter you could often feed them by hand, once they trusted you, which was nice. They were always looking around for worms in the garden, especially when you were digging up soil.

We used to have robins in our back garden when we lived in London. I used to tell YoungPlum that they were Santa's robins and were there to keep an eye on her behaviour through the year When we emigrated and had no robins, I had to improvise and we had Santa's geckos - not quite the same

Hope you all sleep well when you go - I'm off to work now!

It looks like I'm going to be in need of some GOW special positive vibes over the coming weeks. Just as I start to think life is getting good with my increase in hours over the last 3 weeks, I had the rug pulled out from beneath me today at work. Apparently, my job is going over to evenings which I can't do. The manageress about whom I have not been compimentary in the past, was in fact extremely nice and kind today whilst breaking the news to me. It's possible that I may get hours in another department and had to go to see the department manager when my shift ended today. He's an arrogant person, but (fortunately for me) is under the impression that he has to give me hours so that's good for the time being anyway. The unfortunate aspect is that he told me in no uncertain terms, that he doesn't much care, if he doesn't like me, he'll get rid of me anyway. Cool - I know where I stand eh The change over to evening work happens in about 6 weeks but I don't know when my position will change. I do know that i'm unlikely to get many hours and the ones I do get are likely to be at the weekends when no-one else wants to do them. YoungPlum and I will never get to do anything together. I'm feeling a bit woeful, but at least they (the manageress) is trying to make sure I stay, which is nice.

It's times like this that I feel very much on the wrong side of the world to my brothers, not that they could really help but it would be nice to sit down over a cuppa and talk about it.

If I had the money and were keen on flying, I'd treat you both for a nice day out, say a decent restaurant meal and a trip to some popular tourist attraction.

(((((Ima)))))