Granny G Video #1

This is a video for my grandson, Ricky "Roo". In this episode (I plan to do more of these), I'm showing him a new toy that I'm putting in the mail to him tomorrow.

3 Aug 2008

My blog has moved to Random Experiments II on my newly updated website.

Please update your bookmarks and come visit!

Sat 26 July

08:04:00   8.7  / 156  Fasting   
13:29:00   6.4  / 116  Pre-Lunch 
22:32:00   13.1  / 235  Post-Tea  

Driving Totals:
* Anytime: 1445 mins of 2400 req
* Nighttime: 600 mins of 600 req (DONE)

Total Steps: 2745

Breakfast: 1/4 Bagel with blue cheese, plus cottage cheese
Lunch: 2 eggs, bacon and 1/2 bagel
Tea: Minute steak roll ups, salad

Notes: Worked on my personal site today, getting my photo album sorted as to how things are displayed and deciding on how best to set up my blog.

Fri 25 July

07:02:00   8.6  / 155  Fasting   
12:50:00   5.3  /  96  Pre-Lunch 
19:03:00   10.3  / 186  Pre-Tea  

Driving Totals:
* Anytime: 1445 mins of 2400 req
* Nighttime: 600 mins of 600 req (DONE)
30 Mins

Total Steps: n/a (lost the data)

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: leftover lamb meatloaf on a roll with cheese and lettuce, cottage cheese
Tea: Fish & Chips

Notes: Had dressing change today. The wound is looking good. Did some grocery shopping with Rod, then back home again. I thought I finished up a project, but it has a few issues that will have be worked on on Monday. Went to Breastroke meeting with Jenny and we had a glass of bubbly each, chocolate, bickies, chips, crackers. Then came home and Jen stayed for Fish and Chips.

Link(s): On Peanut Shells and Email Archiving

Family Refuses To Turn Beloved Two-Headed Bearded Dragon Lizard Into A Freak Show (And good on them, I say)

Thur 24 July

Driving Totals:
* Anytime: 1415 mins of 2400 req
* Nighttime: 600 mins of 600 req (DONE)
50 mins driving time.


Total Steps:

Bike:
* mins after lunch
* mins after tea

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: sausage roll and left over lamb meatloaf
Tea: kfc

Notes: I haven't done my stats today so those details will have to wait until tomorrow.

Just wanted to note that today is a very Red Letter day. I got a lot done on a website I've been working on, and I reached my night time driving quota tonight. Whoo Hoo! I've also added another set or two to my new online photo gallery on my new site.



Link(s): The 7 Types Of Bad Bosses According To Star Trek (And How To Survive Them)

Wed 23 July

04:05:00   8.0  / 144  Overnight 
07:57:00   7.6  / 136  Fasting   
11:47:00   6.7  / 121  Post-Bfast
23:29:00   7.2  / 129  Post-Tea 

Driving Totals:
* Daytime: 1380 mins of 2400 req
* Nighttime: 585 mins of 600 req
20 minutes driving to Flinders Medical Centre today

Total Steps: 1749

Bike:
* mins after lunch
* mins after tea

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: leftover lamb meatloaf, half bagel w/ blue cheese
Tea: Yiros meat, chips, salad

Notes: Happy Birthday Ricky! My grandson is 6 months old today.

Had last laser and MLD treatment today. Buses have been packed lately. The first bus of mine that came through had a sign I'd never seen before 'Full Bus' and was only letting as many passengers on as what got off (two). The next bus was packed as well but I was able to squeeze in.

I finished the July Monthly Scavenger Hunt this morning, as I only had one more piccy to upload and took care of that. Phew! My set can be seen at: http://flickr.com/photos/flitterg/2693701629/


Link(s): Numb Skull.

Tue 22 July

07:08:00   8.8  / 158  Fasting   
19:04:00   4.8  /  87  Pre-Tea   
22:50:00   6.7  / 121  Post-Tea 

Driving Totals:
* Daytime: 1360 mins of 2400 req
* Nighttime: 585 mins of 600 req
15 minutes daytime.

Total Steps: 7439

Bike:
* 0 mins after lunch
* 5:30 mins after tea

Breakfast: bran pancake
Lunch: 2 eggs, 1/5 bagel with blue cheese
Tea: lamb meatloaf, mashed potatoes, veggies, salad

Notes: Had my usual Tuesday RDNS appointment this morning. As per last week, Rod went to the library and after having my dressing changed I took my walk at Colonnades. I felt very pleased with myself as I'd covered quite a bit of ground, but after coming home and having lunch instead of getting on with stuff I had planned to do, I ended up crashing and napping for an hour. That wasn't too bad, but it took me a few hours to get it together afterwards and get the cobwebs out. It wasn't the best of days as far as arthritis goes and there are times when my hands swell up and stiffen up quite a bit while I sleep (doesn't matter if it's a night time sleep or day time nap), and today was one of those days. After tea this evening, and once I'd had a stint on the bike, I'm now feeling more alert and stuff, but of course now it's the end of the day. Bah, talk about annoying.

I think I'm getting the hang of the usb pedometer now. First, I've resigned myself that the program's calendar data is always going to be a day out. As in when I upload my data in the morning, it counts it as the current days totals. I don't always remember to do the upload before midnight, so doing it in the morning, and then pressing the button on it till the lights blink is what makes it 'work' for the rest of the day. So I can deal with that, as long as I know what the routine needs to be.

Link(s): I so need to give this advice a go: Inbox Zero: Schedule email dashes

Mon 21 July

07:24:00   6.5  / 117  Fasting
13:48:00   5.6  / 101  Pre-Lunch
16:54:00   4.6  /  83  Post-Lunch
20:28:00   6.6  / 119  Post-Tea 

Driving Totals:
* Daytime: 1345 mins of 2400 req
* Nighttime: 585 mins of 600 req

Total Steps: 5565

Bike:
* 5.15 mins after lunch
* 5.30 mins after tea

Breakfast: bran pancake
Lunch: tuna and low carb japanese noodles, salad.
Tea: black bean beef stirfry, pork in plum sauce, noodles (take-away)

Notes: This morning I had an appointment with Dr. Ling, as opposed to my regular GP as he's on vacation. She is so thorough, and gentle. I made the appointment because of needing scripts to be re-done, but as I had the sinus problems over the weekend (and for the last few weeks in general), and as she asked, I told her about it, and then the rib/side pain and that my breast still hurts, etc. She listened to my heart, my lungs (which are clear, so the gunk is all from my sinus'), checked my sides and reassured me that these are muscular pains probably from coughing, and checked my ears, throat and nose. I have a lot of fluid behind both ears. That explains a lot too. So I'm back on antibiotics, and she redid all the scripts that needed redoing. She asked if there was anything else that needed attention, and as you know I've been considering switching to her, and this appointment really showed me the difference, so I asked if I could be her patient and she was delighted. She went over a few notes about my history, and I'll do the full exam thing that they have which includes a full family history, etc. We'll schedule that for after I've had a bone denisity test, which she says I need as I've been on tamoxifen for the breast cancer and its important to get a baseline done. She weighed me, and I like her scales better than mine. (LOL). Anyway, I am pleased I made the decision. And yes, for family members reading this, I know... I was brought into the world by a Dr. Ling. No relation, though. :-)

While waiting to have my scripts filled, I browsed the aisles at Coles (grocery store) and as I was by myself, as I did a month or so ago with pasta's, I went on a label reading spree for low carb snacks. I actually found some too... but to my surprise, the rice crackers are NOT low carb, by a long shot. However, Pringles makes a 'lite' Rice chip that IS low carb... only 15g carbs / 100g. Compared to 85g carbs / 100g for any of the rice crackers. So I bought a couple of cans and had a couple chips with lunch. Very tasty too. MUCH nicer than rice crackers.

Lately I've had a knack for people, mostly of the 'senior citizen' age group, simply start talking to me as if they've known me for a long time. Saturday it was a 78yr old lady who sat down next to me as I was taking off my wind cheater and stuffing it into my shopping bag, if it weren't for her great-grandson offering a distraction, I'd probably still be there listening. Today it was another older lady looking for a whistling tea kettle, which I helped her find. And on the way home, I stopped to take a pic of a lost shopping cart (we call them 'trolleys' here), and a fellow walking by asked what I was taking a picture of, so I showed him the pic and explained about the Monthly Scavenger Hunt and that I had plans to use the pic as an example of something that's a '4Wheeler'. He was amused.

The rest of my day has been working on a site migration (no not my website, another one). My friend Patty dropped by with some clothes for me, via her Mum. Very nice tops all for winter, which I really really need. Well needed as I think I'm pretty well set now.
Rod had to go return something so I told him if the chinese place was open to pick us up some tea. Otherwise pick up some marinara mix so I could make seafood stirfry. Luckily the chinese place was open and so no cooking for me tonight. :-) And what with the exercise bike, I had an excellent after tea reading too. Very pleased about that.

And, the latest scratchy ticket out at the moment is a double crossword one for $5. Last week I bought one and used it for 2 days. I did the first game one day, and saved the next one for after my next walk, and I won $11. Saturday I picked up another one and after I got home today I finished the 2nd game. Another $11. Neat.


Link(s): Perfect Choc Chip Cookies - Just looking at the pic on this story, and reading the description... OMG, what a diet wrecker!

Sun 20 July

07:53:00   7.8  / 141  Fasting   
12:19:00   6.3  / 114  Pre-Lunch 
18:59:00   7.2  / 129  Pre-Tea   

Driving Totals:
* Daytime: 1345 mins of 2400 req
* Nighttime: 585 mins of 600 req

Total Steps: n/a

Bike: n/a


Breakfast: bran pancake
Lunch: scrambled eggs w/ bacon and cheese
Tea: 2 slices (thinner crust) pizza

Notes: Was 'ok' in the morning aside from a nasty sinus headache. Finally gave in to it after lunch and had a long nap (till 5!). Spent the evening napping, dozing and watching TV with Rod, then went to bed and slept through the night.

Sat 19 July

08:02:00   7.4  / 134  Fasting   
11:25:00   6.5  / 117  Post-Bfast
16:58:00   6.4  / 115  Post-Lunch

Driving Totals:
* Daytime: 1345 mins of 2400 req
* Nighttime: 585 mins of 600 req

Total Steps: 2800 (see note below)

Bike:
* 5 mins after lunch

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: 2 eggs, bacon, mushrooms and 1 slice toast
Tea: oyster steak and salad

Notes: I really don't think I've got the hang of the new USB pedometer yet. I'll get there though.

Had walk (Saturday lottery). Sinus headache, but not too bad.

Fri 18 July

07:25:00   8.6  / 154  Fasting   
08:28:00   9.2  / 166  Pre-Bfast 
13:58:00   5.1  /  91  Pre-Lunch 
16:35:00   5.8  / 104  Post-Lunch
18:38:00   5.4  /  98  Pre-Tea   
22:17:00   6.8  / 123  Post-Tea  

Driving Totals:
* Daytime: 1345 mins of 2400 req
* Nighttime: 585 mins of 600 req

Total Steps: 2719 (but see notes below)

Bike:
* 5 mins after lunch, 1.8k
* 5 mins after tea, 1.4k

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: sausage roll and cottage cheese
Tea: hot and spicy fish with a handful of chips

Notes: Had RDNS appointment for a dressing change today. It's looking good, but have an area of skin where the tape goes that's tring real hard to have an allergic reaction. My side is still sore today, but somewhat better than it was.

After RDNS, went to Woodcroft to do grocery shopping. We stopped The Warehouse (now called 'Sams Warehouose) and had a look at some speakers and I tried out the exercise bikes and one that was on sale ($79.95 off) was an elliptical one, that moves your arms as you pedal so you get some additional benefit from it, and as it's a good kind of movement for me in helping to reduce the fluid in my arms, I decided to get it. It wasn't in my plans for today, but it was a really good deal. Rod let me get a headstart on putting it together and I was doing well (albeit slow) but I was quite grateful for his help.

I want to use the bike on a daily basis and make it part of the 'routine of my day', but I also don't want to over-do it so I think 5 minutes after meals would be a good starting point and once I'm used to that, I can start increasing the time. The other thing I'm trying to do with it is interval training which is you work on it really intensley for a set amount of time and then cool down for an equal amount of time, and keep repeating this pattern. Apparently people loss more weight is they use this method. That'd be nice. I really really need to drop at least 10k.

I wore my pedometer on a lanyard today, so numbers might not be quite accurate. Worth trying to see how well it fairs though.

I put a few pics on Flickr - a couple new postcards from Angeliina in Finland and a nice pic of Kelsey and Lynn with a horse (Lynn's I think) because I needed a pic for the scavenger hunt ('horseback riding').

Wish I could say I've done more today, but alas, I guess it wasn't meant to be.

Link(s): bugger, I lost them when I rebooted tonight.

Thur 17 July

08:00:00   7.2  / 129  Fasting   
16:58:00   6.4  / 115  Post-Lunch
21:48:00   8.3  / 149  Post-Tea

Driving Totals:
* Daytime: 1290 mins of 2400 req
* Nighttime: 585 mins of 600 req

Total Steps: 2733

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: sausage roll and cottage cheese
Tea: kfc - chicken and 1 whole wheat roll

Notes: Got up this morning and did my usual routine but had a sinus headache and my right side (where the hole is) was hurting and I felt a bit groggy so I went back to bed until 11:30.

Today I had my 2nd laser and MLD therapy. She noted that the area around the bandaging looked bit swollen and made sure the laser was directed on that whole area. There are actually a few areas that are laser-ed... my wound, the scars on my back and the scars on my reconstruction. During treatment I mentioned the sinus thing and she spent a few minutes doing some therapy on my face, neck and scalp. OOoo, nice. She said it wasn't a full treatment but I'm welcome to come in for a full one anytime. Nice to know. And it did help. It seemed like my side hurt more after treatment, but that could just be a perception thing. It was sore before I had treatment and is still sore tonight. And the weather sucks so my arthritis is being unhappy as well. Tonight it's my right hip aching. Tomorrow it'll be something else. I'm learning that this is just the way it is with me.

I drove to the appointment, and then Rod drove himself home, and I took the bus home. I made a stop off at O'Halloran Hill to pick up some of the Asian noodles that are extremely low carb, and picked up some Vietnamese cold rolls for our snack tonight. I took a few pics of the beautiful green (because it's winter and rainy) paddock across the road, including a few shots with the sheep in it, but didn't cross the road and do a good job as it was really windy and it was a bitter cold wind. And there I was with a very heavy bag, no glove, no scarves, no jumper, no jacket. UGH! It seemed like a very long 15 minute wait. It took an hour after I was home before my ears stopped hurting.

Our plan was to do shopping tonight (Thurs nights the stores are open until 9pm), which would have given me the last few minutes I need for night time driving, but we decided to stay home instead. We can grocery shopping tomorrow after my RDNS appointment. I'm kind of glad of that since I was/am quite sore still and this allowed me to take a Panadeine Forte to help with the pain. And it has helped.

My evening has been spent going through my photo archives looking for scavenger hunt items. I only have about 4 more items/pics to find.

And, last night after I did my blog, I made a discovery -- the USB cable for my new pedometer ALSO happens to fit my freebie glucose meter - the small one that's a bit like a long thick pen. Now I just need to get the software for it installed. I've run into a little problem with that though, so I'll have another go with it tomorrow. Nice find though - it sure beats paying $29 for the cable.

Link(s): none today. Haven't had a chance to read all my RSS feeds today. Normally I do that in the morning.

He is SO cool.

100_2207,
originally uploaded by Katzilla_dances.

Isn't my grandson just the hottest coolest baby ever?? !!



I love this little guy.

Wed 16 July

07:21:00   7.1  / 128  Fasting
18:01:00   5.1  /  92  Pre-Tea
23:15:00   7.2  / 130  Post-Tea

Driving Totals:
* Daytime: 1290 mins of 2400 req
* Nighttime: 585 mins of 600 req

20 mins night time driving.

Total Steps: 5493

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: thai curry tuna, lettuce and sprout salad. Yum.
Tea: Sausage and roll.


Notes: Spent the morning doing work related stuff, and had planned to work on my website this afternoon. However, after lunch my new pedometer arrived so of course I had to install the software for it - on my VMWare Windows because 'naturally' it uses %^&*& proprietry software. (GRRrrr). I think I may have solved the problem of why I couldn't get the USB TV thing working with VMWare a month or so ago while in the process. Turns out there were a couple lines in a file in /etc that needed uncommenting in order for USB stuff to work with VMWare. So, will try the TV thing on the weekend, for sure. There's pretty much nothing to the pedometer. Just a hook so it hooks onto clothing, and a USB slot. That's good as it means it doesn't talk at me, and it can't be accidently reset. The software's a bit daggy, but at least it works. I took a walk and ran some errands and when I came home it told me I'd taken 3982 steps, which is about right for where I'd walked.

I stopped at the medical centre and made an appointment with my GP so I can get some prescriptions renewed. I have been debating really hard on whether to change doctors or not, and even which doctor to choose for this appointment. Funny, it was a decision made for me. My usual GP is on vacation this week and next so I'll be seeing the doctor I've been thinking very hard about switching to. I guess we'll see how this appointment goes and I'll decided from there.

There was a computer meeting tonight and as the topic was GNU/Linux we decided to make an appearance in support of our favourite operating system. It was quite a good presentation, though I personally would have skipped a lot of the basic hardware related stuff and showed more of how it's not that different from what people are already using, but it works without crashing. Different strokes though. I won a couple of door prizes tonight too. One was a beautiful Azalea plant.

I really like knowing the history of my plants. Like this one will always be from the computer club, and I have some great spider plants going that our friend Erik gave me from his many hanging baskets of them. I'm not sure where I'll plant the Azalea, I'll have to look up what it does best with and any requirements. This one has beautiful double-pink flowers with white lacy edges. Really nice.


Link(s):

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/crap-idea/
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/asimov-laws-robotics.php
http://laughingsquid.com/lightening-strikes-woman-as-she-is-shooting-video/

Tue 15 July

15:05:00   5.8  / 105  Post-Lunch
23:11:00   6.3  / 113  Post-Tea 

Driving Totals:
* Daytime: 1290 mins of 2400 req
* Nighttime: 565 mins of 600 req
30 mins daytime driving

Total Steps: 9987

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: sausage roll w/ cottage cheese
Tea: Subway

Notes:

Am adding these notes the next day. Quite a busy day though. Went for my dressing change in the morning and then had a good walk at Colonnades (a bit chilly for outdoor walking) while Rod went to the library. On my 'walk' I picked up a 3 pack of yoghurt starter, had my glasses adjusted, and wandered around with a cup of cappuccino (bought more for the fact the cup would warm up my hands than for the caffiene). Came home, did the security upgrade for Drupal which wasn't as hard as I thought it'd be and then while typing an Email to my step-mom, I just couldn't stay awake and had to go to bed.


Link(s):
This one made me laugh out loud:
Vegan Zombie T-Shirt

Mon 14 July

07:59:00   6.2  / 112  Fasting   
11:23:00   7.1  / 128  Post-Bfast
12:39:00   6.5  / 117  Pre-Lunch 
15:37:00   6.8  / 122  Post-Lunch
19:17:00   5.4  /  97  Pre-Tea   
22:34:00   6.8  / 122  Post-Tea  

Driving Totals:
* Daytime: 1260 mins of 2400 req
* Nighttime: 565 mins of 600 req

Total Steps: 3620

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: sausage roll w/ cottage cheese
Tea: Tandori / Portuguese Chicken

Notes:

Funny that yesterday I worked on my breast cancer web page and moved my chemo pics to the photo gallery as I noticed last night that once again, my eyelashes have disappeared. All the 'visible' ones must be on the same re-growth schedule since my having had chemo. I wonder if others have noticed this phenomenon?

Sun 13 July

06:24:00   7.4  / 134  Fasting 
11:44:00   5.3  /  95  Post-Bfast
13:48:00   5.0  /  90  Pre-Lunch 
16:43:00   7.2  / 129  Post-Lunch
19:46:00   4.9  /  88  Pre-Tea   
22:45:00   7.6  / 137  Post-Tea 

Driving Totals: Daytime: 1260 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 565 mins of 600 req

Total Steps: 3291

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: Scrambled eggs w/ bacon & mushrooms 1 slice toast (Helga's Wholemeal)
Tea: Pizza. 2 slices. (thinner crust)


Notes: I'm pleased with the after lunch results today. Normally I have the low GI / high fibre bread, but as I knew my readings were at a quite reasonable level, I tried a slice of the thick wholemeal bread I picked up for Rod yesterday. I love wholemeal bread, and this is just excellent bread, for sure. And I had a touch (say maybe a teaspoon or less) of strawberry jam on the toast. Yum. And my after lunch reading was normal 7.2 - right in range. Yay!

I spent a pleasant day working on my own website and it's really coming along. Inadvertently the page I worked on today was the breast cancer one, and the old site had an additional page tucked away with photos relating to chemo and radiotherapy. Well, if you've noticed my recent Flickr uploads, these pics are now on Flickr and have been made part of my photo gallery, which uses Flickr sets. As these were the first gallery pics I've added it took a fair amount of time to get things displaying how I want them. It's not exactly what I'd like, but without hacking into code, it'll have to do. And I'm not 'dissatisfied' with the results - just I had something else in mind on how it would all look and fit together. This evening I copied the breast cancer web links to the new site's Links area. A lot of the sites were gone, but some of the most interesting ones are still available. And of course, I added the Breastroke.com site as well. Naturally! It just seemed quite a realisation that although I was working on 'other things' (photo gallery displays, web links), the back drop to this for the whole day was breast cancer. It's probably the most time I've spent on that topic for ages. And ironically, the link I have to share tonight is one that my son sent me, and was quite interesting reading.

Accidental fungus leads to promising cancer drug

Sat 12 July

07:25:00   6.5  / 117  Fasting   <br />11:42:00   6.6  / 119  Post-Bfast<br />16:41:00   6.8  / 122  Post-Lunch<br />19:19:00   4.5  /  81  Pre-Tea   <br />23:36:00   6.2  / 112  Post-Tea 

Driving Totals: Daytime: 1260 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 565 mins of 600 req

Total Steps: 6153

Breakfast: bran pancake
Lunch: 2 eggs, bacon, mushrooms and 1 slice toast (low GI)
Tea: steak, stir-fry veggies. Very few carbs


Notes: Had a walk today but forgot my pedometer. Took it off when I changed my pants and forgot to put it back on again. So since my usual walk up to the shops including a walk around Coles is a bit over 4000, that's what I'm giving myself, plus whatever's on the meter from before my walk and after. I ordered a new pedometer today too: [Have a look]

Got a good start on converting my personal website over to Drupal. It's actually gone very smoothly.

Tonight for tea I tried using bean sprouts as 'noodles' as well as made stirfry veggies. I found they're too crunchy to use as a pasta substitute, and for my tastes, they really need to be with other veggies. I didn't actually 'finish' my tea tonight as by time I got to finishing up the stirfry veggies and bean sprouts, I was quite full. I wish that'd happen more often. I'm sure it'd be a big help in losing weight.


Worth1000.com had (has?) a Photoshop Christmas movies contest. Very funny stuff.

Fri 11 July

12:54:00   6.3  / 113  Post-Bfast<br />16:19:00   8.1  / 145  Post-Lunch<br />18:50:00   6.3  / 113  Pre-Tea   <br />22:42:00   6.3  / 114  Post-Tea

Driving Totals: Daytime: 1260 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 565 mins of 600 req
30 mins daytime driving


Total Steps: 3425

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: sausage roll w/ cottage cheese
Tea: fish & chips


Notes: A friend of ours from the old Fidonet days (back before the Internet became popular) passed away. I wrote a little bit about him for the Homestead mailing list, website and the CBM Fidonet echo (such as it is these days). Here's what I wrote:

Russell Prater, Former CBM Fidonet Moderator

I received news today from Phil Heberer, a long time Commodore Fidonet member...

-------------------
It is with great regret that I inform you that another of the circle of e-friends from the old Fidonet CBM echo has gone on to meet the Lord. Former CBM Moderator Russell Prater died Monday, Jul 7, 2008, from complications of diabetes. He was 69 years old. May God rest his soul.

Phil
-----------------

Russell was the moderator of the CBM Fidonet echo for many years, back in it's hey day when hundreds of messages would flow through nearly every day. He often joked that moderating the echo was a bit like 'herding cats'.

What I loved most about Russell was his sense of humor, fairness, and his belief that 'what goes around comes around', which was part of his Commodore friendliness. He helped create a lot of little utility scripts - some that are part of Rod's QWKRR packages, and was always willing to help people with technical problems. I once spoke on the phone with him when he helped walk my former husband through adding additional drive numbering switches to my 1581 drive. He was as friendly over the phone as he was in the echo.

I'm very saddened to learn of Russell's passing. We've lost a wonderful soul.

--------------------------------------------

Today's XKCD comic, Good Morning, gave me quite a chuckle. I know I've used the technique described quite a bit. - Love this comic - it sure fits me to a tee. Though most of the time lately I've become a 'normal' !!! person and get up in the early morning and conk out around midnight or so.

In the 'things that make you go hmm... Dept. Box falls from sky outside a Saginaw business
It's the LAST paragrph.

Had a dressing change today. The skin still red (way above where the hole is - it's likely from the opsite tape that's used to hold the dressing on), but otherwise everything looks good.

The first Email I received upon returning home was about Russ, and that blew the wind out of my sails for a bit. I went outside and had a good think about the things I liked about him, and wrote it up when I came back in. Rod took the news hard as well, as he and Russ used to share a lot of mail with each other, and they really did a lot of 'work' on lots of little bits of programming code, not to mention a whole lot of humour and comraderie. We're both sorry we didn't keep in better touch with him.

This afternoon I couldn't get settled. I ended up tidyng up my desk, making up a to-do list, and then picking the easiest/quickest thing on the list to do so I could say I've done something. That seemed to help. I did a few of the list items and tonight added a few more ticks off the list. Nothing too hard, just stuff that needed doing. I didn't go to Breastroke today as I am quite sore in the rib area (left side this week) and had extra pain killing meds so figured I was better off taking it easy here at home.

Thur 10 July

07:50:00   6.0  / 108  Fasting   
11:32:00   6.7  / 121  Post-Bfast
16:32:00   5.9  / 107  Post-Lunch
20:12:00   4.4  /  80  Pre-Tea   
22:34:00   6.4  / 116  Post-Tea

Driving Totals: Daytime: 1230 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 565 mins of 600 req
35 mins night driving


Total Steps: 4749

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: sausage roll w/ cottage cheese
Tea: KFC, about 5 chips and no green tea (pretty rare for me)


Notes: Worked on drupal site today, doing member lists via 'views'. Turned out quite nice, IMO. Then tackled the same with the files and particularly the minutes folder, but wasn't quite as successful.

Late night shopping tonight. We went to Seaford so I clocked up some extra driving time. What with price of petrol these days, I've limited our trips to grocery shopping @ Seaford to once every 3 weeks or so. I also reckon if we don't need that much in the way of groceries there's no point (aside from driving time for my logs) in going that far every week.

Had KFC for tea tonight as is our usual for Thursday nights. Was busy reading stuff and forgot to drink my tea after dinner, but it actually proved useful in that it just proves that if I only have chicken and very few chips my glucose levels are quite good afterwards -- even without any extra help from drinking green tea.

I'd hoped to do some work on my own website tonight but doesn't look like that's going to pan out since it's after 11pm and I'm yawning and quite sleepy.

Wed 9 July

07:26:00   6.3  / 114  Fasting   
11:45:00   6.4  / 115  Post-Bfast
17:16:00   5.7  / 103  Post-Lunch
23:07:00   7.3  / 131  Post-Tea

Driving Totals: Daytime: 1230 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 530 mins of 600 req

Total Steps: 4426

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: sausage roll w/ cottage cheese
Tea: ham and cheese on foccia bread, cottage cheese, salad


Notes: Was up early this morning and finished doing stats set up for breastroke.com, and managed to add a recipe to the breastroke site as well. I had ordered a battery powered electric sweeper a few weeks ago that showed up the other day but required several hours charging before it was ready to be used. I tried it out today and it works very nicely. Cheap - only $20, but as the battery died on my old Electrolux 'The Boss' cordless vacuum, this is an inexpensive alternative. The battery for the other is half the price of a new model and there's no guarantee on the dang things. Anyway it works great on some of the rugs there are around the house and quite nicely on tile and plain floors too. Good buy.

We had some errands to run this afternoon and just before we were about to leave, Wayne from Oncara dropped by with the most
gorgeous framed certificate of appreciation from Oncara Inc (Old Noarlunga Commercial and Residential Association Inc) in appreciation of our services to them. Blown away! Was totally unexpected and wow, it's great to be appreciated. :-)

Late this afternoon, I finally found a nice way of importing and showing Flickr images to Drupal sites. It's the "Embedded Media"
module, which includes several additional modules packaged with it. Now I'm just learning how to create views on the images it imports. And it has what I wanted - the title of the image, description, and tags. Working on this has taken up most of my evening and I hope to be able to do some great stuff with it for my personal site.

I found this link in the 'news' today: Baby's smile 'like taking cocaine' for mums. Gave me a smile.

Tue 8 July

08:17:00   7.5  / 135  Fasting   
12:18:00   6.1  / 110  Pre-Lunch 
15:55:00   7.2  / 129  Post-Lunch
23:28:00   8.4  / 151  Post-Tea

Driving Totals: Daytime: 1230 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 530 mins of 600 req

Total Steps: 6180

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: sausage roll & cottage cheese
Tea: satay pork & veggies, 1 slice low GI bread


Notes: Returning to regular updates because Chris asked me to, and I promised I would. I had a dressing change this morning. The hole hasn't shown much difference in size since I started going to the RDNS clinic (I think I started there in April), but it is drying up a bit and looking better. Had a cough the other night that made my whole right side where the hole is hurt, but it is getting better now. It didn't seem to have any visible effect on the hole. Starting on Sunday, I had some odd redness show up on the skin but it looked like irritation from like my last dressing change, so the nurse put some extra barrier wipe over that area today.

On way home, stopped at discount chemist for allergy tabs and decided to get the bare minimum and go home and order these online. 30 for $25 when I can get the same stuff online for the same price, but a quantity of 50. Ordered 2 boxes as I'm tired of running out of the stuff. These are 24hr tablets that due to my skin allergies and the bandaging I've had for the last 16 months, I have to take twice a day to keep from having bad rashes with the bandaging. Expensive but worth it as a skin breakdown would be really bad news.

A few weeks ago I ordered a small ceramic heater to use outside that finally arrived yesterday. Love it! Much nicer than the old heater we were using. It's tiny and looks like a pair of speakers. Good week for it to arrive too. Yesterday morning was the coldest morning in 3yrs. We're having a whole week of rain, which may seem gloomy, but it's really needed so I won't complain.

Had lunch out on Saturday with the 'Lunch Group' - we get together on the 1st Saturday of the month. This time we went to the Old Noarlunga hotel for lunch. Was quite nice. Rod and I had the 'Salt & Pepper Chicken' which was excellent.

On Monday, I had lunch out with the Breastroke girls at the Marion Hotel. This is a rare treat as it's not something we do very often, maybe once or twice a year. One of our members is caring for her elderly mother and rarely gets to come to the meetings, and was able to have some respite time on Monday so we got together with her, and farewelled another member who's off to the UK for the next few months.

Oh, and before I forget it, y'all get on Twitter and then you can follow my occaisonal comments and daily BGL stats. Here's a link to get you started: http://twitter.com/gaelyne

I wanted to start work on converting my website to Drupal, or at least work on adding views to another site, but neither happened. I got stuck trying to find some way of showing Flickr pics as a slideshow or gallery and have the titles and descriptions show. I never got any further.... I did, however, write a blog entry. That's better than 'nothing at all'. Anyway, tomorrow will be better.

3 July 2008 - Commodore Homestead migrated to Drupal

It took a little over a week, but I've finally finished migrating the Homestead website to Drupal and moved it to it's new home on the web. You can see it at homestead.vcsweb.com

The older site was being heavily web-spammed - in the last few days I'd rec'd over 140 news submissions that were totally bogus. The new site has a few things in place to stop those types of shenanigans.

Anyway, just thought I'd note another site update and now I'm going to go celebrate with a sugar free hot chocolate. :-)

Remember me?

Sorry I've sorta gone underground for awhile. I've been very active with working on websites and learning new stuff. It's probably the most my brain has been 'engaged' in a long long time. I just don't seem to be very good at switching tasks lately so I've been rather dogged with the stuff I've been working on.

My upgrade to Ubuntu Hardy Heron went very well. Probably the easiest full upgrade I've done yet. I stayed with KDE v3 though as from all that I've read, v4 still has quite a few kinks. Probably the hardest thing was sorting out how to print from VMWare Windows, a necessity as an order came in for a CD and the only program I have that has the labels I make for these is in Windows. Bah! Once that was sorted out (I spent all evening on it and then Rod told me an easy way and it worked first time), everything else just fell into place.

OOhh, I see my download of pics of Ricky has finished. I had to hassle Terry for these so I better go look. :-)

Gee, I want more. He is soooo cute. I will have to put a couple pics on Flickr and there's one I've picked out to put on my phone for the background as well. Shame about all the red eye pics though. I'll be having to fix those.

The Commodore website I started a zillion years ago is getting spammed - not that the public can see it, but so far in a weeks time I've receive 141 Emails to approve news stories that are nothing but junk links to crap. So, since Drupal is a perfect system for a community website, I started moving the site to Drupal and will finish with it in the next day or two. It also has some built in things to keep spam from web form abuse to a minimum which is why I've pushed to get this move finished. All seems to be going well with it and it looks quite nice.

I finished the June Monthly Scavenger Hunt on Flickr, with only a few days to spare. This month's is interesting. Anyone have a pic of a Power Ranger toy I could use??

Rod's finished this semester and is home until the next one starts in a few weeks. This is good because once he 'catches his breath', I have lots of honey-do's for him.

I'm just about recovered from having the crud a few weeks ago. My RDNS nurse seems to have it now. We both commented on the fact we've had flu shots this year too. This had to have been a strain that slipped through the cracks.

Rod fixed the new pedometer - I think I wrote in my last entry that it had been really annoyingly going off constantly talking at me. He had fixed it so she quit talking, but unbeknownst to me until that night, it turns out it also wasn't counting steps. It's taken care of now and she does speak, but only when I want her to, so that's good.

A few weeks ago I ordered a ceramic heater for the patio. It's multi directional - so half of it can point in one direction (like towards where Rod sits) and the other half can be pointed towards me. I only paid $29 for it, but have been hanging out waiting for it to arrive. Today the place I bought it from Emailed me to let me know that they found out it was a different model to what they advertised and they tried to get the right one from the manufacturer but haven't heard from them. They offered me the one that they do have (it's not a lot different but apparently the controls aren't in the same place) or a refund. Hopefully by tomorrow it will be on its way as I'll take this one. It's still multi-directional, small, same price and ceramic.

Last week was the last week the lady who normally delivers my parcels was working. She officially retired on the 1st. Shame as I really liked Kathy. And the new one, which I haven't met, didn't impress me today. We were home, the door bell isn't broken, the shutters were up, the car in the drive, but instead of delivering my box (batteries I ordered cheap), there was a card in our letterbox - they couldn't have come to the door at all. Grr. And I'd been looking forward to meeting the new delivery person too.

In case you're wondering about all my stats, well I'm still doing the glucose readings, which have been pretty good, but as far as journalling stuff goes, I have taken a rest. I'd much rather spend my energy at the moment working on creative stuff as I have no idea how long this burst of creativity will last and I just feel like I should give it everything I have as it's been so long since I've felt creative. I haven't been walking as much, but I also have to work with the weather, and when it's super cold and rainy I've been more inclined to stay home rather than risk having the 'crud' return.

My back/side is doing very very well. The last 3 dressing changes have been excellent with dry bandaging. The size of the hole hasn't changed, but the fact it's no longer draining is a very good sign that it shouldn't be long now.

OH - last week we had a near disaster. I had an appointment we were getting ready to leave to attend when there was a huge hissing sound from the loo. Turns out a pipe in the wall had corroded and water was spewing everywhere. It only took a couple minutes for Rod to run out and turn the water off, but in that time there was at least 2 inches on the floor. Thank god it travelled into the bathroom and didn't touch the carpet for the back bedroom. We had to have a plumber come in to fix it. The pipe that corroded was a galvanised pipe, which is odd because the rest of the piping was all copper. The plumber wasn't as dear as I anticipated ... phew. We had lots of realisations though. Rod just happened to be home that day, and if he hadn't I'd probably sill be running in circles trying to figure out how to turn the water off. We were also running a bit late -- to our advantage -- if we had left earlier, we would have come home to a completely flooded house. So, disaster averted. PHEW!

I think that's about it as far as catching up goes. I'll be looking into DA to see what's new there tomorrow.

Cheers!

Catch Up 14 June - 20 June 2008

My son reminded me that I hadn't posted a blog entry in over a week, so I thought I'd better do a bit of a catch up.

I still felt quite unwell all last weekend (I wrote on the 13th about not feeling great) and started taking antibiotics on Sunday. I am feeling much better, but it took a few days to be able to build back up to the same activity level that I'd been at before the 'crud'. From what I can gather, I had a cold or some other virus that then turned into bronchitis.

I am still deep into learning and experimenting with what I can do with Drupal (a website content management system). I've spent a fair amount of time on learning how to code so that my glucose readings from my current website can be added into Drupal in a couple of different ways. I'm still working on it. The purpose, aside from being able to convert my personal website to Drupal, is to also learn everything I will need to know in order to do similar with other websites I work on. Exploring and learning new stuff has really been a joy at times. It's nice to give my brain a bit of a workout and to be thinking of other things besides my health, especially last weekend when the crud was in full force.

Monday I had an appt with the breast cancer clinic. My GP had referred me there a couple of weeks ago because I have some pain under my arm on the left side (the cancer was on my right), and he thought it should be checked out. I had a mammogram, and everything came out OK. I don't need to see them for another year. I don't even have to keep my appt with them in September for my 7yr check up. While being VERY pleased about this, and I saw the mammogram, it really is quite clear, I still have the pain under my arm. So I'll be going back to the GP about this sometime next week.

My new 'talking' pedometer proved to be a real problem when it just would start talking at me for every little brush of the 'talk' button. I had Rod 'mute it' for me, and well, he did such a great job, it no longer works. So with no pedometer and not feeling well at all, I didn't do much walking the beginning of the week, but by Weds or Thurs I was finally able to take a good walk and have continued since. Rod's going to have another look at the pedometer for me to see if he can fix it. If he can't, I'll order one online.

Last night (Thurs 19 June), there was a TAFE ceremony for IT students who have completed studies in various certifications. Rod received his certificate 4 in Network Security. He is just finishing the advanced diploma in the same subject with only 2 more weeks to go. The ceremony for that will be in Adelaide, apparently near the end of the year. He's worked very hard for this. More pics can be seen in my Flickr photo set.

I bought a new external hard drive that arrived this week. The only thing making it 'external' was the case, power plug and USB cable. What's inside is a Sata drive, which happens to be not only what my computer can handle internally, I also had a slot and cables for it, plus it'd be faster if we put it into the computer itself. So I asked Rod to do this for me today while I was at my Breastroke meeting. I also had a bit of cable changes I wanted to make and had planned to do this on my own, but since the computer had to be pulled out in order to get the drive in, I jotted down my list of changes (mostly extension cables added for the cameras), and Rod did all the physical stuff this afternoon.

The new hard drive is 500gig (wow - biggest I've ever had), and while it's nice and works and all that I still can't quite make use of it yet as I've decided that since I plan to upgrade from Ubuntu Feisty Fawn to Hardy Heron, I may as well use the new blank drive for installing Ubuntu on as that way I'll have far less work copying stuff and being a faster drive than what I am using, that'll be great for me as well. Then I can use my current drive for storing videos, photos, music and software downloads -- without having to copy a bazillion files to another drive. The files can stay right where they are. So, installing the new operating system will be done next week. I'm looking forward to it, just to see what's new.

Tonight, since the cables have been extended, I was able to move my personal web cam back to where it was before I got my new desk a few months ago. It used to be attached to my monitor, but having the new desk meant it no longer reached my monitor. So that's back to normal, and I've also found for this particular camera double sided tape really makes all the difference in the world. I can pretty much but it anywhere and the tape does a great job of keeping it in place.

And last, ever since he was born, the background photo on my mobile phone has had a photo of my grandson. It's a great place for it because I look at my phone a lot during the day, and I find myself talking to his picture as if he's in the room with me. I really love him to bits, even though we haven't met in person. Oh, and it's winter, so hopefully soon Terry and Jennifer will send me back my lovely warm wrap that Ricky has been cuddled in, so I snuggle up in it knowing he's had it wrapped around him too.

Must end this.... am so tired tonight and geez, it's nearly 1:30am. Zzzzzzzzzz

Including PHP includes on a Drupal multisite set up

I'm adding this snipped just in case it helps someone else, or maybe someone else might have a better solution and share it. Either way, it's good to share.

Drupal is set up on our servers as a 'Multisite' set up... so that several domains/web sites all use the core software but have individual things like themes (how things look) and modules (various ways of doing things) that are for each individual site. I've set up a testbed type site, and I'm now testing for doing things like PHP programming so I can include some of the stuff I use on my personal site. That way once I work out the kinks, I can convert my website to use Drupal too.

The hard bit has been being able to use 'include' files that can be used many times over by my software. The big issue is where to put these files so they are safe, and yet so the web server and the Drupal software can find it, while keeping it separate from the other Drupal websites and the core software. I tried lots of things to get this to work.

There's a command for Apache (the webserver) to tell it where to look for PHP include files. This would only work if I put it in the main file that affects all websites, so that wasn't a good solution. I tried using an .htaccess file in the main folder but that didn't work - the command is ignored for security reasons, as it should be).

In the end, it turned out to be a variable defined at the top of my web page that looks like:

• $inc_dir = "/PATH/TO/CUSTOM/INCLUDES/HERE";

and then where I want to include the file in my code, I just have:

• include("$inc_dir/FILENAME.inc");

That's it. Very simple. Now I can go on to sorting more complex issues out. If you know of a better way to do this, please leave a comment. I'd be happy to hear from you.

Fri 13 June (Happy B'day Mike!)

09:38:00   6.3  / 114  Fasting   
13:03:00   5.7  / 103  Pre-Lunch 
15:12:00   6.8  / 122  Post-Lunch
19:16:00   4.9  /  89  Pre-Tea   
23:00:00   10.1  / 181  Post-Tea 

Driving Totals: Daytime: 1050 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 505 mins of 600 req

W: 91.5 (not feeling well hasn't helped with this at all. ugh)

Total Steps: 2150 so far (forgot my pedometer when we went grocery shopping)

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: sausage roll and cottage cheese
Tea: fish & chips


Notes: It's my former hubby's b'day. Happy B'day Mike! I still feel rough. RDNS nurse said I looked pale and asked if I'd seen the GP yet. No. Have appt at BC Clinic on Monday. My new meter arrived today along with a kit to return the defective one. And comparing just the regular display on both models shows my old one was hard to read even without the backlight - there's a real difference between them, so obviously there's more wrong with it than just the backlight. I'm amazed and pleased they replaced it so quickly.

Missed Breastroke today. I ended up napping during that time, which was probably best for me at this point. Uploaded a real mix of stuff to Flickr this evening, which started off because I rec'd a new butterfly postcard in the mail from Angelina in Finland. What a nice surprise to my day. This evening I solved a little PHP coding puzzle that I had with using include files on a multisite installation. Now I can get into converting my own site and the VCSWEB site to use Drupal since sorting out how to do this was pretty much the key requirement for me to be able to include my own PHP coded stuff on our various sites. I'm really pleased about it - and it was so simple.

I'm taking 2 Panadols and 1 Panadiene Forte every 4hrs. This means I'm taking an extra 500mg paracetamol than I should, but 1 of each isn't working, and if I have two of the Panadiene Forte's I wouldn't be able to function.

Thur 12 June

07:58:00   7.1  / 128  Fasting   
11:34:00   8.3  / 150  Post-Bfast
12:53:00   6.6  / 119  Pre-Lunch 
16:20:00   6.6  / 119  Post-Lunch
17:16:00   5.3  /  95  Pre-Tea   
22:42:00   6.1  / 110  Post-Tea 

Driving Totals: Daytime: 1050 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 505 mins of 600 req

W: 91

Total Steps: 4071

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: sausage roll and cottage cheese
Tea: KFC - 5 wings, half chips & gravy.

Fluids: 3 litres

Notes: Had an appt today, but she rang up and rescheduled. Very rainy nasty day. My glucose meter's backlight stopped working, and I've only had the thing since April, and had to put in a new battery then because there was no backlight. So I rang and asked about this and they are sending me a new one that should arrive tomorrow or Monday. We skipped grocery shopping last night as I wasn't up to it and it was pouring down with rain.

Wed 11 June

08:12:00   7.8  / 141  Fasting   
13:11:00   5.1  /  92  Pre-Lunch 
15:44:00   5.3  /  96  Post-Lunch
17:22:00   5.3  /  95  Pre-Tea   
22:40:00   6.1  / 110  Post-Tea

Driving Totals: Daytime: 1050 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 505 mins of 600 req


Total Steps: 8411

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: sausage roll & cottage cheese
Tea: lamb chops, veggies, potatoes

Fluids: 3.1 litres

Notes: Did a few loads laundry today, and took it very easy hanging stuff. My method is to hang everything on hangers and then put the hangers on the clothes line. It keeps things very tidy and it's easier for me than trying to clip things to the line with my arms over my head. My left side is still quite painful, but wasn't bad earlier today until I went for my walk. Apparently walking with my purse on my shoulder is a no no at the moment. No, the shoulder doesn't hurt, just the ribs/muscles under the arm, and around to the front. I had planned to go to Cunninghams as I haven't been there in awhile (a cheap shop) and the Salvation Army 2nd hand store, but the pain changed my plans a bit. I knew I'd be fine getting there as it's downhill. Getting back home would be the hard part, so I opted to get a scratchy instead.

Not sure if I've mentioned but I'm cutting back on the scratchies. I'm still taking my daily walk, but try to limit buying scratchies to Saturdays and maybe one or two other days. After over 6 months, it's pretty obvious to me that as much as I might enjoy doing these, there's really nothing to be gained by it aside from a few minutes of enjoyment. I can get just as much pleasure out of doing a sudoku game while having a cup of tea.

My fasting BGL was a bit high this morning because I woke up early (pain) and needed something to eat as I had an upset stomach from the pain medication. I had a couple crackers with vegemite, which always settles my stomach.

Tue 10 June

08:05:00   6.7  / 121  Fasting   
13:06:00   5.4  /  97  Pre-Lunch 
16:30:00   6.7  / 120  Post-Lunch
18:35:00   5.0  /  90  Pre-Tea   
21:48:00   7.9  / 142  Post-Tea

Driving Totals: Daytime: 1050 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 505 mins of 600 req
15 min driving this morning

Total Steps: 11,343

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: sausage on a bun, cottage cheese
Tea: home made chilli (very very hot - "No Mercy") and 3 low carb tortillas

Fluids: 2.625 litres so far

Notes: This morning was real mixed bag. I was up around 3am because my right side was very sore. I had a cough, and pulled a muscle or cracked a rib or something on the LEFT side. Arg. I went back to bed and drifted in and out of sleep until 8am when it was time to get up. If it hadn't been a day that I take Rod to school (ie driving), I'd of taken a Panadiene Forte (like Tylenol with codiene), but alas, I needed my wits about me. Took Rod to school, had my dressing changed by the RDNS nurses, who both told me I should see my GP as it was obvious I was in a lot of pain. Walked to Colonnades as I usually do for my walk, and while browsing, realised I had to go to the loo. The first one I went to was 'closed for cleaning'. Finally found another one and as I was unzipping my jeans, the zipper got stuck... in my skin. So there I am, leaning against the wall of the stall, both left and right rib cages hurting, trying to get the zipper down without having to resort to outside help or tearing my skin, and really wondering where this was going to lead. As I'm struggling, I bumped my pedometer, which promptly fell into the toilet. My little red Kellogg's pedometer has survived a heck of a lot over the last few years, but it has always had a bad tendency of either falling off at the most inopportune moment or getting occidentally reset. Well, this was the end of that pedometer. Sigh. Shortly thereafter my skin finally came unstuck. Phew. It was only a tiny bit of skin that had been caught, but of course I didn't know that before it finally came free.

So my next project was finding a new pedometer. I was really annoyed as I really don't have $20 extra to spend on one and that was the going rate I'd seen for them the other day in one store. So on a whim, I tried Kmart and managed to find one that 'speaks', has a cover (so as to not get occidentally reset), and a better type of clip. It also speaks the time, has alarms, a stop watch, and calibrates stride length for giving distance information. All for the hefty price of (drum roll ... ) $4.00. I was tempted to buy 2 so as to have a spare.

The next thing I wanted to see if I could find (although I had my doubts I'd have much luck) were Shirataki noodles. These are Asian noodles that have very low (nearly zero) carbs. I didn't find them, but I was rewarded. One of the 'continental' shops carries items from all over the world, and ... oh, on a day I really could use just a little bit of 'comfort food'... Reeces peanut butter cups. I bought 2 packages. And amazingly did not sit down and eat a package immediately. I did have some later, but made sure it was with my lunch and because of that (and making sure I had lots of protien to balance it with), and did lots of physical stuff afterwards, my afternoon BGLs were still in the normal range.

The rest of the day was pretty normal. The pain in both sides eased considerable this evening, which happened to coincide with when a very windy rainy period came along. Hmm. I'm not sure if it's just I took enough pain medication or if it was the weather, but either way, both sides are much better than they had been, and I'm very grateful.

Mon 9 June

02:16:00   5.4  /  97  Post-Tea  
09:47:00   6.9  / 124  Fasting   
13:22:00   4.3  /  78  Pre-Lunch 
17:25:00   7.8  / 140  Post-Lunch
19:24:00   6.1  / 109  Pre-Tea   
22:31:00   11.5  / 207  Post-Tea

Driving Totals: Daytime: 1035 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 505 mins of 600 req

W: 90

Total Steps: 9823

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: scrambled eggs and 2 crumpet toasts. In a lot of pain from cracked rib or muscle pulled.
Tea: 2 sausages w/ saurkraut on hot dog buns. Should have had only 1 bun.

Notes: Holiday (Queen's B'day). Think I broke a rib or pulled a muscle right where the hole is in my side. Ouch. Walked to chemist to pick up antihistamines. Started batch of yoghurt. Lawn mowed.

Sun 8 June

07:34:00   7.6  / 136  Fasting   
14:07:00   6.2  / 111  Pre-Lunch 
22:09:00   5.1  /  91  Pre-Tea

Driving Totals: Daytime: 1035 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 505 mins of 600 req

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: 2 eggs, bacon, mushrooms and 2 crumpet toast
Tea: 2 slices pizza (thinner crust)

Notes: Ran out of antihistimines.

Sat 7 June

08:04:00   7.2  / 129  Fasting   
16:52:00   5.1  /  91  Post-Lunch
23:05:00   9.6  / 173  Post-Tea  

Driving Totals: Daytime: 1035 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 505 mins of 600 req
30 mins day time driving.

Scratchy: $4 on $3 7246 steps

Total Steps: 7246 so far

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich w/ low GI bread
Lunch: seafood platter (Lunch group)
Tea: 2 steak sandwiches with cheese. Minute steak, low GI bread. Next time only 1 sandwich.

Notes: Lunch with Erik, his Mum and Ann. Driving was terrible today. Had a very nice walk this afternoon on the walking trail.

Fri 6 June

07:39:00   7.7  / 139  Fasting   
13:25:00   5.1  /  92  Pre-Lunch 
19:43:00   10.7  / 192  Pre-Tea   
23:17:00   8.6  / 155  Post-Tea 

Driving Totals: Daytime: 980 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 505 mins of 600 req
65 mins day time driving.

Total Steps: 7255

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich w/ low GI bread
Lunch: sausage roll and cottage cheese
Afternoon Tea w/ Girls: Lots I shouldn't have had.
Tea: fish & chips

Notes: RDNS dressing change, Lymphedema treatment (laser and MLD). Rod instructed on how to do the MLD. Breastroke meeting. Julie and Audrey came and it was wonderful to see everyone.

Mon 2 June - Thur 5 June

Mon 2 June

Scratchy: no win. 2659 steps

Total Steps: 3144 + 172 so far (counter reset)

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich
Lunch: sausage roll and cottage cheese, leftover chicken wing


Tue 3 June

Scratchy: no win. 4878 steps

Total Steps: 4400 + 4211 so far

Breakfast: egg & bacon mcmuffin
Lunch: sausage roll and cottage cheese
Tea: chicken schnitzel

Wed 4 June

Scratchy: last one except for saturdays. No win. 4924 steps

Thur 5 June

05:52:00   7.8  / 140  Fasting   
09:43:00   7.1  / 127  Pre-Bfast 
13:02:00   6.3  / 114  Pre-Lunch 
16:38:00   6.6  / 118  Post-Lunch
21:20:00   6.1  / 109  Pre-Tea   
23:44:00   6.9  / 124  Post-Tea  

Driving Totals: Driving Totals: Daytime: 915 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 505 mins of 600 req
60 mins night time driving.

First Banana Feeding

I just watched a video Terry and Jen sent me of little Ricky having his first solid food on a spoon. He's so cute, and he certainly figured it out pretty quickly too.

In comment to Terry -- have had no problems wearing the geek earrings - Fira asked me a while back about what metals I can wear and I thought she was asking for herself, but turns out she was being sneaky. :-)

I don't know the metal for sure for these earrings, but I can either wear real silver, or pewter without any problems.

I was just looking at baby toys today. I miss my grandson! Waah! (that's me waahing, not the baby).

Wed 28 May -- Sat 31 May

I have been apparently running a fever and the psuedomonas infection has made a re-appearance in my wound as well. Of course I didn't really know this until my RDNS appt on Friday, and I finally had to admit that yes, I have been feeling pretty off for a few days now.

While I let things like updating my BGL records and stuff slide, I have been very productive on the web side of things. Yesterday I completed the Breastroke site, which has been 'in the wings' for almost a year now. I was able to complete it as I've been learning and exploring using Drupal (a website content management system) and things just fell together really quite well. I got a bit nuts with working on it and leaving other stuff (like updating my own personal stuff) a bit behind. I've always found the computer to keep me busy and distracted when I've been a bit on the unwell side, and so I think this also played into things the last week. It's great to have something interesting and challenging, and I've learned so much in the last week. This is the first I've really felt that lovely 'spark' I used to have a long time ago. It's nice.

On the other hand, maybe that's just the fever talking. At any rate, I plan to continue to take it easy and I have a GP appointment for tomorrow (Monday).

Tue 27 May

Driving Totals: Driving Totals: Daytime: 915 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 445 mins of 600 req
1 hour night time driving


Notes: See: The Misadventures of Rod and Gaelyne

What a cool concept

Look for this to be in use on websites I develop in the future, for sure:

What is ReCAPTCHA?


I'll write more personal stuff as soon as I'm caught up. Meanwhile, I just had to make note of this. It's just such a neat idea.

The Misadventures of Rod and Gaelyne

Yesterday Rod had a full day at school, and I had my usual Tuesday RDNS appointment. I drove him to TAFE, and walked over to the hospital to see the nurse and get my dressing changed. After, I had a walk around Colonnades and then went home. This is more or less the way Tuesdays go these days. I spent the afternoon looking for Drupal themes that would fit for one of the sites I'm working on, and then installed Drupal locally (the one I've been setting up is on another server) so I could check it out from the very start. All went well. No problems. Rather incredibly easy install. Was just having a look around the new installation when Rod came home from school.

"Hey you feel like going out for a drive", he asks. "Richard over at "XY Blah" (yes I made that up) has a problem with his computer and we need to go see if we can fix it." Mmm, I remember going to XY Blah's last year while Rod set up their computers and network. I spent the afternoon wandering around town, wishing I'd had a camera with me, and had beers at the little town's three pubs while doing sudoku puzzles. I made comment to Rod that I couldn't think of how to get there, but what I didn't say was I was thinking that 'I know we have to go through Meadows, but can't remember anything after that'.

So we hop in the car, and as I'm driving up to the traffic light on our road, Rod tells me that Google maps says I can either get on South Rd and stay on it or I can get on the expressway and then get on the South Rd and stay on it. I opt for the expressway as it will save us going through several traffic lights. It's just after 6pm, so either way was heavy traffic. I thought to myself that you don't get to Meadows from the South Rd, but didn't speak up. Rod was confident, he'd looked it up on Google maps, so fair enough.

Once back on the South Rd, after we passed through several small towns, traffic eased up and driving would have been a bit easier if it weren't for the the winding and hilly roads. Going through Myponga, I pulled the car off the road so I could have a small break as I was getting rather white-knuckled which with arthritis isn't a nice thing. We get to Yankalilla, and it looks nothing like what we both knew it 'should' look like. We drove on to Normanville, and I pulled off into the parking lot for the hotel, which seemed to be the only place in town open. Rod noted the time on my time sheet for driving (as a 'Learner' driver, I have to use a log book and accumulate driving time), and we'd been on the road for an hour. I was tired. We have some old map books in the car so we each had one, and I found things that looked familiar, such as Richard lives on Venerable Rd which happens to be in Maccelsfield - a long, long way from where we were, in the opposite direction. (Rod had been certain he lived in Yankalilla).

So the next obvious question was, OK, so if he isn't in Yankalilla, where does Richard live? Rod tried to ring him on the mobile but there wasn't an answer. We went into the hotel and asked for a phone book - first Rod looked in the yellow pages (a separate book), and then the local (not Adelaide) white pages and nothing. So we went outside to regroup and I rang Vicki on her mobile but got her voicemail, so next I tried another friend, knowing that they are computer people so they'd be able to look up what we needed to know. Just my luck, they aren't home, but Kirstie says she'll look it up in the phone book for me and txt me back the answer. While waiting, I thought I'd fix Vicki's home phone in my phone since it's had the wrong info in it (an extra digit) for ages now, and if she's home, she knows how to search for stuff online. Joy, it worked and she was home. I asked her to look up the same info, and I also further explained that about the fact we were in Normanville, and I was pretty sure we need to be in Macclesfield. I got off the phone with her (same deal, she'd txt me back as soon as she had the info), and Kirstie rang. The address she gave me was correct - but it was XY Blah's address from a year ago before they moved. Rod went back inside to see if he could look something else up in the phone book, and while he was away, the txt from Vicki came in, which started with an LOL (shorthand for 'Laughing Out Loud'), and the address was ... Macclesfield. I was right.

I got in the passenger side and told Rod he was driving for a bit and I'd probably have another stint maybe on the way home. "OK, but you're the navigator." Fine. I grabbed the good map book (one of them has missing pages - and the missing ones happened to be what we needed), and using the 'flash' from my phone camera (the light stays on rather than flashing), attempted find where we were, and where we needed to go, and how to get there, all while Rod's driving, going back the way we came. As you may recall, 'back the way we came' is very winding, twisting, and hilly. In the last few years, I've learned that I can't try to read something when on roads that have lots of curves. Especially on an empty stomach, which by this point it was long after we should have had our tea. I'd checked my readings while waiting for Vicki or Kirstie to get back to me, and it was at 4.9 -- which isn't too low, but much lower and there'd be a problem. Well, with the motion sickness I suddenly had, my sugar levels dropped, and I was suddenly hot, nauseous and if I wasn't incredibly pale, the only other colour I could be was green. I rolled down the window (it was quite chilly out) and practically did the dog thing with nearly sticking my head out the window. Rod asked a few times if I was OK and if I wanted him to stop the car. I told him I'd BE ok as I knew that was true, and no, to keep going. Stopping would only put off what I needed - a meal.

We finally got to Mt Compass, which wasn't really even half way to where we needed to be, but it was the first town with anything open - the pub. I sat outside at their picnic tables and did my best to regroup myself. I just felt so... green. Ugh. The pub had counter meals, but their kitchen was closed (it was now after 8pm). Fortunately here in Australia, most pubs will have toasted sandwiches available anytime, usually at quite reasonable prices. It's not much, but so better than having an empty stomach. We each had a toasted ham and cheese sandwich and diet coke. By time I finished half of mine, my colour was coming back and so was I. Phew.

Back on the road again, I still felt a bit off, but it was better than I had been feeling. We went in search of Strathalbyn Rd, found it, and after awhile reached it and stopped at the (thankfully open) petrol station where we had to fill up the tank and I bought a sausage roll. The sausage roll helped tremendously and made all the difference in the world for me as far as the motion sickness went (it was totally gone), and we were off again. We saw a sign that pointed down a road saying 'Macclesfield 9', so we turned on it. Idiots. The road turned into a dirt road, and we really got quite lost in the middle of NO WHERE, at night. Luckily the road we were on was actually on the map, and weirder yet, I'd been on a before a few years ago when a friend and I went to a conference in Mt Barker. We followed the map to get to a main road and ... we were back on the same road we'd been on before we turned off, only further down it.

We did end up eventually getting to Richard's place, at about 10:30pm. Rod had told him we'd be there by about 7:30pm. Talk about late. So we fixed his computer booting problem, ran a spybot check (or two, since Rod hit the wrong button and closed the program after it'd finished the first time around), and at 5 minutes to midnight were back on the road again... well, the RIGHT road this time, the one that goes through Meadows and isn't quite so twisty. Only problem was that by this time it was foggy. Not just a little, but VERY foggy. No, I wasn't driving, I let Rod take this stint too. I know my limitations. We were home just a bit after 1am.

Lesson learned: Make sure to have snacks on hand. Speak up when something doesn't sound right. And sadly (for Rod), contrary to what he's trained me to believe, he really isn't right all of the time. And when that happens, I must write about it, because it sure isn't an every day occurrence! Nah Nah, I was right. :-) I can't gloat too much though. I really should have spoke up much earlier - like before we left home would have been good, when we could have looked things up before going to the end of the Fleurieu Peninsula only to find out we should have been in the foothills of Mt Barker (you really can't get much more opposite than that!)

I'm including a link to a Google map I customised to show our misadventure. Here's the link: Going in a BIG circle.

[Edit] ... On looking at the map, it proves a few things.

1. GPS Navigation would be handy thing to have, indeed.
2. The going around in circles thing shows what can happen when you're looking at a map page in a book and don't have the 'whole picture'. If I'd of seen (or known) that we could have gone straight back up to Willunga, then to Meadows, and then to Macclesfield, it would have made our trip a LOT shorter.
3. Even this map doesn't show the getting lost on a dirt road part of our adventure.

[/Edit]

Sun 25 May

08:36:00   7.7  / 139  Fasting   
12:40:00   6.8  / 123  Pre-Lunch 
17:48:00   6.2  / 111  Pre-Tea   
22:53:00   6.8  / 122  Post-Tea

Driving Totals: Daytime: 915 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 385 mins of 600 req
130 minutes driving time today.

W: 90

Scratchy: no win. 3548 steps

Total Steps: 5063

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: scrambled eggs and 2 crumpet toast
Tea: 2 slices pizza (thinner crust)

Fluids: 2.6 litres

Notes: Went out for a drive today and visited some of our favourite places while playing with the new camera. I'll put a few up on Flickr and add the link here. Well here's the link -- I uploaded bunches in different sets so you may as well start with my photostream to see the latest uploads.

I accumulated over 2 hours driving time today and boy was I bushed by the time we got home.

A sweet geeky surprise

A sweet geeky surprise,
originally uploaded by FlitterG.

OMG, this is such a geeky Mothers Day surprise!

Thanks, Kerstin! I LOVE them!!

Sat 24 May

08:39:00   7.3  / 131  Fasting   
11:30:00   6.6  / 118  Post-Bfast
15:48:00   7.1  / 127  Post-Lunch
19:48:00   5.1  /  92  Pre-Tea   
23:00:00   9.9  / 178  Post-Tea  

Driving Totals: Daytime: 785 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 385 mins of 600 req

W: 89.5

Scratchy: no win. 4270 steps

Total Steps: 6955

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread (med slice)
Lunch: 2 eggs, bacon, 2 crumpet toast
Tea: steak and noodles

Fluids: 3.2 litres

Notes: Took my walk after lunch. Spent day working on a web site that uses Drupal as it's CMS (Content Management System). I managed to change code in a module (only for cosmetic reasons), learned how to add PHP snippets to pages, and got something working in a way I'm really happy with. Overall, I'm really quite pleased with the Drupal CMS. I'll very likely use it in other projects in the future.

Fri 23 May

07:58:00   8.2  / 147  Fasting   
11:06:00   7.7  / 138  Post-Bfast
13:27:00   5.2  /  94  Pre-Lunch 
19:53:00   11.4  / 205  Pre-Tea   
23:59:00   6.1  / 110  Bedtime 

Driving Totals: Daytime: 785 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 385 mins of 600 req
40 mins daytime

W: 90

Scratchy: no win. 3760 steps

Total Steps: 7003

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread (med slice)
Lunch: chicken and avocado
Extra: Munchies with Breastroke girls
Tea: fish & chips

Fluids: 2550 litres

Notes: RDNS today. Hardly any exudate. Skin a bit sore looking still from a week ago when she probably didn't use barrier wipe on my skin before using the opsite tape. Drove to appt, then went to Capt'n Christies for Pepsi Max but they're under new management or ownership and no longer carry it. Not impressed with the fact they have less of the 'fun' stuff like various schnapps and stuff either. Good thing about going there though - had to do a 3-point turn because one of the streets Rod directed me down was different than how he remembered it, and I parallel parked for the first time in about 14 or 15yrs and it turned out really well. Went to Breastroke and met up with many I hadn't seen for awhile. Jenny and I came home together and she stayed for Fish and Chips with us. We were supposed to go to a party, but we both ended up falling asleep until around midnight so no party going for us.

Thur 22 May

08:03:00   7.1  / 127  Fasting   
13:24:00   4.6  /  83  Pre-Lunch 
15:18:00   7.2  / 130  Post-Lunch
20:48:00   4.8  /  87  Pre-Tea   
23:31:00   7.8  / 140  Post-Tea 

Driving Totals: Daytime: 745 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 385 mins of 600 req
45 min night driving

W: 90

Scratchy: no win. 6537 steps

Total Steps: 11693

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: Tuna on low GI toast
Tea: KFC

Fluids: 3.3 litres

Notes: Did 2 loads of wash this morning. Took my walk after lunch. Tonight is late night shopping.

Wed 21 May

07:30:00   7.3  / 131  Fasting   
10:42:00   6.1  / 110  Post-Bfast
16:59:00   7.0  / 126  Post-Lunch
18:40:00   4.9  /  88  Pre-Tea   
21:34:00   7.7  / 138  Post-Tea  

Driving Totals: Daytime: 745 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 340 mins of 600 req

W: 90.5

Scratchy: No win. 5901 steps

Total Steps: 7762

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: Tuna on low GI toast
Tea: Yiro

Fluids: 3.325 litres

Notes: Have added fluids to the list as I seemed to have both slipped from drinking enough water (or anything that doesn't have milk in it) and keeping track of it as I had been on the fridge. By putting it here I hope just to push myself that bit further to get enough in a day. Where this makes a difference is in flushing out toxins, keeping arthritis swelling to a minimum and helping with the sinus/bronchits issues. Spent the day working on websites, aside from a walk in the afternoon.

Tue 20 May

08:02:00   6.7  / 121  Fasting   
10:16:00   7.7  / 139  Post-Bfast
13:05:00   5.0  /  90  Pre-Lunch 
16:55:00   5.8  / 104  Post-Lunch
19:11:00   5.2  /  94  Pre-Tea   
22:35:00   6.3  / 114  Post-Tea

Driving Totals: Daytime: 745 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 340 mins of 600 req
15 mins this morning.

W: 91

Scratchy: no winner. 8300 steps

Total Steps: 11169

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: sausage roll w/ cottage cheese
Tea: portuguese chicken w/ low GI bread

Notes: Took Rod to school this morning and went to RDNS for my dressing change, which is looking good, aside from the skin around it that didn't have barrier wipe used on it last Friday. It's a bit rashy from the tape. Went shopping for a winter coat/jacket. It's one of those things I haven't really needed until now. Lots to choose from, but none in the price/size range I wanted. I ended up buying a 'wind cheater' (that's Aussie for 'Wind Breaker' which here would mean someone who farts). I reckon I'll be wearing warm clothes underneath so the wind cheater will keep the wind and the rain out, and really, what more do I need? Got home, had lunch, Rod came home from school. Made a great tea tonight. Portuguese chicken. YUM. Spent evening working on a site I've been contracted to do.

Mon 19 May

08:13:00   8.8  / 158  Fasting   
11:07:00   6.5  / 117  Post-Bfast
15:49:00   7.1  / 128  Post-Lunch
19:23:00   5.2  /  93  Pre-Tea   
22:14:00   8.6  / 154  Post-Tea

Driving Totals: Daytime: 730 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 340 mins of 600 req

W: 91

Scratchy: none

Total Steps: 4889

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: sausage roll w/ cottage cheese
Tea: seafood stirfry w/ oyster sauce and noodles

Notes:
My new camera arrived today!! No walk due to rain. Did use the exercise bike though. Have had very few steps today... I have been busy working on a site and really must admit to not being 100% and that really shows in my fasting reading. Been 'coming down with a cold' for several days now, and maybe it's just finally hit. I've been dozing at the keyboard again tonight, but think it's because I was up quite early (around 7am or so, possibly before). I'm going to post this and then probably go to bed before I really fall asleep at the keyboard.

Here's the best piccy I took today with the new camera...

Sun 18 May

09:11:00   6.2  / 112  Fasting   
12:12:00   7.1  / 127  Post-Bfast
16:58:00   5.3  /  95  Post-Lunch
20:04:00   5.6  / 101  Pre-Tea   
22:59:00   8.7  / 156  Post-Tea

Driving Totals: Daytime: 730 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 340 mins of 600 req

W: 89.5

Scratchy: $4 on 3 3880 steps (down the strand and back up again)

Total Steps: 4889

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: scrambled eggs, 2 crumpet toast
Tea: 2 slices pizza (thinner crust), trail mix

Notes: Very short walk today as I'd planned to do a circuit from The Strand to Pocock St up to Hillier Rd and home, but just before I was about to leave there was a helicopter circling that particular area as it searching for someone. Turns out they were looking for a car that was part of a crime scene. So I only did part of the walk. That, and I wore my bike jacket which I haven't worn for ages. It's leather an warm, but I have NO IDEA how I wore it all the time years ago before we had the car. The thing is HEAVY. Halfway through my walk, my neck and shoulders were aching and in the end I ended up taking it off and carrying it home. It weighs 1.5k on it's own, and that's without my phone, keys and camera.

I spent most of the day working on adding buttons as products to the honey site I've been working on. Quite a tedious exercise, but it's done and the work has already been paid for tonight, so that's nice. Here's a link - Honey Treasures4U - I've put a lot of hard work into the site, so I hope it does really well.

Tonight I spent some time reading up on Joomla, a Content Management System (CMS). I've been working on a site that uses another CMS, Drupal, so I reckoned it would be a good thing to check this one out too. I like it, but it doesn't have the level of user access control that I need for at least one site I'm working on. I may keep experimenting with it for either my personal site or for another site I may soon be working on.

Tomorrow my new camera might arrive, and I'm looking forward to checking out and putting it through its paces.

Sat 17 May

06:31:00   7.2  / 130  Fasting   
11:23:00   6.0  / 108  Post-Bfast
19:30:00   5.6  / 100  Pre-Tea   
22:02:00   8.8  / 159  Post-Tea

Driving Totals: Daytime: 730 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 340 mins of 600 req

W: 89.5

Scratchy: no win. 3323 steps

Total Steps: 5434

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: 2 eggs with bacon, 2 crumpet toast
Tea: minute steaks w/ 2 low gi slices bread and salad. Have been munching on homemade trail mix all evening.

Notes: Had to take a quick walk in between rain showers this afternoon. Made trail mix for the May Flickr Monthly Scavenger Hunt - so I could take a picture of it. Now we get to eat it. Yum! This was the last item I needed for the hunt, so I made a mosaic of my entries (shown below) and now I can just vote on other folks entries for the rest of the month, which is really quite fascinating. I must apologise again to Steve though, for including him and his drum kit as my entry for 'headache'. HIS drumming is excellent and I can listen to it all day, but the photo is included because there's someone who lives behind me who's drumming does give me a headache. And popping over to take a photo isn't possible.


Trail Mix


May 2008 Monthly Scavenger Hunt

Fri 16 May

Heather's B'day. 9:30 Lymphedema Clinic 11:45 RDNS Clinic

07:44:00   7.5  / 135  Fasting   
12:07:00   6.4  / 115  Post-Bfast
14:01:00   4.3  /  77  Pre-Lunch 
18:47:00   7.2  / 129  Pre-Tea   
21:12:00   8.9  / 160  Post-Tea

Driving Totals: Daytime: 730 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 340 mins of 600 req
20 minutes driving in rain on expressway

W: 88 (according to super-calibrated scale at lymphedema clinic)

Scratchy: None.

Total Steps: 4599

Breakfast: sausage roll
Lunch: sausage roll & cottage cheese
Tea: Fish & chips (and a couple small squares chocolate)

Notes: Had my long awaited appointment with the Lymphedema Clinic. I've been give specific breathing exercises to do 5x a day to help drain the excess lymph fluid, and he recommended I have laser and LE massage therapy specifically mapped to drain the area of my back. He mentioned that laser therapy will also help kill any bacteria in the wound as well, so that's a good thing. Bad thing is the cost, which isn't covered so has to come out of our pockets. $90 a session which includes both the massage and the laser treatment. I have to rearrange the appt time as well because Rod needs to be there so he can learn the technique for the massage, which will save us money if he can do it.

We then went to the RDNS clinic for my dressing change. Nothing exciting about that. Then off to a community centre to update their computers for them. Came home and had lunch. I'd planned to stay in for the rest of the day. It was very cold, windy and rainy. Jen called though and so I ended up going to the Breastroke meeting with her. There were only 4 of us but it was good to catch up and just enjoy a tea and some biscuits and chat together.

Neat site with Adelaide pics

I stumbled into this site while looking for pics of articulated buses to show Chris. Well worth a visit if you've wanted to see what the city looks like. In and Around Adelaide

Thur 15 May

06:55:00   6.4  / 116  Fasting   
11:12:00   6.8  / 122  Post-Bfast
15:51:00   6.8  / 123  Post-Lunch
20:28:00   7.1  / 128  Pre-Tea   
23:03:00   5.8  / 105  Post-Tea 

Driving Totals: Daytime: 710 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 340 mins of 600 req
40 mins driving tonight.

W: 89.5

Scratchy: no win. 5318 steps

Total Steps: 5652

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: sausage roll and cottage cheese
Tea: roast pork, 1/2 potato, lots of carrots

Notes: Every night before I go to bed, I jot down my final number of steps for the day in a notebook I keep by my bedside. Then the next day I either try to remember the number to add to my journal or drag the notebook into the office for reference. Earlier this week, I decided to have little post it notes near the notebook so I could jot the number down and take it into the office with me. So when I got dressed yesterday, I popped the postit onto my chest, figuring I'd see it in the webcam pics and jot it down in my journal. Later in the day, I took the bus to go to the community centre and once seated (after passing lots of people on the bus), I scratched the base of my throat and OMG, there's the postit note on my chest!! You know you're a geek when....

I spent a lovely day at home working on web projects for about 4 very different clients/projects. And had wonderful readings all day too. We went out grocery shopping this evening which gave me nearly an hour of night time driving.

Wed 14 May

08:10:00   6.7  / 120  Fasting   
18:55:00   6.2  / 111  Pre-Tea   
22:04:00   7.1  / 128  Post-Tea

Driving Totals: Daytime: 710 mins of 2400 req // Nighttime: 300 mins of 600 req
15 mins this afternoon

W: 89.5

Scratchy: No win. 8184 steps

Total Steps: 8635 so far

Breakfast: half toasted cheese sandwich on low GI bread
Lunch: sausage roll from Jesters Pies. Can't say I'd recommend these. Rather bland.
Tea: Yiros lamb meat.

Notes: Village Walkers today. Went well. Bought 3/4 length gel inserts for my shoes before walk. Not sure about them as they have a texture to them I could feel on my feet, but probably helped as I didn't have as many problems with cramps. I also did the stretching exercises as well before hand. Then went off on bus to Colonnades as I had a Workskil appt. Basically just a catch up (health, etc) and for once all my news was mostly on the positive side. Picked up some milk and took photos of apples for the Monthly Scavenger Hunt. I did photos this morning of my fogged up mirrors, but I don't know how they turned out yet. Ran into A. at Colonnades - she was shocked that Rod wasn't with me (I don't think we've ever run into each other when we haven't been together), she was so thrilled that I had my 'L's too. Then I met Rod after his classes and drove home. Sorta missed the driveway and got the curb a bit on the turn in. Ouch.

Now home working on various websites and catching up with all my paperwork. My desk seems to be covered in little white reminder notes at the moment.