Unwellitude – Another Update
Posted: Wed 3 July, 2024 Filed under: Domestic, Health, Thoughts Leave a comment »So, six weeks after the initial Unwellitude happened, my chest was still fairly well stuffed, ongoing coughing, and generally feeling crappy.
At night I was starting to make noises like the Predator, which is never a good sign.
So I finally got round to making an appointment with my GP, and saw them yesterday. (On a side-note, pretty impressed – called them Monday afternoon, not expecting anything to be available ’til next week, and instead got a slot at 8am on Tuesday!)
Diagnosis? A nasty chest infection – they wouldn’t say which one, but from previous experience and having done some reading, I’d say pneumonia is the most likely candidate. So a prescription for a week’s worth of hefty-dose Amoxicillin, and we’ll see what happens.
Excessive Sportitude
Posted: Wed 26 June, 2024 Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Sport, Television Leave a comment »At the moment, things on TV seem to have gone sports-mad, and as someone that’s not into any of it, it’s *really* tedious.
Obviously there’s the Euro kickyball tournament, which appears to have been at least two matches every day for the last couple of weeks, with still another fortnight-ish to go (although the frequency of matches drops once the initial stages are done with)
Last week there was [a tennis tournament] that took over another channel – and this week there’s [a different one], followed next week by Fucking Wimbledon (to use its full title)
As if that weren’t enough, last week also involved televised coverage of horse-racing, for some fuckforsaken reason. I assume that’s just in case people felt there wasn’t enough sport on.
And the weekends seem to be full of bloody Grand Prix excitement tedium.
Then we’ve still got the Olympic and Paralympic Games to come (although at least they contain a wider range of things, some of which may even be watchable)
And of course then we’ll be back to the normal Kickyball schedule as well.
The only other alternative seems to be all the bullshit being spouted about the upcoming General Election. (Which would be far more interesting if we introduced Guillotines, in my opinion)
I’m sick and fucking tired of it all.
Ongoing Unwellitude
Posted: Sun 16 June, 2024 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Health, Single Life 3 Comments »Thankfully it’s not been non-stop Unwell, but everything’s taken a long time to finally start sodding off.
I was doing OK at the time of the last post, although the cough hadn’t quite Fucked Off yet. That stuck around for the next couple of weeks – not entirely surprisingly, as I was (against advice) busy and doing stuff, and not giving my body a lot of time off.
Then last weekend (the 8/9th of June, if anyone’s counting) I did a day-trip to Manchester (see above about not giving myself time off) for a restaurant visit. (Which was excellent, and well worth the trip) My table companion had been doing a lot of air travel and so on, and also had a similar cough to me.
I *think* that what happened there was that I picked up a second blast of what had already hit me. Or, if not the exact same thing, then at least bloody close to it, but different enough to get past any already-set-up immunity.
So this week was a kind of return to how I was a few weeks back. It didn’t mess me up *as* much, but still left me with a couple of very rough days.
It seems to be back in abeyance now, and hopefully that’ll also mean that this dry cough has a chance to piss off as well. We’ll see.
Unwell
Posted: Wed 29 May, 2024 Filed under: Covid, Domestic, Health 1 Comment »Over the last three weeks, I’ve been unwell – nothing major, “just” a seriously heavy cold, but it’s absolutely knocked me for six.
I say “heavy cold”, because despite symptoms including about 60% of the current “Is it Covid?” guidelines, it never showed up as Covid on an LFT test. Not even the thinnest of thin blue lines. But it’s *felt* like Covid, and as a result I kept myself out the way of everything for two weeks.
It all started with a sore throat (almost like the feel of tonsilitis) , temperature changes (feeling both too hot and too cold) and head cold – the combination of which meant I felt awful and didn’t actually sleep for three days. That lead on to some deeply weird and unpleasant sleep-deprivation side-effects, and a feeling of deep oddness.
Once I did finally get some sleep, the dreams were strange and uncomfortable. I won’t detail them here (because telling people about dreams is deeply effing dull) but they’ve added to the ongoing sense of slight disconnection with things. I know it’ll settle down again, but *wow*, it’s been odd.
For some reason it’s also altered some core things – appetite has changed, body clock is buggered, an ongoing awareness of exhaustion, and even a change in the amount of Coke Zero I’m drinking.
I’m pretty much through it all now – albeit still occasionally coughing up chunks of Finest Green™ – but it’s definitely been No Fun.
MoT Day
Posted: Tue 16 April, 2024 Filed under: Domestic, Driving Leave a comment »Well, today’s the day of the new (to me) car’s MoT, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens. Let’s hope it just cruises through.
[Updated : It passed, no problems and one minor advisory]
Literal vs Lateral
Posted: Fri 12 April, 2024 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, I Don't Understand, People, Thoughts Leave a comment »One thing I’ve found fascinating with people – both where I live now, and previous places – is how literal they are, even when it means they take longer to do things.
For example, where I now live there are several junctions where turning right onto a busy road can mean significant delays for people. But most of those junctions also have roundabouts a short distance up the road if people instead turned left.
So here, for example – the scenario is that I’m pulling out of the Stephenson industrial estate, wanting to turn right.
If I turn left, it’s 400m to the roundabout. It’s a simple thing, an 800m round-trip, and far faster than the delay when waiting to turn right. But no-one does it. They’re so locked into “I’m turning right” that they somehow don’t even think about turning left instead.
On another regular drive, in the run-up to another roundabout, the left-hand lane gets utterly jammed, waiting for a safe gap in which to get out and turn left. But if one takes the right-hand lane, it’s all too easy to get up to the front, go all the way round the roundabout and then come off to that same route – well before the equivalent drivers in the left-hand lane have caught up. Yes, it’s effectively a 450° turn, but it’s *so* much quicker. And again, people are locked into “I’m turning left” and seem to not see the alternative at all.
It’s all very odd. I mean, I’m glad I can look at it and see those lateral decisions that make life easier, but I do find it fascinating that so many people simply can’t/don’t do so.
Car Progress
Posted: Fri 8 March, 2024 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Thoughts Leave a comment »Somehow I’ve already had the new (to me) car for three full months, and thankfully it’s turned out to be a good buy.
I had my concerns – for a car registered in 2016, a mileage of 18,000 is gobsmackingly low, so I did wonder if it had spent a lot of its time in garages or whatever, but it seems that the previous owner just didn’t get out much. Obviously that is not the case with me, so that mileage has already increased by a third. (6,000 miles in three months – yeah, that’s about standard for me)
It’s proved to be an absolute beast on the motorway, and just handles all the miles I’ve thrown at it so far. It’s weirdly quiet in general – which isn’t a complaint, just an observation that a diesel vehicle still doesn’t feel like it’s meant to be that quiet! It’s also sitting happily at an indicated 49Mpg. I’d be happy if that were slightly better, but it’s a decent enough figure for my purposes.
It’s also meant that I’ll be able to split the costs of MOT / Servicing and Tax / Insurance Renewal – I got it with about six months MOT left, so that’ll be due in April, and Insurance etc. isn’t til November/December, which is definitely nicer than having Everything Due All At Once.
There are niggles – primarily it turns out that what I’ve got is a 2015 model that was registered at the start of 2016, so it’s just missed out on having better tech integration (no Apple CarPlay, for example) although I can – and will – fix that with some form of aftermarket sortout. On the positives though, it means I also don’t have driver “aids” like auto start/stop , or the lane-change-warning stuff (that tried to kill me last time I had it on an Insignia) which is all fine with me.
All told, it’s worked out well.