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Today was actually a really good day.
I was woken up at an early 07:15 by Sen phoning (thanks for that, I can't remember if I mentioned the meeting later or not but thanks anyway) and after a bit of a natter, was quickly showered, breakfasted and out by 9am and at Uni an hour later.
A new library is scheduled to be constructed to replace the current Queen Mother Library at Aberdeen Uni, and as a student and member of the Access Panel I was invited to a meeting with a representative of the architects to give my input on disability related issues. Actually there were two of us as undergraduate students, but I didnt get achance to speak to Samantha as she arrived late and left early. There were people from Student support, one person from the current library staff and two other architects from another University building project who were there to get ideas from this meeting - oh well if it makes the end result better who's to complain?
I actually got there early which was a little embarrassing as I twiddled my thumbs for twenty minutes (it't not normal for someone to just be sitting there in an empty meeting room, and as the walls are all semi-transparent anyone can see you if they walk past) but people soon arrived and things got under way. A detailed description of the general floor plan was given and then we had the chance to provide our input. We discussed issues such as the placement and operation of doors, tactile flooring, the contrast between walls and doors, even briefly on the flushing mechanism for the toilets (although how we got there I can't quite remember now!). It was really fascinating for me to see the level of detail that is gone into even at this early stage, when planning permission is still being sought. I also had a brief chat with the rep about the legal side of things, what exactly is needed to file planning and building applications, which was also really interesting. The meeting lasted about two hours and I was back home around 2pm.
I played around a bit with creating another unattended Windows XP install Cd, as I've misplaced the one I did for mum last year, and her computer needs new life breathing into it, but I stopped after a bit as it was getting boring. I guess it's something you've got to be in the mood to do as it's quite technical and takes a good few hours or more.
Quite a quiet evening, I opened the box for the chain-saw I bought a few weeks ago. It looks great, but I'll have to wait until we've had at least two completely dry days before I try it as it's not recommended to use the saw in damp conditions. Also I'd rather wait until mum's here and when she's not tired, as I've never done anything like this before and a second pair of eyes won't hurt and could possibly save me some pain.
And what would my entries be like without some mention of medical maladies? Well it's become obvious to me that now that the headaches are getting better, the neuralgia in the toes is becoming a real problem. I asked Dr. Miller to call me back today, which he kindly did. I said that I thought the ten years of Co-codamol had acted as a 'dampener' to the pain,
and that the pain I had been feeling was in fact the pain at its worst. Now that I'm not taking the Cods, I'm really feeling it. In fact there have been two days this week where it was so bad I had to just lie it out for hours until it died down on its own - not pleasant. So he said I could up the dosage of the Amitriptyline to 50mg, and has given me a prescription for 50mg tablets which I'll pick up at some point. Hopefully this will help things along a bit.
All for now, I'm trying to get some tracks off DC++ but it's slow as usual :( Yes, I know it's not the hub's fault, but there is clearly a bottleneck somewhere and all indications are that it's not at my end - I mean everything else is blisteringly fast, it's just DC++ that's the problem! | |
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This is a fairly long post, hope it makes sense.
Yesterday was going reasonably well, nothing too fantastic but nothing to complain about, that's until mum got home and checked her e-mail.
My aunt, the youngest (I think) on my dad's side passed away peacefully in her sleep yesterday morning at my other aunt's house in Tanzania. This has obviously saddened quite a few people, but it's a little surreal for us here. Let me explain and then you can condemn me for being an unfeeling so and so.
My mum and dad's sides of the family used to be reasonably close, that was up until my dad passed away in 2002. But from then onwards things have gone rather downhill. A few things were said, whether truly meant or in the heat of the moment, that have not been forgotten. Probably the most serious was dad's sisters (my aunts) accusing mum of killing dad, this when they weren’t even here, don't know the story of what happened, where, when and how and with absolutely no foundation whatsoever. Well, when you tell a newly deceased widow that they killed their own husband (with whom they were married for over 20 years), when the death was not even 24 hours ago, it tends not to go down too well. I'm glad in a way that dad died here, and not in Tanzania, otherwise who knows what might have happened if mum and the aunts had met in person. Well anyway since then relations have been somewhat chilled, not downright hostile but certainly nowhere near friendly as they were before. We went to visit them in 2005 when we went over to visit my mum's parents, and things were quite formal, with all the 'usual' questions, education, work, etc, but not what I would call a comfortable and loving atmosphere.
Now I don't know how things work in Western families (and I mean that with no disrespect whatsoever) but surely your relatives would ask about you from time to time, you keep in touch, and if you don't then when you do meet it's all hugs and kisses and a sudden influx of presents which they forgot to send, and huge dinners and laughter and general merriment. Ah, well this hasn't happened in our case. My aunts complain that I never keep in touch, but neither do they make any attempt to do so. They communicate with us through my mum's parents (my grandparents), and not directly. And then they complain that we don't care and that we're the ones bearing the grudge.
Well anyway back to the situation at hand. Well I didn't go all to pieces when I heard the news, because honestly if I’m totally truthful I feel for my aunt like I would for one of my very distant cousins (and trust me there are a lot) that I don't really know. Yes it's sad, and I sympathise with her direct relatives (she had two sisters, but fortunately no marriage) but it's nothing really earth-shattering. I'll go and visit when we go over in August, do all the usual things you do when meeting the ones that were close to the deceased, and move on. I'm sorry if that sounds heartless and uncaring, but after the last five years of 'wilderness', I'm finding it considerably difficult to muster any great sense of loss. Maybe it's that there aren't really that many great memories to remember her buy, maybe I'm unconsciously feeling the hurt mum felt by those earlier accusations, but whatever it is it's certainly not going to rock my world, stop it spinning on its axis or otherwise be anything other than a date on the calendar when I'll give the matter a few moments of silent thought and reflection and then, as said above, move on.
In other news, I spent the whole day waiting for my chainsaw to arrive. And it didn't. Well I was miffed big time, not even a call to say it was delayed, the truck ran out of fuel, the driver was lying drunk in a ditch somewhere; his daughter chocked on some broccoli and was now hanging upside down from the rafters to try to get it out, or even an e-mail to advise of the delay. So I wasted the whole day waiting, jumping with excitement every time I heard a van or lorry drive past, only to sit back down in despair when they continued on down the street. I tried to get a human on the phone late last night, but the only number which worked went to voicemail, which now has the honour of a two minute diatribe from me at my coarsest. Ah well, apologies, but you should get your act together. The chainsaw was delivered at 9am this morning, so that's good and sorted. Not even an apology for being delivered late, but oh well, I didn't shoot the messenger, that's for another day!
I had one of those heart stopping moments late last night. You know, one of those that make you question the point of existing for very much longer. One of those where you realise your top of the range graphics card might not work with the screen reader you use, said screen reader being rather vital to your ability to use the computer in which said card will be deployed. Well, that is the distinct possibility if what I read on one of the mailing lists I'm subscribed to is of any indication. Time will tell.
Sorry for all the death-related puns in this post, considering what the bulk of it is about, just my usual style, I promise!
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The second full day on the Amitriptyline 10mg with tomorrow being the first at 20mg. Yesterday I slept for most of the day and was feeling really drowsy even in the evening when I woke up. Today was better, mum and I went for lunch at the Ashvale which was good, and I had the usual breaded mushrooms with the garlic dip which I'll just never get tired of. Yesterday I didn't have a headache all morning which was a change, but the afternoon was just a little less severe than usual. Today was a bad day for the toes though. I went rifle shooting in the evening but couldn't really stand much so just sat for most of it. Morag, one of our group of for (well now three) visually impaired shooters passed away quite suddenly last week. Ali (who's sort of my unofficial mentor for the sport) wasn't really feeling up to 'proper' shooting, so we just spent the 90 minutes from when I got up to the range with him showing me how to load the rifle, use the target retrieval system and mount the rifle on its stand correctly. I picked it up pretty quickly and for me it's one step closer to independence. We also discussed the possibility of my using a stool to shoot. I would sit on it instead of standing, which would take the weight off my feet and alleviate the problem of my having to stop and rest every now and then. We'll have to check with the sport regulators as to what kind of chair or stool would be acceptable. It has to meet certain criteria, for example, it must not allow any part of the body to receive unfair support that would aid balancing the rifle, and it must not give the shooter any further directional or stabilization guidance. Time will tell what happens with that, but it would make shooting much more enjoyable for me and allow me to spend more time doing it.
Another thing I did today was to finally buy the chainsaw from Tesco that I've been eyeing up for a while now. The trees at the back of our garden have a few rather thick limbs and branches that have grown outwards, one of which is actually being entirely supported by our shed. As we want to take the shed down sometime in the near future, it'd have to be cut down anyway, but the fact that it's putting pressure on the shed (which is on its last legs anyway) is of some concern. And between you and me I'm looking forward to doing something new and teaching those pesky kids that keep sitting and climbing on our trees and generally being a nuisance that we won't tolerate it any longer. Damn those child safety laws that stop me taking any definite action - and don't worry, I'm not talking about physical assault or anything like that. For an example, if I start cutting down the tree, and decide to leave it for the night (because it’s getting dark or cold or whatever), and a child climbs on it, and gets hurt, it's my fault! How unfair is that? Especially as it's not even my child or their tree!
(Note at this point the internet went west for some random reason right in the middle of my writing this despite the fact there was no activity taking place, I had to switch over to my existing wireless network, but then the computer suddenly slowed right down and I decided to run an anti-virus check. The check failed half way through, but by then I'd already gone to bed. I'm continuing these six hours later in the morning when things have mysteriously fixed themselves.).
Anyway, in site news I'm trying out a new content management system, e107 which looks to be quite fully-featured with a good number of themes and plugins supporting it. I plan to install it soon and will hopefully use it as the base for hosting my stories, lyrics, etc. I had tried out a number of CMS's at < a href="www.opensourcecms.com">Open Source CMS</a> and found this to be the best cross between its functionality and ability to do the job that I want it to do. I also finally qualified for the < ahref="http://forums.digitalpoint.com">DigitalPoint Forums</a> AdSense participation programme. This works by sharing the revenue generated by that site from AdSense between all of its registered members, provided they have posted 50 or more times on the boards. So I'm looking forward to this boosting my own profits.
OK, that's all for now, I'm off to go and do, err, well I'm sure something will spring to mind. Have a great day!
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