davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)

 My mother had the electrician in today to take a look at the electrics in the kitchen after the melting-plug incident I discovered over Christmas. Despite being forty-ish he had to call his dad in for help (family firm, and we've used the dad in the past) because the singed sockets were tiled flush to the wall and they didn't know if they could get them out without smashing up the kitchen tiling, but they managed and so my mother has three new sockets and a new plug on the kettle as he passed the kitchen-wiring and the kettle as safe, but labelled all moulded-on plugs on high-powered appliances as accidents waiting to happen - this one plug has burnt out two sockets and melted itself without the fuse ever blowing so I'm not certain he's wrong.

davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)
 My sister went along with my mother to the GP earlier, because of a bunch of minor symptoms that individually could be read as "she's getting old", but which we suspected meant the dosage for one of her conditions is too low. And it's a rare condition - 5/100,000 - that none of the practice doctors have shown signs of understanding before, leaving everything to the specialist, so she expected to have to argue.

Doctor "Yes, I think you're right, you should have had a follow-up appointment with the specialists months ago, I'm upping your dosage and writing to their secretary to get this sorted."

Thank god for doctors who read the notes in advance!

davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)

So my sister prodded me to order a Mothers Day card in with my last food delivery so I could send it in plenty of time for Sunday. But while Asda do have an category for "Mothers Day presents and cards" it turned out to be all presents and no cards. So she told me she would sort something out, which turned out to be ordering one from Etsy to be delivered to me.

It finally turned up today - she ordered one for herself at the same time and it turned up last weekend - and I opened the package to find an envelope that was already addressed "Mam" and "do not open til Mothers Day", and was sealed. So immediately I knew I was going to have to find another envelope to post it in - fortunately it was a relatively small card - and to break the seal - fortunately it was just a single sticker I could carefully peel loose rather than the whole glued seal.

And inside it already says "To Mam, with love on Mother Day, from David x". She could have had it sent to her instead and just handed it to my mother on Sunday.

I managed to squeeze in "Looking forward to hugging you for real", which was made harder by not having a great deal of space and the paper for the card being made with wild flower seeds in, so my pen kept going askew every time I hit one, making my writing even worse than normal. And now it's resealed and in the post and god knows if the post office will deliver it in time given the current delays (I got more Christmas cards after the New Year than before Christmas). And of course it was peeing down on the one day this week I needed to go out.

Discussing it with my sister afterwards "Yeah, I vaguely remember writing in a message, but then I must have changed my mind and had it sent to you instead". Genius!

Oh well, hopefully it arrives.

(The other slightly weird thing is that the order acknowledgement card has an individually packed biscuit and a tea bag glued to it. While I can see what they were aiming for I'm not sure I'd trust a single biscuit to the mercies of the post on a regular basis!)

davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)

First short story rejection of the year, bah humbug. But the stats, eeek!

"Please keep in mind that we had nearly 1400 submissions and we accepted 20 stories total"

That's for the Derelict anthology. Presumably they had similar numbers for the other two anthologies they were doing.

My mother's central heating broke down on Thursday, which isn't ideal for an 81yo at this time of year, but kudos to her central heating guy who came out on Friday morning (apologising that he hadn't been able to come on Thursday evening), spent a while working on it, determined it probably needed a new PCB, and then told her it would be cheaper to sign up to the manufacturer's service plan and have them come out and fix it than for him to do it, and refused to take any money (and he'd be losing the annual service, not just the one job). And he was spot on, they came out on Saturday and replaced the PCB and her house is warm again. Thankfully my sister was able to deal with everything without needing me to get involved beyond agreeing what the engineer was saying made sense.

And as well as that being fixed, my clinically extremely vulnerable brother-in-law had his vaccination (AZ) on Sunday, so that's one less worry for both him and my sister. Judging by a graphic in the Guardian on Monday, she and I are likely to get our jabs in the last week of March if progression continues as currently.

Not much of substance happening at this end. Gamewise I've been playing Ark again for the past few weeks, I hadn't played since April-ish due to a corrupted save file, but finally got around to rolling back to the previous save. And I promptly fell off my giant owl in the dark, in the deadliest spot on the Ragnorak map, the Murder Murder Snow* - hypothermia actually killed me before I hit the ground. As my character had all my good gear on it, I needed to recover the body.  Unfortunately all my good gear included my best set of insulating fur armour. So recovery had to be dash in wearing my second-best set, grab the stuff, and dash out again before hypothermia killed me, and before the body and its gear faded in a couple of gameplay hours. To make things even worse, it had landed right on the spawn-spot for a pack of direwolves, so I didn't even dare hop off to get it. Trying to take the direwolves out cost me three good flyers and more sets of gear - I lost count of the number of times I died. I finally decided the only way to do it was to build a base on top of my body, block by block, by flying in and placing them from the air. Initially I'd planned just a raised platform where I could land, a couple of campfires to keep the hypothermia at bay, and a ladder dropping down to the body, but I ended up building first a shack on the platform and then a wall around the body for safety's sake. And so now I have my gear back, and a base in the middle of the Murder Murder Snow. I'm not sure that I can do anything practical with it, but it's a fantastic spot for watching the daily war between the direwolves and the mammoths.

* So-called because at -60C it's even worse than the -40C Murder Snow.

davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)

... while my mother is in town shopping.

So far today:

Up to Argos to return headboard I bought yesterday as the bolts to fix the legs to the headboard are missing (both box and internal packing had clearly been opened and resealed at some point). Woman at the till said it would be Saturday before a replacement was in, text sent by their system at the same time says tomorrow .... hmmm!

Took delivery of new fridge-freezer, which actually arrived early, so just as well we were back from Argos quickly

Deciphered innovatively translated instructions for fridge-freezer. Delighted, not, to discover that as a disabled person I should only use it under supervision.

Dropped Mother in town with a box of spare tumblers (not sure how I ended up with so many), bag of books and bunch of old rucksacks for the British Heart Foundation shop.

Been to the bank to pay the first money into the executor's account for my father's estate. (Yes! Alleluia!! Finally!!!)

And all before 2:30.

We've already, at the weekend, made a second run to the tip with the back of the car completely filled, and are putting stuff together for a third load, though that will be much smaller.

it's just as well she's going home on Thursday, the house would be empty if she stayed much longer!

davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)

My mother is sweeping through my house like an 80yo Northern Marie Kondo. Typical conversation:

Mam: Why have you got so many clothes?

Me: Because you keep buying them for me.

Mam: You still have far too many.

I'm just nodding a lot and agreeing that stuff can go to charity shops or the tip. The British Heart Foundation are sending a van tomorrow to pick stuff up, I hope it's a big one.

Home ...

Jan. 9th, 2020 05:34 pm
davidgillon: Text: I really don't think you should put your hand inside the manticore, you don't know where it's been. (Don't put your hand inside the manticore)


.... with my mother in tow (it's five and a half years since she last visited, rather than me going to Durham)


I spent days cleaning before I left the house pre-Christmas. I've already been banished from the kitchen after a demand to know where the cleaning products are.

Send a rescue party if you don't hear from me again!
 

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davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)
David Gillon

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