Video Schmideo!

Heh Heh, well I finally got my video for cftube looking the way I want, there's no stopping me now! I'm going to bore my relatives senseless with my holiday videos ;-)

Seeing the vid really makes me miss playing in the band; we split up a couple of years ago because we all had other things going on in our lives and possibly because of that we just lost momentum really. I think M (The singer) had a real gift for writing songs; the rest of us just added the sonic film-flam around his songs. Anyway; I am for hire, if only I can find a band that needs a guitarist...

Oink, Oink!

It feels a bit like I'm surrounded by the tentacles of Swine Flu at the moment. There have been a few suspected cases at Abby and Oscar's nursery; and today there has been a couple of suspected cases at my workplace. The company policy is to send the people home (quarantined) until their symptoms subside. That's the idea anyway; this morning one guy turned up feeling unwell with a temperature, and stayed around for an hour checking the NHS Direct website before being sent home, doh! All this makes my working from home seem very desirable, so I'm going to agitate to get my laptop setup so I can work from home.

We (Abby, Oscar, and me) have got colds at the moment. Oscar's terrible case of imaginary CF (;-)) continues; he's got a chest infection at the moment, if I put my ear to his chest I can hear the phlegm bubbling up, poor guy. R took him to the doctors yesterday as he was quite fed up, just not himself, with a slight temp. He's been put on a 5-day course of Amoxycillin. Because it's for kids it comes as a lovely yellow banana-flavour medicine. He doesn't like it though, and he's taken to spitting it out onto my work shirts, which now have lovely yellow stains on them ;-) Abby and me aren't too bad, I've just got one of those almost-colds that doesn't have full blown symptoms yet. I've run out of Vicks First Defence though, I couldn't get any at the supermarket either, I think it's sold out with all the concerns over swine flu. I don't think we've got swine flu (touches wood) though, the doctor said that the symptoms of swine flu present themselves very quickly and are quite severe, with persistant high temp. Roll on the immunisation jabs I say...

parte dos del Menorca...

Menorca came and went in a blur of sun, sea, sand, swimming pools, hyperactive children and more annoyingly hyperactive reps. We stayed at the Victoria Playa hotel, which was very child-friendly and did some really nice (half board) buffet food. The buffet was a bit bland but they did do some more adventurous traditional Menorcan dishes like tapas, lobster soup and a tripe casserole with chick peas and chorizo. Abby did OK with the food because there was a kids buffet section with chips, beans and ice cream. Oscar took a fancy to the french baguettes, they helped with his teething. I was eating like a king; a cooked breakfast every day with danish pastries, toast, something with chips for lunch and a full three course meal in the evening couretesy of the buffet. I swear a normal person would have put on half a stone after 6 days on that diet; I'd just gained 1 pound when I got back, Grrrr ;-)

The pictures below are from when we hired a car for a couple of days and went up El Toro, a mountain in the middle of the island with a church at the top. On a clear day you can see the whole of the island. from the top. We also went to the two main port towns on the island; Ciutadella and Mahon, they are both well worth visiting for their fantastic architecture. As for the kids, well, Oscar was a real handful (crawling everywhere, opening and closing doors, ripping up other peoples Heat magazine, putting our plane tickets down the hotel toilet, etc) and Abby had a great time, she's getting very confident in the water, diving underwater in the swimming pools and even ventured out quite far in the sea. She didn't quite get into the social side of things with the other children until the last couple of nights though. The only complaint I'd have is the rooms, they were a bit cramped with Oscar in a cot on one side of our bed and Abby in a single bed on the other side. This meant that we always woke up early because whoever woke up first would always wake everyone else up...

Well, ho hum back to work and I'm still ridiculously overworked doing two people's jobs. I'd complain if I wasn't so pathetically thankful of having a job in this recession (another friend of mine has just been made redundant and he's been working for the same company for 20 years+

Anyway, to cheer me up, here's is a little video of Abby's new favourite "wash up" song as she calls it (The Boy Does Nothing by Alicia Dixon), they play it a nursery at the end of the day when they're tidying up :-)

The water in Menorca don't taste like what it 'orta

Here's some pics from Menorca. Menorca's lovely, I'd definitely go there again. A cheesy Judith Charmers-style write up will follow when and if I get some time ;-)

I'm melting!!!

Phew! I can't cope with this humidity, it like living in a rain forest. Well it's 10 PM and I'm sat here with a sweat on, basically praying for some breeze to come along and cool me down so I can sleep tonight. Oscar's in the loft and I really feel sorry for him with it being the hottest room in the house; he's currently sleeping in just his nappy with a fan pointing at his cot. Bless him.

Went to the hossy today for the end of my IV course. remarkably the cannula stayed in despite all my (and Abby and Oscar's) efforts to make it fall out ;-). Blows are slightly less than what I would have hoped :( FEV1 2.9 FVC 3.85. I think I seem to get more out of the first week of IVs, although my chest is definitely clearer now. While the new doc went out to check my blood level results I had a look at my previous blows and apart from a magnificent 3.3/4.3 back in 2006 (post IVs and post 3 days in Wales by the sea), they've stayed pretty steady (from 2.9-3.0) when I'm well, can drop to 2.4 when I have an infection. Maybe it's wrong to obsess too much about FEV numbers, perhaps how we feel is more important ;-) Thank god for Immodium though! IVs always give me the runs these days, but taking two immodium tablets every day gave me surreally normal bowel movements while I was on IVs and even carried me through a mortal weekend on the lash in Blackpool. I'm starting to pay for it now though, now I've gone "cold turkey" on Immodium (this is an accurate analogy, because Loperamide is an opioid-receptor agonist, it basically dopes up the gut -like opium- to slow it down, luckily or unluckily depending on your point of view it doesn't cross the central nervous system like other opiates)...Oh yeah, the high para-protein levels of last month (I Googled it and it suggested scary complications with bone marrow) are probably spurious and nothing to worry about, and that is Proff Webb approved, so good news :-)

Right, it's panic stations because we're off to Menorca for a week of sun, sea and sand this weekend (maybe we should just stay here, it'll probably be colder over there) and I haven't even thought about all the things to get for packing. Some things I've done last week are:

• Gone clubbing in Blackpool with a cannula in
• Decided clubbing in Blackpool was pretty grim.
  
• Played a golf course with a terrible hang-over and a tubigrip over my cannula
• Lost over half a stone in sweat on the hottest day of the year on said course
  
• Had a really bad round after I pulled a muscle in my arm and decided to never play golf again because it's poo.
• Decided mountain biking and running are much better things to do than golf.
• Lost my jacket bought for me by my misses in the hotel in Blackpool, I've phoned them up but they can't find it, waaahhh!
• Vowed never to drink again because it turns me into a cretin the next day ;-)