a view through my own eyes

Which one of you seven cats in the house brought in the sparrow, ate half of it, left feathers all of the place and as a result scared the life out of mrspao?

The above was the question I faced our cats with earlier this evening. Which to be honest was followed with: Good girl/boy who’s a clever cat then.

Oh well one of the downsides of cats I guess.

Still I am certain that it was not Jasper – he eats birds whole. Ophelia is into mice, Lucy doesnt leave the house, Phoebe can barely jump, Ariel has never been into catching anything, Merlin well he is the expert bird catcher (live pigeon on the curtain rail from time to time) but he has been semi retired for a few years, so that leaves Perdita who is a bit of a wildcat monster.

Yeah my money is on Perdita.

Went to see March Of The Penguins this evening.

Awk!

I have been thinking a bit – it’s OK as I will have a lie down in a bit.

The donor thing really does concern me and to be honest I feel quite ethically challenged.

Particularly since I should be done in the next couple of months and so people I see now could be donating to the eye bank real soon now.

I know that a cornea will become available as that is the way of life and death, but I do still feel that I am pretty much wishing someone to die so that my quality of life can improve.

Anyway its been suggested that a thankyou letter may help, both me and the donors family.

Is it “right” to write a thankyou letter to the donors family?

Should I do it in advance now whilst I am to an extent challenged by the situation or should I wait until afterwards when I am hopefully eternally gratefull?

Gah!

Comments of course are welcome.

Noticed an oddity under OS X and figured that I would mention it here.

I have two external USB drives – same brand and both recognised on boot by my MAC.

When they are formatted as FAT32, one or the other will automount a minute or so after booting and the missing one automounts a few minutes later.

When they are formatted as HFS+, they are bothe mounted on boot and are available straight away.

No predjudice there against MS then.

Mind you at least the Mac reads FAT32 (and a fair few others) by default, how many file systems does Windows read by default? I will leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Oh and if I want to read an HFS+ external disk on a PC I can, but I have to buy the driver.

…but I have a real hankering for beef in black bean sauce and noodles.

Anyway home made Boston baked beans for dinner tonight according to mrspao – so it could well be windy in East Kent tonight.

Well I had an interesting chat with the lady who deals with waiting lists at the hospital.

Apparently now there is one person in front of me waiting for a cornea transplant and they are booked to be done on the ninth of March.

So the waiting lists people are going to get my consultant to confirm his NHS availability (the joys of a two tier health system) and then get a cornea ordered from the Eye Bank. Assuming that the consultant is not on leave or is overly booked for private work they are hoping that I will be done late in March.

I should get around three weeks notice apparently so that they can blood type me (for emergencies) and do an ECG etc amongst other pre-op chores.

Things are suddenly starting to seem a bit more real and I am going to have to start considering what can go in the diary (or at least be easily cancelled without browning people off) and stuff like that.

Hmmm,

I have just discovered that once I have had my cornea graft, I will be ineligble to give blood or to carry a donor card.

This is due to the fact that I have had a transplant operation.

It doesn’t take into account that corneas do not have blood vessels and so there is apparently no risk of the nasties that they are paranoid about.

I could go into a long rant now about the ridiculousness of pre donor screening (tick box forms) but to be honest I really cannot be bothered. But I will point out the obvious.

Its easy to fib on the forms, and the blood is screened anyway.

Grrr

Bleugh.

Browned off, really utterly browned off.

Shivery, shaky, hot, cold, sinuses hurt and I ache everywhere.

I hate being stuck at home like this but know I need to rest and get well.

[editing this page - 1. to change the formatting to make it more readable, 2. update some of the answers from my fluey fug ridden ones, 3. cos its my blog and I can]

SWMBO claims she has tagged me, sadly its not a game of kiss chase but a few questions. So here goes:

Four jobs you have had:
1. customs clearance agent in the ports of Dover, Folkestone & Ramsgate
2. flogging TVs, VCRs and HiFis for a chain electricals seller
3. packhouse administrator for a tomato grower
4. taxi driver

Four movies you could watch over and over:
oooh far too many to choose from
1. Where Eagles Dare – classic boys own adventure – that differed very little from Macleans book
2. Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back – not so mind blowing as the original in 77 on 7 year old me, but certainly a better film overall
3. LotR – Peter Jackson has done a most reasonable job of these – though I do have some issues but they can wait for a seperate blog entry when I have re-watched them.
4. Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Jaws or ET – Speilbergs early stuff was on the whole superb

Four places you have lived:
1. Park Wood – student accomodation – some of the most fun I have had was there
2. little terrace house with no square rooms which makes it a nightmare for storage – still there now with SWMBO
3. at an Aunts for a couple of weeks – that turned into five years! Thanks Auntie Doreen
4. in a little two up two down cottage with my mum and dad when I was small – that place was tiny

Four TV Shows you love to watch:
this is a challenge as I don’t watch a tremendous amount of TV
1. Horizon – BBC2 documentary series
2. Dr Who – grew up with this with Tom Baker at the Dr from the mid 70s – the new series isn’t bad either
3. MotD when them chaps in red shirts are playing, and F1 GP racing on Sundays
4. Battlestar Galactica (new series) – possibly the best SciFi out of the US for the last 10 years IMHO.

Four of your favourite books:
again too many of these to choose from
1. The Silmarillion – Tolkiens grand work – his story of the Elves in Middle Earth (LotR – gets a few pages at the end)
2. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smileys People – Le Carres superb cold war works – I know they are two books but they are the story of George Smiley
3. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie – this one really did keep me guessing until the end
4. Antarctica – Kim Stanley Robinson – an environmental thriller set about as far south as you can go

Four places you have been on vacation:
this is easy as I have only had a few holidays
1. Boston, Mystic and Cape Cod – Honeymoon – best holiday ever so far
2. Bath and the surrounding area – we rented a cottage where every floor board squeaked!
3. Switzerland and Germany – for Christmas and New Year a few years back – bloody cold – highlight was that it snowed Christmas eve and we had around 2 feet of snow overnight
4. Bournemouth last year – yes I know that its odd, but it pissed it down the whole time, it was the off season and everywhere was shut – SWMBO and I made extensive use of the hotels facilities and it was soooo relaxing

Four websites you visit daily:
ummm there are lots of these so…
1. news.bbc.co.uk
2. www.f1racing.net/en
3. slashdot.org
4. google

Four favourite foods:
1. chilli con carne – has to be done with stewing steak in a slow cooker for around eight hours
2. roast chicken, spuds, peas carrots etc – just like grandma, my mum and now SWMBO does (oh and I can do it as well!)
3. breakfast in the Sportsman (bacon, eggs, beans, toast, fried potatoes etc) – cooked breakfast must always be cooked for you – it is just not the same if you have to do it yourself
4. a good curry from Tia – our local curry place – current faves from there are: chicken (rezalla, roshini and tikka masalla)

Four places you would rather be right now:
1. Antarctica – just the one place in the world that I really want to go to
2. sitting underneath a tree on the Amalfi Coast with a good book and a bottle of Chianti
3. a nice warm country pub with a log fire going, fine ales and good company
4. walking along a deserted beach being able to hear the waves lapping against the shore

Not tagging any other bloggers as mrspao seems to have grabbed my likely candidates – thieving mare

Well Lucy the diabetic cat returned to the vets for a checkup.

Glucose levels are higher and her weight hasn’t gone down at all, so it appears that our hunch that she was snacking the others food is proven correct.

So now we have to up the insulin a tad and ensure that there is no other food around she can get at.

The poor girl does like to eat, the vet reckons she eats to please people as she thinks she is a good girl for eating stuff. Which isn’t really the right answer and she will given chance try and eat absolutely everything – particularly chips.

I expect Jasper is not going to be pleased as he tends to come and go as he wants and eat at the same time. Oh well if it means he learns to come and go at sensible hours that will be a good thing as well.

Oh and also Lucy has early stages of cataracts, but then she is quite old. So the wife is shuffed to bit that we have a cat that will slowly go blind and a husband that needs an eye operation.