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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Eleanor Blair's LiveJournal:
- 1 large or 2 small onions
- 2-4 cloves garlic
- 3 small carrots
- 4 rashers of smoked bacon
- 1 cup of dried red lentils
- 400g tin tomatoes
- 1 teaspoon dried chilli flakes
- salt and pepper for seasoning
- oil or fry-light for frying
- 1/2 a glass red wine (optional)
- 100g chorizo - whole rather than sliced (optional)
- I have seen the parathyroid surgeon today and have surgery booked for September 3rd
- I'm going to go visit baby Oliver (and his mum and dad and grandad and granny) next weekend while Mike is away in Nottingham
- We are going on holiday: staying in Exeter for a week from the 16th. Conveniently letting me travel there directly from Rae's hen night in Cardiff, rather than coming home first.
- Had a CT scan for my kidneys (actually that was before my last entry), but not got the results yet, despite it being nearly 3 weeks now
- Had some friends over for dinner, on one of the hottest days of the year, and really enjoyed eating with the patio doors open beside us
- Been given an appointment for July 28th to go talk to the surgeon at Addenbrookes about having my dodgy parathyroid gland out. Apparently I should get the date for the surgery itself on the day, so looking forward to that, though no doubt it'll mean more waiting.
- Reached the point where I've lost 10% of my body weight, and so should be seeing positive health results provided I keep it off (there's the rub!). Will go see GP (once the damned CT results arrive!) and ask if I can come off the pills. At least the metformin, since it seems to upset my digestive system a bit whenever I forget one or take one with too little food. Have decided to lose a little more and stop at either 90 or 85 kg.
- Been to a fab BBQ in Histon with Mike's colleagues followed by a bijou party for Pete's 30th, both of which were excellent.
- My sister now has a date on which they plan to induce her baby (at just over 38 weeks, for health reasons), which is a week on Monday! So excited and looking forward to visiting her and the baby (and Dave) the following weekend assuming all goes well *fingers crossed*
- Had a day off today to make sure I do use up all my holiday before the end of September. Will still have a week to spare to hopefully go away in August.
- Looking forward to Rae's hen night in Cardiff in mid-August. Half wishing she'd gone for the hen weekend approach given how long it takes to get there. I will be on a train from Shelford before 7am on a Saturday. Ow.
| Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 | |
| 5:40 pm | My long weekend Rae and Adam invited us and Fluffy for dinner on Saturday to say thankyou to Mike and Fluffy for being bridesmaids. So we got the train to Cardiff arriving late Saturday afternoon with just time to take the dog for a muddy 45 minutes walk before it got dark. Dinner was lovely, with good company and much playing of estimation whist and then hearts after dinner. On Sunday we got up and out of the house about 10:30 and took the dog for another much longer walk, about 2.5 hours with me on the lead for much of the time. I'm still surprised such a small dog is so strong, and so hard to wear out! We ended up with a nice walk along the cliffs though, and Mike and Monster made it down to the beach, although it was a bit too muddy for the rest of us to attempt. We finished off the weekend with a cheap and very plentiful lunch in the pub, and a lovely pint of Brains Dark, before Adam dropped us at the station. Having gone all that way it seemed like a good idea to take a couple of days off work and go visit Mike's parents too. So we got a train to Newport, and the bus to Chepstow and a lift home from there to their house, for a lovely curry for dinner and much amusement for me with Gina's Wii Fit Plus: I've already put a copy on my amazon wishlist but Mike now tells me I may need to remove it again :) After dinner Evan dropped us at Phil's house for a pleasant evening of gossip and Rock Band. On Monday we got up late and headed out after breakfast at nearly 12 for a nice little bike ride. 23.1 miles and 2100ft of climbing (and descending again!) in around three and a half hours rather completely wore me out, especially after all the walking the previous days. So we slumped on the sofa for the rest of the afternoon before trying to take Evan and Gina out for dinner. But despite us saying it could be a late birthday present to them they still insisted on paying for their half! It was lovely to see them anyway, and we had a nice time, and have spent today travelling home again without having to worry about anything more disruptive to the rail network than a cow on the line at Roydon leading to a 15 minute delay. Tired now! |
| Friday, October 23rd, 2009 | |
| 6:47 pm | News We've booked our wedding venue, and will be getting married on 18th September 2010 at Queens'. We're very excited. Have to go do the Notice of Marriage at the Register Office in the next few weeks, and next weekend me and mum are going to look at wedding dresses. I shall try not to go on about it too much :) No new health news :) Back to Addies on Monday to get rescanned to see if the kidney stone has really gone. Still waiting for the results of the blood tests they took at the end of September to see if my hormone and calcium levels have gone back to normal. Otherwise pretty well though, scar is already visibly fading, and I'm still slowly losing weight. 5.5kg to go until I'm no longer obese, at which point I might think about trying to maintain my weight instead. We'll see. A couple of lovely parties fairly recently for Laura and Karen's birthdays. Other than that life's been pretty quiet: lots of reading, lots of watching DVDs, not much else. It's all good though. Oh, and I'm vaguely considering upgrading to Windows 7, since I can get it cheap as an academic, but it seems my graphics card isn't compatible with their shiny new "Aero" style desktop, I'd need new drivers for my ethernet card (not so bad), my AV won't work on it, I'd need more memory to run the 64-bit version, and it's not clear whether any of my games and so-on would run on it. Oh and it definitely won't do the virtualised WinXP compatibility stuff. So it's not looking like a great move really. I might just buy the extra memory instead :) |
| Monday, October 5th, 2009 | |
| 11:25 am | Spicy lentil and bacon stew I cooked this on Friday for me and Mike and Karen, and promised her the recipe, so may as well post it here. Ingredients (In this case I used 1 tsp olive oil, 75ml red wine and no chorizo, to serve 3) Method Peel and dice the onion, peel and finely chop the garlic, gently fry in the oil or fry-light until softening. Chop the bacon (remove fat if desired) and add to the frying pan and fry until cooked. Peel and dice the carrot into reasonably large pieces and add to the pan, along with the lentils and fry for 1-2 minutes, stirring constantly. If desired add the wine and the chorizo, chopped into large dice, at this point. Add the tomatoes, season with the chilli, salt and pepper, and slowly bring to the boil. Turn down low and simmer for around half an hour until the lentils have absorbed most of the liquid and it's thick and tasty. Serve with crusty bread or garlicy mashed potatoes (just peel a couple of cloves of garlic and chop in half and add to the water while the potatoes are boiling, and they'll mash in once cooked). This quantity serves 2-3 people, and it is even better with the chorizo as well. |
| Tuesday, September 29th, 2009 | |
| 5:52 pm | Surgery followup They've confirmed that the enlarged (and removed) parathyroid was indeed an adenoma: a benign tumour. Also taken a blood sample to check calcium and parathyroid hormone levels are back to normal. They'll write to me and my GP and let me know the results, if so we're all done and dusted. He didn't say what happens if they're still elevated! Also apparently my scar should be all but invisible within 12 months, which is excellent news. It's fairly unobtrusive anyway, all things considered. All good. In other news I'm actively looking at wedding venues now: have three visits to colleges lined up, all inconveniently on different weekends, but Mum and Dad will be able to come along for one of them. V exciting, and scarily expensive looking! |
| Monday, September 21st, 2009 | |
| 12:07 pm | All doped up and nowhere to go Walked to the hospital this morning in the sunshine, which was really nice. And they got me all doped up ready for the procedure, and lying in the right place on the table with the ultrasound machine. And then started looking for the kidney stone in order to blast it into pieces... and couldn't find it. It's possible I passed it the last time I had pain, or it's possibly just hiding. The images on the machine intended for zapping are apparently not always good enough to find things, and my stone is (or was) only just big enough to need treatment anyway. So they're going to send me an appointment for an ordinary ultrasound to see if they can still find anything. If not we'll assume it passed and just be pleased, otherwise they'll make another appointment for the lithotripsy once they know better where to find it. Paul picked me up and has dropped me in the office instead of at home, where I'm going to read email for a bit and have some lunch while the sedative finished wearing off. I don't feel *very* doped up though, so I'll be able to get some work done this afternoon. |
| Sunday, September 20th, 2009 | |
| 12:42 pm | Back to hospital tomorrow :) It's been a good couple of weeks: my scar's getting much better, my shoulder isn't aching any more, and I no longer have to drink horrible effervescent calcium tablets twice a day. We had a fab weekend in Bath for Rae and Adam's wedding, where Mike was bridesmaid complete with electric guitar, and we're generally taking it easy and enjoying life. Tomorrow I'm back at the hospital again though for litrotripsy on my kidney stone. This is where they bombard it with ultrasound waves through your back in order to break it up. Being sensible I just dug out the paperwork yesterday to make sure I was ready for Monday morning. Being less sensible I hadn't really looked at in detail since the beginning of August when they sent me it, and *now* I realise they suggest I take the rest of the week off to recover and bring someone to take me home, since I'll have been sedated and not fit to drive. Ooops. Now obviously I wasn't intending to drive anyway, since hey, I don't have a car. Hopefully they'll let me go home in a taxi on my own, but I've grovelled to Paul to ask if he can give me a lift home mid- or late-morning. Sometimes I really am a bit of a muppet! I'd best email work and tell them not to expect me in after my appointment :) PS *phew* Paul says yes, so I've got a couple of people I can call on just in case. Thank goodness, and sorry for being so disorganised! |
| Sunday, September 6th, 2009 | |
| 11:01 am | Recovery Thanks all who sent good wishes. Surgery apparently went well on Thursday, and I was allowed home the same evening. Since then I've largely been curled up in my pyjamas under the duvet reading lots and letting Mike look after me. I've finally got up properly today :) I'm still achy, I've got a big scab a couple of inches long along one side of my neck, but it's right along an existing crease, so once it's healed the scar should barely show. And I'm not in enough pain to be worth taking even paracetamol, which is brilliant. I'm taking vitamin D and calcium supplements for a fortnight, until the other three glands supposedly recover from being rather suppressed and everything gets back to normal, and I go back to see the consultant in 4 weeks. I'll be seeing my GP on Monday though, to give him my discharge letter and check that I've not got too much calcium in my system now. There's a bit of me that's scared I'll be like my neighbour and find the operation hasn't worked and they need to operate again and look at the other glands. I hope not! I don't think I'm up to sitting in front of a computer all day yet, it makes my neck ache, but I should be OK by the end of next week I guess, we'll just have to wait and see. Overall I'm a lot more recovered than I thought I'd be though. |
| Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 | |
| 9:46 pm | Stuff and things Finally mapped our two long walks in Devon, you can see them here: Haldon area and Dartmoor. 9.2 and 7.3 miles respectively with 1800 and 1300 feet of climbing. No wonder my knees hated me afterwards! The elevation profiles are pretty cool though, and if you zoom in you can see the rocks that make up Grimspound. Pre-assessment yesterday took all afternoon, but I've been given a clean enough bill of health (despite an irritating blood pressure reading of 158/86), so surgery is on for tomorrow. Alarm clock is set for implausibly early (by our standards) so I can get to the hospital by 7am, for a mid to late-morning surgery. They expect it'll last 45 minutes max, but I doubt I'll be allowed home before the evening. My bag's all packed and I'm pretty much ready to go, if nervous. I suspect I may not get the best night's sleep :) |
| Monday, August 24th, 2009 | |
| 2:50 pm | Back from Wales and Devon Just over a week ago ( ... ) But we had a wonderful time, and to be honest I actually enjoy the train journeys too. A fabulous holiday, and a day off today to recover from the travelling, and somehow I'm not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow, or to surgery next week for that matter, but boy do I feel fit after all that exercise :) Photos of Haldon, Exeter, Dawlish and Dartmoor are on Facebook (you shouldn't need an account to see them at those links). At some point I may try to map our walks too. |
| Friday, August 14th, 2009 | |
| 3:57 pm | Gragh! Why I hate Virgin Media right now: ( letter to virgin media sales team ) I would say I hate everyone, or everyone selling anything on the web, but John Lewis just delivered me a bookcase when they said they would, and even rang in advance to let me know they'd be here in 30-45 minutes. Somehow I'm not in the mood for building flat-pack furniture right now. It turns out the construction team noted the problem on the 8th, but didn't bother like telling the people who rang me yesterday to check today was still OK, never mind telling me. BT tell me I have to get Virgin to cancel the number transfer and then call them back on the 19th to double-check. Virgin tell me that the number transfer has been cancelled because the installation was cancelled. They still tell me someone will be in touch to re-arrange a date but that it might not be soon. I am *not* happy. (but telling me I'm a fool for having anything to do with them is not going to help) |
| Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 | |
| 10:00 pm | Hurray It's all good. Apparently the urology appointment I have on 27th August will just be to discuss what to do about the kidney stone, rather than actually do it, but that's not the end of the world. And I have to visit the hospital for pre-assessment 2 days before the parathyroid surgery, but hopefully that'll just be a reasonably short appointment rather than taking a day off work. And I'll have over a week to recover before we're off to Bath for Rae and Adam's wedding. |
| Monday, July 27th, 2009 | |
| 7:38 am | More news I got a text message from Dave at 3am: Baby Oliver born 23:08 tonight, 7lbs7oz. Steph is reported as looking rather pleased with herself :) |
| Sunday, July 26th, 2009 | |
| 8:34 pm | Not an aunty yet My sister Steph was supposed to go in for induction for her baby last Monday at 38.5 weeks, because she has gestational diabetes. They didn't have a bed though, so she went in on Tuesday instead. Since then she's been alternating between trying to induct her without much success and waiting around while they do nothing because there's no cot for the baby. I went up to visit on Friday and came home today and there's still no baby, and even if it does manage to arrive tonight/tomorrow both mum and baby will be on the transitional care ward for at least 48 hours, to which they're only allowing partners to visit because of swine flu. It's all been rather stressful for everyone, however she is now finally in labour, so fingers crossed! And it was good to see her and Dave and mum and dad. I wish I could have stayed up longer really, to see them when they can come out, but I have a hospital appointment on Tuesday that I can't put off. |
| Friday, July 17th, 2009 | |
| 3:57 pm | Health update Sprained/chipped ankle: sufficiently better that most of the time I don't even remember I did it any more. Even when doing things like attempting to scale a climbing wall. Success. Hyperparathyroidism/hypercalcaemia: Have appointment to see surgeon on 28th, at which point they'll make an appointment to actually have the operation and take my overactive parathyroid out. Relatively minor day surgery, will need to take calcium/vitamin D supplements for a while afterwards until the other three glands reset to normal operation. Kidney stone: This is almost certainly caused by the excess calcium in my urine because of the above. CT scan results are in and I have a 4mm stone in my left kidney. At this size it's 50/50 whether it's worth treating, but since I have symptoms (pain again this Tuesday, and I can still sort of feel it now) the GP has referred me to have it broken up using external ultrasound. No idea how long this referral will take. In the meantime I still have enough diclofenac left to deal with the pain. Metabolic Syndrome: Having lost some weight I've discussed this with my GP. Since I have a strong family history of diabetes it's very likely that even if I lose more weight I'm still going to get diabetes later. He'd rather I continued to take the Metformin and statins, since apparently they can have a protective effect and will hopefully delay its onset. I'm not terribly happy with this, but will review in maybe 6-8 months time, at which point I'll ask them to re-do all the sugar/cholesterol level tests too. This does mean I still can't drink. Weight loss: 13kg so far to 97kg, which is over 10% of my weight and more than 5 BMI points. I expect to reach 90kg (around BMI 31.5, and my next target) by mid-September. I need to reach 85kg to no longer be classed as obese. Still following Slimming World online, still trying not to go on about it. |
| Sunday, July 12th, 2009 | |
| 10:50 am | The weekend Nice quite Saturday with much geeking, and finishing the book I started on Friday, with curry and The Commitments in the evening. Slightly spoiled by waking up on Sunday and discovering computer won't boot. We unplugged everything, opened the case, checked nothing had come loose and then tried it again and now it's booting OK. Stupid thing. We intend to spend the afternoon at Shelford Feast. |
| Friday, July 10th, 2009 | |
| 8:16 pm | Stuff wot haz bin happnin' It seems like ages since I wrote anything here. In the meantime I have: There's probably other stuff too, but that's the main events. I've generally had a few chilled out weeks, with far too much time spent playing the Sims, and doing quite a bit of reading. I should give Tom his book back now I've finished it. I have applied for a library card and will see if I can borrow the rest from the library in the village. I have at least got round to cataloging the books I've finished over the last 2 months now, and reviewed them all over on librarything. I'm still really glad it's the weekend though. |
| Friday, June 26th, 2009 | |
| 11:56 am | Perl DBI help Argh, I've got an SQL query which works fine if I run it from Access, and which I think has no errors, but if I try run it from Perl I'm getting an error from the database. Can anyone tell me what obvious thing I'm doing wrong? ( code )
Ah, it seems that in fact the oracle database does *not* support left outer joins, and that the reason it works in Access is because Access translates the query into a form that this version of oracle does support. Many thanks to Paul for popping in to explain (I could have just gone and asked him obviously, but he's been rather busy with exam marking recently). What a nuisance, since this is obviously a much nicer way to do the query than faffing about with a "where not in (subquery)" or similar. (We suspect it is supported in the new version of Oracle Paul's working on migrating to, but sadly I think my code is needed before then). Double correction: it does support them, but with weird syntax. The following code works: ( more code ) |
| Friday, June 12th, 2009 | |
| 4:29 pm | Cambridge cycle commuting Apologies for the repeat, but I messed up the poll. I'm still interested in how far people in Cambridge typically cycle to work. Not that I think this will get very statistically valid answers of course. Poll #1414849 Cambridge cycle commuters (mark II) How many miles do you commute?
View Answers 0 - 1 1 - 2 2 - 3 3 - 4 4 - 5 5 - 6 6 - 7 7 - 8 8 - 9 9 - 10 10+ I am not a Cambridge cycle commuter Do you cross the city boundaries?
View Answers
Yes No Don't know / Other I am not a Cambridge cycle commuter Google maps, and bikely may help you plot your journey to find out how long it is, and here's a map of the boundaries Feel free to add your commute even if you only do it once a week, rather than every day, and do comment with details if you'd like, or vote in comments if you don't have a livejournal account. If your commute is entirely outside the city boundaries but you still consider yourself a Cambridge cyclist (perhaps you live in one of the boundary villages?) then do vote, but please comment. |
| 4:01 pm | Cycle commuting I'm curious about how far people commute by bike in Cambridge. Arse, I missed 2-3 miles off the poll. Please accept my apologies and vote/comment again in the new version. Feel free to add your commute even if you only do it once a week, rather than every day, and do comment with details if you'd like, or vote in comments if you don't have a livejournal account. If your commute is entirely outside the city boundaries but you still consider yourself a Cambridge cyclist (perhaps you live in one of the boundary villages?) then do vote, but please comment. NB in the second question "don't know/other" is intended to cover the answer "I am not a Cambridge cycle commuter". I knew I should have made that a specific option. |
| Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 | |
| 6:44 pm | Hospitals again Consultant appointment today. They took my height, weight and blood pressure first - where I proved you get weird results from the automatic machine if the cuff is too small - 160/94 became 100/70 when done again manually with a bigger cuff, and she checked it 3 times, once standing up, just to make sure. Consultant took lots of medical history information and didn't say much that I didn't already know, other than to mention that actually my calcium levels are only *just* above normal, and if I were older they wouldn't bother operating, and that after surgery my bone density should go back to normal. They do want to do a DEXA scan to check bone density at three specific points (spine, hip, forearm) and I've got to collect some urine samples and have another blood test done, but if the results of those all confirm the diagnosis so far then I'll be referred to the surgeon. Should take 6-8 weeks to get an appointment to see him and then another 6-8 weeks before the operation, so I guess I'm looking at October. Oh and if the tests *don't* confirm the diagnosis I'll be back to see the consultant in 3 months time, because they only run the clinic once a month and she's not available in 2 months time. I really do hope they say the right thing, I just want to get this *over*. Still, at least I can probably now thing about booking a holiday in late August. I also got an appointment for a CT scan for the kidney stone through this morning, and that's in a fortnight's time, and will also be relevant. I'm a little unimpressed that wasn't sooner, given that if I were still in pain I'd have to go back to the GPs for a bigger supply of painkillers. Just in case I'm getting hospital withdrawal symptoms in the meantime though I've got an appointment to give blood at the hospital's blood donation centre next week. In other news this morning I managed to make a boiled egg explode, and cover both myself and the kitchen in egg, including the clean clothes and the clean washing up. It was *not* what I'd call a good start to the day. Don't believe Delia when she says 7 minutes is long enough for a hard-boiled egg, especially not in shallow water. And do prick the yolks *before* microwaving the resulting shelled lumps of half-cooked egg-like mess, if you're attempting to finish the cooking process off. They were fine in the microwave itself, but the one which was most whole did not react well to me cutting into it to see if it was done. Thank goodness I was wearing my glasses! |
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