I've just got in from visiting my mum in hospital. Thankfully the operation she had today went very well. I didn't want to mention anything before as I am strangely supersitious about these things.

It is interesting to see my mum in hospital mode. I think she has been in and out of hospitals a fair bit, mainly because she got something called rheumatic fever as a child and it damaged her heart. So she started with that, and then had open heart surgery back in the early 1960's to unblock a heart valve, followed by regular annual checkups and then two new artificial heart valves on her 70th birthday in 2003, and a pacemaker just over a month ago.

Ever since I can remember my mum told me 'not to get too used to having her around', this was because of the heart thing. But today I've come to the conclusion that she must really have the constitution of an ox.

Despite artificial heart valves and a pacemaker, and having had a general anaesthetic (to say nothing of the actual operation), she was bright and alert and chatted on for a couple of hours. No problem. You'd think nothing had happened if it wasn't for the intravenous drip thing!

I'm just so impressed really.

justbloggin

The harvest festival season approaches. As with most things there is always more than one, this is a new feature of my life brought about by children, one event is never enough. There is the school harvest festival, then the church harvest festival. As the school is a church school the two are not that different.

One has a play involved, so there are words to learn, as well as a donation to produce. The other requires a donation of some kind and a few more well known hymns.

As with all things charitable it is hard to know what to give. Whilst veg is lovely stuff today's recipient of the harvest vegetables might not manage to eat them before they go off.

The nicecest part of the school version seems to me to be the fact that a couple of children are dispatched to the nominated people to deliver parcels and maybe have a bit of a chat.

Personally I rather like the songs, 'we plough the fields and scatter' as it reminds me of being the small child at the assembly with the vegetables. I don't really feel like it was that long ago that I was sitting cross legged in assemblies myself.

But I have started to notice that where I used to get quite sentimental at school services and similar child centric productions I've now started to observe the clock and wonder when the tea and biscuits will be served.

Gotta be quick the battery is nearly flat

Well Im working on trying out the wine club's first delivery. It came in handy as the students who have been working for us during the summer have all gone back to University, with plenty of gifts, not limited to a bottle of chardonnay.

We decided to shut the second office as there isn't really anyone to sit in it at the moment. Closing the office has meant that we were rather oversupplied with IT equipment. Said 'stuff' is now relocating itself to student residences, parents houses, and our other office which is likely to look a teeny bit full up when we finally squeeze everything into it.

It has resulted in a major IT swap round at home as I refuse to let the kids have computers or televisions in their rooms. So I just had to go to Ikea to sort out the storage. Where I noticed that the staff have kindly located all the desks in the till area ready for the influx of 30,000+ students into the Tyneside/Durham area in the next few weeks. Which saved a lot of traipsing round the isles. Similarly Tescos are doing the same thing so my search for PC speakers (for the kids interactive games) and CD cases (for the games CDs) was rather easier than expected as everything was in the doorway. So despite the shops being packed it was a very painless experience.

The kids now go to the PC rather than the TV, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. They were playing some Viking board game on the computer tonight, looked a bit like chess. I've seen all their videos about ten times each already so it makes a change.

Thanks to the wonders of Ikea we now seem to have more space in the room, despite having added more furniture. Kind of makes me want to move to Sweden :-)

Everything happening at once

I'm not too sure about Murphy's Law, which I think is the one that says 'if something can go wrong it will go wrong', but I think there should be a new law of 'if something can happen, at least 3 other things will also happen on the same day'.

A case in point. Who would have thought that DFDS the ferry company would sell off their vessel the Princess of Scandanavia just as we are due to go to Goteborg (aka Gothenberg) for the festival of lights in November?

DFDS are cancelling the route completely which means that any trips to Sweden via ferry from Newcastle have to take place before the end of October. Equally who would have expected that the only week we are available to go to Sweden is the week before the ferry service ends, and that it clashes with a school field trip week.

This would not be quite so odd if it wasn't for the fact that normally (ie every other year up until now) 8 year old pupils were not permitted on the week long residential field trip. But as a special concession this year they are allowed to go. A fact which we only discovered last week when a letter came home inviting said 8 year old to go to the trip, causing much excitement and sibling rivalry.

On top of which it is also my birthday in the same week, and I had decided that all things being equal said daughter should go on the field trip! It is a special birthday (with an '0' in the year) when one is meant to make a fuss, although I hate the idea of organising my own birthday 'do' which means that it ain't gonna happen. Unless someone hires someone to organise it, so it definitely won't happen.

Now the dilemma is which of the three possible events takes precedence. As I see it my options are;
1.Book the trip to Goteborg and cancel the field trip (wrath of small child forever)
2.Change the trip to Norway or Holland on a different date (new opportunity to locate clashing events, but more of the year to choose from as not restricted on dates up to the end of October)
3.Get my money back (means no autumn holiday :-( and everyone is unhappy)

I will consult 'she who must be consulted' on option1 and refer to 'him upstairs' for options 2 and 3. Unless anything else happens we'll probably end up in Holland...but the way things are going it could be next year!

My life would be so much easier today if someone hadn't thrown the toothpaste tube down the toilet!!!!!!!








This is a great example for performance management goal setting (think positive, whilst trying to find packet of mints for the morning). It meets all of the criteria;
1.Specific - toothpaste required
2.Measurable - one tube would do as there are only four of us in the house
3.Achievable - if I could be bothered to go to the shops at 9.45pm
4.Realistic - toothpaste is widely available
5.Timely - I need it now

Sadly this is beyond the current performance objectives of the small person responsible for flushing the toothpaste. But he did do the artwork.

The odd image on the left is an ultrasound of a bladder polyp.

I was checking out the prognosis (as you do) because my mum seems to have developed one of these.

As a regular warfarin user it turns out this little thing got detected a lot earlier than it would normally have done. The trouble now is that nobody really likes to operate on people who take warfarin (aka rat poison like substance that can cause excessive bleeding, but also helps to thin the blood if you are prone to getting blood clots).

This is not 'the' polyp, the NHS only give you copies of certain scans and I don't think they do one of your bladder polyp to take away yet. I am hoping that the real one is much smaller. This will also be my mum's second operation in 6 weeks if they continue to run according to the current plan.

Some things to worry about

In no particular order...just off the top of my head
Bird Flu (thanks to the FT magazine this weekend for reawakening this one)
Mega volocano erupts on west coast of America (nice BBC program on volcanoes last week!)
Mega volcano erupts in meditteranean (ditto)
Global warming (seems to be happening)
Sea level rise (bound to happen if there is global warming so I'm happy to live on a hill)
Political instability when everyone is forced to stop working for the UK government, as we all seem to do either directly or indirectly!
Cashflow (immediate)
Cashflow (medium term)
Children (your own)
Children (other people's ...and their impact on your own children)
The state of society in general (respect, manners etc)
Care of the elderly (or lack of)
Schools (level of attainment, expectations and the differences between public and private schools)
Pets
Traffic (and the likihood of traffic, pets and children colliding in some form at any point in the future)
Crime
Terrorists
Lack of oil
Lack of water
The state of your car
The condition of your house (winter is coming)
Fuel prices (petrol, gas, electric)
Leaking gutters
Leaking bathroom roof
Lack of curtain rail in child's bedroom
Politicians (general ineptitude and appearance of their distance from reality)
Benefits culture and overdependence on handouts
Political correctness, and why it hasn't helped anyone
Inexplicable legislation and enforcers thereof - ref those who are about to be fined for not using their recycling wheelie bins enough
Wheelie bin collection dates (hence worrying about fine)
After school activity timetabling
Cleaning (no time)
Shopping (no time)
Health of parents
Prospects for business growth
Lack of spare time
What to feed the family today
What to put in a packed lunch for tomorrow
Upcoming social events
Parent with imminent hospital diagnostic tests (and their results)
Side effects of medicines (prescribed to said parent)
Fitting in work when there are so many other things to think about

Must go to sleep

Just one last thing

Just discovered that the new version of a certain well known software program is not entirely compatible with an earlier version. Ironic considering the program is for file sharing...hmmm The rest of the beta version of wotsit 2007 looks promising so far.

My payroll program refuses to find the backup file...always does..always will. It does this every tax year end when I run the updates, so I'm not particularly surprised. I have paper files around the place to compensate for this known issue. Not that they are necessarily in order, but they are in the files. I only really swear at the computer when I need the paperwork for tax returns and the software plays up as well.

Fortunately the current tax year is on different software and on a different computer. The new software is much more user friendly, and about half the price AND it does multiple companies.

Still I've promised myself that this is the last thing I will update on my newly rebuilt laptop for the moment, as it is now 1.30am and all the chocolate has worn off! Well probably worn 'on' in a more permanent way by now.