Human Lifestyle

Woke feeling quite a bit better. Both boys feeling a bit poorly so they stayed off school. If I have had Swine 'Flu, it was very mild and just affected me for about 24 hours. I phoned my GP as I wanted to chat about whether I should be tested as I've been in indirect contact with Ali's daughter, who has a weak immune system. The NHS Direct website said I had the right range of symptoms for Swine 'Flu, and so did the GP when she rang back, and as I'm taking medication to prevent asthma, she offered me tamiflu. I declined as I was already feeling much better, and I wonder if indeed I have had this virus. The NHS are not testing people anymore, just diagnosing using a tick-list, so I was told to tell Ali that I had exposed her to Swine 'Flu. The GP also suggested looking on the Health Protection Agency website, on their page about H1N1 Influenza.
Ali rang her daughter's doctor. The advice was to wait until she had a temperature and then get some antivirals. A bit worrying, but we're all in the same boat, as even healthy people might get struck down badly.

I did quite a lot outside today, shredding the hedge clippings I chopped yesterday, collecting some garden waste from Gladys round the corner and shredding them, chopping up a huge pallet which a chap with an overfull skip gave me, posting some cardamom tea sachets to a freegan contact over in Ireland, checking the progress of the money I've sent to the Netherlands for my questionnaire, visiting Raj, and more!

Whilst on the laptop, I wrote some of my blog and checked the Feedjit widget and found several referrals from http://www.totalpolitics.com/, and I had a look through this website... it is really good. I enjoyed the blog list by party section, as this is where my blog is, but there's a lot more and I'll be going back there to check it out...

Had a lovely tea, linguine (like spaghetti but slightly thicker and flatter) with quite a bit of home grown veg, including broad beans, broccoli and spinach. Delicious.

A quiet evening, boys still feeling a bit ill, maybe they have Swine 'Flu.

Woke at 3am with headache. Went downstairs for a lemsip (paracetamol) and put a log on the stove, and 10 mins later did a batch of washing up whilst waiting for the lemsip to kick in. Back to bed at 3.45 and slept til 8 when shouting downstairs awoke me. I went down to see if Gill needed any help... it was just our youngest being mightily resistant to putting on his socks and shoes! We all have our quirks, and he hates footwear..., putting on a sock and then off again, and on again, trying to get it 'just right'. Takes about 5 or 10 minutes per foot.....

When they'd gone I had breakfast and then went back to bed, with another lemsip to help me get better... I hope.

But nothing worked, headache all day, spent most of the day in bed. Gill is calling it 'Flu' but I don't think it is as Flu is a different set of symptoms and I had a Flu jab, so if it is Flu then it's a weird one.

The only good thing about today was that I got through quite a backlog of NewScientists! Oh, and a surprise visit from Damian and David, Gill's friends from the Arts Centre, who are back in York. Lovely to see them, but couldn't socialise much as feeling too poorly.

And I finished writing my column for Community Care, on reuse and repair plus Buy Nothing Day, which this year is on Saturday 29th November, just two days after the magazine comes out.

Spent some time trying to update Windows and when I got back on this blog, found my Bravenet Counter and Feedjit live stuff had gone... more than weird! However, my email to Feedjit was answered by Mark Maunder, the CEO/inventor of the tool, and he told me that the Live stats thingy was loading after the Bravenet counter, which was taking about 3 minutes. Also he explained a possible reason why the location/geographic database might be doing weird things, and told me he was developing a tool to allow users to confirm where they were. So that explains some of the weirdness...

Took bathwater up for our youngest and put the refilled can straight back on the stove so I could have one later, as if I'm going to try to go to work tomorrow, I might as well be clean but unwell rather than dirty and unwell...

A relatively peaceful morning but boys full of energy and aggression. I wasn't feeling up to much, tired and a bit headachey, so just sat and watched Countryfile and after lunch did a bit in the garden and then at about 2.30, to the allotment to dig up the last row of potatoes and remove some more brambles and lay a bit of mulch material... cardboard and a split bamboo window blind.

Came back to find Simon and his son visiting, after going to the York in Transition Eco-Freecycle-Swap event at the Friends' Meeting House, organised by Anna Semlyen. Apparently it was very successful and Simon was able to offload some spare keyboard stuff and a huge pile of butterknives found in a skip, and come back with a Christmas present for our friend Dexter plus a few other bits and bobs.

I wasn't my usual chatty self and as soon as they'd gone I went to bed and slept, coming down sometine about 8, and had a bowl of soup and the pastie Gill got yesterday. A quiet evening, although frustrating as something is going intermittently wrong with my email and internet... it keeps going off. Perhaps it's caught my bug and needs more sleep!

Later though, I was able to access the net and get emails and do this blog (but not my paid blog!) and I found a bug in my fairly new 'Feedjit' live stats tool. Previously, when I've accessed my blog and then left to see the live stats, the tool tells me that I've come onto Feedjit from my blog and has correctly identified that I'm in York. However, now it thinks I'm from Leighton Buzzard! I can tell this as when I hit the button 'remove my details' the Leighton Buzzard stuff goes. I emailed Feedjit to ask why they thought this was happening.