Ok… I surrender!

 Home and Hearth  2 Responses »
May 172008

Finally I raised the white flag and waved it about. Yes… I finally gave up and asked for a referral to a back specialist. The referred pain in my hip is steadily increasing and taking anti-inflammatories and aspirin or paracetamol or whatever simply isn’t working any more. I’ve now got pains down my right leg to my knee and they’re starting to radiate down my left side as well.

As usual, tho I got the referral on Weds I decided I knew better and thought I’d wait a few days in a final vain hope my back might improve… naturally it didn’t, and won’t

Obviously I’ve *no* idea what this guy might suggest, if anything, but it’s time I bit the bullet and got it investigated.

Of course I’ve discussed this with friends who all seem to have had similar problems… one had surgery on his neck which didn’t solve the problem. Another surgery on her lower back… which didn’t seem to solve the problem. A third said she was having regular pain blocking injections (essentially a ‘tri-monthly’ epidural) which did at least stop the pain for three months and kept her mobile even if it didn’t treat the underlying cause.

So the current word-of-mouth options aren’t too palatable. I can try to have it fixed, and two out of two said it didn’t work, or I can opt for pain relief which might result in me imagining the problem has been fixed and maybe making it worse by overdoing it or something.

Either way it’s time I did *something*. This morning I forgot to take my tablets and after we got back from the skating rink and I’d pottered about for an hour or two I had to sit down because the pain was making me very ‘unstable’ on my feet. Once the painkillers have kicked in I’ll be able to manage but it’s a pretty crappy way to live.

Posted by Welsh Dog at 12:49 pm  Tagged with: , ,

Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit…

 Environment, Home and Hearth  1 Response »
May 162008

So there we were trolling along home in the car. We’d been to pick up the youngest from skating… the coach brought her ‘so far’ and we collected her from the drop-off point.

As we turned into our street we saw a rabbit in the middle of the road. Clearly it was transfixed but the car lights so being ‘environmentally friendly’… we stopped to give it a chance to escape… but it sat there. After a few seconds of non-movement we realised it was actually a *white* rabbit and possibly someone’s pet… which is why it hadn’t run away.

The wife got out to see if she could catch it and maybe find out who its owners were… if it was some child they’d be worried after all. She crept from the car to face the thing and slowly crept closer and closer… it didn’t run.

Concrete Rabbit.Then as I looked… she reached out… and picked it up by the back!! By the back?? Daylight suddenly dawned and I finally realised it wasn’t a little pet white rabbit at all.

It was a one eared garden ornament some loon had left in the middle of the road for fun!!! :)

Wouldn’t have been so funny if someone had decided to run the thing over of course… I hate to think what would have happened to the bottom of their car had they hit it.

Still, as it happens nobody hit it and we all had a really good laugh over how daft we’d been thinking this concrete ornament was alive! I nipped out to take a photo before it got away. :)

Posted by Welsh Dog at 8:53 pm  Tagged with: , ,

Eldest? Shirley knot?

 Home and Hearth  10 Responses »
May 142008

I’m sure most of you are aware but in case you aren’t, when I write ‘eldest’ or ‘youngest’ when talking about my daughters I am referring to the girls who are still living with me… I *do* of course have another beautiful daughter in the UK who we never see enough of, even allowing for the time she and her family spent with us over Xmas.

The problem is ‘semantics’ really… there isn’t a term for the ‘middle child so, while they are here I’m reduced to ‘eldest’ and ‘youngest’ to describe them. No offence intended! :D

In addition, ‘solace’ has made a couple of appearances on the blog lately which is nice… I rarely get to talk to him so it’s always a pleasure when he drops by… even if it’s just to whinge, after all it’s what we do best on here! :)

On a theme, yet again I’ve forgotten to upload more photos… mind like a sieve. I really ought to get on with it before I forget again.

Solace? Oh come on… sol = sun and ace = number one. Together they read “number one son“… well almost. :D

Posted by Welsh Dog at 5:14 pm  

Updated one of my pages…

 Home and Hearth  No Responses »
May 132008

I thought it was about time to add in a photo of yours truly to light up your life. This particular photo was taken this morning and shows me in all my glory… ah what a handsome creature I am eh?? :)

Welsh Dog in May 2008Just to make sure posterity is able to find me at any time I copied the picture into the ‘About Me’ page as well… ahhh… no wonder women fall at my feet, they faint!

Tells ya… even the computer rebelled when I tried to publish the photo. Took me four tries before it finally left my desk and I’m not sure it was too pleased about it even after it had gone!!

Come to that – when the wife went to look she couldn’t see it at all. Clearly she has a blind spot when it comes to me and aren’t I lucky for that?? :D

Posted by Welsh Dog at 1:53 pm  Tagged with: , , ,

Work versus play.

 Home and Hearth  2 Responses »
May 112008

The daughters room is now almost bright and clean after two days quiet work cleaning it out. The fish tank has been moved along with all sorts of old toys, abandoned bits of wool, bits of unknown games and other detritus of uncertain parentage.

She did a good job… well I’m sure she would have had she done any of it. Instead the poor thing has had to sit downstairs doing homework and listening to her mother making the most of Mothers Day in Oz by harassing and ‘encouraging’ by exhorting the poor child to keep her nose to the grindstone and shoulder to the wheel every few seconds.

Despite the obvious discomfort of trying to function with your nose and shoulder positioned in such a fashion, she’s managing to work gradually through the weekends projects tho they’re still not fully completed.

I’m betting that the completion of her homework will coincide almost to the second with my completion of the cleaning of her room. Any takers?? :)

Posted by Welsh Dog at 2:05 pm  

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

 Home and Hearth  6 Responses »
May 092008
This quote is from the Merriam-Webster dictionary. If the person concerned should read this I’m sure they’ll know who it refers to… but because of their ‘infirmity’ probably won’t understand *why* it’s here, probably because of the last eight words. I say no more other than the mind boggles… and having boggled… moves on.
Stupid
Main Entry:
1stu·pid Listen to the pronunciation of 1stupid
Pronunciation:
\ˈstü-pəd, ˈstyü-\
Function:
adjective
Etymology:
Middle French stupide, from Latin stupidus, from stupēre to be numb, be astonished — more at type
Date:
1541
1 a: slow of mind : obtuse b: given to unintelligent decisions or acts : acting in an unintelligent or careless manner c: lacking intelligence or reason : brutish
2: dulled in feeling or sensation : torpid <still stupid from the sedative>
3: marked by or resulting from unreasoned thinking or acting : senseless <a stupid decision>4 a: lacking interest or point <a stupid event> b: vexatious, exasperating <the stupid car won’t start>
— stu·pid·ly adverb
— stu·pid·ness noun
synonyms stupid, dull, dense, crass, dumb mean lacking in power to absorb ideas or impressions. stupid implies a slow-witted or dazed state of mind that may be either congenital or temporary <stupid students just keeping the seats warm> <stupid with drink>. dull suggests a slow or sluggish mind such as results from disease, depression, or shock <monotonous work that leaves the mind dull>. dense implies a thickheaded imperviousness to ideas <too dense to take a hint>. crass suggests a grossness of mind precluding discrimination or delicacy <a crass, materialistic people>. dumb applies to an exasperating obtuseness or lack of comprehension <too dumb to figure out what’s going on>.
Posted by Welsh Dog at 10:24 am  

Flaming moggie!

 Home and Hearth  No Responses »
May 072008

The cat brought in yet another mouse this arvo. I heard it yowling and turned in time to see it bat the poor thing around before running off with it again.

Naturally I went off to try to defend the rodent, as I’ve said before, while I know cats kill mice and ‘play’ with them first, I’d prefer it if they didn’t do so in front of me. Vermin or not there are better ways to die than as a cat’s plaything.

I’l pass over the details of the chase, or the four times the mouse got away only to be caught again. I’ll not describe how and why I had to climb on a chair to get it off the outside light, not how it fell on my head. I’ll not even go into detail about having to catch it on the kitchen counter…

… I’ll just say that somehow it was still alive when I finally *did* catch it and seemed quite pleased when it was dropped over the neighbours fence.

By the way, the cat wasn’t at all concerned at all. While I was trying to catch the mouse as it scurried over the workbench it just continued to munch at its cat food. Cats really do have a strange mindset.

Posted by Welsh Dog at 1:54 pm  

Like sand through a sieve.

 Home and Hearth, I.T and similar  No Responses »
May 072008

My memory is getting worse as time goes by. I find I get so engrossed in some project or other that I forget or ignore all else… regardless of whether the other projects are completed or not!

One such project was getting the daughters holiday photos to her. She’d copied them to a DVD but when she got home discovered it hadn’t recorded properly. So she asked me to upload to Photobucket… but I had all sorts of problems and after several attempts eventually got distracted by other things… and forgot.

Following that I determined to send them on a DVD along with a pile of her belongings left behind because of their weight. Yet again I not only forgot the photos… I forget all the rest of the stuff as well so it’s all sitting in a couple of bags waiting.

To overcome at least one problem, the photos, daylight finally dawned and I’ve created a ‘Gallery’ on a ‘spare’ domain and I’m in the process of uploading the photos there. I’ve given the site an upper limit of 1Gb so there should be room for them all… and if all goes to plan I can upload more of my own… and even make space for the family to upload some as well!

So how has it gone?

Well obviously nothing is as simple as you’d hope.  The first attempt was made using software actually *called* ‘Gallery’ but after several abortive attempts to upload and view photos I decided to give it up as a bad job and move on.

The next piece was ‘Coppermine‘ which I’d heard great things about but never used. I’d not used it partly because I was also told it was a pig to configure properly. Well I’m not sure what ‘properly’ means yet, but so far I’ve managed to create the site, add a few categories… and even upload some photos! :)

Anyone who wants to view them… especially the daughter to whom they belong after all… can find the link in the side bar or click the url to the new site now called ‘Imagery‘.

There are hundreds of photos to add to this album, and we have thousands more tucked away on drives everywhere. I suppose I’ll have to find some way of editing and sorting them… and maybe even making much of the site ‘private’. I’ll also have to make sure the family know they can ‘join’ as well.

Still, right now we’re on the way to a good little ‘family’ site and that’s a good start… isn’t it?

Let’s hope I remember to sort it all out! :)

Posted by Welsh Dog at 10:19 am  

Me and my big sis sometime last century.

 Home and Hearth  No Responses »
Apr 262008

Here’s a picture of me and my big sis… when we were neither of us higher than a grasshoppers knee!

The Dog and his sis

Gawd…. sad… innit?? :)

Anyone who’d like a copy… or the original negative should contact “Happy Snaps”, 4 doors from the GPO, Fleet Street, Torquay. Wow… a half century ago they had to send the film all the way down there to be processed?? It’s all digital now. Not the same somehow :)

Posted by Welsh Dog at 6:15 pm  

The loose moose!

 Home and Hearth  No Responses »
Apr 222008

You might remember a few weeks back me rambling on about a mouse the cat had brought in and released. The cat caught it once more, but after being scolded by the visitors it released the mouse to roam free again in the house… seemingly with a charmed life as from then on neither we nor the cat could catch it.

Times change of course but not a cat’s hunting skills… and we no longer have a moose loose aboot the hoose!

Mid-morning yesterday I was sitting reading something and heard a noise behind me. The cat was standing next to the water cooler poking around on the shelf alongside… suddenly there was a lot of scrabbling and things falling off the shelf and down came the cat… with the mouse in its mouth.

In line with the usual behaviour for a cat it dropped it with the obvious intention of batting it about a bit until she decided it was ready to kill and eat. I got up to ‘intercept’ and hopefully catch the mouse before it ran off and hid.. again. This time however the thing gave just a couple of twitches before the cat picked it up again and stalked off. Maybe being chomped three times finally gave it a heart attack – can’t tell but it seems likely. I’m sure being carried off by a lion or tiger three times would have finished me off!!

Anyway, by the time I’d picked up a box and persuaded the cat to drop it the mouse was definitely ‘nailed to its perch’, an ex-mouse… it had ‘ceased to be’ etc.

So with due reverence… I picked it up… and walked off to throw it out.

I’ve pointed out on here how little intelligence our cat has, even by the limited expectations one usually has of cat intellect… but occasionally I wonder if ours has any sense at all. Despite *watching me* collect the corpse of the mouse, instead of following me as a dog would do, it remained sniffing around where it last saw the thing, perhaps in the hope it might spring out of some hiding place?

For ‘completeness’ I went back and picked up the cat who of course struggled violently until it realised the dead mouse was in the box three inches from its nose… whereupon it went quiet. Stupid animal.

The dead mouse got thrown onto the patio and the cat got thrown after it. I assume she collected it and disposed of it in the usual way but I really didn’t feel like staying to watch. Either way a few minutes later neither were anywhere to be seen.

The end result… we are at last mouseless! Sad for the mouse, but much better for us… probably.

Posted by Welsh Dog at 11:47 am  Tagged with: , , ,
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