Lexin

I seem to have been in a slough of despond where organisations aren’t helping me do anything. I applied for some drawdown of my equity release, and it’s been days without them sending me over the funds. They usually take two days, so I rang them to move them on. Many apologies from them, but no funds yet.

Additionally, I applied for a repeat prescription about ten days ago and have run out of one of my iterations of insulin. Obviously, I’m not dead yet, but they haven’t sent it and my blood sugar numbers are hitting the stratosphere. I hope it arrives tomorrow or that will be two weeks without my basal insulin, and I’ll be running short on some of my other medications. I do think that ‘apply online’ for medications means ‘fulfil prescriptions as and when they feel like it’ for the doctors and the pharmacy.

My friend Julian suggested I buy my medications (specifically Ozempic. I’m supposed to be on Ozempic, but the diabetic nurse tells me it won’t be available until the end of the year) but somehow I baulk at that, as in Wales medicines are provided free. Ozempic isn’t a cheap hobby.

I also nearly got caught up in a phishing scam, and while they didn’t get any money (I realised what they were up to with seconds to spare) I’ve had to replace my bank card. So far over the last ten days I’ve had one item of post and that was a letter form Ysbty Gwynedd. Interesting, but not a bank card. I know what the card number is through my app. but no actual card, meaning that when I went to Bangor yesterday, I had to use the ‘emergency cash’ function of the app, and I’ve never used that before. It worked, but I hope to get the card soon.

Bangor was looking lovely – the weather was bright and sunny, lots of daffodils were out and the university was looking spectacular. Very much why I came to live in north Wales. So that was good.

I have discovered by accident that the developer who built the houses in my estate wants to extend the estate by 55 houses on a piece of land opposite where I live. That would ruin my view - but legally one is not entitled to a view. Additionally it would bring in 100+ more people living in the estate, with additional cars, mess etc.

Looking at the planning application, there are 17 varieties of birds which use the land the developer wants to build on which use the land as a roosting area. Some of those birds are amber and red listed endangered species. I spit tin tacks on discovering this.

Finally, the design of the houses is very similar to those already on the estate. These houses aren’t bad looking, but – and it’s a big but – the two and three storey houses have quite narrow staircases with two corners. People may recall the difficulty I had when I tried to put a stairlifts into those staircases. I could find only one company who would even look at the job and they charged an arm and a leg and had to alter the stairs to allow the stairlift also at some cost.

So, not a happy camper.

About a week later than last year my house martins have moved in to the nest in the eaves. A welcome sight.

It does mean, though, that my planned painting of the wooden bits of my house will have to be put off until September as they are an amber list endangered species.

Someone else mecurtin? was talking about what temperature people have their heating on in winter.

I have control-gizmo on my phone which controls my heating, it's called Hive. It allows me to set the temperature on the heating to change up to six times a day.

So, it's at 21°C from 06:30 to 08:30, 18°C from 08:30 to 12:00, 7°C from 12:00 to 16:30, 21°C from 16:30 to 21:30, and 7°C from 21:30 to 06:30. I'm not sure if that's wise or if I'd do better to have it the same temperature all day.

I'm in two minds. What do people think?

I want my friends and family to visit, but they all seem a bit wary. I can understand that, but it doesn’t make the desire go away.

Good news: the guys who are installing my stair lift have been in touch and they will be carrying out the changes to the stairs next week. Go me! Go them! When they’ll install the stair lift, I don’t know.

In other good news, I have been fighting the good fight to get Hive Heating installed. I bought it in January, and while I could understand that from January to May, installation was not going to happen because of Covid, I’ve been trying since May to get an installation date. This week I gave up and tried their chat thingy. The first three people couldn’t help, but the final one gave me a phone number. The first two of the people on the phone couldn’t help, but I finally got someone who knew what the were doing. So I have an installation date: 24 August. Modified rapture. And I’m leery about that date, but we’ll see what happens.

Smokey is a good kitty and at the moment is ignoring her dinner. Strange cat.

I went out, to a shop, and bought things. Yippee!

I went for breakfast at the oddly named Clio Lounge – excellent breakfast, with sublime smoked bacon. Great pot of tea.

Then I went to Marks and Spencers for food, since I knew I have a gift card which had been unused for well over a year. Bought some nice things to eat which will keep me going until Tesco deliver on Saturday.

So a good morning. Would have been better without the rain, but ho-hum.

The other mild irritation was that my contactless thingy on my debit card didn’t work on the bus. Or in the restaurant, so I’m currently on the phone to my bank to get it sorted out. Arriva buses prefer contactless, which I’m sure is more convenient for them.

Smokey did a sterling job of guarding the house. Which is lovely and clean thanks to the efforts of Mandy, my new cleaner.

So that’s me. How are you?

Just to be annoying, my dishwasher has gone tits-up again. It was last repaired on 18 November, and they can't come and see it until 22 December. I just hope it works over Christmas, and then it can break down as much as it ruddy well likes.

Well, we’re pootling along. “We” here meaning Smokey and I since I don’t have any visitors due to the ongoing Covid-19 business.

I had a rather rough night last night, didn’t get to sleep while gone 3am because my stomach doesn’t like baked beans. This is rather annoying as that’s three meals I can’t eat, meaning I will run out of food three meals sooner than I had expected or planned for.

My Tesco delivery, and fingers crossed I get one, isn’t until this coming Saturday (4 April). Then we will see exactly what I receive of my order. I may go to the website, remove baked beans and substitute with something else. Tinned curry? Who knows what will be available.

I’m also lying in wait to see if I can get an order for the 24 April. I think that may result in me staying up until midnight on Friday as I calculate that’s the day (or rather, night) the slots for the 24 April will come up.

Work is somewhat dull – or it has long periods of dullness enlivened by periods when I have too much to do and have to try to do it all in a rush. Still, I know I’m extremely fortunate to have a job, and one which can be done from home.

In other news

In more fun news I’m playing a Dungeon Crawl Classics game on Roll 20 with my friend Fuchsia as GM. When we left the game on Sunday we were part way up a ziggurat having spied a horde of beastmen who were chivvying a group of villagers in chains to the top where some sacrifice looking thing was going on.

“We” in this case is four zero level peasants. And as I told the GM, the operative word in her description was ‘horde’. Four peasants and a few prisoners aren’t going to have much success against a horde. Are we down hearted? Not a bit of it. I have two characters, one I started off with (who at least has chain mail, making him harder to hit) and one villager, another zero level peasant. I’ve named in Carkas, because he has one hit point, meaning a moderately strong wind could kill him and he will indeed become a carcase in very short order. We play again tonight, and we’ll see if we win.

I’m also making plans to run a game on Roll 20 myself. I’ve bought a few low-level scenarios and am designing characters my players can take along. Included in the scenarios I bought were a couple that are too high for the low-level characters I’ve designed, so I’m thinking I might buy a longer campaign we can be participating in while this Covid-19 business is ongoing.

I don’t want to complicate things by having my own campaign in two or more places making it difficult for me to keep track of.

I’m a bit nervous about running something on Roll 20 in a way I wouldn’t be about software I’m familiar with. RealmWorks I’m fine with, but there’s not much that has to be done while the game is running. Roll 20 is a quite different kettle of electronic fish.

Yes, I’ve been a bit quiet for the last few days. I’ve been having a tough time.

Basically, 2020 can fuck right off, and I want to move to 2021 without any delays.

First Patrick died (see the entry on that), then I have a flood into my kitchen from the flat above. On the same day as that happened, unconnectedly my fridge-freezer dies the death of all electric objects. Then the kitty costs me £150 in vets bills.

A new fridge-freezer has been bought and delivered, which is fine, but it’s not as nice as the one it’s replaced. I couldn’t afford such a good one this time, and I’m looking at the new one a bit suspiciously. It also has blue lighting inside, which makes me go ‘tilt’, as I can see no good reason for a fridge to be lit up in blue.

The story about the kitty, is that on Friday I had chicken Kiev for my tea. Real chicken Kiev comes with a bone. I put my empty plate aside when I’d finished, and watched a couple of TV programmes, and then turned the TV off and fell asleep. When I woke up the bone from the Kiev had gone.

I looked around the flat and couldn’t find it. Not anywhere. The logical answer was that it was inside the cat, and I’ve always understood that a cat eating cooked bones is a veterinary emergency. At this stage it was midnight. I rang the 24 hours vet hospital and they said bring her in, so I packed her into her travelling basket and took her to the vet hospital. I was told by them that they couldn’t feel anything, but I was to watch her for the next 48-72 hours and if she was being sick or not pooping I was to bring her back. OK. Cost for this advice, £150. It was midnight, but still, ouch.

Comforted, I took Smokey home in her basket. I let her out when we got back to the flat and then next thing you know?

I stood on the bone, which was hidden in the pattern of the carpet.

Then I said words, many of them beginning with ‘f’.

I love my cat, but I’m currently addressing her as ‘expensive hobby’.

I have been away from LJ and DW for a little while and I can see that some of my friends have been having worrying times. I’m sorry if that’s the case. I can only offer belated hugs and commiserations.

I’m very close to the Great Work on the flat being finished – Marius the builder says it should be today or tomorrow. More likely tomorrow. At which point I’ll be able to get Smokey back from gloria1 and bring her home. I think I’ll put a Feliway plug-in thing in, because a lot has changed and it will smell rather different, not least of paint. I will try to post before and after pictures.

It has, and is currently still being little short of hell on earth, not least because since December, and worse since the middle of January I’ve been struggling with some sort of viral infection as well as the builders, and with a flare up of my IBS. It’s been horrible. Everything still tastes of metal. I did go to the doctor and he gave me a cough medicine call pholcodine, a medicine of evil that is banned in the US but is supposed to calm your cough. Did it hell. He also gave me, because I had oral thrush, a medicine called Nystatin which is quite the foulest thing I’ve ever tasted, even including that ‘lamb kebab’ from the nearby kebab shop that looked and smelled like poo.

Next Tuesday the Bulgarian cleaner mafia (Niki and Vesi) are coming over to put everything back in the right places and sort everything out. I’m so looking forward to it. I’m paying them well since I don’t know how much use I’m going to be.

I want my kitty back, I want my flat back and I want my cosy things around me. First world problems.