Delay week

This week has now officially been labelled as "delay week". I was supposed to have my Cardioversion on Tuesday, but as previously mentioned that got postponed. Still, I'm hopeful for a good INR score from today's test - I bled for a bit longer than usual after by blood test today (the nurse kept lifting up the cotton wool, only to put it down again and wait a bit longer as I continued bleed from where the needle had been) so I'm guessing that my blood is nice and thin.

I got back home from the test (today having been designated as a day away from work) and my first job was to phone our solicitor to get an update on the house sale, as we were hoping to exchange in the next day or so. He called back a few minutes after I spoke to him to say that he'd just spoken to the purchaser's solicitor and they'd pulled out! We spoke to the purchaser today, and he confirmed that they had indeed pulled out, due to having a larger than expected financial commitment elsewhere.

As I type this, we've reached the philosophical stage, although I did allow myself a few minutes of feeling thoroughly pissed off, and a few choice words as well. Nicky, being the little dynamo that she is, was straight back in touch with all of the other people who had shown an interest. We've already had one couple come around to look at the house. They love it and have indicated that they would most likely make an offer but first they need to sell their house, which has only just gone on the market. There is another potentially interested party who may get back to us tomorrow, and Nicky has already lined up two agents to come round to look at the property and have a chat with us on Saturday.

Obviously this means that we're knocked back somewhat in terms of timetable. A bit of a blow given that we have plans for some of the money that we are really keen to be getting on with, but we think that the property is of such a high standard and will be appealing to lots of people, meaning that we should get another offer in the not too distant future.

Nicky and Jake have been to a science event at MGGS today which sounds like it was lots of fun. Jake has been enjoying getting stuck in to some hands on experiments!

I went out for a walk in the Autumnal woods with Barley, and here's a photo to prove it.

Holiday countdowns

It's not that I'm obsessed with counting down to holidays, honest, but today is 50 days until we go to Florida to spend Christmas at the Beach Club Villas. (See similar previous posts when it was 100 days to go, 200 days to go, and so on!!)


Can't wait.

Today was my original date for having the Cardioversion, but my 1.7 the week before last has put that back a bit. I called the hospital today hoping that they were going to give me a new date by now, but have been told that they want to see some more good scores before I get booked in.

Weekend update

Well it's Sunday morning so I'm sat by the side of the pool. Bex is trying to explain the finer points of butterfly to Jake!
We're off to Nanny and Grandad's for lunch later, and then over to Haig to collect the few remaining things we have there. We've invited Rew and Frances to come over so that they can have a final look at the finished article. Fingers crossed we will finally be exchanging this week and then either completing this week or next.
Had a trip to Bluey yesterday. I think it may well be our last weekend trip this side of Christmas - it certainly was busy. We went in to JL and we've discovered the joys of buying stuff and then collecting it at the end of the day. Saved us trogging around with a kitchen bin and new coffee-maker!
We met up with the Fairs family at the Apple store so that we could check out the new iMacs. The key decision for me is whether to have the 21.5" or 27" screen. I am favouring the smaller one at the moment, partly on price grounds but also that the 27" does seem alarmingly large for a computer monitor, and just too big for where we are thinking of keeping it in the kitchen. Besides, maybe I can put the price difference towards some other Apple store goodies!
Then it was off to the cinema to see Fantastic Mr Fox (sweet story and fun animation but not a patch on Disney at their best), tea at TGIs and then back to Carolyn & Chris's to watch X Factor.
At home the garage sort out is coming on well - another tip trip yesterday, and Nicky's been doing a great job this week of finding new homes for things via Freecycle. Hopefully the old patio doors may go next week. Really looking forward to seeing the transformation of garage into games room. (Jake's room is also coming on well - more Billy installed this week.)

Delicious

Sat by the side of the pool again on a Sunday morning. I seem to have had a few weeks off but back to Sunday swim blogging again.

As is well known, I'm really looking forward to getting my Mac, and fingers crossed it won't be more than a couple of weeks now until I can do so. No doubt it will take a while to get used to it, but I'm sure that I will enjoy iPhoto, iMovie, Garage Band and so on that will come preinstalled.

I've also been looking at some other bits of software that tempt me. One in particular is called Delicious Library, and it is a catalogue system for books, CDs, DVDs and so on. Its particular USP is that there should be no need to type in lots of information as it enables the iSight camera to read product barcodes. It then searches through product databases, most notably on Amazon, and then populates all of the information in the database for you.

Sounds pretty cool to me. I'm hoping that it will be possible add some more information to the database to show when I've read a particular book. The problem I have at the moment is that there are some authors where I have so many of their books that I can't remember which ones I've read and which ones I haven't. For the record I finished The Broken Window by Jeffrey Deaver this week. Fairly standard Lincoln Rhyme stuff, but enjoyable nonetheless.

Nicky remains to be convinced about the catalogue software. I think she has vi sons of me being sat at the Mac surrounded by boxes that I've dragged out of the loft. Truth be told, she's probably right, but then again I'm hoping that when we've completed some of our planned changes at home (especially converting the garage) there will be enough space to get lots of the books back on shelves rather than hidden away in boxes.

Up

We went to the Odeon cinema at Dickens World this afternoon to see the latest offering from Pixar - "Up".

Taking it from the beginning, we had three trailers to enjoy - all of which looked promising - Planet 51, a new Nanny McPhee film, and Nativity. (By the way I really love the opening sequence to Disney films that we've had for the last couple of years - starting with the the steam train, and then panning back to come over the castle with the flag flying at the top, and the river running underneath it - always means that we are in for a Disney treat!)

I had forgotten that the first few minutes would be the latest short, which as always was lovely. It was called "Partly Cloudy" and was the story of the stork that drew the short straw. Apparently, it turns out that when storks bring babies (animal and human) they collect them from clouds, and our hero was the stork who had the pleasure of bringing baby animals that aren't quite so cuddly, so we saw it getting more and more frazzled as it had to do deliveries of a baby crocodile, a ram and a hedgehog, and at the end an electric eel! Not quite up there with "For the Birds" but then again that is one of those pieces of film that will make me laugh 'til I cry no matter how many times I watch it!

Then on to the main attraction. I didn't know very much about the story before going in, other than that there was an old man's house that floated away tethered to thousands of helium balloons. The wonderful people at Pixar haven't lost their ability to tell a truly magical story and this film was just great.

The story started with Carl (the old guy) as a young boy dreaming of great adventures, and meeting a girl called Ellie who had similar dreams. Then we had a brief musical montage of their life together - falling in love, getting married, dreaming of having children but not being able to, always thinking about going off for their great adventure, growing old together, and then Ellie falling ill and passing away, leaving Carl alone and lonely. This little segment was done with such tenderness that seeing Carl old and alone, missing his wife really brought a tear to the eye.

To avoid being packed off to an old people's home, Carl decided that the time for the great adventure had arrived, and that the way to achieve it was to tie thousands of helium balloons to his house and to float away to Paradise Falls, the place that he and his wife had spent a lifetime dreaming about. Inadvertently he ended up taking Russell, an eight year old cub scout with him, and the rest of the film shows us their adventure together and the relationship that the develop (along with a talking dog called Dug and a rare flightless bird that Russell decides to call Kevin!).

More Pixar magic - we love it!

Cardioversion

Got the results through from this week's blood test yesterday. Disappointingly I scored a 1.7 (needs to be above 2.0), so I phoned St Thomas' to let them know. They explained that this means that I won't be able to go ahead with my Cardioversion on the 27th, because the clot risk would be too high. I need to be in the "therapeutic range" for a period of 4 consecutive weeks before I have the treatment. Otherwise, there is a possibility that any clots that form whilst my score is too low won't have had time to be sufficiently dissolved (not sure if this is the technical term!) before I get zapped.

Obviously I was disappointed with the test result and asked the hospital whether there was any way in which we could carry on with 27th, but they explained very clearly why this wouldn't be a good idea. On reflection, it hasn't taken long to get over the initial disappointment. Whilst I want to get the treatment done as soon as possible, get into a regular rhythm and hopefully feel the benefit of it, for the sake of a few weeks it's really not worth worrying about.

The anticoagulation clinic has upped my dose a little - l now have a couple of days this week when I get to have a pink 5mg tablet - so it's fingers crossed for a better blood test result next week.

Ebbsfleet

I was in the London office today and decided that I would try out a different way of getting there. Rather than getting a taxi down to Chatham station, I got in the car and drove to Ebbsfleet International, and got the fast train (17 mins!) to St Pancras. From there it was only one stop on the Circle Line plus a few minutes walk to the office.

The fast trains are new and clean, and there was no problem in getting a seat in both directions (even though I got the 5:37 train home which I would have thought is one of the busiest rush hour trains of the day). The Ebbsfleet station is also brand new with a coffee bar, newsagents etc.

I was about 1 hour and 20 minutes door to door - I may never go to Chatham station again !!

(In other news, we've just booked some flights - more about that later!)

Michael McIntyre

Look where we went yesterday:



We had lots of fun, and left with aching sides from laughing so much. Here we are at the show.



Thanks very much Carolyn and Chris - we had a great time!

The Lost Symbol

OK, here are some ideas for a book:

• the need to solve some centuries-old puzzles written in strange symbols
• a short time period with all of the action taking place in a matter of hours
• a obsessed lunatic baddie with great power and wealth
• a chase involving the hero, the baddie and the law authorities
• action taking place at famous historical landmarks which reveal their hidden secrets
• mysterious and shadowy secret societies
• the extrapolation of some cutting edge scientific ideas.

Sound like Angels and Demons or The Da Vinci Code? Well guess what, Dan Brown has given us more of the same in his latest page-turner - The Lost Symbol, the main difference being that the action has been moved to Washington DC.

Do I mind? No, not at all. If Dan Brown had given us something completely different, I would probably have been disappointed. Looking forward to the next Robert Langdon adventure already - hopefully the wait won't be as long this time!