Busy, busy. Still trying to crank out the Elfin Diary. Still getting the online version of the May edition of Transit together.
Should have finished and uploaded Transit last night. But we had a surprise visit from one of Brian’s brothers and his wife, all the way from Australia. No, they hadn’t come just to see Brian; the wife was born in Scotland and they were going back to her birthplace. Hadn’t seen them for fourteen years, so we had to spend time with them, showing them around the place. Nice seeing them, even though they couldn’t stay for more than the afternoon.
Wanted to get stuck into Transit first thing this morning, but had to go to Dumfries – B had to get a new silencer for the car, and we needed some shopping.
Still, it’s been a nice day for going out.

On the way there, we passed a middle-aged woman; we frequently see her standing at the same spot, on a corner. I’ve always thought she was waiting for a bus. She’s well-dressed, grey-haired, tidy, shopping bag on her arm. She looks up and down the road, paces a little. Just like somebody waiting for a bus. It’s only ten minutes or so walk into town and she’s not obviously disabled, but hey, maybe she enjoys riding the bus.
No,said B, she was there nearly every time he passed that spot. “She’s not waiting for any bus. She’s staked out her spot, and she’s claiming it.”
When we came back that way, over an hour later, the woman was still there. Still staking out her spot.

Went to see Doc G this morning about my blood test and got some positive news. My cholesterol level, though still rather high, is down, from 7.5 to 7.2. I told him about my new vegan diet; he was quite impressed and said that since my blood pressure was OK and I wasn’t experiencing symptoms of angina, then I could get away with not taking anti-cholesterol drugs.
Got to come back in three months for another check, but I’m feeling quite pleased with myself.

Damm my wobbly health…
Friday morning I woke up with a migraine which lasted most of the day, with attendant nausea and retching.
Yesterday I was feeling OK, except for a very sore throat – which I put down to getting some stomach acid spray up the back of my throat during my migraine episode. It didn’t feel too bad, until I went to bed and tried to sleep. Every time I drifted off, my throat started closing up and I’d wake up gasping and coughing. In addition, swallowing was difficult – and I had a runny nose, so I needed to keep swallowing.
So, not much sleep ensued. I don’t feel too bad now – as lack of sleep is one of the triggers for my tachycardia, I was worried about having an attack. But my heart rate is keeping slow and steady. I can’t talk so well at the mo, but then I don’t talk much anyway. And after a couple of salt gargles, my throat is feeling much better.
I think I’ll get an early night tonight. Needless to say, very little wurk has been accomplished in the last three days. Grrr.

OK, not posted anything for quite a while. I’ve been hugely busy, getting on with the Elfin Diary and getting my Life on Mars fansite off the ground. It’s been live for just over a week now and is already getting quite a respectable number of hits. There’s lots I want to be writing for it, but that will have to wait – Elfin Diary wurk somes first.
So tata for now.

From the latest Ansible, more examples of bad writing:

Sound Effects Dept (Again) `The Archivist tugged a handkerchief from her sleeve and blew her nose, noisily and at length. Moon could hear the snot rattling through her system like an old boiler filled with air.’ (Jonathan Barnes, The Somnambulist, 2007)
Dept of Wicked Winks and Unclad Fish `Her breasts winked at him, and he chastised himself as he felt a stir of arousal. […] He was sixty centimeters taller, but she wiggled like a lithe, naked eel until a final shrewd twist toppled him from the bed.’ (David Weber, Heirs of Empire, in Empire from the Ashes, 1993)
Far-Future Technological Prediction Dept (or, `As You Know, Bob’) `… composing on the keyboard, where erasure did not mean throwing away a piece of tangible paper that could fall into the wrong hands — and where he had an automatic copy of his exact words.’ (C.J. Cherryh, Deliverer, 2007)
Eyeballs in the Sky Dept `His eyes ran, literally, across the whole of the upper portion of his face …’ (Richard Marsh, The Beetle, 1897)

….having fully accepted my Life on Mars fangirldom, I’m setting up www.hyde2612.net, as an LOM fan/ecommerce site.

I blame Neptune conjuncting my Jupiter, personally….. 🙂

…..I have spent the last two hours reading through a Life On Mars fan forum.
How sad is that…?

“It’s 1973. It’s dinnertime. And I’m ‘aving ‘oops!”

Thought I was doing too well….
Yesterday morning, I woke up with an all-too-familiar tachycardia attack – heart thumping away at a regular 170-180 bpm. Not at all unusual, unfortunately, and nothing to be done about it except stay lying down and wait for it to end; these things had never lasted longer than about three hours before….
That was around 5am. By 12.30, with my organic pump still thundering away, I was starting to wonder if it was time to panic. By that time, I’d managed to get downstairs to the sofa, but being upright and walking around made me dizzy and faint. Even lying down, I was feeling space-out; the ultra-fast circulation meant my brain was running a little short of oxygen.
So I rang the surgery, and asked the receptionist to ask Doc G if he could pop over sometime that day. He arrived two hours later. Just twenty minutes after the attack ended by itself, natch.
But Doc G is good. He gave me a good checking over, reassured me that I hadn’t had a heart attack and that everything looked and sounded fine.
And then he cheered me up with “So long as your heart is sound and your arteries are clear, these attacks are good exercise for your heart – hard running doubles your heart rate. And yours has probably done the equivalent of two marathons today!”
What a great thought – not moving off the sofa and getting all the exercise I need just by having one or two of these attacks each month!
But it appears that whatever I’m going to die of, it won’t be a heart attack.