![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Swings & Roundabouts
May. 22nd, 2008 11:14 pmI went to see my Lovely Lady Doctor on Tuesday and told her that I'd had to stop taking the Perindopril on Thursday as I couldn't stand it any more, so she prescribed something else which she thinks will work almost as well. Fortunately the breathlessness hadn't come back in the meantime.
Unfortunately, although it is a bit better, I still have the practically non-stop nasal drip and the hacking cough, so much so that I had to miss another creative writing session this morning. It is starting to seriously ipss me off now. So far I've missed a wonderful Bangladeshi wedding, a Poetry awayday and two sessions of my course which I've already paid good money for, not to mention feeling unable to go to the Lit & Phil in case I disturb people with my tramp-like cough. And let's not forget all the things I want to do in the yard and garden, as well as about the house, but which I can't do without starting off yet more coughing, buggrit!
Anyway, to make it up to me for missing my writing session, after I'd finally finished the morning two-hourly coughing session, John took me to Twice Brewed for a pub lunch and a nice drive in the sunshine. It was a lovely day!
I've never seen more blossom on the hawthorn and blackthorn or on the gorse, which positively shimmered in the sunlight. The fields and fields of oil-seed rape were almost fluorescent and indeed, I imagined I could see a yellow haze of pollen over the ones in the distance. I immediately shut all the windows because I spent one miserable summer covered in painful itchy wheals because of an allergy to oil-seed rape. I keep wondering whatever happened to the craze for growing flax which there was a few years back, when you couldn't go anywhere without seeing wonderfully blue fields.
It was a lovely drive and a nice lunch, but as soon as I got home I started hacking again!
I was idly considering baked potatoes or salad for tonight, but Charles made us a wonderful paella for dinner; it was even better than the last one. This time he included some rabbit instead of pork fillet and it was seriously delicious. Of course it takes the two of us ages to chop everything up and prepare it for the pan, but it doesn't take very long to cook. We have at least enough for another meal left over to go in the freezer.
Over the weekend my printer got worse and worse and I knew I was going to have to get an inordinately expensive new colour cartridge, because the printer won't work even in monochrome without at least a partly fully colour cartridge. And because I thought that maybe the machine would conk out completely before I managed to use up all the expensive ink, I decided it was time to bite the bullet and get another.
I went to PC World with Charles on Monday and bought the cheapest Epson I could find which takes individual cartridges for each colour. It's an all-in-one scanner/copier/printer and it looks rather suave, being shiny black all over, although, of course, it takes up a little more room than the old one did.
It's a much better printer, I could see the difference immediately, but it's sooooo sloooow!! Still, you get what you pay for and since the whole thing including a spare set of inks cost me £61.98, I suppose I can't complain. The printer was only £39.99, while the spare inks were £21.99, which actually, perniciously expensive though it is, compares quite well with the others I looked at. I chose it on the basis of size (small-ish) and lowest price of refill cartridges. It's good to have a working scanner again. I was making do with John using his for me, but his printer is also playing up at the moment, so isn't reliable and I'm pretty sure the quality of the new Epson's scanned copies is better than those his Lexmark produces.
All in all it has been quite a good day in spite of the disappointing start, and Glory Be! it was finally warm enough to wear my sandals!r
Unfortunately, although it is a bit better, I still have the practically non-stop nasal drip and the hacking cough, so much so that I had to miss another creative writing session this morning. It is starting to seriously ipss me off now. So far I've missed a wonderful Bangladeshi wedding, a Poetry awayday and two sessions of my course which I've already paid good money for, not to mention feeling unable to go to the Lit & Phil in case I disturb people with my tramp-like cough. And let's not forget all the things I want to do in the yard and garden, as well as about the house, but which I can't do without starting off yet more coughing, buggrit!
Anyway, to make it up to me for missing my writing session, after I'd finally finished the morning two-hourly coughing session, John took me to Twice Brewed for a pub lunch and a nice drive in the sunshine. It was a lovely day!
I've never seen more blossom on the hawthorn and blackthorn or on the gorse, which positively shimmered in the sunlight. The fields and fields of oil-seed rape were almost fluorescent and indeed, I imagined I could see a yellow haze of pollen over the ones in the distance. I immediately shut all the windows because I spent one miserable summer covered in painful itchy wheals because of an allergy to oil-seed rape. I keep wondering whatever happened to the craze for growing flax which there was a few years back, when you couldn't go anywhere without seeing wonderfully blue fields.
It was a lovely drive and a nice lunch, but as soon as I got home I started hacking again!
I was idly considering baked potatoes or salad for tonight, but Charles made us a wonderful paella for dinner; it was even better than the last one. This time he included some rabbit instead of pork fillet and it was seriously delicious. Of course it takes the two of us ages to chop everything up and prepare it for the pan, but it doesn't take very long to cook. We have at least enough for another meal left over to go in the freezer.
Over the weekend my printer got worse and worse and I knew I was going to have to get an inordinately expensive new colour cartridge, because the printer won't work even in monochrome without at least a partly fully colour cartridge. And because I thought that maybe the machine would conk out completely before I managed to use up all the expensive ink, I decided it was time to bite the bullet and get another.
I went to PC World with Charles on Monday and bought the cheapest Epson I could find which takes individual cartridges for each colour. It's an all-in-one scanner/copier/printer and it looks rather suave, being shiny black all over, although, of course, it takes up a little more room than the old one did.
It's a much better printer, I could see the difference immediately, but it's sooooo sloooow!! Still, you get what you pay for and since the whole thing including a spare set of inks cost me £61.98, I suppose I can't complain. The printer was only £39.99, while the spare inks were £21.99, which actually, perniciously expensive though it is, compares quite well with the others I looked at. I chose it on the basis of size (small-ish) and lowest price of refill cartridges. It's good to have a working scanner again. I was making do with John using his for me, but his printer is also playing up at the moment, so isn't reliable and I'm pretty sure the quality of the new Epson's scanned copies is better than those his Lexmark produces.
All in all it has been quite a good day in spite of the disappointing start, and Glory Be! it was finally warm enough to wear my sandals!r
