Things I now apparently like:
1. Peppers
2. Mustard
3. Hazelnuts

Not that I'm complaining. It's just weird that my tastes are changing so suddenly. In other news though I have a couple of nice (and not stupidly expensive) things from the food festival in the Bay including some bright red honey mustard which is absolutely wonderful.

I also have a new phone thanks to my dad giving me some money to get one. I can't afford to go send my stupid, badly made, badly programmed Sony Ericsson off to possibly get fixed so I'm flogging it to envirofone and now using a Motorola which I've always found very reliable. It's annoying that it lasted less than a year but when the guy in the shop admits that his broke that quickly too I'll admit defeat.

I watched Torchwood and was annoyed by it, especially the last two episodes, but it could have been worse.

Lastly. People who walk in front of wheelchairs and then stop deserve to have their ankles rammed. That is all.

And now my phone is broken. Brb, I need to go and refrain from smashing things.

No laptop back as of yet. Rang them up and was told that it was a problem with the motherboard and it was going to have to be replaced. Again. This is the third time now in as many months, what are they doing with them?

it's giving me restless limbs meaning that I'm doing more things exercise-wise. Yesterday I pushed my housemate's wheelchair all the way up City Road and today I rearranged my room, only getting help with the giant chair of awesomeness, so I now have this elusive thing called floorspace. So yeah, with the Naproxen as well the pain's not too bad either. \o/

In other news I had to go see my psychiatric doctor again because I've entered a low (because it's now the school holidays). She seemed absolutely fascinated by the whole thing because, of course, she's not seen me in one of these before. I now have extra meds to help me sleep and to stop me fidgeting and she's hoping my getting proper sleep will make my mood lift a little. I thin I'll feel better when I get my laptop back and I can start doing stuff on there again. Or at least when I get something I can do on the computer because I'm loathe to restart my projects until I find out whether I've lost the data on my laptop or not...

Happy 4th of July to all the Americans on my flist!

In other news, does anybody know of an RPG which will accept OCs? I've got a character being exceedingly noisy in my head and I'd like to be able to play him/her out.

And, of course, because my day is never complete without something going wrong *sigh* my laptop has broken again. It just flat-out refuses to switch on. I really need to stop defending this thing.

Bored... Even more so now.

Huh. I've found something that's, if not more painful (although it's coming close), then more awkward than my back. Note to self: next time remember you have a centre of gravity so you don't fall backwards onto the chair again. Bruised ribs hurt.

In other news, I'm bored as anything. Give me something to draw tomorrow and I'll post it up here once I'm done.

So we've renewed our contract for the house (actually we did this like a couple of weeks ago but it's been a strange time in between and I've only just remembered to write it down). I've been trying to rearrange my room in the mean time and as my new medication means that the longest I've slept in three days has been 2 1/2 hours this has only been somewhat successful. Anyway, we've also been sorting out the garden which was left in a godawful state by certain previous tenants. We've restored the barbecue, now with a nice tile and soil/ash base after we had a job and a half removing the flammable "compost" that had been left in there. The quote marks are needed because it seemed to be mostly made up of fat, dairy, meat, potato plants and acidic fruit. Not particularly compost material. The other bin, the one that caused the most problems because it had started to rot through its container and so we weren't going to bring it through the house (even disturbing it slightly made the whole house reek and the maggot layer had to be seen to be believed), we just threw away very carefully.

The barbecue, however, really is a testament to the effort that cardiffwanderer has put into it as originally started out as this:



Yes, those are jeans. No, you really, really don't want to know what they were doing in the back garden. I wish I didn't. Alas that the horrors of these things just keep. on. happening. Still, hopefully the saga of the back garden will be the last of it.

Tomorrow, I will show you what we did with the pile of... *shudder* stuff and the new barbecue (nearly finished). Like the rest of it, you won't believe the difference.

And now, a meme, courtesy of anglepoiselamp

( 5 things )

Saw the hand therapist on Tuesday and besides finding out that my 600mg Quetiapine dose probably needs to go up again I was told that I need to wear wrist splints when I'm a) writing, b) using the computer and c) sleeping, so, pretty much permanently.

Right, now a question for the craft-minded:

How should I decorate these rather drab things?

Oh, and finally, a meme courtesy of ( plum177 )

Dear Hand Surgeon I saw today:

1. Hypermobility exists. I have it. I am not making it up. It is not just because I am young and female. I am a 9 on the Beighton scale. I definitely have hypermobility. Even the dentist knew this.
2. Chronic pain syndrome exists. I have it. I am not making it up.
3. The pain, pins and needles and muscle weakness in my hands exists. I am not making it up.
4. I do not need to see a psychologist or psychotherapist because of the PHYSICAL pain in said hands.
5. I cannot hold a pen properly. This is a problem at university and during exams. Amazingly.
6. While it may not be a surgery issue, this does not mean I am making it up.
7. Yes, I am angry. Yes, I am crying. This is because I did not wait 4 months on a waiting list and 3 hours in a waiting room for fun.
8. I am not imagining things. If I was going to make something up it would be something less inconvienent than NOT BEING ABLE TO WRITE.
9. I AM NOT IMAGINING MY ENTIRE FUCKING DISABILITY. You bastard.

Dear Hand Therapist Lady:

Thank you for putting up with me being alternately weepy and nearly shouty and thank you for actually believing me when I said that something was wrong with my hands. Very much thank you for believing that both chronic pain and hypermobility exists. And thank you for seeing me at the end of your shift when the surgeon fobbed me off onto you.

-------------

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

In other news, I didn't go to my exam in the end. Spending all night not being able to move from the settee because it hurts too much will do that. Also, the 27 hour staying up thing probably contributed.

Tomorrow, the fun of trying to get a doctor's note for it.

Exam today didn't go too badly I think. I do, however, hurt like hell all over and most specifically in my back. Tomorrow's going to be a really fucking bad pain day and I have a four hour exam and then a hospital appointment. Can it just be Thursday already?

I like to believe that the Rift has started eating parts of the Internet now. Otherwise I'm just going to get angry at the University for having robust servers on their past exam paper page and at the Union for being as competent as usual and not having any information about post-handover processes or links up at all on their site. Not that it matters, of course, because if you go by the Union website there isn't a Students with Disabilities society. No worries then! -.-

Now, back to looking at photos of trees for my exam tomorrow.

Okay so, update.

Laptop is being sent off again. Let's see if we can keep it going longer than a week this time.

Exam today went alright, me thinks, considering I had a blinder of a headache (that fun mis of tension and weather that sends my eyes all wonky), generic nauseous feeling and a bad back. At least I finished in time for me to scarper out of the room early. Yays.

My chronic pain clinic 6-week catch up thing is tomorrow (hard to believe it's been 6 weeks since I last attended) and it'll be cool to see how peoples are getting on. I hope that they've been finding it all as useful as I have. Well, more so in the 'learning to sleep properly' case because I don't need no stinking sleep pattern. Really. >.>

I can't wait for exams to be over. My wonderful brain has been coming up with all sorts of fun things to draw while I'm supposed to be revising - mostly doodles to go with the 'Living With...' disability talks I'm planning for next year.

Oooh! On a related note:

Has anybody come across any books they've found particularly good at dealing with issues to do with disability?

Doesn't matter if it's a specific disability or about being disabled in general; I have to make budget requests for the society this and next week so the more books I can name the more money we can get to buy them (hopefully).

My bastard laptop has started electricuting me again. I am not happy.

Aiya-Stortaire. My dear Sirafeisi, Kayleigh, is currently hiding in her room after this week and is refusing to come out until tomorrow when she has to return to revision. Tonight, she says, she is having off. So, the various denizens of her mind took a vote and, upon reaching a complete deadlock, volunteered myself to write this blog post in her stead.

Items I am to cover in this post:

1: The Earth Surface Processes and Landforms exam.
Kayleigh isn't quite sure how she did in this exam, which is part of the reason she is so determined to do absolutely nothing today, and can't actually recall whether she even finished one of the big calculation questions. I've no opinion on this as I've never been able to figure out this blasted base 10 system of numbers you have here. When I prodded her last she muttered something about 'maybe sort of passing it, she says, touch wood'.

2: The Biogeochemistry exam:
This was yesterday and Kayleigh claims that she 'finished it'. I suspect this means it went slightly better than the one above but I couldn't be certain. I don't think it helped that her back was exceptionally bad and I can only imagine how distracting that must be. There are no more exams until Monday now though so hopefully she can rest a little, revise a little more and be ready for Environmental Pollution in a few days time.

3: Chiropractor:
This method of healing is fantastically interesting and does seem to be doing something to help with her walking, probably a good thing because she does somewhat resemble a Satreen as she lumbers along which is rather worrying as they tend to have two more legs than she does. Her father has offered to pay for the trips to this person, a great relief, and she's decided that seeing them for the forseeable future is a wise idea.

4: Internet:
Kayleigh's house recieved this today after a great amount of fuss. It was amazing to discover that between the five of them they managed to download 30-odd gigabytes of information in just a few hours. Products of deprivation I suppose. After a little promblem with connection and a telephone call to Sky (with much aid with patience and luck from Raza and Birianis) they seem to be well set up with things now.

I think I might go back and join Kayleigh in her room, poor thing, and distract her from trying to procrastinate too much now that her desktop has the Internet installed.

Keepsafe.

This post brought to you by 'Blog Like It Isn't You Day'

I has a laptop again!

Well, sort of. It's actually my old laptop with the screen, top part, bottom part, keyboard and hard drive replaced. And the OS re-installed. So just like my old laptop really.

In other news, my Microfossils exam went fairly okay I think. Which is good because I doubt the other two this week will go as well.

Why the hell is the heating on in the computer lab at uni?!

Ah well, at least there is Internet which brings many, many lolz for many, many reasons. I think a break might be in order later though.

Dear Ex-Housemates,

When running out on debts it is important that you don't leave your forwarding address with people who you fucked over. I will just re-direct the baliffs to where you are now living. We don't want your non-existant credit rating and illegal bill-dodging to affect us. We especially don't want baliffs coming to the door (which we've had happen several times, thank you), phoning up demanding to speak to you or the stream of letters I've had to deal with.

Hopefully, today's will be the last red letter we get for you now.

No love,
The girl who knows how to deal with baliffs.

Edit: Note to self. Don't forget to update the list of these things when you get back and to tell other housemates about this latest bit of the Sky saga. *sigh* So much for thinking the bills were all squared when ways parted. Honestly, who would have thought that 'we'll pay the £80-odd quid you owe for utilities and you'll pay the £80-odd quid we owe for the Sky bill' would be so complicated? Well, I suppose it wouldn't have been had both sides of the deal been upheld. I mean, we've had no problems with the utilities at all thanks to our prompt payment.

Edit of edit: Second job's half done. That'll be completed tonight along with the first job.

Oh yeah, I have a dissertation proposal to write for next week, don't I?

*dies*

So, my laptop's probably died a death. I did have what must have been the shortest tech support phonecall PC World had that day though:

PC World man: Hi, what seems to be the problem today?
Me: My laptop keeps electricuting me.
PC World man: What?
Me: Yeah, from pretty much any metal bit. Also Windows seems to be playing up too...
PC World man: ... We can pick it up on Thursday for you if you like!

So it's being sent off to see if it's fixable. If it's not, I've not lost too much data as I was halfway through transferring stuff to the computer anyway and I managed to get a good bit of what was still only on the laptop onto various data devices before I gave up with trying to avoid the shocks and let the battery run down. All in all, I think I'll be missing about a third of my 2000 music files and the last week or so's typed stuff but considering I could have lost everything but my Uni work and e-books I'm not too upset.

---

This, in turn, because I lost about a week's stuff means that my lgbtfest entry got eaten. Rawr. I still have the outline and notes handwritten so, while I've missed the upload date to the comm, I will type it up again after exams and probably post it here. *sigh* Typical though.

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In other news, I went to the chiropractor and was apparantly quite interesting and unusual. Considering the state my back must be in I'm not surprised. I was also amused that the person has to go do research before I get a report and a treatment plan because, hey I am actually that awkward. One good thing though is that this place does half-price student treatments so it's only £15 a time to go - I can afford this a bit more.

---

In a windy way, as I met the chiropractor there, this brings me to the Cardiff Natural Health Show. I have a stripy hat and a henna tattoo from it. There were also many, many pretty pieces of silver jewellery there and a fair few interesting types of 'healer' there who all jumped on me because I have a stick. I generally stuck around to talk to a few of them just to see how many of them could guess all the places that were bugging me at that point. Unsurprisingly, the chiropractor who I'm now seeing won the guessing game but a fair few of them also did quite well. I did try to avoid anyboy who had the word 'angel' in the description though as... well, actually they were usually the ones charging horrendous amounts for even taster sessions.

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In another tangentally related way, I went to church for the first time in many, many years on Sunday as I wheeled my housemate there so she could go. I sung hymns, most of which we covered in school so I wasn't too lost, and had a generally peaceful time. I don't think the people there mind that I'm not particularly Christian (or religious in general actually) which is good.

---

Finally, I have Virgin Radio on CD for just £5 thanks to ASDA. Okay, it's not actually the radio channel per se, it just has those songs that were always playing on it and hey, 100 ('classic') songs for a fiver, who's to complain?

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Edited to add: Oh yeah, we still don't have Internet at home (thank you, once again, idiot!ex-housemates for fucking that up) and I now have no laptop anyway so I'll be online sporadically until one or both of these situations change.