Better enough, for instance, to remember that despite reading most blogs over on Livejournal, I'm supposed to be using Dreamwidth as the master and letting it handle cross-posting. Oops. To anyone who only follows me on Dreamwidth - sorry about that.
http://janewilliams20.livejournal.com/247825.html
and then
http://janewilliams20.livejournal.com/248488.html
should bring you up to date.

Anyway, at home, ensconced in a nice upright armchair on loan from next door, with a footstool, a netbook, a TV control, and an adoring and attentive husband (who unfortunately caught the chest infection I got in hospital, and therefore really needs someone to look after him).

( Progress under here )

This entry was cross-posted from my Dreamwidth account.
Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you prefer. "There" currently has comments.

Normal service still won't be resumed, because I'm still doped out on antibiotics and pain-killers, but I'm home. Infected leg is still a mass of blisters, yellow goo, and Where the Skin Isn't from knee to ankle, but it's no longer oozing slime and so on, and it isn't as swollen. The inflamed and swollen underside of the foot makes it rather hard to walk on that leg, but at least I can use the knee again. Trouble is, the "good" leg keeps getting cramp in the calf, and not having any reliable legs at all makes life complicated.

Still, antibiotics are tablets not IV, painkillers are under my control not when the drug cart happens to come round, and this armchair has wings so I can doze off whenever I feel like it. I have Dave's cooking, and chocolate. Life is pretty good, really.

I'm in hospital with another go of cellulitis in the leg, massive doses of IV antibiotics, etc, etc. Walking is just about possible with a frame, once I've had help getting out of bed (the leg has no power of its own, is very heavy , and bending the knee is extremely painful). Most of my online access is via my phone, so I can do short text-only emails, texts, and Facebook status updates. At the moment I'm sitting up with the netbook and using the phone as a WIFI hotspot, but I won't be doing this often or for long. Yes, the hospital does have a guest network,  but no-one knows what the passsword is.

See you in a week or so - I might be home by then.

One of my colleagues/users today was trying to describe my role to the rest of her team, by comparison with someone else they used to know in IT. "She's like X, only more helpful," she began, then reconsidered. "She's like X, only with a user interface".

OK. I can cope with that :)

This entry was cross-posted from my Dreamwidth account.
Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you prefer. "There" currently has comments.

I'd been hearing in various places that getting enough sleep helped you lose weight, but no more detail than that - barely even ancedotal, much less correlation or causality. There's an excellent blog I get to see via a Facebook page that goes into a lot more detail.
http://blog.metaboliceffect.com/?p=1821

My sleep patterns were all over the place until a couple of weeks ago - I'd wake up at around 5, unable to get back to sleep, and that was after probably not getting into bed till gone midnight. Not good. Things improved at round about the time I shifted to taking all my carbs in the earlier part of the day, next to none after 15:00 or so (correlation yes, causation maybe).
Last night I was asleep by 22:00 and slept through to 6 and the alarm. I also had a bigger overnight weight loss than normal (correlation maybe, one point does not a graph make).
I think I might start tracking hours of sleep per night as well as weight loss. It'll be interesting to see if there really is correlation.

Edit: So, having then failed to get to bed before midnight, I am reminded of another recent article, showing that it's normal for humans to sleep in two sessions, not one, and with productive work occuring between. My productive writing has always been best at about 1am, and last night was no exception. Two sleeps.... fine, but I tend to miss out the first one completely :(

This entry was cross-posted from my Dreamwidth account.
Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you prefer. "There" currently has comments.

The OED word of the day is, as always, delightfully appropriate.
vernant, adj.:
1a. Flourishing or growing in, or as in, spring. (from 1440)
1b. Freshly green; verdant. (from 1594)
2. Pertaining to the spring; vernal. (from 1654)
3. Of or forming the ‘spring-time’ of life. (from 1794)

While today isn't as sunny as yesterday, it's not bad at all, crisp rather then chilly, spring rather than summer. The daffs are blooming madly, the hyacinths are out, and I heard the first cuckoo on the way to the car. Yes, I'm sure others have heard them earlier, but I don't usually hear cuckoos near our house at all.

This entry was cross-posted from my Dreamwidth account.
Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you prefer. "There" currently has comments.

It's St Patrick's day, so I thought I'd give these a go. I've always found shop-bought ones a bit dry, and anyway, I like to at least know I can do something, even if I never do it again. I started with this recipe www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/5092/potato-cakes-with-smoked-salmon then ignored what they thought should go on top, and halved the quantities.

Enough potatoes to make 125g of mash (or I suppose you could use instant?)
50g plain flour plus extra for dusting
1/4 tsp baking powder
(I suppose using self-raising would have the same effect?)
1/4 tsp salt
Enough water to make a dough
Mix everything into a dough.
Flour worktop, squish it out into a circle about 1cm thick. Dust with flour.
Cut into quarters
Heat a large frying pan (dry is fine)
Cook for about 2-3 min each side
(After the first turn, add bacon and eggs to pan).

Sorry, no photo - they were yummy, and I ate them. But there's the second two sitting in the fridge waiting to be cooked, so maybe I'll take a picture of those.

8 WW points the lot, 2 per quarter.

Update: while leaving them in the fridge to be cooked later works for a few hours, leaving overnight was going too far. The result had got a lot softer and stickier, and needed more flour and re-flattening to be of any use. Still tasty, though.

This entry was cross-posted from my Dreamwidth account. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you prefer. "There" currently has comments.

We were discussing this a while back - the phrase that probably dates you back to the 30s, and grammar schools, and the implicit assumption of a shared set of background knowledge that any reader of decent fiction could be relied upon to know, so that, for instance, Dorothy Sayers could drop a letter in French into a story and not bother to supply a translation.

I'm trained in science and IT. I stopped studying language and literature at 16. I'm not religious. I was not alive in the 1930s. I therefore find it mildly amusing/pleasing when I comment on a friend's post on Facebook (yes, stop shuddering in horror), they answer with a Bible quote in Latin, and I laugh, having got the joke. Clearly we are both "any educated person".

The other half, incidentally, who claims to be Christian, didn't recognise the quote even when I translated it for him.

This entry was cross-posted from my Dreamwidth account.
Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you prefer. "There" currently has comments.

Book quiz: do you know these classic first lines? | OxfordWords blog

OK, so it isn't an actual post, but it's proof that I'm still alive.

10/10, by the way.