Odds and ends

We’re in the middle of another heatwave here after dodging pretty much all effects of Cyclone Narelle, which didn’t hit the northwest coast of Western Australia as originally expected. The much needed rain never eventuated and it’s just hot and humid right now. Fun stuff. We had the hotted night since 1989 last night at something like 27.8 C. Despite our a/c running all night, it was still pretty uncomfortable so I can imagine how bad it was for those without it at all.

I donated blood again today and it all went pretty easily and quickly. I think I felt the most normal I ever have after a donation. I even refused the little chocolate bar as the muffin was plenty for me. I go back in a month for a plasma donation and in three months for another regular blood donation.

Because I was donating blood today, I changed my day off  exercise for the week from Monday to Tuesday. This meant I worked out seven days in a row and my body seems quite ready for a break. I think I’ve exacerbated my shoulder problem again so will likely take an extra day off doing weights and adapt my routine a bit until that feels better. I’d also been doing rowing pretty much every day so this seems a good time to change gears and focus on a different cardio machine for a little while.

I made my chickpea and veggie patties last Friday and they came out quite well. Using the new food processor didn’t exactly make it quick and easy but it certainly improved on time and labor to took to prepare some of the ingredients for cooking. I also tried cooking the patties in the air fryer and they came out quite well there. The time had to be adjusted a bit after the first batch or two but it seemed to do a pretty good job of cooking them. The only change I made was to make the patties smaller so they would cook more evenly. I had some old leeks in the fridge so I chopped one of those up into the onion and zucchini mixture and it worked well. I’ve also started adding a bit of chopped kale to that mixture and that has also worked well. It’s nice to be able to play around with ingredients a bit when making this recipe. My only mistake was I got a bit food processor crazy and started chopping up more veggies for a stir fry while cooking. But because I was devoting less time to it, it turned into a pan full of sort of mushy veggies with a strong leek flavor. I must admit I am a bit over the leeks right now. But I will try them again for some winter cooking, like leek and potato soup.

After having trouble choosing my doctor on the online appointments system and getting that fixed, I have found that system seems to always have issues. For a week or two, there were no appointments showing up at all. Then only one doctor was showing up. I hadn’t checked it for a while but today found that all the new doctors are showing up and none of the established ones. This means I have to call for any appointment for the  family since none of us see the new doctors. The other issue is you can only book short appointments on this system and of appointments I need to make, at least two will need to be long ones due to extra items to be handled. It appears the online booking system as it stands isn’t going to work out for our family after all. :(

I found a shop sort of near us that sells a trackball mouse that I think might work to replace my old one. They didn’t have one in stock to look at but will call me when one arrives. I’m handling the Logitech trackball mouse that was supposed to replace the Kensington expert trackball mouse…but only to a just functioning level. I find it hard to get the cursor from one side of the screen to the other with any speed. At first I thought this was due to the fact I am left-handed and the muscle strength in my thumb isn’t as good as the left one. But now I think it’s due to the small trackball and the not-so-smooth movements. Once I get a new trackball mouse, I imagine this will just be stored as a back up for the future. To be honest, I think I’d have done just as well with a reasonably ergonomic mouse for the interim period.