Odds and ends

I still haven’t finished the next post on my Auckland trip but it will happen soon, I hope. It’s so close to being finished but I just haven’t done it yet.

I have a gp care plan again after waiting over month for the other one to run out. I don’t even know if I ever used the last one either. Sigh…What this means is I can go see the podiatrist and have my costs covered by Medicare instead of out-of-pocket. I also had visits for an exercise physiologist included. It covers five visits altogether so I will probably use one or two for the podiatrist and then the rest on the exercise physiologist. I do have insurance that covers podiatry (partly) so I still won’t have to pay totally out-of-pocket.

I had some more blood tests this week, one of which was to check my iron levels. My iron stores are still low but slightly improved. I guess I will be taking iron a bit longer. My iron level is fine although it’s very much on the lower end and hadn’t changed since my last test.

Although it’s been reasonably mild overall this winter, it has been chilly for much of the past few weeks. That was until a week ago when we had a preview of spring for a weekend.  Over the last week, there’s been quite a bit of rain too. The bees are out and there are lots of flowers blooming. Sometimes it seems like all the flowers are yellow but there are some pink and fuchsia ones around too. Soon there will be many more colors. Our native hibiscus is blooming some beautiful purple flowers and the white one looks likely to bloom soon. That’s one currently below the patio roof that needs to be moved. I want to wait until it finishes flowering before moving it. I imagine that will work out with our current plan of paving next month or October.

Game Fanatic has been coughing for about six weeks. Last weekend I took him to see a doctor. He seemed to be okay in the lungs and throat, etc. so the doctor prescribed an asthma medication that has a reliever and a preventer in it. I was rather doubtful on the asthma front since Ventolin didn’t seem to make any difference but he tried it. After several days we had a prescription for antibiotics which he’s now on. His cough has been even worse since then. I don’t necessarily think it’s due to the medication but whatever ails him is not improving. I am going to see if I can get him in to his regular doctor in the next few days to see where we go from here. I wonder now if reflux could be the problem as that turned out to be at least part cause of a cough I had years ago that persisted for months, And there’s also a mycoplasma infection which I had when I was 22 that persisted for about two months, which I suppose is also possible.

I’m in the middle of a brief work stint of about two weeks with the local university. This is the same project I’ve done over the past five years, so I am quite familiar with it. It’s much shorter this year because the testing that’s being done is now online for one of the age groups. Next year it will be totally online so this will be the last time I work on the project. For the client doing the testing, this surely will save massive amounts of money on all the hours of work going into processing test booklet so it’s a good thing for them.

A couple weeks ago, our family finished playing a game called Danganrompa together, using the PlayStation TV. Game Fanatic had played the game already on his PS Vita but wanted to share. He went to the extra expense of buying the NTSC version from the US so he could do this on the tv with us. Actually, I think he got the PlayStation TV for this purpose too. It turns out to be have been a good risk to take because we really got into the game and ended up completing it more quickly than we originally planned. The game is a Japanese case solving mystery involving murders. It’s a pretty perverse premise but it still drew us in enough to do a marathon session to reach the end and find out all. There’s a sequel that GF has also completed that we are likely to start next weekend. This one will already work with the PlayStation TV so no extra expense has been required.

I seem to have acquired a sore throat in the past couple of days. The guy I take out as a carer on Wednesday evenings was sick last week so I assume I got it from him. He seems to have recovered quickly from it so I am hoping this will be mild for me too since I have three workdays ahead of me.