Web Blog of Greg Mathews

A couple of days ago in my post It’s a mystery I mentioned we were in process of fitting some kitchen units etc. As some of our worktop is not over any units we decided to fix some wood to the wall under the worktop to help support it. This was great idea, drilled first hole in wall, drilled second hole in the wall, had already screwed screws into wood so just needed to put up to holes in wall and screw up.

NO, one of the screws wasn’t lining up with the hole in the wall so rather than move the screw I decided to drill another hole in the wall, this was a big mistake as there just happened to be a pair of water pipes just where I drilled and I ended up having a shower fully clothed.

We turned off  and called plumber, he arrived later at the same time the Father inlaw was here cutting hole in worktop for sink and taps. Anyway, after about an hour, the plumber had fixed the pipework, the water was back on and I had decided not to put a peice of wood in that spot.

I then thought I might aswell fit the tap, simple with flexi pipes it wouldn’t take too long. Well we had water spraying everywhere each time we turned the water on to the tap, and I wasn’t going to give up until I figured out the problem. Midnight came and I thought it was indeed time to give up until the morning. During the night I wondered if there maybe was an ‘Olive’ or ‘washer’ missing so mentioned it to Tracey. ‘Oh there are some washers that came with it in that little bag’ was her reply and in that bag was the washer that fitted perfectly, and stopped all the water.

We completed the tap yesterday morning and put the sink and waste trap in yesterday afternoon, it did take a while but now it is complete on one side of the galley kitchen. Well apart from the tiling which we will probably do next week. The other side of kitchen will wait until we have purchased all the units from Ikea as well as a new hob.

I am sorry it’s been so long, I hadn’t realised (yet again) that it’s been nearly a month since I last posted.

It is strange that after a month since I shut down Dropaholics and replaced the widget there are still blogs trying to display it. Fortunately for me it has been replaced by a search box pointing to my Meta Search engine BookMarkCenter.com so is doing me no harm

What have I been doing since my last post? not much work to be honest.  Tracey decided a while back she wanted a new kitchen and called a builder out to knock down one of the walls to make the kitchen and dining rooms more joined/open plan. This meant we lost storage space etc and some kitchen units had to come out. That was a couple of months ago, and me being a man said ‘ah thats ok no rush’, ‘we can make do with what’s left’ etc. Well we have been to Ikea more times than I’ve had hot dinners in the past month and picked up little bits each time, ie base unit this week, worktop next week etc.

Our kitchen is a galley kitchen, so we decided to do one side at a time, well we had everything we  needed for the one side, I had to remove and lay some floor tiles which is a bloody messy job (they way i work at least), and over the weekend we fitted the units and worktop, the one problem we have is that Tracey won’t let me cut out for the new kitchen sink, so we are waiting for her father to do it (this evening) and at the moment we have no kitchen sink which is a right pain in the back side.

A few weeks ago I posted What’s wrong with me? well it appears the doctor hasn’t a clue what the problem is. Well that is what he is telling me. I first had blood tests and they came back all clear so he sent me for a chest xray, can you believe in this day and age it takes over a week to get an xray from a community hospital to the doctors surgery, anyway that came back clear.

My last visit the doc asked if I was still experiencing the same symptoms, as if they would stop after months because I have had tests, and when I said yes he said he would refer me to the hospital.  It used to be the case that the hospital would make the appointment and then tell you the time and place, not any more, I received a letter from the doctors surgery telling me I have been referred and I need to make an appointment. I did this online, and actually it turns out to be a good thing, I was able to choose when and where I had the appointment. I could have made an appointment in about 3 weeks time, but that falls during the kids school holidays and at a location I don’t know, the next available time was 2 weeks later at the local hospital so I took that as the kids would be at school.

It amazes me that from the the time I first saw the doctor to the time I am seen at the hospital will be nearly 3 month, heck it’s a good job I’m not dieing. I can’t complain I suppose, it is FREE health care which we PAY for in our taxes etc. I could PAY more and go private but I am not in a financial position to do that these days.

Anyway, I won’t know any thing for a  while yet so it’s back to work.

OK last week I announced that Dropaholics is shutting down until I get time to fix some bugs, I then sent messages via entrecard all those I knew had the dropahholic widget on there blog, about 80 I think there was.

Well over a week later 60+ of those blogs are still showing the widget. Even some that have responded saying they will remove the widget haven’t.

Sorry I am not sending them all another message but am just going to say here that tomorow the dropaholic widget will no longer be available. I am not a total prat and I will replace it with a simple totally different widget so that blogs do not get ‘page not found” errors where the widget should be.

The reason I am taking this action is because some blogs in the Dropaholics database have been linked to the wrong blog image and this is upsetting some blog owners.

Dropaholics will be back but not sure when.

Yes, this IS a plug, not for any affiliate program but one of my own sites.

Mystery Valentine Card

I bet many of you remember me  launching this site early last year. If you don’t then this site allows you to send your loved one a Valentines card in total anonymity. These are REAL cards, not E-cards that have no personality, they are mailed out, not sent via an email, to real people.

Mystery Valentine Card can mail out a Valentine card to that someone special anywhere in Europe and North America.

Hurry though, there are onlly a couple of days left, don’t forget your loved ones.

After the amazing response I received after yesterdays announcement I started thinking about what and if I can do anything.

As I mentioned in the post yesterday, I don’t have the time at the moment to develop as I need to work on projects that pay the bills. I will however promise that as soon as I get a  few days to work in Dropaholics I will and the site will return.

I am sorry to say that Dropaholics is shutting down.

There have been a number of bugs over the past 15 months with it and while looking into something recently I have discovered that the scripts that are meant to update blog info if it changes, ie blog button or title etc hasn’t been working correctly for a while.

Without fully investigating I don’t know exactly what has caused this to stop working, and at the moment I don’t have the time to put into checking and rewriting it.

If you are one of the 1300 blogs that have registered with the site then I want to thank you for taking part in it and if you have a widget on your blog could you please  remove it.

Thanks

Greg

As many of you know I gave up smoking early last year, when we went to Spain in August I found I was sweating all the time. Now I have always been one who sweats when its hot or I am in an uncomfortable situation but this time I was sweating more than I have before when in Spain and it was not as hot as the previous year.

Anyway I put it down to a ‘different kind of heat’, yea I know heat is heat but any excuse will do, I am invincible so it can’t be anything else, heck I have given up smoking so must be healthier than before.

Anyway move on, about 2 months ago, I started getting out of breath and sweating after minor things, the breathlessness normally came at the end of the day when I am sat in front  of the TV. I put it down to the fact I have put on a few pounds on since giving up smoking.

A week last Friday we went shopping at the supermarket (Tesco), we had not been there  two minutes and I had to take my coat off, sweat was pouring off me. This was not good, I even mentioned to a friend who was with us that I think it’s time I went to the doctors.  By the time we got home I sat here at the keyboard and forgot all about it.

Monday morning I did some research online and both sweating and breathlessness can apparently indicate blocked arteries. This I thought needs a doctor so I phoned to make an appointment. I love the free NHS here, I think we get a great service generally but it does mean we have to wait for appointments. The soonest I could be seen was in 7 days, I could have phoned next morning at 8:30 and get in the same day but I didn’t feel the need.

Yesterday I had the appointment, explained the situation and the doctor listened to my chest, I had not told him what research I had done so his actions confirmed that the artery/heart could be having problems although he never said anything like that. He asked me to make an appointment to see the nurse to get some blood tests done and said if they don’t show anything then  he will send me for chest xrays. I did this and had the bloods taken this morning, the results should be in on Thursday, and I have made another appointment to see the Doctor next Tuesday to discuss the results.

So now I have another week to wait, is it just me or is there a problem?

This week has been one of those weeks, it started Monday night when while walking Lady, our Golden Labrador, she saw a cat the otherside of our street and decided to chase it, at the same time a taxi cab was driving up the road. Unfortunately the dog had seen the cat before us so she had gone before we had chance to stop her, thud as the cab hit her but up she got and carried on chasing the bloody cat.

Fortunately she was not hurt apart from a cut in her mouth, limbs etc appeared normal by the way she carried on running, even when she was back home.

The next morning we took her to the vets just to be sure there was nothing wrong. The vet confirmed that all that was wrong was a slightly brused mouth, but she gave her antibitoic and pain killer injections, I am sure just to charge me more.

When leaving the  Vets I reversed into a bloody tree, putting a lovely dent into the back or the car.

Tuesday afternoon the car was already booked in to be checked over as there was a couple of problems, they managed to fix them in a couple of hours apart from one, they want the car back next week and to be left as they need to run tests on my gear box. It’s poorly apparently.

Tracey has decided she wants a wall knocked down between kitchen and dining room, so have had to get quotes as it is a supporting wall so needs a steel rsj fitted to support the wall above. Then today we have started clearing the units that are fixed and/or against said wall.

Oh what a fun week.

After weeks of snow and Ice our street has actually been gritted by the council. There must be a reason!

For the past few weeks the council has been running out of grit/salt, they haven’t been refilling the grit boxes on the sides of roads where accidents are likely because ‘they do not have enough salt’, well that is what they told me over the phone although on TV they say because people used it on their property rather than the roads and pavements.

They did fill the grit boxes last week and I managed to grab some to put on our street before it all ran out, boxes where  empty within hours, but then we had a big freeze during the night, below -5C (23F) so the grit/salt didn’t have any effect.

What annoys me is I am disabled but I am the only mug gritting the street when possible, one resident stood talking to me while I gritted yet not once did he offer to help. There are some lazy bastards around today.

Yesterday we kept the kids home, schools where open but the school bus that two took  didn’t turn up and I couldn’t get to the car without slipping over so driving was not a good idea with the amount of black ice about.

Today does appear a bit warmer, the stuff is melting slowly and for this unknown reason the council truck came down our street today and gritted (2 council workers shoveling from back of truck. The only reason that we can think off is because our refuge has not been collected since before christmas and they are planning to collect it soon. We could  be wrong though:)

PS Don’t forget it’s just one month to Valentines’ day.

After I posted yesterday we got a call saying that the secondary school our eldest two boys attend was closing at lunch time because of the snow, school buses would run so no need to collect them.

About 20 minutes later it was announced that the primary school our youngest attends was also closing so we had to collect him. We couldn’t get up our street in the car so had to go down a track at the other end and join the main road on a blind corner. Main roads had not been gritted so there was a lot of snow/ice. It appears we was one of the first to get there.

When we returned home there was a telephone message from our Sam, our 2nd son. He decided not to wait for the school bus and he would walk, was not happy as he has no phone (seeWho is at fault?) but then nor did we as kids.

I can’t see the rubbish being collected today as the minor roads are still bad. I also found our more from the council about the grit/salt boxes. It appears they are running out of the stuff so can only grit major roads although they claimed not long ago they after last year they have made sure they have enough grit this year. On the TV they are also claiming people used the salt to clear their driveways rather than the roads and pathways.  So a few are miss using it so others have to suffer.