I have had a couple of good days. Yesterday I was treated to mama’s world famous chicken soup. Delicious in its bubbly goodness. Now I will have soup leftovers for days. It is the gift that keeps on giving.

On Friday I finally made it back to the playground. There is still snow on the streets, but a lot less so than recently. And a splendid sun in the sky. I guess spring is here in some fashion after all.

It was great to see all the animals of course. The goat sisters big and pregnant. Just as I got there, Bodil came by with her dog Sif. “You know they’re going to have kids?” she asked. I did. Within the month, hopefully. It is going to be a lot of fun.

Bodil picked up Sif and handed her to me. So I got to hold her, briefly. Just to feel how heavy she has gotten. Which, to be honest, is not that heavy after all. She’s still a small one. A little later she was jumping up on my leg, barely reaching my knee. A lovely little doggie. Bodil loves her a lot, that is easy to tell. I am glad she found such a sweet dog, after what happened to Lulu. I can barely imagine Bodil without a little charming dog in tow.

It was really good to spend time with the goats again. Lots of scratches and old bread and just sitting back and enjoying the sunshine on the snow. I also walked around a little and said hello to the other animals. The piglets are mighty, mighty big now. And loud. The little lamb is not so big or loud, running around in the heels of his black mama. And Polka with them. She was looking a lot more comfortable than last time I saw her. But I didn’t see any lambs with her. I guess it’s possible that her lambs were inside, but I don’t think it’s likely that she’d run around with black mama and boy like that if she had had lambs of her own inside. I think it’s more likely that she may have lost hers. There wasn’t anyone around for me to ask, but last time I was there they had been worried about her. So it probably did not turn out well. Poor Polka, she has been through a lot. But she did look like she was doing okay, as far as I could tell.

I made a little video. youtube.com/watch?v=nkgQcdbv4T8. Nothing outstanding, but sweet animals. Loud piggies, migrating sheep. And big goats. I did not realize how big Vanilje was until I saw the video. I couldn’t really see it when I was there in person, her white body against the snow. But she’s looking like she’s got something cooking alrite. I hope we will be blessed with many babies. Maybe if they get a bunch they’ll let me steal one home.

Hey, it could happen.

This week’s doctor and hospital appointments are now over and done. With mixed results.

The doctor’s appointment on Tuesday didn’t accomplish much. I guess there’s not a lot to be done about the side-effect of the kidney medication. The dizziness. It’s not that horrible to be honest, I can live with it. It’s worth it to protect the kidneys, right? I can just hope it gets better in time.

Today we were off to the hospital. Much waiting time as always. Michael Palin’s Hemingway Adventure on my MP3 player helped with that. And the news were pretty good, I think. My eyes seem stable. The pressure is okay, even without the anti-pressure eyedrops. So we are just about ready to proceed with the work on the left eye. We have scheduled surgery for May 6th. Full anesthesia. They’re going to take out the oil in the left eye. And then possibly see if they can clear out some scar tissue and cataracts. And then evaluate whether I need to have another pocket of oil inserted, or if I can go without oil. That’s what I’m hoping for of course. The doctor said that there was a little chance that they could make the eye a little better. The cataracts aren’t a big problem in the eye, but removing them and clearing scar tissue and gettng rid of the oil, it could make for a slight improvement. That would be wonderful of course. Any improvement would be very welcome. I’m not going to get my hopes up too much for that, though. As long as it doesn’t get worse. As long as I can hang on to what little eyesight I have now, that’s what’s most important. Anything else would be a bonus. A wonderful, welcome bonus. It’s going to be very scary though. That first day after the surgery, in bandages. Completely blind. And then when they remove the bandages. It will be very much a moment of truth. Will I be seeing? Seeing more? Seeing even less than now? It’s going to be a little terrifying. But I’m looking forward to getting it done very much. In a couple of months it could all be over. Well, of course it will never be over. The rest of my life will be this. But all the doctors and hospitals and insecurity. Maybe some of that could be over. At least toned down a fair bit. There will be a lot on the line in that surgery.

But for now I can relax a little again. I’ll be going in for anesthesia consultation at the end of April. Until then my calendar should be pretty open. Unless… you know. Something. Unforeseen. Etc.

I am hoping to go visit the goats on Friday. And mama makes soup on Saturday. So the immediate future isn’t too bad. I even turned off the heating system today, as the sun made a welcome appearance and it almost looked like spring.

PS. I added a Cliff Clavin tweet-feed on the right. Because Cliff Clavin is awesome. I identify with him a lot. You might almost say he’s my secret identity. Or something. Whistle.

Today is March the first. What does that mean? It means that my birthday is two weeks away. But more importantly it also means that winter is officially over in Denmark.

Theoretically anyway. I do think it’s been thawing. But it doesn’t feel much like spring. I overheard a weather forecaster talking about -12 degrees one of the coming nights. It’s supposedly going to be a very cold spring. Just fine, just fine.

Hopefully some of the snow and ice is gone. I never made it to the playground last week. I am missing the goats. I hope I can get to see them at the end of the week. I have doctor’s appointment Tuesday and hospital appointment Wednesday, though, so I will probably be quite tirededed out. Fingers crossed that it will all go well.

My front door was quite busy today. I had to open it thrice. Once for my dad dropping off goods. And twice for the mailmen. Yes, plural. Two mailmen came around today. The first one was the regular mail. He brought me my new MP3 player. Did I mention I was buying a new MP3 player? I can hardly remember what I put in my blog and what I put on Facebook these days. Or twitter. Yes, I have a twitter now. God help us all. You can find it in the links on the right side of the blog if you should so desire. I rearranged the links a bit. Fascinating. Anyway, about an hour after the first mailman came a second one. I wasn’t sure if I dared to open the door. After all the mail had already been there, so who could it be? But I knew that I was also expecting my Stephen King Under The Dome audiobook. The one I was not allowed to buy on Audible because of “geographic limitations”. I was able to buy it as an MP3 CD on amazon, where I also bought the MP3 player. And verily so, it was another mailman. The Stephen King CD was delivered as a pacckage I had to sign for, while the MP3 player was just regular mail. That’s why it took two seperate mailmen to deliver it all. This mailmen story is almost as suspenseful as a Stephen King novel, don’t you agree?

I have spent some time today setting up the MP3 player and getting it all to work. And I seem to have figured it all out. I can use it and bought and transfered my first Audible book to it. The Call of Cthulhu by Lovecraft. I’ve never read any Lovecraft, it seems like something I should do. At least give it a chance. I am just relieved that I can operate the MP3 player without too much fuzz. Everything new is a little scary and daunting when you can hardly see anything.
But so far so good.

I’ve been getting some other stuff done as well the past few days. Upgrades of antivirus and wordpress. Research about exercise. I have ordered a matt and a gym ball and some other tidbits. For extra exercise goodness. I feel like I have been fairly productive, which is nice. Lots of little stuff that should be quick and easy, but isn’t anymore. But as long as it works out in the end then I won’t complain. Much.

In other good news, the ointment I got for my right eye seems to have worked. It’s not really sore anymore, not much anyway. It’s hard to put ointment on an eyeball though. Not least on a blind eye that can’t see where the tube is aiming. But it worked, so that’s good. And I have stopped taking the anti-pressure eyedrops. Been taking them for months, but the hospital doctors told me to stop a week before the appointment on Wednesday. To see if things are stable on their own. And I have felt no increase in the pressure, no pains. So it looks like the right eye is stable on that front. I am still taking another form of eyedrops, and now the ointment too, though. But hopefully the right eye can soon be left to rest for good. Time to get to work on the left one I hope. As I have said before, I’d just like everything to be resolved so I know what I have to deal with.

I had a shooting star for dinner today. We are all starchildren.

I had planned to take a trip to the playground today and visit the goats. Instead I ended up taking an unscheduled trip to the hospital. So it goes.

The playground trip was canceled due to snow. Lots and lots of snow. A little too much for me to handle. I may try again on Thursday, if the weather permits.

Meanwhile, my right eye has been sore for a while. And my dad said it looked red. So he called the hospital and they wanted me to come in. Just like old days. Waiting, waiting, waiting. And then poked and prodded and eyedropped and I’ll just get my colleague to have a look at you too if you don’t mind waiting some more.

Nothing too alarming though. If I understood it correctly, it’s the cornea that is irritated and dried out. All this mucking about with the eyes and the complete death of it, means that it hasn’t gotten enough fluid. Or something like that. Anyway, I got some ointment for it and we’ll be back next week for the previously scheduled appointment. I do hope we’ll be able to proceed with the left eye. The right one has given me enough trouble as it is. Sometimes it seems like it might have been easier to just have it removed. I think I may even at one point, not too long ago, have imagined gouging it out on my own. But no, no. I would prefer to keep it. If it would just stop being a pest. I don’t expect it to ever see again, but is it too much to ask that it would not give me pain?

Also, I think I am seeing a little worse on the left eye. The last couple of days. Seems to be a little darker in the central vision. Less clear. It’s hard to say with everything that’s going up and down. We’ll see.

So I didn’t make it to the goats today, but last Saturday I made it to the library for the first time in a year or so. The one right around the corner, it’s not a long trip. I went to pick up an audiobook I had ordered through Nota. Dad came with me. I was hoping that I could do it all on my own. I remembered where the shelf with pre-ordered books are picked up is. But they are sorted by dates, and I couldn’t see the dates at all. So I had to have dad help me. And then it turned out that the audiobook wasn’t on that shelf at all because it had been ordered from an out-of-town library and those books are kept behind the librarian’s counter. So we ended up having to ask the librarian for help, and she found it for me. Michael Palin’s Sahara. I have ordered more books from Nota. Most of them are directly from their service though, so they will come straight to my door and I can keep them. No need to go to the library to pick them up.

I have also ordered a new MP3 player. On amazon. The one I have now is an ancient model with only 512mb. I wonder if they even make those anymore, today it’s all about gigabytes. My new one is nothing outstanding or expensive but it does have 2 gigabytes of memory and built-in radio. That should be enough space to put the Nota books on there and to get better quality books from Audible. It should be good, assuming I can figure out how to operate it. I did have some problems with my new radio. I had to go online and download a PDF manual because I couldn’t read the paper one. Even the PDF was hard. But I did get that sorted. So we’ll cross those britches when we get to them.

Today I got my copy of 30 Rock season 3 that I hard ordered from the American amazon.com. I originally had preordered the European version on amazon.co.uk. But then it was postponed to April. And the European release of season 1 didn’t have any of the bonus features. So why look like a chump and wait months for an inferior product? I cancaled the amazon.co.uk order and ordered it from amazon.com. As an experiment. And today it came, a couple of weeks after I ordered it I think. It wasn’t held up in customs. And after mucking about with my DVD player’s regional settings I was able to play it. Neato. I really don’t understand why in today’s day and age a company would release a product in America in September ‘09 and then have the European release 6 months later. We’re living ina global village etc. It makes no sense. If I hadn’t been such a swell and honest person I would have downloaded an illegal, free copy months ago. Some companies really need to wake up and smell the age they’re living in. No wonder piracy is such a problem. Don’t get me started on Ubisoft’s new DRM.

No really, don’t.

Onwards and upwards.

I have had numerous requests for another guitar video. Well, two. Of which at least one was probably a joke. But still. I went ahead and did one. Only… I couldn’t find my guitar. I’m not one to let small problems like that get in my way though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmOrmELHqAk

Yeah I know. That’s pretty dumb. Even for me.