I've been farting around a lot on Facebook looking at load of different pages and groups and have joined one that sounds like fun. One is called "Music from whatever the list says" it's a closed page so you have to ask to join but the premise of it is as follows:
You have to select fave tunes based on a list of 30 questions such as
- A tune that makes you feel strong emotions
- A cover version that is better than the original
- A song that makes you happy
- A song in a language other than English
As I say about 30 questions all told some of which really make you think - I've had multiple answers and end up weighing the relative values. For such a small group it seems very busy I had no idea FB could be used for stuff like this. So you fill out the list and then paste a selection to the wall for others to share and enjoy and comment on.
It's only about 200 people and they seem to be from the US and UK mainly but as a music lover I've found it a great new way to be exposed to stuff both new and old that I'd never heard before. The 'list' appears to be the jumping off point to see how your taste fits and then folks pretty much just post stuff they like. Friendly board and a nice thing to stumble upon.
Another one is a fanboy site for a band I was crazy about in my twenties and who I have recently rediscovered via downloading their stuff from i-tunes. Be Bop Deluxe one of the great also rans from about '74 to '79. Made 6 albums had a great national following but never quite crossed over. There's a whole site of people my age and older all anorakking about the band and I frigging love it. What's the best album, guitar solo, track - real twatty bloke stuff and I can't get enough.
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| Bill Nelson - Be Bop Deluxe.1977. |
As another measure of how bored I'm getting I even got round to filling out a Linked In profile to tell everybody how much middle management bullshit I know and got rather unnerved when I had 'evaluate my ...er skill set' and I slipped back into the old spiel so easily. It's not a world that I would be keen to re-enter even if it weren't now populated by pointy toothed, sharp elbowed, gimlet eyed twenty and thirty year olds with a keen sense of self entitlement and law degrees. I'd hazard that the working environment is a much more fraught place in which to start now than in the 70s/80s.
I think when I do regain my health I'll get a lot more satisfaction and a feeling of self respect from working with my hands for a fraction of the money I used to earn. Gardening, DIY, knocking over betting shops, benefit fraud - the kind of job that gives you a bit of self respect much better than attending endless meetings and feigning giving a flying fuck about the trajectory of someone's career structure and development plan within your department.
Had a visit from a dental specialist today to check my ulcers out - he agreed that they had progressed slightly but wants to stay on watch and wait. I can understand how they don't want to mess with the meds until a stable state is achieved - back to my crappy plate spinning simile of last week. He's prescribing me some lidocaine numbing paste to take the edge off if things go wonky and will be checking back on me early next week.
One of the nurses who looked after me last year is back on the ward (in fact she sat in and administered my transplant) she's called Nurse May and I think she is originally from China. Super experienced and someone in whom one can have complete trust. She came in yesterday to see me and to administer an ECG (electro cardiograph) which is a snapshot of the function of the heart taken from a series of sensors placed on the arms legs chest and ribs. So he came in with the machine and the sticky pads for arms legs chest etc with all the leads to connect to them. Stuck the pads on my forearms and then tutted when she saw my chest and when I removed the DVT stockings from my legs;
Me "Is there anything wrong May?"
May "Yeah is problem"
Me (worried) "Oh what's up?"
May " Can't do ECG on hairy man!"
Apparently it prevents contact with the skin and you can't get a signal. So I'm looking like I've had moths at the moment with little shaved bare patches here and there where the electrodes ended up - all good though heart healthy. Swab results back from last week indicate that I have a new virus YAY. Its called VRE (Vancomycin Resistant Enterococci) - I have colonisation rather than infection which is a benign format - no change to meds needed but I need to stay in isolation to prevent cross contamination to other BMT patients on the ward. So no change there then, apparently quite common in people with naff immune systems and means that it is resistant to certain more front line penicillins requiring the use of alternatives for treatment.
Just found this on wikipedia;
VRE can be carried by healthy people who have come into contact with the bacteria. The most likely place where such contact can occur is in a hospital (nosocmial infection). although it is also thought that a significant percentage of intensively farmed chicken also carry VRE. Well the only chickens I've seen in the past 3 weeks have been wearing cheese or sweet and sour sauce. So some bugger in here has lurgeyed me up!
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