The new year has started.
I thought I would do a review of the year that just passed,and some of the plans for the new one
It has been a interesting one, and for some people life changing, but for me quite sad.The loss of my mother mid summer has been a shock to me and has reminded me how fragile life is.
I am finally on my own now, both of my parents have gone, just me and my younger brother.
It has been a time of change that has seen my children move from secondary education on to college, my daughter studying A levels and my son learning furniture making.This change will continue in 2013 with my daughter moving on to University and leaving home and I feel that life has been on hold for the last two years and that this year is the year for me to get on with living again.
As you know if you have been reading my blog for a while I have been able to start swimming again and getting fit and trying to loose weight.I hope that I will continue to loose more and will be able to do more fitness activities to help me.
I also hope to do some travelling during 2013 and hope to get a motorbike.If the weather is good I will be getting out and about on my own more. I have found the start to this year has not gone as well as I hoped I had a minor crash in the car when leaving a parking space outside the doctors and ended up damaging the wing and bumper on my car this has annoyed me as I had to make a claim on my insurance to get it repaired which will impact on bike insurance in the future but it can't be helped :( The car still needs some work doing so in the near future I will have to return it to the garage to get this done but for the moment I am just happy to have it back after a couple of weeks of courtesy cars, an experience I am not willing to repeat just yet.
The main reason I have been remiss about updating my blog is I have been having some problems with my vision for about a month.I have been having great problems with blurring and lack of focus with my vision deteriorating as the day progresses. I attended the doctors as I was having problems with seeing the photos on the screen at camera club and she referred me to the local eye hospital. I was very worried that I may have developed some condition due to the medication I have been taking.I was reassured when I attended as the problem I suspected - glaucoma was checked and found to be unlikely.I had to wait to attend again with Liz so she could drive so that they could conduct a full eye exam using atropine drops to enable them to see the retina and the back of my eye this all proved that nothing untoward was evident.But it seems that my suspicions were correct, I have developed dry eyes due to my use of Bi pad overnight and long term steroids I have been given eye drops I will need to use from now on. Although they are better than they were I still have problems and need to rest my eyes much more often now and add another medication to my daily regime!
One of the good things that has happened since the new year started is I have bought myself an new tablet a Nexus 7 from Asus :) It has been fun and has encouraged me to learn more about Android operating system with the thought about learning more about creating apps in the future.
To this end you may have noticed that I now have a
Android app for this blog so people can read my blog on their android phone or tablet you can download it or use the QR code on the blog.I hope that people find this useful.
I have also removed the message board widget that was on the blog as it had collected a lot of spam messages.I am hoping to have a revamp of the blog in the near future and have some ideas about making some changes.I would love to know what people think about this and what they would like to see in the future. Personally I would like to make more information about transplantation available. A more comprehensive list of some of the blogs people are writing about transplantation and more places to seek help and advice across the internet.
The other thing I have bought myself is a new camera it is smaller than my DSLR and made by Olympus and has image stabilization in the camera body to help with the shaking that I suffer from with my meds. If you are interested it is
OMD EM5 Olympus and it came with a extra 45mm portrait lens. As it is splashproof I will be able to use it when weather is poor so keep an eyes out for new pictures from it in the near future.
Finally I thought I would include some pictures from the most recent competition we had a the camera club the subject was quite hard "The letter Y " so I included the following two pictures
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| Yellow Sky over Didcot |
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| Yellow Aqualegia |
The first picture taken with a small compact on the way back from Harefield scored 15/20. The yellow Aqualegia taken with my Canon DSLR did a more respectable 17/20. I am hoping that my new camera will be scoring well in competition in the next few months watch this space!
I am now able to go swimming again and am going to be attending a fund raiser for my good friend Justine Laymond in february as she will be attending the World Transplant games in South Africa to represent UK again if you wish to help her you can find out more here -
Justine Laymond just giving
I hope for my next blog I will have some pictures of the event to share:) till next time stay well and if you still haven't signed the donor register you can
here
