…and welcome to it.
Saturday I received my ISEB Practitioner’s Certificate in Software Test Management. This virtually completes my certification with ISEB–I could take the Practitioner’s Certificate in Software Test Analysis but probably won’t as it does cost a bit of money. I will now try to get contract work as a tutor for the three certifications I now have. There is some money in it and I enjoy teaching. We shall see about this.
There are few jobs out there; I have had a few nibbles via email but most are in out-of-the-way places for very small salaries. That’s not very attractive for me, as my net would be pretty small.
Nothing to say about Sunday; church, then home. went out to lunch with us to a Pizza Express in Soho. Then HWMBO and I walked to Fopp and I bought some books, CDs, and a DVD of Le Diner de Cons, which I saw in the theatre but would like to see again. Oddly enough, as I was browsing the shelves I thought, “I’d like to see Le Diner de Cons again,” and looking down at the bottom shelf, which I hadn’t looked at before, there it was! Obviously someone wanted me to buy it, so I did. Will watch soon.
Monday I did virtually nothing. This is depressing, but I think that a goodly amount of time away from work will help me sort out my brain. In addition, being out of work means that it’s probably good not to go out and buy anything including lunch, coffee, or what have you.
Tuesday I went to the Diabetic Clinic at St. Thomas’s. When I got there my friend Helen from the Friday Drop-In at St. Matthew’s was there also, raising cain as usual. She is in her late 60’s and is very firm about her wants and needs, so waiting in a waiting room is not a happy time for her. We chatted for a while and I told her that I was apt to have to inject a drug for type II diabetes. She said, “You should ask them about the pill I’m taking–sitaglyptin. You don’t want to inject, do you?” I told her, “No, I don’t want to inject, but it seems there is little alternative and I have to trust the doctor.” She wasn’t having it, but then she got called in for her blood test and we ended it there.
My blood test was OK, I think, and my blood pressure seems to have been a bit lower–the result of the increased dosage of blood pressure drug I got last time I was there, I suppose. The practice nurse called me in, and we discussed the drug: exenatide. It is injected, but not with a syringe, with a pen. You have to put the needle on the pen, dial up the dose, take a chunk of your tum between thumb and fingers, and insert the needle and press the plunger, counting to 10. Then remove the needle, take it off the pen and dispose of it in the sharps box, and recap the pen. We practiced on a squeezy pig, and then with a pen full of saline on myself. No sweat. So we started on it yesterday evening. I have to take it about 1 hour before breakfast and dinner. The needle is amazingly small and you can hardly feel it, if at all. So I got the prescription, waited at the pharmacy, and walked home. The diabetes practice nurse is very good, very helpful, and really took away all fear of being stuck with a needle.
This is almost it, I think. If this medication doesn’t work, then it’s insulin for me. The good part about it is that now that I am used to giving myself injections (he says, after having done four in two days) insulin doesn’t hold as many terrors for me. The problem with insulin is that it tends to get you to put on weight. This is bad for a diabetic. I want to keep away from it as long as I can. Once I do have to go on it, I shall have to cut down what I eat to the bare minimum to keep me alive.
Today, Wednesday, I got the guest room ready for and did some shopping. The rod that serves as the hinge in back of the toilet seat was about to break, so I needed to replace it. What a pain in the arse that is! I had to take the hinges and brackets off, clean underneath, try to put the new brackets on, find that they didn’t fit, put the old brackets back on, thread the rod through the two parts of the seat, sweat like a horse, and swear like a trooper. I wish they’d make these things easy.
Tomorrow is a meeting of the New Lammas Lands Defence Committee, where I’ll have to apologise for not keeping the website up to date, and figure out where we go from here.
Friday I have lunch with one of the other delegates to the ISEB Practitioner’s course to talk about testing stuff. Then I have to get my new glasses from Otto Opticians and rest from my labours.
