And what's the subject of your thesis?

I've been stuck at the same point for a couple of months though. At this rate it will be at least 2020 before I'm finished.

Thanks for the cat Sue.

Have a limerick too - sorry can't help myself, I'm breaking out in awful poetry all over the place..


There once was a swotter named Flossie
Who worked day and night for her 'D'
A lecturer's post
And a plateful of toast
Motivated her write-up so glossy!


Night-night x

Thanks Sue.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. My laptop hates me. King Rat is using the main computer so I want to set up my laptop to use MSN. Will it let me? It won't. I will have another fight with it in a moment.

It's possible an MSN problem may be at MSN's end petrat. It took me three goes to put MSN on my new computer.

Doesn't everyone

Grrr. Why does one particular person's posts always make me feel I want to reach for a hatchet???

*wonders who Cyrilla is referring to*

In our usually quiet and peaceful village we had an armed robbery this evening just a few yards from my studio.

Not mine I hope!

Nope, not yours, mel2!

Sorry to hear that, petrat. I remember how the Hungerford massacre 20 years ago affected everyone in this area. Must be very unsettling; you just don't expect armed robberies to happen near you.

I remember that quite well ... a good friend of mine was driving back here from the west country on that day, and intending to come off the motorway through Hungerford at about the crucial time - however she missed the turn off : couldn't quite work out how she did, but found she had gone sailing past ...

Petrat sorry to hear about yours. Was anyone injured?

Oh my goodness!!! How scary! *hugs*

I'm hiding in my own house. Excellent.

Actually, it's not my house is it? It's just the place I'm expected to call home.

Well my dear, you've been given some excellent advice this week from someone who really does know what they're talking about. All you need to do is apply it. It won't happen by itself, so take some positive action! (That's an order, by the way! )

I really am trying, Elisabeth. I know it won't happen overnight so I'll keep chipping away, just sometimes it gets to me a bit, you know? I do appreciate that person's advice though.

Have had to move house unexpectedly due to somebody messing me around so now I am living on a friends living room floor for I don't know how long and had to give back my rented piano, feels very weird not to have one and also quite inconvenient as I was meant to be starting teaching soon!

My son has just returned from a shopping trip to say that an alleyway in the main shopping area was cordoned off, police everywhere, crime scene markers and blood everywhere being hosed down by fire department. Good grief - this was at 10 o'clock on a Saturday morning in the nice part of town....

My friend's son was mugged for his mobile last Saturday. He's OK, but they haven't arrested anyone yet.

Yes, of course...although some of the goings-on on the forums today have rather made me feel as if I'd like to use it before I pass it over...

PLEASE stop all these unkind digs at people..*has had enough of forum so buries hatchet in own head*..

Oh dear, hope it wasn't anything I said, Cyrilla. No nastiness intended.

It wasn't you, Sue. I'm just fed up with people sniggering behind other people's backs.

I'm tired and overstretched and I have a cold and I'm finding it hard to put up with stuff at the moment.

I'm not sure if some posters realise just how much unhappiness they cause.

*takes sore head to bed*

Aw, hope you feel better soon, Cyrilla. Sending you a hot cyber-toddy x

I've got absolutely no idea what you're refering to Cyrilla, as we don't normally frequent the same parts of the forum, but have you tried talking to the people about it? As you say, they probably don't realise they're making other people unhappy. You've always struck me (from what I've seen on here) as the kind of person who'd be able to work out a way of saying something tactfully and sensitively - although I know it's difficult to deal with this kind of conversation online where you can't see body language or hear people's tone of voice.

*tries to work out if she has ever said anything which might have offended Cyrilla, and hopes that Cyrilla would say something if she had.*

It wasn't you, Flossie!

Just spotted this : this sort of thing makes me both sad and angry in equal measure.

Glad he's coping OK.

with the first bit, I hurriedly add. Not the hatchet in Cyrilla's head - please, no!

My head is hatchet-free...

Good. I'm declaring a hatchet amnesty - you can hand them in to me at the DIY store.

C - I hope you soon feel better !

Aw, thanks, Maggie!

AAAAGGGGHHHHH!

That's better.....
I'm smiling.

Our washing machine has just died and it has dyed my clothes in the process.

It hasn't been working properly for ages and we keep reporting it to college, but they don't ever do anythings about it.

My nice cerise tops are now a rather strange purple colour.

I'm probably going to have to have Gandalf put to sleep today (barring a minor miracle).

He's going for blood tests for FeLV and FIV after his white cell count plummetted.

The worst thing about this is if he is positive is I've got to have Plato tested and its not just one dead cat I'll end up with, but knowing the other is on his way out too.

You poor old thing. We get so fond of our pets don't we! A kind thing to be able to do for him though.

That is quite annoying. Especially as it seems you were fond of those cerise tops.



Sympathies jod.

Very sorry to hear this. Hope the outcome is less bad than you expect.

The hole in the wall ate my cash card last night.

Especially annoying because I'd just missed the last train and was trying to get cash to pay for a taxi. There's money in the account and the PIN was correct so I don't know why it felt the need to keep the card. Luckily a machine a bit further down the road gave mne cash on my credit card but I'll end up having to pay a charge for that.

Nowhere near a proper Argh, merely a Harrumph.

There was a forum I was a member of which upgraded its format (to phpBB3, if you're interested). One of the changes was that next to each topic title was a little animated picture of a row of lines, which scrolled. I couldn't cope with this, because the scrolling lines were just too weird on my eyes, and a little close to a migraine for my liking. As I was a member I experimented with the various board settings, and it turned out that all of the available board themes had some sort of animation in them - one was tolerable in terms of its animations, but a weird colour scheme that I didn't like.
Anyway, since that time I visit that forum far far far far less, hardly at all. Like not even once a week or probably even once a month - only when I need to ask a specific question.

Then, in the last month, two forums which I'm not a member of - but read with some regularity - have also updated. To phpBB3, with the scrolling lines. One of them I might become a member of and see if there are board settings that I can handle, but the other I'm just not going to use any more.

It's just so annoying when things are inaccesible, and I'm not even really hardly at all 'accessiblity-impaired'. I know, I could just switch off all animations in my browser, but seeing as the vast majority of animations don't both me - for example, the little animated smilies on this forum - I don't want to do that.

ARRRGGGGHHHHHHH I'm LATE!!!!


(So why am I sitting here on the forum... )





idiot


byeeee

Well he tested negative for both FeLV and FIV which is great news for both cats. We've had our miracle for now, and thanks to medication to get Gandalf to eat, he is still with us, but he still is an immuno-suppressed cat. From a cat who needed syringe feeding he now woke me at 6.30am with loud miaows for food from the kitchen (directly below my bedroom)

The Vet slated the Nurse at my GP practice whose response to getting bitten on Monday when I was syringe feeding him was "I wouldn't do that for a cat" and give a tetanus booster and no prophaxtic antibiotics. The correct thing to do was give antibiotics and ignore the tetanus booster, you can't catch tetatnus from cats.

I visited my GP yesterday and now have the antibiotics.

More important until Gandalf visits the vet in 14 days time and another set of blood tests are run, we are still a two cat household. I'm just keeping him in to minimise his contact with feline pathogens until he has had a chance to rebuild his immune system. That is if he can rebuild his immune system.

He was so funny at the vet. It was if he was trying to say "Put down? Who me? Look at me I'm a well cat, I am, really I am!"

As for me my hands look like I've been pruning berberis without gloves. My right hand in particular is covered in scratches.

Aw, pleased to hear this, jod.

Your description of Gandalf at the vet did make me laugh - cats really ARE a law unto themselves, aren't they??

^^

Excellent news.

Much has been written about how to get medication into a cat and feeding by syringe must be a task for Hercules. Glad it's not necessary any more. If my 3-legged rescue tabby ever needed that (she possesses the Jaws of Death) I fear she would starve, tactics in the past having included donning gardening gloves and binding the beast in a bath towel.

LOL in between the reassuring strokes of "Good boy Gandalf" there have been screams of "OUCH that hurt you brute" when he bit me, initially it was "Oh no! Why is there all this blood on his fur?" followed by the realisation of "Oh, that's my blood, but I've got to get that last syringe of food into you."

Never thought of myself as Hercules before!

Cats are funny things with medicines. Rats are too - I tend to give antibiotics by direct syringe in to the mouth (often vets give you medicine to put in their water - but that means either separating the ill rat or giving everyone some medicine in the water; or more likely [because the standard medicine for rats tastes foul] a selection of dehydrated rats refusing to drink your evil concoction). Giving antibiotics direct is very easy with a sick rat...but as they work, and the rat gets better, the struggle beomes monumental. It was in the same with my last cat when she got sick - at first it was difficult to give her a tablet, but as they started taking effect it became extremely difficult to give her a tablet!

The best one was a very ill ratlet who was being persuaded to eat Ferretvite, a thick marmite-like concoction full of minerals and vitamins and something to stimulate the appetite. It is often referred to as 'ratty heroin', and not without reason - if they get anywhere near the tube, they will gnaw it open and gobble the lot, they just love it.
For several days I'd only been able to persuade her to take a little bit of the stuff off my finger. I came home one night, put a blob on my finger, shoved it in the cage and BITE! A really full on proper deep bite, never had one like it before or since from any pet, bled like anything and even a couple of days later it was still throbbing from time to time. Monster!

I'm very glad to hear that Gandalf continues on to give you more fun looking after him