I thought all those red kisses on my homework used to mean that my teacher fancied me...

..and LOL meant lots of love!

I used to think that too!

Kept wondering why all this love in the middle of a joke??!!

Mostly I can ignore it, but phase instead of faze really really really bothers me for some inexplicable reason

Argh, my neighbour set off my car alarm in the early hours this morning - I feel like death now as I couldn't get back to sleep

Me too.

Exam + unpreparedness = tomorrow

You'll be okay.

It's your last exam!

It hasn't hit me yet. I am just terrified.

Just tried to PM you but it did not work

Where on earth have those three years gone?? All the best to you Nicki!

Have no idea. Final final

Still very scared though as not prepared

Very best of luck Nicki

Fantastically good luck, Nicki-I'm sure you'll be fine!

Thanks. I just want to get in there and do it, even if it goes badly. I couldn't have done anymore so we'll just see how it goes. Gosh. I'll have completed a degree in just a few hours.

Good Luck Nicki, now comes the waiting. I hope you, and everyone else taking exams at this time of year, get good results.

So there's a piece on the TG G6 recorders list that my teacher 'knows but can't remember'...so while ordering some music, I also ordered that. He said if it turned out to be rubbish, he'd buy it from me and inflict it on someone else
It's a Boosey Custom Print piece, so not cheap.
It's de Fesch, Sonata in G, and on the syllabus list are the 1st and 2nd movements: Adagio and Allegro.

The music arrived today, hurrah! Only the movements are: Largo, Allemanda, Aria larghetto and Gavotta

The B&H webshop I have just checked, I have definitely found the right publication, and it says that this is the item from the TG list...

So, email B&H? email TG? or, if I end up choosing this one to actually do in the exam, figure the examiner won't even notice?

Bleh. Messed it up in spectacular style.

Wait 'til yet get your marks, Nicki. It can be really hard to tell in the heat of the moment how well you've done and very easy to lose all sense of proportion in picking up the things you *might* have done differently - the latter probably applies especially today with it being your lasy exam. There's a lot happening and changing all at once for you and it's bound to make you feel more fragile.

I'm sure you'll be celebrating come 23rd June.

you always remember what you think went worst in your exams-I'm sure you've done brilliantly

More of a groan - I obviously didn't shut my contact lenses case properly last night :/ So when I went to put them in just now, I find two lenses floating in the liquid with no way of telling them apart, except from sticking them in my eyes and experimenting. GAH!

Good question! seems no time at all since you were discussing school music with us, Nicki!

I'm sure you did better than you think. Enjoy not having it ahead of you! xx

I had an email from the Board an hour ago saying my exam appointment times were online. They aren't.

Ahhh, I've done this before! It's so irritating, isn't it! There should be some way of telling them apart for silly people like us

Have you never tried wearing glasses?!

I've never put them on the wrong way round!

Dennis Taylor seemed to have issues!

Nowadays I wear daily disposable lenses with the same prescription in each eye (I think they would be slightly different if I really wanted to optimise my vision, but since I only wear lenses occasionally, usually on social occasions, and since the difference would only be slight the convenience of having them the same outweighs the benefit of differing prescriptions). I used to wear gas permeable lenses (with each eye different) pretty much every day and I went for a check up once complaining that my vision seemed to have deteriorated. The optician examined my eyes and said "It would obviously help if you put them in the right eyes!". Apparently there's a tiny dot engraved on the edge of the right (or is it the left?) lens to allow you to tell them apart. I think you'd need a magnifying glass to see it though.

I look like a cross between a six year old and a secretary when I wear my glasses, so I wear them as little as possible these days!

Pretty much upside-down, I think!

I have put one pair on top of the other (adding reading-glasses), when I've forgotten that I'm already wearing one.

I've put two contact lenses in one eye before...that wasn't clever

Seeing 'double' you could pick up your violin(s) and perform Bach's D minor on your own!

I wish-I couldn't play it with one violin, never mind a second!

Well after some trial and error I've sorted it out Crazy situation - I resorted to propping a book up on my desk and standing a few metres away and deciding if I could see it better with lens 1 or 2 in my right eye. How annoying!

I am SO not happy

Went to the doctor because I wasn't feeling well, have had an ECG and it would appear I have a heart murmur!

Now waiting for chest xrays and stuff but I'm getting worried about my trumpet career, not only the obvious pressure from playing but also the fact that I really need to slow down and full time work and 2-3 gigs a week is not slow by any means.

I still have the piano whatever but my trumpet and I have been together a looooong time, it would be wierd without it.

Sorry just needed to vent, hopefully I'm worrying over nothing

Apologies if I'm telling you something you've already tried, Andante, but this happened to me once - and I found I wasn't navigating correctly through the ' entries and appointments page'. This particular page has various options: the appointments aren't automatically shown at first, and I don't find it at all intuitive. Eg Make sure you click on the entries (2010 B) line - even if it is the only one, and then (I think) click 'next'.

Juniper - really sorry to hear your news. Fingers crossed that it's nothing much! I seem to remember a colleague of mine was told this, but that it had been there all his life and was unlikely to be a problem.

ohhh...that's awful Juniper!!! Let us know how you get on! and no need to apologise... I'd be devastated if I was told I couldn't play the piano anymore so understand how you feel!!!!

Nope - I'm doing all that. It keeps telling me the appointment times are not yet available. I've emailed the Board.

Awww Juniper, hope its nothing serious and it doesnt interfere too much with your trumpet ( although it does sound like you could do with slowing down a little!!! but couldnt we all???? )
Hopefully the x-rays will clear things up and you can learn how to deal with it. I know a few people with murmurs and you would never be able to tell, and they lead normal lives as long as they are careful.
Hope everything goes well.

My first one went online this morning - exam date 30th June...

W

I've had a heart murmur all my life and I've always been told it's nothing to worry about. It just means that your heart isn't quite as efficient as some (I believe the murmur comes from slight leakage through a valve), so you're not likely to be the world's best athlete. It doesn't affect my everyday life at all.

I'm sure your GP would have told you if the murmur was anything serious. It's almost certain you've had it since birth, and if it's never affected you before, probably your current ill-health is nothing to do with it. Next time you see your doctor, make sure you tell him your worries; he is the best one to reassure/advise you.

Not that it's helpful but this is why I avoid doctors and hospitals unless I'm on death's doorstep - they always seem to find something wrong... Ignorance is good!

Thanks I went to the dr cos I was having palpitations and she found my blood pressure was high, hence the ECG. She said not to worry to much but I will probably need to see a heart specialist. I guess I'm more worried because friends have family have told me for years I need to slow down, I guess this time I can't ignore them


I agree, infact the doctor this morning going through my records said, you obviously don't like us you're never here!!!

I was 'diagnosed' with a heart murmur by an anaethetist before an op when I was 19. I think that most people on the ward got told they had a murmur. My mother and brother have both been told they have them too.

At the dentist a couple of years back the dentist wanted me to have a hygeinist visit but said she wouldn't go near me as I had 'heart murmur' on my medical history (as provided by me). So I trundled off to my GP, who looked at my notes from the operation I had, and he said he had no comments on there regarding my heart. But her referred me on to the cardiolgist. The cardiologist did an ECG - perfectly normal. And scheduled me for an echocardiogram (an ultrasound of the heart). Turned out, that was perfectly normal too. I actually don't have a heart murmur. I also apparently have lovely aortic cusps

But anyway, neither me nor my brother or my mother were ever told that anything in your life has to be different due to a murmur. I think it was explained to me that instead of the heart going ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump, every so often it might go ba-da-daump. But not as something you feel, like a palpitation. It's just something it does.

Still, your x-rays etc will be with someone suitably qualified who will be able to put your mind at rest far better than I can

Juniper, it is probably really unsettling to hear about your heart murmur, but just be aware that a heart murmur in itself is not necessarily indicative of a heart problem. They can actually be made more apparent by illness - so for example if you have been feeling run down or have had a virus etc, then the murmur generally gets louder and hence more noticeable. The most common type of heart murmur is a flow murmur - it's a sort of shhhhh sound that can be heard alongside the regular heart beat, and would be drawn as a wavy line rather than as distinct vertical lines to depict the ba-dum parts of the heart beat. Also, murmurs are measured on a scale, with the loudest at one end and the quietest (and hence less "bad") at the other - sorry I don't know too much more about the scale. From personal experience, I developed a heart murmur following a nasty and lengthy illness that meant I had to be taking large amounts of various drugs over an extended period - and ECGs and echocardiograms were all normal so there's no underlying heart problem. Of course, one hears the words heart murmur and instantly visualises some horrific heart problem but it is very rare for that to be the case. Hope you feel better soon

Juniper when my father was called up for the army he didn't pass the medical for the infantry on account of a heart murmur they said he had. He was assigned instead to the medical corps as an ambulance driver. If he hadn't been I do not think the gentle soul who was my dad would ever have survived the war and I wouldn't be here.

Anyway no other doctor ever confirmed this after he was demobbed and he passed the medicals required to be a public transport driver. So try not to worry. I don't think you will need to give up the trumpet.

Just to endorse what has been said - I was first told I had a heart murmur in my 50s, out of the blue at a routine medical, after years of having regular medicals for work, and referred to a cardiologist. (The doctor who spotted it said it was probably because it was very quiet in her consulting room, otherwise she wouldn't have heard it.) I was told it was caused by a flapping valve which doesn't really cause any problems except that because the blood maybe doesn't flow quite so freely round it, but might stagnate in a sort of eddy, there is a slight danger of an infection. In fact the cardiologist told me that if I ever had surgery, including dental intervention, I should take antibiotics as a precaution. However the advice has now changed and my dentist says it is no longer considered necessary for dental work.

Bizarrely, when I went to the cardiologist that time, I thought I might as well get my moneyworth by airing all my heart disease paranoias (my mother, and HER mother, having died of heart disease at a relatively early age) and I rather self-consciously asked him about the vertical creases in my ear lobes, which I had heard were indicative of heart problems. Instead of laughing me out of his consulting room, he said "How interesting. How did you know about that? I have them too, and it's true there is a correlation, but noone has been able to work out why!"

So probably nothing to worry about Juniper! So far I have survived both murmur and ear lobe creases.

PatC

Have just realised when i slipped in it that at some point in the last hour i have tipped a squirty bottle of soapy water (i used to clean the rats out) over my floor, now my lovely laminate floor has raised around the edges of at least 3 planks and looks decidedly damaged

Bet you've done better than you think. Good luck for 23rd.



I had an email from the Board saying my exam appointment times were online. The system is currently down