You may have wondered why I've been awol for all these weeks, well even if you haven't I'm going to tell you anyway.
A few months ago I started getting small sharp pains in my head that would last just for a minute or so but were so bad it brought tears to my eyes. They gradually turned into bad headaches and then my eyes started aching and itching and if I didn't know better I would have said I had the flu without any other symptoms.
I didn't know who to go to first, the doctor, the dentist or the optometrist! I opted for the optometrist and had every eye test including a new one I hadn't had before for glaucoma. Verdict - $900 later - eyes perfectly healthy all round except for needing new glasses which I hadn't had for 5 years.
Then I went to the doctor (my doctor's locum) who didn't seem too concerned about it being anything other than my eyes, he gave me eye drops and I had a blood test for infection which turned out to be negative. So what to do - I decided to limit my computer time to no more than an hour two or three times a day to see if that would help! So what to do with my time, housework was never my forte! If the computer was the problem then reading would be just as bad so then I had a brainwave and went racing down to our local library and took out a couple of audio books! These I can listen to while do all sorts of things including walking and shopping. So now I'm getting plenty of walking in but with not having the time to download and edit photos for my blog I don't take my camera with me much anymore.
I didn't have much luck with an old Walkman I picked up off Trade Me for $5, it works okay but it's rather large to lug around in your pocket as it's only for playing cassettes. Then another brainwave (I should get sore eyes more often) I Googled 'can you listen to audio books on an iPod' and came up with this great website:-
http://aldoblog.com/audiobooks/
Everything I ever wanted to know about how to use audio books on an iPod. DH very generously shouted me an iPod Nano for my birthday (not until November, with a bit of luck he will have forgotten by then) and away I went. I found that iTunes have audio books you can download straight to your iPod but they aren't exactly cheap. I'm able to get them from my local library but they don't have a great selection of the sort I like to read/listen to - Travel Non-Fiction. I have found a few that are on CD which are easily sent to my iPod but cassettes are another story, no show getting them onto the computer/iPod unfortunately. I've just finished reading/listening to a great little series written by Englishwoman Annie Hawes about her time in Liguria Italy where she bought a house and settled into the Italian way of life. Very interesting if you ever need to know about the Italian psyche and their way of life (which I did because youngest son is married to an Aussie whose parents are Italian). These books are read by Rula Lenska, an English actress some of you may know, and to my ear she speaks perfect Italian, but then what do I know! Very entertaining books which are:-
Extra Virgin: Amongst the Olive Groves of Liguria
Ripe for the Picking
Journey to the South: A Calabrian Homecoming
And the latest one:
A Handful of Honey: Away to the Palm Groves of Morocco and Algeria
So that's my latest doings, my eyes are slowly getting better and hopefully I will be able to spend a few hours on updating my blog from time to time very soon. Tomorrow I'm off to look at an iPod Docking Station so I don't have to have the earphones on when I'm at home - ain't technology wonderful? I like the look of this one but I doubt I'll find one in NZ somehow!
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