what a week. first things first i suppose.

music server – still no joy. the “right” one came back from the techie guys, ostensibly fine and working, but when we opened it, set it up and connected it, it wasn’t ok. no power light, although there was clearly power, you could hear the fan. but it wouldn’t connect, either via the network, or directly. had a long talk with said techie guys, tried more fiddling and faffing about (taking out the hard drives, changing the network leads) but no joy. now we’re in the process of insisting on a refund. Hmph.

next thing, also computer related. have been trying to get iTunes to work in Ubuntu. well, what a performance. there are a number of software packages in Ubuntu which will do some of it. I need cover art, ripping, medata editing and syncing. none of them will sync, but one or two of them will do most of the rest. well, that’s no good. i knew about  “wine” which is a little package you can use in Ubunto to make Windows packages work. But not iTunes. Same with “playonlinux”, which was new to me, and quite exciting till I discovered it doesn’t like iTunes. but nowhere on my extensive trawl of the internet did anybody mention something absolutely fabulous called “VirtualBox”. It’s free, written by oracle, and amazing. you install it, and then you install Windows x inside it, then you install iTunes inside that. It mostly works – the only stumbling block is ripping, but it works perfectly otherwise. i guess most people download music these days anyway, i certainly do, so i’ll be using that from now on, rather than dual booting. my friend’s extremely techie partner told me, via her, about it. thank goodness there’s somebody to ask now, though don’t want to bother him too much.

and me. how am i? well, have been improving day by day but today have needed a tramadol, having managed without for the past three days. but that’s ok i think. am anxious because i’m supposed to have the cast removed next tuesday, and still have no appointment with the hospital. when it does come through, i then have to phone physio and try and get an appointment synced with them so i go to one department, get the cast off, then go to physio. not going to work, is it, they’re going to be fully booked.

and to finish on a lighter note, we had all five grandchildren to stay last weekend. it was absolutely lovely. they love being together, and played so well, lots of laughing and hugging. loved it. and here are a couple of photos of said weekend!

hospital yesterday. they removed the old cast, took out four stitches from the three wounds in my wrist – the big wound in my hand has invisible stitches under the skin. put on a new cast – a thumb spica they called it – which immobilises my thumb. the cast is smaller, lighter, and much harder/firmer than the last one. i was able to wash my hands – oh the bliss – before they removed the stitches and stuff.  i was in a lot of pain last night – because they’d been Doing Things to my hand I guess, and today not much better.

But i’ve managed to reduce the tramadol to 1 x 4 times a day, which is less than 2 x 3 times a day. still taking the paracetamol though.

i seem to have less use in my hand now because the thumb is not moveable. but the strength in my fingers is still gradually improving. i can’t do my own hair mousse though now. two more weeks and they are going to remove the plaster, fix me up with a removable splint, and give me physio exercises to do.

but they said yesterday it’ll be a good 3 months before i’m anything like back to normal. you know, they don’t tell you this stuff before the op. only afterwards.

must say the care at the hospital is absolutely wonderful. i love the NHS. without it, i’d be in real trouble, physically and financially. thank goodness for it i say.