mintybloggydiarythingy 2.0

Week from Monday 2nd November 2026 - Seems I missed another whole week of diarizing! AND HERE'S HOW. I'm now most definitely back in MYELOMA FUNLAND and I'm coming up to the end of my first cycle of CHEMO (brackets, 'MOSTLY-NON-STABBY VARIETY', close brackets). Routine stuff... But on Tuesday, I got a phone call from the hozzy asking me to come in for some tests, as I'd recently brought my BREATHLESSNESS and occasional SORE FEET to their attention and they wanted to scan me for BLOOD CLOTS. Fair enough. But what they DIDN'T mention up front was that it would involve an overnight stay (or more... later!). So I arrived at the hospital as soon as my legs and the bus service would allow, but with only the clothes I was standing up in (my standard, long established uniform of cargo pants and a band t-shirt) and no form of entertainment to wile away any hours of 'PATIENT WAITING'. They first plonked me on a ward with three other blokes who were in much...

Week from Monday 19th October 2026 - PATIENT WAITING... I took another BLOOD TEST, as is my wont, and I've had a late morning telephone chat with THE KIDNEY PEOPLE. All is okey dokey in the RENAL department - there's been no noticeable difference since my previous examination, six months ago. I've got yet another PHONE-IN scheduled for tomorrow, this time with the HAEMO/ONCO peeps. I did some more for the "CBQ MINIATURES" project, and some sort of "CONCEPT" is emerging! Having completed twenty little tracks based entirely on sounds derived from Mr Quartet's own recordings, I've kinda reached the limit of what I can do JUST manipulating HIS sounds. Besides, I'm itching to try out my own instruments! So 'the album' will now consist of a "CLOUDLAND BLUE QUARTET & PEDANTIC PEDESTRIAN" 'side' and a "PEDANTIC PEDESTRIAN & CLOUDLAND BLUE QUARTET" 'side'. (BTW, I still haven't strayed over o...

Week from Monday 5th October 2026 ...AND WE'RE BACK! I now have all of my LOST DATA returned to me on an accessible medium... The annual FLU JAB has been gleaned (merely a five minute walk away) and the COVID one has been booked for a couple of weeks' time when it shouldn't get in the way of any other pressing engagements... Further BLOODENINGS have been had... I had my conflab with my new CLINICAL NURSE SPECIALIST, and together we have kicked off the second season of CHEMO. It's a lot less stabby and jabby this time around, but I will be keeping track of my daily or weekly intake of Lenalidomide, Dexamethasone, Co-Trimoxazole, Aciclovir, Allopurinol, Apixaban and Omeprazole, not to mention the Candasartan, Loratadine, Paracetamol and Ispaghula that I take already! Needless to say, using my skills acquired from all those years of designing POWERPOINT SLIDES, I made a CHART! If only for the fact that I now have to imagine a 'week' that runs from THURSDAY to WED...

It would be untrue to say that the NEW PEECEE PROJECT has otherwise gone 'SMOOTHLY', but I have at least achieved some sort of success. So Far. I now have a working WINDOWS 11 platform, relatively free of bloatware and any Copiloted interference. Alongside that, I have a fully operational LINUX system running on an EXTERNAL USB DRIVE, thus being free of the kind of cockups that one can get when one tries to DUAL BOOT alongside Windoze on a SINGLE drive. Notoriously, whenever Windows receives a regular update, those dreadful M1©r0$o f T people will overwrite any changes you may have made to 'THEIR' operating system. This, as I already found, includes disabling your Linux's startup files, meaning that your second OS is no longer there as an option. Much better if the GRUB MENU is on a different drive altogether. As Django Bates once said, "YOU LIVE AND LEARN. APPARENTLY." I encountered a number of headaches before getting the LINUX to work at all. Plenty of...

Week from Monday 14th September 2026 - On Saturday, I left home for my HOZZY APPOINTMENT extra early, as I half expected the kind of omnibus delays I'd encountered earlier in the week. In the event, I did get there in PLENTY of time (I arrived at the obstacle just in time to watch the AIR AMBULANCE depart from the helipad for its journey back to Eastleigh). I got dealt with straight away though, and I relaxed UNDER THE DRIP while listening to the previous night's excellent performance of MAHLER #9 off of the Proms. I then spent the rest of the day either waiting FOR or waiting ON buses, hopping about the city. I had to find my way to CURRYS, out on the Ocean Retail Park where the airport once was, so that I could purchase that 'USB-C-to-USB-A-female-converter' that I need for my NEW LAPTOP PROJECT. That involved a slow held-up bus from the hospital to the city centre, a wait for the number nineteen out to the east of the island, a slow journey through traffic to OCEAN...

My appointment with the PREMIUM-PRICED DENTIST revealed that my maxillofacials are AOK and nothing needs fixing. Which is a huge relief, if only for the fact that it would cost a bloody fortune if it did! There has also been a routine BLOODLETTING ahead of my Wednesday FACE-TO-FACE with the docs. SPIN CYCLE... In parallel with LA VUELTA, I've been dipping into the TOUR OF BRITAIN coverage. ITV4 are carrying it live. But I have no vested interest in the results this time around, so I'm just enjoying the scenery! Meanwhile in the Netherlands, the five-day ZLM TOUR is occurring. Typically, when there's a race going on which I DON'T get to watch, 'MY TEAM' does amazingly well, and that's very much the case with this one! The LiDL-TREK lads are hoovering up every stage win, point and bonus second going, especially Czechmate MATHIAS VACEK and mighty MAX WALSCHEID. But I'll have to take soshul meejer's word for it, because there are no tellyclips to be vie...