05.00 pm
Well, I’m back again – after a bit of excitement last night! Sean had just left – I’d shown him the blog from this end, and everything was working just fine! Then I went into admin – just to have a quick look at a couple of Themes I’d downloaded, and I noticed that one of my plug-ins (the one that handles security and stats, actually!) had an “Update” flag on it… so I, ummm… updated it.
And everything stopped working!
Now remember, this is Word Press-dot-org, where you have to do all the maintenance and problem solving and fixing yourself, not Word Press-dot-com, where my old blog was – where they take care of things like this! We’re complete newbies at the moment – we didn’t even know what had happened! In the end, Julian “raised a ticket” with our Web Host, whom we’ve been with for about sixteen years (read: “stuck up his hand like a kid in a classroom, going “Oooh! Oooh! Help us, Obi wan Web Host, you’re our only hope!”) and then we sat back and waited! They’re in Queensland, and by the time we got that far, it was pretty late… still, they’re normally very quick to respond to nebulous requests, like “everything’s stopped working, and we don’t know why! Help!” and sure enough, they’d found the problem and fixed it by the time we got to our desks this morning. They very diplomatically told us that a plug-in (!!) had apparently “updated itself automatically” ( 😳 ) rendering it incompatible with the version of php that Word Press was using (or something) so they’d very kindly updated their version of php, and now everything’s lovely and working again! 🙂
So if any of you tried to “drop by” last night to read my latest Episode of “My Word! It’s a Really Strange Life with Winter”, that’s why you weren’t able to – and why I wasn’t able to even write it! :/ So, sorry about that one, chiefs…
Naturally, I was quite elated to get my dear little blog back on-line, but unfortunately we were going out, so once again – I had my hands somewhat tied behind my back! Julian had his appointment with his Specialist early this afternoon, to find out the results of his radioactive scan-thingy, and this time – seeing as my hair was looking really cool today (thank you Sean! 🙂 ) I was going with him. As Julian also wanted to pick up the Dry Cleaning, and get some more coffee over at Doncaster Shoppingtown, we left a bit earlier than we strictly needed to, and had our lunch over there. We arrived at the specialist’s surgery about ten minutes early, only to find that the Great Man had been held up in Surgery, and was running late! Thank heavens for Kindles! We eventually got to see the specialist, who told Julian that the condition that he’d been quietly confident that Julian had, wasn’t…. That is, Julian didn’t have this extremely rare condition after all, and that now we’re pretty much back at square one! (*rolls eyes*) He said that he could keep running tests, but that it would be pretty pointless, seeing that “the condition” isn’t present currently, and that we’ll just have to wait until it reoccurs – if it ever does (and sometimes it never does!) and either run the tests while it’s actually happening – or as close to that as possible! Ain’t science wunnerful! There he was, carted off in an ambulance, in hospital for two days (one of which was his Birthday!) had all the known tests done, and all of the results came back “clear” – so we still don’t know (a) exactly what it was, (b) if it could be life threatening or not, or (c) whether it’ll reoccur or not! :/
So because we had lunch over at Shoppingtown (it was only Toasties!) we’re having pasta tonight, with some of our very own home-made passata as sauce (cos we’ve run out of commercial gloop, and besides, I’m dying to try our very own, home-made – from home-grown tomatoes – pasta sauce!) I’ll let you all know what it was like tomorrow night! 🙂 Oh, we also bought some more fresh, sourdough bread over there, from Tree Frog – it’s called “Noir” (which is French for “black”, don’tchaknow!) We had it sliced for “toast”, and from the look of the slices (which you can see a bit of in the plastic bag) it looks black-ish, too, like a dark rye – a sort-of a very refined “Black Bread”. We’ll have some for lunch tomorrow, so I’ll be able to tell all of you about that, too, tomorrow night!
Mind you, I don’t expect to have much computer time tomorrow 🙁 We have an electrician coming over at 8.00 am to make some changes to our breaker box – we’re having extra solar panels installed on the roof, and getting in some sort of battery thingies, so the breaker box has to be “re-configured” to accommodate the extra bits and pieces – I could explain it all properly, but it would take too long as I’d have to get Julian to dictate while I typed… anyway, we’re doing all of this, not because we’re mad Greenies or anything, but so that we won’t lose our computers if there’s any sort of prolonged power outage – as seems eminently possible in the near future, with all the energy problems Australia seems to be having at the moment! So I’m making sure that my Kindle is fully charged overnight, and that all my important files are backed up and closed down properly by the time the electrician gets here, so he can turn the power off without inconveniencing us too much while he works on the breaker box – and an inside switch for the fountain by the front door! 🙂
My weight is still dithering between 74.0 kg and 74.5 kg, so at least I’m not steadily rising – but I’m wondering about my Warfarin intake a bit – I’m not due to have my next test until March 30th, but I’m getting a few unexplained – and unexplainable – bruises… Warfarin thins your blood, which means that you bruise much more easily than you normally would – but bruises shouldn’t just suddenly appear, especially when you can’t remember having bumped into anything hard enough to cause a bruise – and one definitely shouldn’t develop a bruise under one’s wrist watch! I’m keeping a close eye on my sudden and strange bruising, because people tend to forget – bruising is caused by damaged or broken blood vessels under the skin – it’s like a cur or a wound under unbroken skin – and you can also get bruised internally, where you can’t see them. In other words, you can be bleeding internally without knowing it, and this can be extremely dangerous for lots of reasons. I don’t really want to have to go and have my Warfarin blood test early in order to see if my INR is too high, but if I get another unexplained bruise, then I think I’d better.
All the fluffies and finnies are well – alas, no more pictures yet – I’ve been too busy dealing with running my blog independently – but bear with me, there’ll be more piccies soon. And that’s really about “it” from me for tonight! Do drop in again tomorrow night – hopefully there’ll be no more problems with the blog – but until tomorrow night, don’t forget to bee good, remember that money can’t buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you’re being miserable, and don’t forget to keep warm – or cool, depending on your preferences, to look after yourselves, and to always drive carefully… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂