Travel and a few random thoughts

And that first random thought is that I really need to blag one of those cans of air to clean out the keyboard on this laptop !

It was Mothers Day this weekend just gone, so we all did the travelling thing (it's tradition). Was a fairly good weekend all told. Gotta admit, I'm still looking inwards when I rate a day as Good or Bad at the moment. My skin is gradually getting better, although it's gone slightly backwards today (not had enough water lately).

I think it was a good weekend for my mum, which is what counts. It was the first time we'd all been back since the funeral. (My nan was my mum's mum) House felt a bit different, there was a definite sense of a gap. That's the hardest thing about a loss, the unconscious expectation that someone is about to pop their head around the corner.

My mum's suffering from 2 health issues at the moment (well, actually a couple more), one of which is a severely broken elbow. Like complications with the nerves and massive cast kind of thing. But that looks like it's mending, random pain (from confused nerves) is turning into meaningful pain and she can wiggle the fingers. Happy Days. She appreciated the flowers too.

We've been changing things around a bit. Since they retired, my mum and dad haven't really needed more than one car. Their normal runabout was written off in a crash (they're ok - yey !, car was written off - yey !*) so they had the opportunity to turn 2 cars into one. They have an A Class Merc now, which meets with approval. My sister has their MX-5, which they'll use as a commuter car because it does double the mpg of the Merc ML they have.

*The dead car was the Volvo, which I hated. I didn't get on with the brain in its automatic gearbox and it was too slow to justify <30mpg .="" p="">
So - travel this weekend and a few excuses to play with more techie stuff.

Internet radio - this was a bit of a bust to be honest. I had my phone hooked up to the car via bluetooth and it was pulling in Test Match cricket commentary audio from the BBC iplayer app. Just one problem - lack of signal and a lack of the app waking itself up when the signal returns. Next time, I'll try the Tune In Radio app and I'll see how it copes with the signal loss.

Phone providing the music - This needs a little more preparation or a passenger who's taste coincides with your's. The iPhone 5 (contrary to some reports) works perfectly with Bluetooth connected it to my Lexus CT or the Merc A Class. The A Class was limited to telephone connectivity, whereas my Lexus can also pull in audio from apps or music. But - you can't control what music is played outside of Next Track, Last Track. Here comes the :
Preparation by making a playlist for the trip
Passenger to tell the phone what to play

I'll definitely keep using the phone for car music, when I don't just go to the iPod Nano random selection. They both have the same amount of memory installed but the Ipod holds 33% more tunes.

Dad's phone - my dad has a new phone to let him use it with the Merc. The old one didn't have Bluetooth, the new one is a HTC Wildfire S which does. Incidentally, the HTC was the most reluctant to talk via Bluetooth.

Satnav - my car apparently likes Mansfield. It's a bit more North than I should really go but twice now, it's diverted me that way to avoid bad traffic near Leicester. I like that feature, I just don't lose time to traffic jams any more when I'm on long trips.

Car swaps - we've done this before. My mum had a Belmont SRi with no power steering, which was causing her problems with her arms. My sister had just blown up her Astra GTE. I needed something more reliable for starting work. So I got the Belmont (excellent car, shouldn't have part-exed it), my sister got my Astra Mk1 while looking to either repair the GTE or get something new. My mum really got short straw with a truly nasty Peugeot 205.

I'm rambling again aren't I ? I think I need to find some good topics to focus in on. Blogging has been frustrating lately. I've had the urge to post stuff, I just haven't had anything quality to talk about. A lot of the themes have been done to death in the 800+ posts so far. I feel a music post coming on though. Soon.

Health wise, I'm steadily improving although my skin is still ridiculously weak. Just rubbing it too hard can make it bleed. Not good. But it is improving. I have the feeling though that my skin will recover in time for cricket but the rest of me will be a wreck.

Tally at the moment - really badly stiff neck and shoulder, swollen legs and hips that hate me. Plus a huge tendency to cramp which is due to a water imbalance. The water thing is in hand - I'm drinking lots of water but I don't think I'm drinking it quite fast enough to satisfy my body's need for it to sort my skin out.

I'll leave this post with a Youtube link - it's dedicated to a colleague :-) It was one of the tracks from the car last night and it sticks in the mind ...