Latest editions to the house

As you might be aware, we visited Barcelona a few weeks back and came back with... some amusing but nicely taken photographs. The theme is a combination of food and little plastic figurines. Sounds weird, but the pictures make us giggle and they're nice and colourful, brightening up the house and making it feel more homely.


We bought two small prints and have hung these in the kitchen. We also bought a large print and have hung this in the main room and it has quite an effect on the lighting, since it seems to cause a red reflection to spread throughout the room


You might also be able to make out that we've now had the skirting boards installed in the house, so it's slowly becoming more and more homely. And we didn't just stop with the photographs... we also got around to hanging up the poster that we bought when we were in Hong Kong earlier this year.


The garden's coming along too... with the combination of down pours of rain interspersed with sunshine, the garden in looking pretty green and most of the plants have now doubled in size since we planted them last year. Here's a picture of Flo sat out in the garden with her parents... it was surprisingly warm this weekend!


It's almost time to organise the house warming party I feel!

Coffee whippe

Coffee whippe, originally uploaded by jonnycorcutt.

One of the things I enjoy about the morning is our ritual coffee making... not only does it taste lekker, it kick starts the day!

This morning the coffees were particularly good (and needed to be since it was a relatively early start to the day), mainly because we forgot to set the dishwasher this morning so had run out of regular pans... so Flo ended up using an enormous steaming pan to heat up the milk and inevitably poured too much into it, since it was difficult to gauge the correct amount.

But the extra milk enabled me to get a good froth, which I used to full advantage, as you can see.

More tests!

Yesterday it was a test for gluten and today it was allergy testing!

Our doctor is currently participating in a trial treatment, which is said to effectively treat allergies and negate the requirement for anti-histamine drugs.

I've been an habitual user of anti-histamine drugs for pretty much as long as I can remember and I hate it. I can feel that they're not doing me any favours at all, especially when I stop taking them... within a few days I noticeably start to feel more alert and lively. But living life with pollen allergies is horrible... itchy eyes, stuffed up nose, sneezing, irritable skin... just not nice.

The first step in the process is to take a skin test, to test exactly which things one is allergic to. So today I went to the doctors surgery, where they plopped 13 small samples onto my skin and then gave my skin a little scratch for the samples to get under the skin.

After 10 minutes, here was the result.


The tests confirmed what I already knew... that I'm allergic to pretty much all grass, plant and tree pollens, but it was surprising to see that I didn't react to the cat test. I was tested a few years back and that showed up that I was allergic to cats, so it appears that my tolerance to them has improved considerably, probably due to exposure to our two kitties Boris and Boika.

Next step is a chat with the doctor, who will decide whether or not to place me on the trail... but going on the quite severe reaction I had to the grass pollen, I can't see why he wouldn't? It was damn itchy, but the nurse told me I wasn't allowed to scratch.

Here's a copy of my test results.


As usual, click the picture for a close up.

CoeliaTest

A couple of days ago, Flo ordered a CoeliaTest.

That's what I thought.

Both Flo and I suffer from symptoms of tiredness and recently Flo's not been regular with her periods. Inspired by the recent news that one of her friends has just been diagnosed with a Gluten intolerance and aware that this intolerance can cause the symptoms described, Flo's been online and ordered us each a self test kit.

Today the kits arrived and Flo could barely hide her enthusiasm after dinner to get the tests done, getting the kits out on the table before I'd even finished tidying it up. So we took it in turns to test one another and sat for the required five minutes watching the little pieces of test paper.


The result was a bit double. Great that we can continue to happily chomp away on bread and pasta, but kind of sad not to have any answers to our questions. It would be great if there was something tangible to blame everything on that's wrong in our lives. Suppose life's not like that though... in truth it would probably be a bit boring if it was.

If you're interested, here's a description of what the test results mean and some contact info if you fancy trying it yourself.


As usual, click if you want to go larger.

It's me!

Thought I'd give ShoZu a try with my new phone!