Recently I have...

Bought a new suitcase...

It looks bluish but it's actually mauve!

Taken Eduardo to the vet for a check up...

( The vet said that he is in good health but the scab on his nose that has been there for a month is, as I suspected, a form of skin cancer that light coloured cats can tend to develop. No sign of spreading or ulceration at the moment so 'we are just keeping an eye on it' for the time being)

Had a check up at the doctor myself and consequently have had an iron infusion to top up my depleted iron levels...

The little hospital where my haematologist works from

 Getting my iron...old way used to take 5-6 hours...now the newer method takes 15 minutes!

Went to the dentist to discuss the issues with that annoying tooth...which led to the difficult decision to have the tooth removed this afternoon....

Had some photos taken...
I wasn't allowed to smile...

Renewed my passport as it is due to expire in early May this year

Went to the pharmacy with a special '3 month supply' script from my GP...

And recently I have been working at using technology which is new to me. Earlier this year I had read about an accessory for an iPad called a 'card reader' in Janice's blog. It seemed to be the answer to my problem of how to upload photos from my camera to my iPad. I planned to buy one but my friend Helen gave me her card reader as it does not fit the port in her iPad 3. So I practised uploading/importing  photos taken with my camera using the card reader in my recent trip to Melbourne.

The card reader slips into the port where you recharge the iPad and then the SD card from the camera is inserted into the card reader...

 As if by magic...the photos appear on the iPad...

And then it was a simple matter to insert the images into a blog post written using the Blogger app...

I also have recently bought some new jeans and 3 long-sleeved tops...

DH has also organised with the credit union to get some foreign currency...

I have also gathered my potted plants together into one spot in the backyard and have a shelf in the laundry filled with cans of cat food.

So I have a new suitcase, have had health checks on myself and the cat. I have had passport photos taken and have renewed my passport and we have some British pounds, Euros and some HK dollars. Also I have got more than 1 month's supply of medications, I have bought some new warmer clothes, worked out, and then practised how I can use the iPad instead of a laptop of PC for blogging, Plants have been grouped to make watering them easier and I have a stockpile of cat food...

You've probably guessed...DH and I are off on another travel adventure. On Tuesday we are heading for London where we will stay for 4 nights before picking up a hire car and travelling around England, Scotland and Wales for approximately 4 weeks. On April 23 we head back to London and catch the EuroStar to Calais. From there we will travel to Amiens in time for ANZAC Day at Villers Bretonneux where we will join friends at the Aussie War memorial there. Then we will stay in Paris for a few nights before heading home via Hong Kong. 

DsD3 has always been our house sitter but with her in Canada, my neighbour Judy and DD1 will share the care of Eduardo and collection of the mail.  We will not be lugging our laptop this time...just the iPad...what a great gadget it's turned out to be!!

An unexpected outing...

On Monday, DH ended up taking Eduardo the cat, and I out for a short drive later in the morning...it all started like this...
DH reported that the cat had not eaten the dry food that he had put out for him early that morning; Eduardo had ignored the food and just stayed curled up on the chair on the veranda. Now this is the cat who starts up his cacophony of piteous meowing as soon as he hears footsteps in the morning.
I checked him and he was quite listless. I checked for ticks and then for any wounds etc from a possible catfight early in the morning. I didn't find anything.

The next step was the 'chicken test'. I got some uncooked chicken from the freezer and shaved off some pieces...let them thaw and then offered them to him. He wasn't interested, so I knew something was wrong. You know the old saying about 'walking across hot coals'? Well Eddie would certainly do that for raw chopped up chicken! lol   So I rang the vet and organised an appointment at 11 am.
(Now through all of this, DH thought I was overreacting and that the cat had just had a 'hard night' and would be perfectly fine but because he loves me 'he went along with how things were going').

So the cat carrier was brought upstairs by DH, taken out of its covering bag, dusted and a towel put on the base. Unlike other cats I've had, Eduardo did not sneak away when he saw the carrier, lol. So that's how I had my outing...DH drove us to the next suburb to the veterinarian practice that I have been taking my pets to for years, although the original owners have sold up and retired for quite a while now...

We had to wait about 10 minutes, so Eduardo 'sang' in his carrier...

That's bags of expensive dry food for dogs in that unit in the waiting room...

The vet checked him over very thoroughly; also taking blood and urine samples and checking his temperature. I noted that the vet looked between the cat's toes, looking for ticks there too...I didn't realise that ticks could be there as well as the more obvious places! The vet could find no ticks and no cat bites or scratches that had been infected. Eddie's kidneys were fine but two sore spots were found on Eduardo's back. Shane, the vet, decided to treat Ed with an anti-inflammatory drug and gave the cat a dose straight away.

While DH put eduardo in the car, I just had to take a photo of the bougainvillea growing over the fence of the front carpark at the vets..

Within an hour of getting home Eduardo was back to normal, walking around, eating etc. Phew! And that evening I took this photo of him looking rather smug sitting on the sofa...on the rug I made years ago especially for DH...Eduardo thinks the rug is his! lol