Maxine's Mental Notes

Today I am hoping to start a vlog for friends only here on Vox. I've been doing video diaries just for myself for a few months now and I've been looking for somewhere online to share them with friends - and not the general public who may be harsh with comments. I've learnt that Vox is the best place for storing and sharing videos which you can set for friends only. So - if anyone reading this would be interested in sharing video diaries or vlogs with me please leave a comment and perhaps we could friend each other and go from there. I'll be writing publicly here about my experiences doing my vlogs and what they bring up and I hope to encourage others to vlog here at Vox too as no one seems to be doing it (apart from one woman I saw at Heartbreak Art). Come on everyone - join in!

It was a lovely warm day today so I picked Mum up and took her and Hol to a local park for a long walk. Here is proof!

Mum, Hol and I took a drive to one of our local beauty spots - Eastham Ferry on the River Mersey (near Liverpool) on Saturday (June 30th).

07-06-30 - Eastham Ferrry bench.JPG

This is the laptop I ordered from Tescos yesterday. It's a Gateway MT6839b and is exclusive to Tesco. It cost £599 and I get 1,598 tesco club card points with it (now all I have to do is figure out what that means!). It was reviewed in the computer magazine my dad gets - Computeractive. I'm really excited and can't wait to pick it up on Monday from my local store.

Gateway

OK, now I am totally pissed off with O2 and this fucking Nokia N73!!!!!!!!!!!! It keeps stalling and I keep chargin it up but it makes no difference. I thought it was gonna be the best phone ever for me as it has special bloggin tools - but I can't get them to work... I'm not sure I'd use this function anyway as I don't have anything going on (or anyone to share stuff with via mobile)... The camera is good but the lense cover is poor and rattles in your hand. It's bulky and doesn't look nice and the keys are badly designed... I've had enough! And I can't get through to O2 to sort it out - well, I did get through but was promptly cut off - which I hate! I'm thinking I need to go to an O2 shop or just cancel the whole order. If I stay with them I'm gonna have to pick another phone as I think the phone itself is not up to scratch, which is a shame cos I like messin with smartphones. I had one before - an Orange SPV E200 - which was fun at first but was bulky. I'm thinking about going for a Sony Ericsson K800i for the decent camera but I also want one that will act as a decent MP3 player and one that is designed well. There's also the Samsung U600, which can come in red (which would please me) but not sure O2 would be able to provide that colour, though I did manage to get them to get the N73 in plum. Thing is I've already bought a Mini SD card for this phone which won't be compatible with the others and a case, which might be OK but I don't know. I need to go look at these phones but I don't know if I can handle a trip to Chester (my nearest shop)... It's all the more annoying as my neighbour, Linda, has been texting me and I can't read the texts and it won't even call O2 so I have to pay on my landline. AAAARRRRR!!! Does anyone have a view on any of this or am I just wasting my time stressing about it.

I got a new moby recently. It's a Nokia N73. It has a decent camera (3.2mp with a Carl Zeiss lense) and good blogging facilities (it's a Symbian phone and uses a program called Lifeblog). I've been made up with it but it has needed a lot of charging... I'm using it now to blog this. I'm not doing it from the phone itself as I'm still trying to get that part set up but I can use the Lifeblog program on the pc to gather photos - like the one below taken with my Samsung Digimax L80 - and to write my blog before sending it quite easily. I have it on an O2 contract and got a good deal as I was having problems - I had bought an O2 sim and wanted to use it in my other phone (Samsung E530) but couldn't get an unlock code from Vodafone so I phoned O2 up and the guy gave me 300 mins and 500 texts (with 100 extra texts for the first month as I couldn't move my number) for £20/m. So - I have a new number. I'm still in the process of letting everyone know what it is.

Nokia N73

What other names did your parents consider for you?

Maxwell if I was a boy - after my dad's mum's maiden name (a good Scots Ulster name). For a girl - Alison, Kirsty or Ailsa. I like Ailsa but I'm glad they went for Maxine. I have no middle name but if I did I'd like it to be Ailsa.

Today I went to see my GP... It was really hard getting myself there and I certainly wouldn't have been able to do it without my lovely mum who got a taxi round here to wake me up (appointment was 1.50pm). I was seriously tired as I had a terrible night (unable to breathe because of sinus problems). I was in a terrible mood and could hardly walk or raise my cup of tea. I had to get some baccy on the way to calm my nerves...

I'm afraid I wasn't very polite to the doc... By the time I sat down I'd forgotten why I'd come - even with Mum in the room my mind went blank. I wanted to show her the pain diary worksheets I've been filling in every day since May 23rd so I showed them to her but she only gave them a cursory glance (what did I expect?!). I also mentioned pregabalin/Lyrica as I've been reading that it's a good drug for fibro but she hadn't heard of it and when she looked it up she said there's no way I would get that prescribed in this country as it's not technically for fibro... (sigh...) So I got a bit angry and stormed out saying I don't know why I bothered to come. Of course now I realise my mood was affected by not having taken any antidepressants for a few days (I've been coming of sertraline/Zoloft) but at the time I was adamant that the doc should have treated me better... I have these confrontations with medics all the time. My mum must have been mortified (again). Oh well, how am I supposed to act when I have no life and I'm doing all I can to research treatments only to be told (again...) that I shouldn't believe anything I read on the net... I did explain that my head wasn't in gear and my mum said I was having a particularly bad day but I suppose my behaviour was out of order but it's only cos I'm so frustrated with this fibro thing and (after having been ill for 11 years and only just being diagnosed with a medical problem) I want action. She just told me to talk to the psychiatrist - who I'm seeing on Monday. I wonder if he will give me the time to show my worksheets and discuss treatment options but I highly doubt he will see it as his problem.

I started on the duloxetine/Cymbalta - I have to take one every other day at first. She said I wasn't giving it a chance. Actually I was the one who suggested it and of course I'm hoping it will help but that will no doubt take weeks and in the meantime what am I supposed to do about the pain (she wouldn't give me any painkillers)?

God I hate doctors...

Today I have mostly been...painting my nails. I must have about 6 layers on now - all different colours!

I've also been working on my Tripod site and blog. I decided to upgrade to a Pro account last night so I can upload my offline diary database - to be fixed by software provider - which I'm still trying to do now (the file is 250MB!). Of course I will delete it again once it's been fixed (I don't people reading everything I write!). Read my previous posts about computer problems re that.

Now I have to decide what to put on my main site over there: ...in search of maxjustmax... which I set up on a free account ages ago. I'm wondering if I can use my own design as theirs aren't very good. I'm also wondering whether, since I've paid, I should use the blog I have there... I can never decide which blog to use... I really should use each one for different things - like the health one I'm currently using for fibro stuff over on Blogger - but really I just want one place to write everything to... This one on Vox is good for cross-posting to LJ (as long as the post is public I just found out) so that's one less copy and paste. I'm such a ditherer... I want to write so much but choices like these are too much for me. Being a Libra doesn't help (I'm just like you Christiane!).

I suppose I could use the Tripod blog for private posts...since they don't really have a community over there (I don't think). There's also my Windows Live Spaces one... I have so many now I get confused...