Er, why is it December already?

(This post was very witty. But WordPress ate everything except the first sentence and I had to re-write it. I forgot most of the jokes. Argh)

Normally I’d title this one “I aten’t dead (still)”, but I suspect that I’ve used that title too often…

I’m not, though. Dead, I mean.

It’s been a weird year, largely featuring my battle to get the colitis into remission, which has involved several rounds of steroids and a variety of increasingly powerful drugs. Thankfully we’ve finally got there and I’m now on some lovely strong immune suppressors (plus a couple of other things) and the steroids stopped three months ago.

Unfortunately the stopping of the steroids meant the return of the back pain. That is being investigated. Ugh.

Still, looking at how ill I felt this time last year, I think that I’ve still made progress. At least I’m able to eat normally again and retain my food, which I think we can all agree is an important thing. I’m slimmer than I was, but at least I’m here 🙂

What else have I been up to? Not a lot. The big trip that I’d planned in September had to be cancelled due to another flare so much of the last few months has been pretty quiet.

I’ve read lots of books, become a (bigger) TV addict (thank you, Netflix in my Wii, DVD manufacturers and my new iPad with BBC Global iPlayer) and achieved very little knitting. Professionally has been better: despite all the illness, doctor/hospital visits, tests and drugs, I managed to get promoted at work and we successfully released a big bit of software last month. Not too shabby, I think.

So, why have I finally dusted this thing off? Well, it’s easy – books!

And maybe, TV!

As I am pretty terrible about updating on things like what I’m doing and how my life is, why don’t I fill in the gaps with book nattering? My page for this year’s books is here and I’ll be setting up something for 2012 soon.

Also, I’m doing a book challenge next year so I need to get myself signed up and a thread started for that. So much reading to do!

Good thing reading is my first big love 🙂

A little bit of re-organisation and announcement

First, the re-organisation: I’ve been sorting out and adding to the links on this blog. I’ve now separated out the blogs that I read (Blogroll) from the other links to sites I use or love. So there are now links to Girl Dislocated, Siren Voices, Nee Naw and Benefit Scrounging Scum in the blogs section and links to the HMSA, EDS Support Group, Gallifrey One and the Organisation for Transformative Works in the “Useful links section”.

There is also a link to my latest love, the BBC iPlayer. It’s amazing that a few years ago, you had to watch a grainy image 2 inches wide if you wanted to download and watch TV shows and now you can stream near broadcast quality images with barely any lag.  I love technology. I feel the need to start a campaign to allow people outside the UK to use iPlayer (hey, I’d be willing to pay a subscription for it!) so that when I eventually emigrate, I can still watch all my favourite shows.

Like Torchwood 🙂 No longer a my shiny, crappy show, it’s now my shiny, wonderful show. Three episodes in and the quality is still great, the writing is much better than before and they seem to have finally worked out that this show works best when it’s about characters rather than titillation.

Tangent. To return to the original subject:

The announcement! On Monday, I fly to Canada for a week’s holiday. I shall be spending time with family, taking care of a few legal things, eating a ton of food and generally enjoying myself. I shall attempt to blog my holiday regularly and, if I can get access to an SD card reader, maybe put a few piccies up on Flickr. It’s going to be great 🙂