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Serinde, I have had a fair bit to do with containers for transportation of major components for Airbus/ESA Eurostar 3000 & Eurostar Neo spacecraft https://www.airbus.com/en/space/telecom/eurostar-series, but not too many others (Beagle 2 was one). Those spacecraft can be up to 8 tonnes and sit in geostationary orbit, acting as huge data relays for earth based information networks. Several hundred of those spacecraft have been launched if you include the earlier versions in the last 25+ years, and 94 in the current configurations.


This morning, at 5.50am our household was woken up by the phone. Never a good sign. MIL, who had gone home on 19 December, had fallen over. She'd been knocked out, had a huge bruise on the back of her head and was lying in a pool of blood from a skin tear on her elbow. We called the ambulance, and at the end of it, it was touch & go if she was taken to hospital. As she was too immobile and still vey dizzy, it was decided to take her to A&E. That was 8am. We went back home to have breakfast & then set out for work. Oh joy.
Saturday, the plan is that both Tracy & I are off to see my Dad. However, if MIL comes home before then, Tracy will stay at home to settle her in.

Regards,

Richard

It all just keeps coming for your family, doesn't it? praying that there will be some relief this year and you can have some stress-free, peaceful time!

There are times when I think we're hazardous to know...

Regards,

Richard

Poor MIL! She's been through the mill lately for sure. It's a good plan for you both to go together to see your father, if that's possible. Guess it just depends on how well she recovers, which is a thing to be wished for.

Richard, sorry all your family is going through.

Sorry I’ve been MIA. Things have been rather hectic here. Before Christmas we had grandkids visit for a few weeks, which is fun but busy.

A lot of minor illness over Christmas, and one son’s family was more serious illness requiring doctors and antibiotics. When it hit my son he ended up in the hospital with myocarditis…again. Doctors can’t figure it out. Last time he had four heart attacks, and no sign of any damage to his heart. Still, no sign of damage to the heart. They think when he gets a virus it hits his heart and causes swelling. This is not uncommon with young healthy men after they had Covid. As a first responder he caught it during the first wave, before vaccines were available.

Here’s hoping the year improves.

Golly, I do hope so, too! My DH and both sons contracted Covid very early on, and Younger Son was in bed for a couple of days (unusual for him); Elder Son very sick for about 10 days, but avoided hospital; his senses of smell and taste took their sweet time returning. DH was flat on his back for a week, then recovered slowly; then had it again in 2022 (Epsilon?). It's a very tricksy virus.

Roland, so good to hear from you again.

Covid is horrible, and the symptoms are weird. Never hear of symptoms of a heart attack as being one, that must be terrifying. And Myocarditis sounds like a really serious problem. Hope he is OK & stays that way in the long term.

BTW, I can't see your avatar image. If you can, it may well be worthwhile saving it and re-uploading the image as may avatars on the forum seem to have gone AWOL. I had to re-upload my Albert avatar too.

Regards,

Richard

Having listened to a podcast about long Covid I realise my own LC symptoms are mercifully mild, but even then they are annoying. Very frightening when they are as impactful as in your son!

@richardandtracy myocarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle, and that can cause heart attacks. Myocarditis is a known side effect of vaccines, including the Covid shot, however it is much more common from Covid. It can also be caused by other viruses, and in DS case they think Covid has caused other (more minor) viruses to attack his heart.

A whole lot of smilies are not working for me either.

Stitch Magazine asked me to record a short video to go with Bunny Beware. Editing the clips turned out to be more tricky than I expected, mostly, it has to be said, because my main computer is fairly pre-historic. But with some advice from our church's main techie, and DH's more powerful laptop, I managed today - yay !

Scary! But well done for figuring it out. (Can your business afford to buy you a new computer? If making videos is going to be a "thing", it might be an idea?)

I don't think it's going to be a thing, Serinde, not if I can help it! And the main business can definitely afford one, it's me digging my heels in because I'm used to the one I have and it works (except for video editing) and so on....

Well! That was a close shave. But here we are, back again, thanks (I expect) to Alex

Back but No Puffin avatar!!

You will probably have to reload it. Mine disappeared, too, and that's what I did. Whatever shall we do without your puffin??

Odd - in Firefox I still get the "domain expired" message even after clearing cookies and refreshing, but in Brave it works! (Hence me typing this now ) Any suggestions?

I wonder if Firefox is routed through different servers, or is querying different domain name servers, and those are taking a little while to have the restored domain name propagation go through them. When my web site's domain name expired (unexpectedly as I'd paid for 5 years and got 3) I was told it'd take up to 24 hours to propagate through all servers.

Regards,

Richard

The UK Self-Assessment tax deadline is fast approaching (end of the month). My dad has to submit a tax assessment, and usually gets an accountant to do it on his behalf.

I picked up his affairs from my late step brother and couldn't find any evidence that his usual accountant has had the information. So I tried phoning, and couldn't get through to her, so ended up using snail mail. The upshot of that was that the accountant's executor phoned me up to say that unfortunately the accountant had had to have heart surgery and died during the operation. This was in November 2023... My dad was one of two clients the executor had been unable to contact to let them know the news. The executor had obviously been a close friend and I could still hear the shock in her voice when she told me. Poor woman.

Going to have to find a local accountant & see if I can collect together the information needed in double quick time. Then on the weekend of the 2-4 Feb I'm going to have to go down again to check on my dad and see that the house hasn't suffered further damage from the recent storms.

Just once in a while I wonder if I have a reverse Midas touch. Everything I touch that should be [moderately] simple turns from gold to lead...

Regards,

Richard

Yet another worry for you (although as you say I also feel for the lady who so unexpectedly lost her friend). Have you thought of doing it yourself? Depending on how complicated your father's finances are, filling in the online assessment is actually fairly straightforward. DH used to get his personal one done by the accountant who also does the business accounts, but some years ago I said I'd do our personal ones saving us a chunk of money in the process. Unless there are complications in his financial circumstances, it's probably quicker to do it yourself than to find a good accountant!

Just for this first year, I think it's probably best to get someone to do it as the turn-around will be quicker. Probably. I'll need to learn everything and it's just one more thing..

We've had to pay his water bill as the Power of Attorney hasn't come through yet, and it was something that had got to the letter after the final demand. The rest seems reasonably in order.

Regards,

Richard