T + 470 Happy Twixmas

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Happy Twixmas to all my readers. Twixmas of course being the official name for that weird twilight period between Christmas and New Year.

I had a very nice Christmas at home with Mom and Dad and observed all the usual Stanford family traditions. This year I was also able to go see my Brother and his family in the morning of Christmas day as they were all healthy this time.

As far as medical stuff is going, things are ticking along nicely. I've not had any occurrence of GVHD and the 2.5mg of prednisolone steroid every other day is not causing any major problems as far as my energy levels. The only thing I have noticed is a bit of a bout of nausea, tiredness and general yukiness about 2 hours after I have had my morning pills.

It passes after about 15 minutes so I just have to sit quietly and wait it out for the most part. I'll mention it to the doc when I go next Wednesday ( 6th Jan ) but I suspect my ciclosporin levels might be just a bit high and causing this reaction after my morning dose.

I logged on to work this morning for the first time since the start of my Christmas break and I'll be working a half-day tomorrow as well. Then I am off until Monday the 4th January.

Oh and just for a bit of fun, if you read this via the web and not an RSS feed you'll see I have a "guest columnist" offering words of wisdom on the site, just over the holiday period.

Now to promote a rather good podcast I have been listening to for a while...

Escape Pod

Escape Pod is a weekly podcast that is a reading of a Science Fiction story. I came across it a few months ago after seeing my Dad had subscribed to it when he saw it featured on the iTunes store.

I can't praise this podcast enough. If you like science fiction then check the website http://escapepod.org or search for "escape pod" on iTunes.

The stories are really well read and for the most part the audio quality is very good. ( Just the Xmas day issue had poor quality but we'll let them off that as they were probably busy with other stuff like eating turkey and getting drunk ).

The stories themselves have been really engaging and only one of the couple of dozen I have listened to has been "not my cup of tea".

Check it out.

They also have sister podcasts Pseudo Pod for horror and Castle Pod for fantasy. I've listened to a couple of the fantasy ones and they are equally good. I just don't have time to fit in listening to them on a regular basis along with all the other podcasts I have. Can't vouch for the horror stories on Pseudo Pod because as you may know "I don't do scary."

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