Marvellous

I stood up and could smell hot plastic. A quick glance around showed the TV was on and fine, my laptop was on and fine, Jo was using her computer... I looked at my monitor and it was off - which is strange. Then I noticed the power light was flashing - which usually means No Signal.

The computer was ON, but no signal. Forced shutdown, fiddled with graphics card - still dead.

I've got such a headache I just cannot deal with it at the time being, but I have a suspicion something has died on a massive scale. Ho hum. Fingers crossed I can repair it, otherwise, it's laptop only for me.

For The Record #432

Waking up with a stonking headache is not a good way to start the day.
Still, sunglasses are hip and happening. Apparently.


-Posting from a mobile...

In The Wee Small Hours...

Earlier today, my head started doing it's thing. That strange tingling sensation when - unlike Spidermans Spidey Sense alerting him to danger - mine alerts me to an incoming Migraine. Added to that, my constant *sniff sniff* "You smell that?" was a pretty good give away.

I managed to fend it off mostly in order to be both social with Lane, and to do the school run. Around five, I nodded off on the sofa, was woken up by everyone telling me it was dinner time, picked my way through dinner feeling more and more icky, only to find myself waking up in bed at about half one this morning. Apparently, I flaked on the sofa again and was put to bed.

The headache is still there, but no where near as bad as it was, but of course, after dozing/flaking for several hours, I'm wide awake. I tried laying in bed for a couple of hours thinking I'd nod off, but something was bothering me. I could not for the life of me place it.

So I set to prowling through the house. Had a moment of panic when I couldn't see Tam in her room, but she had turned around and shifted to the other end of the bed. Restarted her Spongebob DVD, turned it down, checked on the boy. He was curled up fast asleep - uncovered and shivering - on one of his Horrid Henry books. Covered him, removed book, turned his music down.

Checked the middle floor. Rats needed some water, so refilled their bottles. Various bits of crockery; glasses, cups, bowls, cutlery all around the lounge, so collected that all up and took it down stairs. Plonked it in the kitchen - which was a state - emptied the tumbler, reloaded it, filled the washing machine. Still, something felt wrong. Garden was empty. Front door.

NOT SHUT.

Now, it wasn't open a huge amount, and passing by the house in the dark, it might have appeared to just be a shadow instead of open. But none the less, the front door was ajar.

So, now it's 4am and I've cleaned up the kitchen, put away the drying up, put things in to soak, tidied up the front room, messed around a bit on WoW, and as they are doing a server restart, I figured I would blog.

And I am wide awake, with a head ache, feeling a twinge of paranoia at the what-if's.

Still - I knew there was something wrong...

Bleeeergh...

It has to be said, Boys Weekend is off to a less-than-auspicious start. For dinner, I created the culinary masterpiece of "Microwave Sweet and Sour" for Jaysen, and "Microwave Duck in Ho Sin Sauce" for yours truly. While the little mans dinner was cooking, it smelt marvellous. I love chinese food at the best of times, and I love duck, but his Sweet and Sour smelled glorious.

While mine was cooking, I wondered for a moment if I was microwaving the cats toilet. OK, it probably didn't smell that bad, but none the less, it wasn't a "oooh I can't wait to eat that" smell.

So I cook it, serve it and think "doesn't look as good as Jaysens" but, none the less, I take my plate and my manly glass of milk upstairs and sit at my desk eating. Jaysen inhaled his dinner and said how nice it was.

Mine wasn't quite that good. The rice was almost powdery. The duck was full of bone, gristle and "bits" and tasted like microwaved ass. Whatever that tastes like, but I think it was a pretty good approximation. I managed to "eat" just under half of it before giving up. I complained to the management, but he didn't listen.

Sally enjoyed it, after I picked out the rest of the boney bits.

An hour or so later, from nowhere, a migraine arrived. If I didn't know better, I was being house-invaded and was smacked in the head with a lump of solid matter. It literally came on from nowhere. Ugh. So, shit dinner, and now I felt like hell. I flopped on the sofa, told Jaysen "bed in half an hour" and stayed there trying to remain Conscious and... well, actually, that was my only goal. I got myself some water and had a sip here and there.

Jaysen was great - he let Sally out for her bedtime pee, locked the back door, turned off the lights, and went to bed. I was minutes behind for bed. When Jo is away, he sleeps in our bed with me, and was reading. As I stumbled into the room, he apologised for the light being on (he was reading) and clicked it off for me, and I collapsed into bed, pillow on my head, brain feeling like it's trying to push its way out my eyeball.

An hour later, the crappy duck and rice put in a repeat performance, only in reverse as my migraine dragged me from bed, put my head in the toilet, and emptied out the rubbish dinner. Better out than in I suppose.

And it didn't smell much different either ;)

The headache subsided drastically after that, I had some more water, was able to check my mail, and finally flopped into bed and slept, finally falling out of bed just after half nine this morning. The head is fine this morning - fuzzy from meds, and a dull ache inside which is nothing in comparison, so I'm officially restarting Boys Weekend with a bowl of porridge.

And hurrah for Saturday Morning blogposts containing vomit! At least it wasn't booze-orientated vomit I suppose!

Busy Bee

In the true styles of a certain lasagne-eating cat, yesterday was a constant crapfest. I had to face the town, so the less said about that the better for all. We didn't get back in till gone half two in the afternoon, which gave me 15 minutes to put shopping away, grab something to eat (a doughnut), and then run out again into the Arctic Wilds of Basildonia to grab the boy from school.

The house is a tip, we've got Cel stealing out laundry so we don't run out of the necessities - I mean, do you WANT me walking around naked, plus we're trying to deal with Xmas and everything else. Joy.

In other news, Jo's foot is now officially on the mend and she can walk about without much hassle. On the other hand, while she was at the erotica show on Sunday, there was a woman looking for volunteers to demonstrate a new tongue-piercing technique. Guess who now also has a hole in their tongue.

Some people just can't think of their own trend to follow.

Where her tongue is a little swollen she sounds like she has a bit of a lisp, but on the bright side, it's making her form her words properly so she doesn't sound like a common old trout for once. She sounds like a real Essex Girl most days, but for the time being, she is actually pronouncing words correctly.

And last night, in celebration of Lane getting a new job, the girls went out to Bas Vegas and partied. Which left me with the moody kids. Again. *huff*

Once again, I had issues coming up with a Musical Monday song, but I hope to fix that shortly with a bit of creative date editing and posting something. He says, hopefully.

Aside from all that, I've been dodging a migraine for the last few days - it keeps looming behind my eye, and I pop enough pills to push it back, but I can feel it building a while later. I think I might let the bastard just come out, get it over with...

The Sofa

It's nearly midnight here in Chez 0ddness, and yet, here I am, pissing around on my blog. The reason is simple - I am on the sofa tonight.

Thankfully, I hasten to add, it's not one of those "YOU can sleep on the sofa tonight" instances, but me, being the perfect gent that I am, have given up my bed for our friend Lane.

Yes, there are two women in my bed tonight... But I am still the gentleman here ;)

Lane is having what you might want to term "A Bloody Awful Time", and has spent the day here alternating between crying, laughing, chasing the kids, and chilling out. She even got to see Migraine Dan pass out on the sofa and bury himself under a stack of sleeping bags. She's been through a lot in the last few months, and it's all coming out on our shoulders.

She's also the person that "helped" me get our replacement washing machine in. She's even started to blog a bit, I've added her to the blogroll. Her blog is Phoenix Is... so poodle on over and say howdy.

In other news, well, we've got a replacement washing machine after our other one was repossessed. We got a letter today telling us it was going to be taken. Great, well done - would have been handy a week ago.

My arm is sore and bruised from the Needle of Doom.

I've had a bitch of a headache for the last couple of days.

Hellgate London is an excellent computer game. I've been waiting two or three years for this game, and it was worth the wait. Swords, guns, demons, undead - great stuff.

Firefly still kicks ass. Anyone that didn't enjoy what there was made of that show should be pushed out of their country and sent to somewhere strange. Like Australia.

Anyways, I am sooo glad tomorrow is Friday. No doubt it will be spent doing the worlds supply of washing up and clearing up generic chaos. I might even post the rest of my Whinefest ;)

So, with a Happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers (who are no doubt doing family stuff and far too busy to read blogs, I'm going to try and fall asleep.

Edit: Oh, the template. So, it turns out that the problem is to do with new code being viewed on out of date software. You need to upgrade to IE7 or Firefox in order for the poor little sidebar to appear in the right place. I tested it on an old computer a couple of days back and see the problem, upgraded to Firefox and it was fine. Otherwise, just grin, bear it, and wait for the next template rehash ;)

Da Flu

Don't you hate it when sneezes become a cold, a cold becomes the flu, the Flu becomes ManFlu, and then - THEN - it has the audacity to develop into the dark pits of Migraineville. I've felt rough as crap all week, and Thursday I woke up with "that smell" that usually says Mr Migraine is coming for a visit. I spent Thursday and Friday pretty much out cold in bed, not getting up till the crack of 3pm.

On top of this, Jaysen has had a stinking cold, and Jo has been complaining about her foot or something. I think she's still trying to milk that particular sympathy cow, but alas, Mr Dan has been too ill to notice. Lucky for us, one of our friends have been waiting on us hand and foot (heh) so it's not been too hellish. And think of me what you will, but Cel is (to use the P.C term) "a member of an ethnic group", or (to not be P.C), she's black. And I give her such a hard time. So to have Cel cooking dinner or cleaning up, I get to make comments about her needing her chains, or to shine my shoes. She knows it's all in good fun, and she'll play along too. Especially in public which cracks me up. At one birthday party or another, my family was over, and I introduced her as my personal housekeeper.

Yeah, I'm a bastard.

Anyway. Mr Tim, I've tested the template in IE and FF, and it seems to work fine and dandy, and you are the only person with an issue (I think)... Perhaps come to the new age and use IE7? And the link bar across the top is indeed part of the template. I think the site I use (which is in another language!) convert WordPress templates to Blogger.

So, with my germs on the way out finally - we're back down to Defcon Stinking Cold - I'm hoping things are going to get back to normal. Ish. Whatever normal is in this house.

Oh, and in my search for a post image, I tried "ManFlu Virus" as a search string in Google Images. Amazingly, it provided one porn site, and, well, take a look - third row, third image...


Clicken to Embiggen, but there we have it, an image of the ManFlu virus. And for those that don't know what I'm talking about, click here.

Oh, edit because I forgot - congrats to those of you that twigged the header image on the blog is "Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll". Took me minutes to make it ;)

Germs and Life

So, last week I got poorly. It started in my nose and spread from there, making me feel, well, icky as hell. My nose was blocked but running green, by eyes were bulging and watering, I ached and felt like crap. I carried on as best I could, but otherwise just sort of curled on the sofa feeling sorry for myself.

No, this wasn't ManFlu - that is a much worse disorder. This was just a cold, and I did stuff around the house and what have you. Of course, in the process, I managed to give it to Jo who is now dealing with her ManFlu. She's such a wimp ;)

So, aside from feeling grotty all week, I've been really tired, and the weekend with Emmas news, I've been kind of deflated the last few days. I've been keeping busy and trying to keep the head occupied, but it's not working the whole time. I just wish I could give Emma a big hug, tell her it'll be ok.

And since last night, my head has started pounding. Great.

GAH!

I'm in town, tired, aching and still fighting off a headache, but i SWEAR if one more pensioner pushes me, bumps over my foot or glares at me for playing with Tam...... Suffice to say, I will become famous and be splashed on every paper in the country!

Head From Hell

Now, yesterday can officially be put down as a Really Shit Day. It wasn't bad enough that every part of my body hurt, but around lunchtime, I started smelling things. Icky, nasty things that no one else could smell.

I had a migraine coming.

Now, sometimes it gets to the stinky-smell stage and hangs there or fades. However, yesterday, it rapidly went from stinky-smell stage into headache stage. And it built rapidly from there. By four in the afternoon, everything was too bright, everything was too loud, and I felt like shit.

Skip forwards to 11pm, and I'm laying in bed, headache still building, nothing touching it, and it progressed to the "being sick2 stage which I hate. After half an hour of being ill, I somehow stumbled into the lounge and collapsed on the sofa. No pillow, no covers, I just flaked. 6am, I wake up, no headache, back screaming, and made it back into bed.

Half one this afternoon I manage to wake up and get up. No headache, just lots of back and leg pain. But that I can deal with - I'm back on the sofa, armed with laptop and kids TV. I've even put the webcam on!

Thankfully, it was last night I felt rough - tonight, Jo's mum has the kids, and we're going to Ruths to have a boozey evening.

Yay to be adults for a change!

Edit: I think I'm being a bit thick, but I can't get my webcam to connect to the web on my main PC, so no cam :)

Oopsie

So, the journey here wasn't too bad - most connections were straight there and no faffing, no delays. There was a security alert one station from us, but it was fine and dandy and nothing came of it.

We spent the afternoon sitting and chatting and having a real laugh and talking about everything. We had a near-perfect lasagne for dinner and carried on chatting into the night. Rolling onto 9pm my head felt funny, then crappy, then bad, then just plain awful. Finally, just after 11pm it developed into a full-blown migraine. It was awful, and I ended up having an early night, being a complete party pooper.

Booo!

Anyways, I crawled out of bed just after five and have sat here playing WoW with them! And - shock horror - Jo is up before 8am!

Hell Hath Frozen Over!

OK, OK, I'm Here!

If there is one way to get me to post on my blog, it's to pester me. And a few of you have pestered me, so here I be. On the bright side, nothing particaully bad has kept me away, just what I define as "stuff".

First off, the ManFlu/Flu-Monia has been and gone, and while me and Jo are dealing with the tail end of it, we can breathe through noses and roll over in bed without gloop inside shifting around. The kids escaped it too, so it's a win for us.

Next on the menu is the "Dan Nearly Killed Himself" section. As mentioned before I have a citrus allergy, mostly to lemons. I can use bottled lemon juice if it's a low concentration, but otherwise, it's nasty stuff. So last week, we're eating pancakes and I am merrily slapping around the lemon juice when I kept clearing my throat, then cough a bit, then choke, then Jo started running around. My neck and throat ballooned, breathing was a mission, and she had to pour antihistamines down my throat. It took a few minutes, but did the job. Of course, coughing with enough force to hack my lungs up was very painful on my back, and then a migraine kicked in from nowhere.

On the back front (er, huh!) I've had several days of a lot of pain, it's been horrible. I've actually been skipping wearing socks as I just can't get down there. And on the migrane front, I've done my month supply of pills in just over a fortnight. Guess I need to try another sort!

And to add to the "Doom and Gloom" - Jo's monthly visitor has arrived, so I am typing this from my nuclear fallout bunker.

It has, however, been half-term this week, so Jaysen has been off school. Of course, Monday morning, Jo's mum picked him up so he could stay the night there, and he come home Saturday afternoon.

And the best news of all is better explained via a single photo.

Yes, that is Tam, and yes, that is Tam using the toilet. She's pretty much potty trained now, but refuses to use an actual potty. No no, everyone else uses the loo, so she has to use the loo. It's taken us a grand total of... Ten Days. Ten days to potty train an ickle girl that isn't even two yet. Go Tam.

Everything here is pretty much quiet though, and with it being this time of the year, we're tending to ignore most things (such as blogs) while we work on the whole "keeping busy" thing. No doubt I will post on Wednesday, as that is the anniversary of losing Bethy, but the last couple of weeks have been filled with dates that send us back. Not fun.

Lastly - Early Valentines Day worked fine ;) I decided not to celebrate it on the 14th as it's another of THOSE days, so we did it early. Have some pressies dear, yes yes, there you go. Now shush. hehe

Oooh My Head

Here's how out of it I've been of late... Bear in mind I usually post when something even as far from interesting as you get happens, I've missed a few key moments of late.

The Weather:
Yes, England had snow, and while the north got a fair few inches, the rest of us got a mere dusting. Once again, in True Brit fashion, the country ground to a halt. Cars abandoned, roads closed, train services and airlines not running... Oh, and all spread across the front pages of everything. It didn't even stay on the ground for more than 36 hours!

The Telly:
Celeb Big Brother and it's racism row. I don't watch it at the best of times, let alone when it's the celeb version. But it's all that the press has been squealing about of late. Bless.

Tamsyn:
Has used the potty. Has also started coming out with occasional words that you can hear mixed in with the babble-blabble.

Me:
Got a call last week from the surgery - seems the optician was worried about my constant headaches and very-regular migraines, and wanted me referred to the Neurological Unit in Hospital. Yikes. Doctor wanted to see me first, see what was what, and I went today...

Lovely woman, filling in for my current doctor who is on suspension for "Out of date practices". Woot. Anyway, I went into great detail about my headaches, how they start, how they go, how they last, what happens, etc etc. Seems I have a extra-high rate of Migraine with Aura, and we're starting on yet another kind of medication that could help, and if not, we try another, then another, and maybe a preventative instead of a curative. All very interesting stuff, and has answered a lot of questions, especially the "Aura" part, which are something else that comes along as sort of a warning sign.

So I can rest easy and not worry about what's happening inside my noggin. Now when I get a Migraine, I have to pop a Sumatriptan tablet, and if it doesn't help, another 2 hours later. If that doesn't help, tough - no more for 24 hours!

Jo had another meeting with her bereavement councillor this morning and I was there with her, sort of out the way while I read the info on my head. Woman is lovely, and after a while, she started chatting to me. I felt like I was intruding, but both Jo and her were happy for me to be there. I spoke about some stuff, and we discussed a few bits and bobs that seem to make sense, but I will leave that to Jo to post about. Needless to say, we spoke about some more hard stuff once again, but I can understand what she was talking about.

And lastly - I've been saving up all the Meme thingies from the last month to hit out in one fel-swoop. While Christine has done one, Cass has been a busy (bored!) little bunny and done a load. So the post after this one is VERY long winded!

And as a side note, has it ever occured to anyone that these Meme things could be used for nefarious deeds, such as burglary or identity theft? If you read enough from one person, you can put together a pretty good picture of hours they keep, where they go and who they are with, personal family information, what you have of value, important dates and anniversaries...

Or is that just my paranoia striking? Give it a thought ;)

Just, Stuff

Holy crap is this week dragging... Is it really only Tuesday? Pah.

Anyway - had my eyes tested yesterday as my doc thinks these constant headaches and weekly migraines are due to my glasses not being strong enough. It's true, without that I can't see much at all, and with them things are still a bit fuzzy. The optician was very nice yesterday and very thorough, eye test, retina scan, also checked to see if there was any underlying problem that could be causing the headaches. All seemed OK, aside from something odd in my left eye that I've heard about before.

Several years ago, and again yesterday, I was asked about surgery on my left eye, as at the back, this chap and the one before both saw what they consider to be "surgical scarring" on my retina (the bit at the back). I don't recall ever having surgery or even injuring an eye. I called my mum, and she said all she can think of is an episode of Dan-Down-The-Stairs when I was three, and had a black eye for several weeks. But no idea really.

I collect two pairs of glasses tomorrow - normal and sunglasses. Both are very nice and kinda wide rectangles, but hard to explain. £75 a pair, extra for tinting and so on - but because I am partially broken, we get a discount! Yay!

Been pretty busy the last couple of days and the nights have been strange - Tam is once again refusing to sleep, and is up till stupid time in the early hours - she was pissing around till 1am this morning, 3am the night before, so me and Jo are knackered.

Been watching movies again to pass the time as everything seems pretty quiet of late. Fellowship of the Ring again, Payback again, Shanghai Noon again, Gone in Sixty Seconds again... All good movies. We also watched Kingdom of Heaven night before last, and while it was a good epic-on-a-large scale movie, it kinda jumped and farted around. Not bad, but not up there with Gladiator.

And as for the popup issue that people are reporting, I've found the culprit. The Cbox has a popup clause for it's free boxes, but will only serve one per person, per day. I'm looking for a way around it, but might change the software to something else. Again, if I hosted my own page, it'd be easier.

Tim, to answer your question - the counter covers hits, not individuals :)

So, another day, another school run. Not sure if I am going to have a gossip again this morning like I do most mornings - if not, I'll be back in a couple of hours to irritate the world!

Headache

OK, not funny. After messing around on WoW for something to happen - the only person that was talking to me had to go for a while - my head decided to start pounding. I'm not going to call it a migraine as I hate that word - people use it all the time without knowing what one is.

But anyways, I'm going back to bed. Cam is on for the world to see. Later