chrishansenhome

Part of this I can't talk about, as it upsets me too much. It doesn't have anything to do with my health, but it left me a gibbering wreck for most of the afternoon. It is not bad, and it will not leave me with anything but nightmares. Enough of that. I would talk about it but it would squick you all out and if HWMBO ever found out (no, it has nothing to do with any other human being) he would be squicked even more than me. So, enough of that. Sorry to be so opaque. Maybe I can talk about it in the future.

Second: my new monitor. I bought a new Samsung monitor, 24" (but who's a size queen—not me!) as mine was a bit smaller and HWMBO's even smaller and older still. So the plan was to install the Samsung monitor on my desk, my Dell monitor on his computer, and then his current Dell monitor upstairs, moving the Sun Sparcstation 5 up there.

The Samsung B2430 is a good monitor: very sharp, good controls, just barely fits on my desktop, but that's OK—I counted on that. What pisses me off is the truly abysmal setup for the driver and the software. It is, unfortunately, not plug-and-play. I suspect that most monitors aren't. However, what I do expect is that when I put the CD in the drive, and select the model number, the setup works fine. This didn't.

My default browser is Chrome. Unfortunately, the setup for the monitor driver installation is integrated with your browser—as long as your default browser is IE. If it is something else, the installation program trundles silently along, then falls off a cliff after around 3 minutes and tells you that, sorry old chap, you need IE to install this driver automatically. Otherwise, run it from the CD.

So I went to the CD and ran the installation. The first thing it did was uninstall a driver that it had previously installed. OMGWTF??? It told me it hadn't installed the driver! Well, perhaps it only installed part of the driver. Then when I tried to reinstall the driver it told me (after much faffing around) that it couldn't find the driver on the CD. Lather. Rinse. Repeat twice.

As a software tester I do not take NO for an answer. So I changed my default browser to IE and installed it automatically. Of course (you guessed it!) IE first uninstalled the driver and then reinstalled it, this time successfully. The monitor now works and I have a lot more desktop real estate as well as a very good resolution and wonderful video. But I was reduced to swearing maniacally at Samsung, the driver, the installer, and life in general. My grandfather used to get like that when something he was doing around the house didn't work. I take after him.

The only installer that beats Samsung for idiocy is the HP software installer. I presume that the programmer who wrote HP's installer moved over to Samsung to infuriate a new generation of computer users. London Stabbie would like to talk to him. Sternly. He might not survive the encounter.

Third, I did not have to have a visit from the District Nurse today, for the first time since I left the hospital. I have been having recurring bouts of tinnitus in my right ear, but couldn't figure out what was causing it. When I looked at the information folder that comes with the teicoplanin (the antibiotic I was taking each day) I discovered that tinnitus is a recognised side-effect. Oh, crap. So when I went to the foot clinic yesterday, I told the doctor that I thought I ought to be switched off the teicoplanin because of tinnitus. He conferred with the Professor, who said, "You'll have to have a blood test to see whether you are still infected and one for renal function."

Oh, crap and crap. When Ian (the cute Pinoy nurse) came to draw blood out of my PICC line, we got 1-1/2 vials out. Then, nothing! The PICC line was clogged. I am now a veteran of this, so I waited while Ian got a 5ml syringe (this one has the highest pressure) and pushed some saline into the line. It then unclogged, but what a pain in the arse. Luckily the clot was not very big or else I'd have had a coronary right there—I now know why they have a resuscitation kit there.

The Professor said I'd have to wait for the results of the blood test. So I waited. Had my lunch (they supplied the insulin), and then waited some more. I was there, in total, from 10:30am to 4:30pm. Ian then came out and asked if I was allergic to penicillin. For the umpteenth time, I said that I wasn't; they should have known that, as I was taking amoxicillin and flucloxicillin for months last year. But, this is a new year, and new possibilities for allergic reactions, I suppose. I don't want Stabbie to get after Ian; he's too cute for that (but straight). But someone needs to pay. I shall think and get back to you. They now gave me a prescription for…amoxicillin and flucloxicillin. Just what I'd had before. I was so upset and annoyed by this time that I just went home.

I got the "welcome" news that I probably have two to four weeks to wait before they debride the bone out of the wound on the side of my foot. Oh joy. That particular ulcer will not start to heal until the bone is out of the way. One of the wound specialists said that I should have the Foot Clinic do it as I have no feeling in my feet. Well, I'd rather they took precautions with local anesthetics than discover, belatedly, that I actually do have a bit of feeling on that side.

I know that lots of other people have had crap weeks, some of whom are on my lj friends list. My woes are mine alone, and I do not compare them with anyone else's woes. I hope that all our woes are taken care of, soon. Stabbie's onto mine as we speak!

It was Saturday, and I awoke with some eye irritation, probably from a piece of the hard crust that forms in the corner of your eye when you're asleep. This is always annoying, and made me feel pretty awful. Blood sugar was good this morning, though, and thus I had an interesting day.

I decided that I needed to clean some of the pots and pans that had been accumulating grease deposits for a while, so off to the DIY store at the Elephant I went. Bought two boxes of Brillo, two different types of pot cleaner, and some caustic soda for the upstairs bathroom (hair gets down in the trap and there you have it…).

I cleaned the enamel casserole pot first. It had lots of brown gunk on the bottom, burned on. The pot cleaner (kind of a paste, applied with a web cloth) seems to have softened the gunk—then the Brillo pad and a little elbow grease removed it. I was amazed. It's still a bit the worse for wear, but it's clean. I followed that with a shine on our Moka espresso pot, and that cleaned up too. It is amazing how accomplished doing this kind of thing makes you feel.

I kvetched to my friend Fraffie Welch in Marblehead about the awful Tesco corned-beef hash I had a few days ago after reading her column in the Marblehead Reporter. She replied saying that Prudence hash is the best canned hash around. Unfortunately, this isn't available here in the UK and I don't think it would be a good idea to get another appetite that can only be satisfied by hauling cans back from the US. So, I made my own.

Sliced some raw potatoes and parboiled until they were nearly done. Sautéed onions in my mother's black cast-iron frying pan, then drained the potatoes, cut them up some more, and dumped them in to fry along with the onions. Took two cans of corned beef (Yes, I know—I should have used fresh corned beef but you can't get it here, at least not in the places I shop), wondered yet again why these cans have a key rather than just letting us open them normally (perhaps it's the squareness of the cans), then had to disentangle the first key from the can lid because the second can was missing its key, and finally got them both open and the contents mashed up and sliced a bit. Into the frying pan it went, and I fried it until it was heated through.

Tesco's hash was something that looked like what I used to fill my diaper with, studded with large cubes of barely cooked potato. My hash, while it was not perfect, had some texture and flavour. I made myself a salad, poured a glass of Diet Bitter Lemon, and voilà!



Couldn't finish all the hash, so into the fridge it went for tomorrow's dinner. HWMBO will be back Monday morning, thank goodness! Back to normal.

Of course, while I was making my dinner, others were catching and eating theirs. Yesterday I went into the back garden to discard some vegetable garbage on my compost heap, such as it is. I was startled to see a large spider web above the heap, with a very large spider waiting for its dinner smack in the centre. I'm kind of an arachnophobe, so I was a bit unnerved, but discarded my garbage and went back inside.

Today, of course, there were potato and onion peelings to go onto the heap, but when I took them out I saw that the spider, too, was eating its dinner. A bee was caught in the web, and the spider was coming and going, eating a bit and then moving around a bit. Perhaps it had already injected its venom to liquify the bee's innards, for easier digestion.



Does anyone else think of The Fly when they see this picture? I know I did. I hope the bee was already dead by then.

In Masonic symbolism, a beehive symbolises the industry that we should all show in our public and private lives. I wonder if a spider in her web is even more symbolic of the effort to which we should strive each day. I feel accomplished today, like a bee but also like the spider. I am glad that I don't have to capture my dinner, kill it, and then liquify its innards in order to eat it. The spider, were it to know about our lives, would probably be quite happy not to have to run to Tesco's every time it was hungry, be behind one of these people who makes the clerk pick change out of his hand to pay for his shopping, be in front of a guy who had obviously been inside his house for months smoking every waking minute and exhaling into his clothing, and being served by a guy who was suffering from too much work and too many boneheaded customers—thus making me the perfect person at whom to snap when it was time to snap.

I wonder if the spider has to clean off its web when its bee dinner is finished, to make the web ready for breakfast.