catching my breath

The week has just whizzed past. Didn't get much scrapping done in the past few days, although I did get an entry done for an online contest at a digi-designer's site.

Friday was the dentist, I didn't sleep well being so wound up about it (I really really don't like going to the dentist - bad experiences with dental butchers as a child). Ray hadn't really organised a delivery of concrete pipes (for the drain crossing he is working on), so I had to wait to see if he would be able to drive me up - I wasn't keen to be driving in case I had to have the tooth pulled. Fortunately, the company swapped their delivery schedule about a bit, and Ray drove us up. He dropped me at the dentist, and took the kids to the shopping centre - Caleb had some birthday money to spend, and Ray took my glasses to OPSM - on Monday one of the rubber bridge thingies broke, and it had been rubbing and irritating the bridge of my nose all week (just unpleasant and annoying, no blood LOL).

The dentist took xrays, and is concerned that there is a problem under another tooth, so that will be another visit at the end of March, and perhaps an extraction then (I will not even consider spending $2000+ on a bloody tooth! I'd rather have a laptop computer!) Friday afternoon I spent dozing on the couch dosed up with Panadeine, with an aching jaw. It wasn't so bad this morning, but still aching through the day, with the occasional serious shooting pain through the tooth, and I succumbed to panadeine late this afternoon. The weird thing is the pain in the tooth directly above the filling - I didn't know teeth could go out in sympathy. The dentist warned that I could still lose this tooth, as the problem went rather deep and close to the nerve (it was an older filling that had failed).

I got me some new walking shoes! I have to confess to not having walked since before Christmas, as my shoes gave out, and I was getting too much pain in my feet (I have totally flat feet). I have never spent so much on a pair of shoes before, but figured this was an investment in my health (at least, that's what I told Ray). Ray took me to the Athlete's Foot after the dentist, and I even walked on their fancy computer foot thingy, and saw the walking motion on the screen, which was fun (but pretty meaningless). The attendant fitted me with some asics with really pronounced arch support, and firm inside walls (my left foot rolls in a bit, which combined with the flatness, would be giving me the pain). And the shoes were on sale! They were normally $170, but I got them for $120. How good is that.

It was dreadfully hot and humid yesterday, really not a good day to be travelling across to the valley, but there were storms in the afternoon - we had a ripped thunderstorm. I didn't have the computer on, I was feeling too bad (see, I must have been feeling crook), and didn't turn it on until about an hour after the storm had passed, thinking it was safe by then. I checked my emails, then got dinner. After dinner I went back to the computer, and freaked! It wasn't quite the blue screen of death, but it looked mighty bad - Windows couldn't start up properly, and it was running in a loop of failure. I phoned our trusty local computer guy (he is so good about service at all hours), and he told me that there appeared to have been a huge power surge and/or lightening strike - I was the fourth call he'd taken so far. So he talked me through a couple of things to try, none of which worked, and Ray took the PC box around to him. When Ray came home without it, he said that Ross thought he would have to wipe the main drive and re-install XP - eeeek!

I spent a restless night, between pain in my jaw and worrying about having to set everything up again. All my files were safe - most had been transferred to the new hard drive. But I was concerned for my downloaded music (I am so not buying any more from Bigpond - back to cds for me, the license system really sucks). And I really didn't want to deal with the company that does the accounting software that I use. I originally registered mine when I got it, and you have to get an activation key to run it. Well, twice I have had to reinstall the software (once when we got a new computer, and the second time when I had to upgrade the hard-drive) and was totally given the third-degree about why I was reinstalling the bloody software. I wanted to shout at them, who would want to pirate their bloody accounting software!??!!! I don't appreciate being made to feel I had done something wrong when I had paid up the $200 for the software, and needed it to do the job for which I purchased it.

So how glad was I when I phoned Ross this morning and he had played around and got it going again without a format and re-install. He said it took him longer than the format would have, but he just wanted to see if he could do it! Computer geeks! Gotta love 'em! Now, the bigpond music licenses are all kaput, and I phoned them, and got a nice guy on the phone who reset them for me to download again, but now they won't play on Windows Media Player 10 (I think Ross maybe upgraded me). I haven't tried the accounting software yet, I'll leave that pain for another day.

We're just about Winter Olympiced out, although we enjoyed the ice skating exhibition tonight. And Amazing Race is starting back next week - yay! Still really peeved that we aren't getting Survivor Panama in Australia. Very underwhelmed about the coming Commonwealth Games - don't get me started on the obscene amount of money spent on total nonsense, when our elderly are mistreated, and the mentally ill don't receive adequate care.