I Be Back

It's Tuesday night and I'm finally back on the internet, but I'm at home, not at work or my wife's house (where I should be during the week). My eBay-purchased HP Pavilion zd8000 laptop computer with its absolutely stellar 17" screen is -- no more. Forever. It died when I, eh, kinda sorta managed to spill some Diet Coke onto its keyboard. That laptop was my sole computer at home.

In the meantime I've had to blog whilst either at work (man, is that an issue in and of itself!) or at my wife's house. During the past two weekends: nada, mang. To say that I've been in some sort of withdrawal status is an understatement.

But moreover, I've had to resurrect my huge desktop unit. Custom built by Sundance Computers in Auburn (Anybody in the Fornicalia Sierra Foothills area? I'd sure as hell recommend their wonderful, comprehensive and caring service, though I'm not sure they'd be sufficiently impressed with my Hard Astarboard personal recommendation.), it sat for a number of years and thusly had some issues with loading software, dust, etc. I took it back to Sundance and they added a second 400-gig hard drive, another 512 into RAM, though I left the motherboard and processor alone.

Spoiled by the 17" HP display, I went with Chris's recommendation for a flatscreen and trusted his taste. He ordered a 22" Viewsonic VA2226w for me and, I must admit, I'm very pleased with his choice. That's how much I trust this business.

In any event, I'm Back In Bidness at home but am only now able to divert attention to blogging. Because I'm hosted by Blogger, I was able to pre-schedule a couple of posts up to Sunday. But that's when things changed.

My wife was stung by what us mountain knuckle-draggers in Fornicalia commonly call a Meat Bee (which is actually a yellowjacket) this past Sunday, directly into an already-open wound on her foot. For the first few seconds, little happened. Then, she doubled over in pain. I removed the stinger a short time later and the pain was such that it remained a continuous "10" for an hour -- to the point where I had to transport her to an ER 35 minutes away.

The pain came in waves, and we waited seven hours to be seen. The triage nurse had to take various kids ahead of us who had either broken bones or other more serious events. It became almost a joke -- the automatic doors would open and a set of parents would carry or wheel in a small child (or in one case, an infant) and we knew we were bumped back. I can't blame the parents or the ER or the staff. It's the nature of triage itself. But it was certainly eminently frustrating. Especially considering my wife's pain abated little. It was frustrating to see her damned near continuously writhing in pain, to the point where she cried out loud and tears flowed down her cheeks. A very nice nurse knew of the situation and kept checking on us. But with only one Triage nurse, three ER nurses and two doctors on duty, they did the best they could. We simply had to understand.

One injection of dilaudid later, and a prescription for hydrocodone (essentially, morphine), my wife began to experience little pain, but sordid hallucinations. She wanted to get into her truck and drive to work. I spent Monday and Tuesday keeping her in the house, calmed, medicated. The pain lessened. I blew two days' leave from work. But I couldn't let her drive.

I finally was able to slink down to Auburn in order to pick up my updated desktop confuser, new flatscreen, and log back into my internet host. The modem works, for whatever reason, quicker in the laptop than on my updated desktop -- whereas before I could whip out 54.9kbps on the laptop modem, the best I can acquire on this desktop is 49.1kbps. Hey, nothing like a couple steps backwards on the internet!

I should probably simply count my blessings: my wife feels better, the meds are working (d'ya think??), my computer computes (though I still have to reload every damned bit of software again and again), the screen is nice, my desk is cleaned of dust and lint and, perhaps most importantly, I'd kept my copy of Windows XP and DON'T have to trust Vista.

I suppose this is a long way of saying: I'm back blogging.

In the meantime, I've not had time to access any media source whatsoever. And I apologize for not accessing any of My Dear Readers' blogs. What the hell's been happening?

BZ