Tony Gallichan is Mildly Perturbed by... Space Mumps, Part Two: When Gunge Attacks!

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So, yet again I've been laid low by a lovely sinus infection. Can we spot the sarcasm inherent in that last sentence? Can we? Hmm? Oh, but this time it was far, far worse. And as for it's timing!

Let me explain.

I started a cold a few weeks back. This was ok, I mean, what's a cold? (No, Adam, that was rhetorical!) I knew I'd get some kind of infection up the old snozzer but was prepared for that. However, I got a phone call from my father a couple of days into it. He was coming to visit me in a couple of days time.

Great!

Wonderful!

It's always fantastic when my dad comes to visit. He's damn good about it, you know. Comes all the way from Jersey, spends loads of money to do so. I'm really very grateful.

However, this time I had to warn him about my cold etc. He's getting on a little, (though I'm fairly sure Bill is still older... heh, heh, heh), so I didn't want him catching anything nasty. He was fine about it though.

So, I prepared for his visit. I spring cleaned the flat, got in some lavender glade plug in air freshener thingies, told the cats to behave themselves etc.

It was on that same day when suddenly my nose and sinuses went kabloowy.

Mon Dieu! It's never, EVER been so bad. I was having to blow my nose almost constantly. I was coughing in between nose blows. I was, to put it bluntly, a mess.

So poor old dad had to put up with me making the most God-awful noises all the time. Taste and smell had gone, (and normally I have exquisite taste, lol - shut it, Purcell-face! See?) so the couple of meals we went out to I simply had to enjoy the texture of the food. I had also planned a meal with all the others for the Friday night.

Unfortunately, Theresa and I had an argument the Friday afternoon, (I simply will not tolerate anyone happily scaring my cats and laughing at the reaction. Suffice to say, that's one person I won't be seeing again.) and I was getting worse. Head pounding, nose flooding, lungs heaving etc. So, the meal was called off. Big shame as I always enjoy them, taste or no. So the visit ended on a rather sour note.

The Saturday evening, however, I was invited to a friend's (let's call her Bert) place to watch "Wrestle Mania". I used to enjoy the pure nonsense of American wrestling so this was gonna be a giggle. As usual with these things, they last for hours.

And as I sat there watching the telly, as the hours unfolded, I stopped coughing. I stopped having to blow my nose. (Well, it went back to normal, anyway, lol)

Why was this, I pondered?

Then it hit me. The Glade air fresheners. They were badly irritating my nasal passages. So, straight into the bin they went. And surprise, surprise, my head cleared. It still wasn't back as it should be so I popped to the doc's and got things.

So, my flat now has to stay smelly, LOL.

One consolation during all this was that I've finally got digital television. Good it is, too! Admittedly, it's giving my television a bit to think about as it now does odd things, but I'm somewhat chuffed with it.

However, not all technology has been kind to me. Oh no. You see, just when my head cleared and I could start to do some rather important pieces of music for a couple of people, my pc decided it wasn't gonna do what I needed it to do.

Gitting thing!

Sooooo, I had to phone my Chief Scientist, old Purcell-face.

He duly popped around and we tried to reinstall windows. No joy. The Dunn provided a different Mordonsoft disc, and a few nights later, the thing was almost up and running. Except for the fact that we needed the motherboard drivers.

Bugger.

Cut a long story short, Crumbly hadn't taken his disc back from Purcell-face's so a few nights later, the thing was up and running. Keep up at the back!

I then sent out e mails to the good people waiting on me, explaining things and saying that all was ok.

Note to self: Check that all actually IS ok before telling people.

I installed Cakewalk and lo, it didn't work properly. Exactly the same fault.

Guess who I had to phone. Guess who had a slightly annoyed expression on his face instead of the usual smug one?

So, Purcell-face had to pop around again. And, after an evening of pulling the pc apart, putting back together, pulling it apart again etc, he announced that the fault was that the motherboard didn't like the sound card.

Shit!

However, I can do practically all I need to, I just can't use some of the features, which, while annoying, means I'm back up and running.

Just not in the nasal sense.

I do have to thank Purcell-face for all his help. It must be very irritating to have people constantly wanting you to do pc things for them, so thanks Adam, I really do appreciate it.

 

Tony Gallichan is also mildly perturbed by Andy "Crumbly" Simpkins. He appears to have been kidnapped and replaced by his evil duplicate from an alternative universe. See below.