When Bad Stuff Happens!
Here is a list of annoying things that have happened to me over the past week, each with a suitably over-dramatic heading in the style of annoying TV programmes.
When Computer Gremlins Attack! Yep. My shiny new PC has been having a few problems. Firstly, the CPU kept overheating. A call to the technical support number revealed the problem:
Support: Is it the PC with the black case with a kind of glass panel at the front?
Underblog: Yeah.
Support: Oh yeah, with that particular model one of the fans has been installed in the wrong place.
Underblog: Err, okay…
And they thought they’d wait to see if I noticed? Anyway, thankfully the guy talked me through how to move it on the phone, so I didn’t need an engineer to come out. Then, last week, the thing just stopped booting. I rang last Wednesday and they said that an engineer would call me within 48 hours to arrange a visit. That was last week and I’m still waiting.
Wasps… FROM HELL! I was awoken early Friday morning by a tingling on my elbow. (Alright, it was 2pm, but I still hadn’t got up.) I can’t really endow this story suspense and surprises since it is quite obvious from this paragraph’s heading that it was a wasp. Which stung me. Somewhat miffed that it had decided to ignore my strict “No Wasps” policy regarding my bed (which had been put in place after I was stung on the sole of my foot last summer) I rolled over and covered my self with my duvet, thinking that the evil insect had flown off. It hadn’t. The buzzing I’d heard was actually just the wasp making the short flight from my elbow to my arse, where it stung again, just above the right-hand cheek.
Understandably, my thoughts at this point were along the lines of “sod this for a lark”. I got up, went to the toilet and pulled down my boxers so that I might enjoy my first urination of the day. It was with considerable surprise that I observed a large wasp fly out of my boxer shorts. I suppose it shouldn’t have been such a shock, since the last known location of the creature was in the vicinity of my arse, but to my half-asleep brain it was unexpected. To cut a short story shorter, the wasp escaped out the window, and the stings still itch a bit. And I made a pretty bad joke the following day about wasps not knowing their arses from their elbows.
When Laptops Fall. I tripped over the mains cable from my laptop, pulling it of the desk and snapping the CD draw. I can’t get it fixed until my desktop is working again. Bugger.
Right, I really think I should provide a link vaguely related to this post. How about this silly cartoon. OK, it’s not actually related at all, except that it captures the mad panic of seeing a scary animal quite amusingly.
May 6th, 2004 at 15:38
I just laughed out loud at that arse/elbo quip. I had a dragonfly waft up out of my nightdress once, must have got in there before I put it on. Suddenly it was dragging itself up my chest an looming in my face. Scream? You bet I did. I quite like wasps, though.
May 6th, 2004 at 19:29
Dolores, I like you. You know that. But how can you like wasps? Wasps are fucking nasty bastards and I only hope that in my lifetime the world doesn’t become polluted enough to create human-sized wasps. Doesn’t help that I’m allergic to insect bites and stings too (though not in the sting-and-I’m-dead way, thankfully)…
May 6th, 2004 at 19:29
Oh, is Look Around You any good, by the way?
May 6th, 2004 at 20:29
You poor thing! I was going to suggest that you stay in bed after Accident Number 1, but after reading Accident Number 2, that’s not a good idea! Hope the itching has gone down.
May 7th, 2004 at 01:21
Thank you all for your kind words in this difficult time. I think I’m over the worst.
Mr. C, actually my copy of Look Around You has arrived yet, despite play.com saying they dispatched it over a week ago.