xt1me

On Thursday after lunch, so around 2ish, I got a sudden terrible headache.
I don't what to call it a migraine because I used to get migraines a lot when I was younger but I haven't had one in years and years.

When I used to get migraines they'd always start with an aura. A blind spot that would spread out in a ring and by the time it reached the end of the eye and I could see again the pain would have hit. The aura was the queue to immediately take medication to try and shorten recovery time. If I missed it, usually because it struck when I was asleep, it would get so bad I would have to trow up. And of course in those cases I would have to wait until I finished throwing up to take the medication.

I was on something stronger then the 1st level migraine medication, I remember that. Synflex I think. It's (thankfully) been a while.

The day of the migraine all I could ever do was lie in my bedroom as dark as it could get and wait for the medication to kick in enough that I could sleep it off.
The next day, even if I was feeling better I was usually useless for anything. Pain takes a lot out of you and migraines leave you really fuzzy. But I was usually fine the 3rd day.

 

It's why I'm so hesitant to call what I got a migraine.

I didn't get an aura and the only medication I had was some paracetamol someone had in the office but that at least made enough of a dent in it that I was able to get home.
Yes, the pain was so bad I felt nauseous and I had to leave early.
But I was able to get home and crawl into bed and sleep for a few hours.

I obviously didn't have didn't have any migraine medication since it's been so long but panadol seemed to be enough to let me potter around and get myself something to eat (even if I wasn't feeling hungry) before going back to bed again.

I was feeling better the next day. But better isn't well, and I probably shouldn't have gone back to work. Even if I was working from home.
I ended up leaving early again but I made it half the day at least.

It's been 2 days since then and I am feeling a lot better.
Still not 100% though.

To be honest, it probably was a migraine, if technically a lighter one then I used to get.

But I really don't want to admit it. 

I really don't want to get migraines again.

This isn't about the danger of driving too fast or anything like that.
This is about the fact that there's no point.

The other month (I meant to write this out ages ago but kept forgetting) I was driving to work.
I had left at a reasonable time so I knew, even with morning traffic, I was going to make it in plenty of time.
So I wasn't in a hurry, but I couldn't help but notice someone who was.

I first noticed them in fount of me when I was turning onto a road with a traffic camera. Since I was careful to go the exact speed limit it was really obvious that the car was speeding away from me was not.

Now, this would ordinarily would just make me shrug and feel a little bad for the guy, as they were definitely going to end up with a ticket from this, but I ultimately wouldn't have remembered it if it wasn't for the rest of my journey.

The car had some uniquely shaped rear brake lights. So even when they were too far ahead to see anything else it was easy to tell I was still behind the same car.

You might think, they were speeding, surely weren't behind them for that long.
You'd be wrong.

Every time there was a turn off I caught up with the car. Every time traffic let us through I was right behind them. Every time they speed off again I went the speed limit as they tore off ahead. And every time I caught up with them at the next turning.

There was only one point were I wasn't directly behind the car and that was when the traffic let one car between us for a spell. But they soon turned off to another road I was directly behind them again.

This happened for the entire trip.

Eventually I got to work and it turned out they were heading to the building next to mine.
I saw them parking through the fence as I was pulling into my spot.

So there you go.
There's no point in speeding you'll get where you're going at pretty much the same time regardless.

I got a phone call yesterday for one of the jobs I was waiting to hear back from.
I got the job!
I just have to go through the contract and sign it and I'll be starting in Dec.

It's such a relief to not have to slog though the job search anymore.

I can't walk without crutches yet but finally being able to put weight on my leg opens up so many options. I have a lot of physio to do before I'm back to normal but I finally have my cast off.
I have a boot cast to wear for the next 2 weeks but it has straps so I can take it off. Which means I can sleep in more then position again, I can were my pajamas. I can wear more then 1 of the 2 pants that fit over the cast.

I know I was healing all this time but now it finally feels like I'm on the mend.

Goodbye silver Ford Fiesta.
You served me well ever since I traded in my first rust bucket back in 2013.

Sure it had been creaking for a while now. And the USB drive stopped working ages ago. And the CD play kept skipping. And the mat under the peddles kept creeping up to get stuck under them. And ever now and then the wing mirrors got stuck and stopped pulling in when the car locked.


But it's kept me going from A to B which is all I really needed it for.
It survived rain and snow and ice and even the occasional sunny day. It may have been a bit battered by that time I reversed into a pillar but it still ran fine.
Even the time I hit a bird on the highway and it the wing mirror exploded it turned out the all the components had just popped off. The actual mirror part was even still hanging on by wires so I could put everything back together again. Except the back of it, that was gone. Still, I was able to get a unpainted back mirror cheap and got spray paint and did it up with a stencil of a bird on it to commemorate the occasion (And to hide any mismatch).

But I've been meaning to get a new car for a while. Having to pass the NCT every year is a pain and I almost forgot about last year.

To be honest the last accident I had kind of brought home that it's time was limited but I've been putting it off.

I should Have got a new car last year since they've discontinued Fiestas now so I can't get a new one.

Oh well, My new Ford Puma seems to be ok.
Hopefully it lasts as long as the old car.
 

No real reason. it's just last Christmas my brother convince me to go over to his place for a visit sometime during the year.
I thought I might as well since I hadn't any holidays planned and I figured I could pop in over to London and see show, maybe do a weekend.

I mean it wasn't really feeling it but I couldn't think of anything better to do so why not.

This weekend it was off to a wonderful start when the day before I was due to leave I seemed to have come down with food poisoning. That wasn't fun. I basically spent the entire day not eating. The day I was due to go to the airport I risked cereal and that seemed to be alright. I decided to head off since they already paid for everything.
I knew I needed to eat something so I managed to muffin in the airport but I wasn't really hungry. I almost I mistook the gate number before the flight but thankfully I realized the mistake in time to get to the correct gate number. The flight but it wasn't too bad, I got the row to myself which was nice.
I landed in the airport no problem so things were going all right despite everything. I did forget about roaming and had a bit of issue getting my phone working but that got sorted out pretty quickly so that was fine.
I was able to find my luggage almost immediately as soon as I found out where it was being deposited so that was nice. Got the Heathrow Express down to into London, text my brother and to get his full address and got a cab to his place. He ordered food while I was on my way and it was arrived a few minutes later.
Unfortunately the delivery guy had obviously given us someone else's order because it wasn't what we wanted. The food wasn't too different, it was edible so you know it was something. Unfortunately the burger may have been a bad idea because in the middle of the night I did have to get up and go to the bathroom and, well, it wasn't fully diarrhea but it was a lot more watery than was comfortable.

So the next day I had planned to  walk around central London do a bunch of touristy stuff and then in the afternoon go with my brother and see a show on Broadway. I had already bought the tickets and everything.
Because the night before I was just that did decide to keep things light but I did risk Cornflakes and it seemed to be alright so so far so good.
Could be worse.
And then it was.

I had a shower and I was warned that the bathtub was slippery but apparently the cleaner hadn't put down the bathmat that usually went in there so when I was trying to get after the bath I slipped and I dislocated my knee.
Or partially dislocated it or something I definitely heard a click as it went back into place.

It was incredibly painful.

So that sucked.
I'm aware it could have been a lot worse. I could have fully dislocated it or collapsed on the floor or ended up stark and naked in a bathroom in another country.
Thankfully after taking some time to recover a bit I was able to finish drying off and getting dressed but my leg was pretty fucked up though. I had dislocated my leg years ago and it very much felt like when I was recovering from that. Not like the actual dislocation, that was absolute agony, although I did break my leg at the same time so that might have made it worse.
But I was able to slowly hobble around as long as I kept my legs straight and it could take my weight. "Thankfully" my brother had torn his ACL a couple of weeks before so had a crutch lying around.

I decided to try and salvage what I can could. I didn't bother trying to walk or get the tube into town proper I just got an Uber but I did decide to see if I could see at least some of the sites in London. So I went to the natural the Science Museum and unfortunately I barely made it up around two floors, let alone going any further, before I just realized it's absolutely exhausting being in pain and trying to limp around.
so I just gave up. I still wasn't all that hungry and I did not want to risk any heavy food but I knew I needed to eat something so I chanced some soup in the museum's cafeteria. It seemed to work out all right.

By then it was time to try and make my way to the theater for the show. Thank you Google Maps for finding me the nearest tube so it was just 15 minutes away. Which is great because I took absolutely ages just trying to hobble around to get anywhere so I wasn't going to be walking if I could help it.

I Managed to survive getting to the place met up with my brother.
The show was Wicked.
I had read the book absolutely ages ago and of course I knew the handful of more famous songs but I didn't actually know the plot of the musical so it was fun to see.
I had just enough time during the intermission to hobble slowly to the bathroom and hobble slowly back to my seat so that worked out.

After we were originally gonna go to a steakhouse but I still wasn't willing to risk my stomach on some heavy meat so we decided to just go back to my brother's place order some pasta. I think I was getting better than by then because I was able to finish the the small portion I ordered so that was something. I didn't do much afterwards, just watched a movie, but I was absolutely wrecked so I just went to bed.

Next morning my body decided to wake me up at 6:00 as if I had to go to work even those I was on holidays so that was annoying.
I was able to sleep the whole night through so without any issues so that was good. My leg may have been a little better, still wrecked but I figured I could make it without the crutches. I did borrow them  just to make my way down to my brother's car just to be safe. Mainly because he is up two flights of stairs in an apartment and the elevator wasn't working.
We did talk about maybe stopping off at Buckingham Palace or something just to get a few touristy pics but honestly I wasn't up to doing any amount of walking whatsoever and I already had knew I had to try and make my way through across all of Heathrow. So basically we just went straight to the train station said goodbyes and I hopped back onto the train to get to the airport.

I've got to say it's amazing how something that is usually absolutely piss easy becomes so difficult when you're in any way injured.
I was as slow as a wet weak

 Heathrow is big.
Getting off the train I was already exhausted and I had to then I had to make my way all the way over to Terminal 2. it took a while. I'm glad I left plenty of time to make it because I was not going to be able to rush anywhere.

An annoying thing at the airport was when booking the flights it said that i couldn't have carry-on but there was a free under 10K bag you could bring in the hold so from the way over I did just that. But coming back for some reason in the check in desk they said there might be an issue with the bag having my laptop in it which made no sense to me but I was told I could bring it in his carry-on and I wouldn't be having extra charge. So fine, whatever. Unfortunately I had a scissors in there. I had lost that scissors years ago and apparently had been at the bottom of that bag ever since. Of course they found it during the security check and of course it was just a centimeter too long to bring as carry-on so that's gone. Nothing major but still a bit irritating.

Ordinarily I would've prefer having my bag is carry-on so I don't have to wait around for the luggage to come in but this time, with my bad leg, I really would have preferred if I could have checked it in. But after hobbling away through the security check ins and all of that I was actually too early to see my gate so I had some time to kill.
At this point actually feeling hungry for the first time the entire weekend so I went to the nearest place that sold food and I got myself a pizza. I managed to eat more than half the pizza so that's probably a good thing.
When I was finished it was the time to check my gate so I started my slow hobble over. I did make a quick slight detour to go to the bathroom because I wasn't risking trying to navigate the flight bathrooms but by the time I made it there it was just in time for the gates to open so I pretty much hobbled straight onto the plane. I was really grateful to be able to sit down for the next hour.
I checked in online the previous day and I had forked over the extra 20 bucks to get the extra leg room. You're not supposed to sit in those seats if you have mobility issues because you're next to the emergency exit but screw that.

Flight was fine, very little turbulence, so I was pretty much able to read the entire time without getting motion sickness so that was great.
It was only when I was in the air that I remembered that I still had to drive home and I had no idea how my leg being busted was going to affect that. I mean it really only seems to be an issue when I tried to lift my leg up and bend it so having it down and working the clutch probably wouldn't be too bad but of course all I could do is wait and see.
Landed fine and made my way to the car. Seemed to have left the sunshine in England unfortunately, it was drizzling on the entire time. Getting into the car was a bit of an issue but once I was in actually it was fine so I drove drove home and was very grateful to be able to sit down at home afterwards.

I had taken the extra day off from work for this holiday mainly because I had originally planned to do a whole lot of walking and I didn't know how tired I would be. And I had holiday hour to use up so I might as well use them.
So on Monday instead of going to work I went to the hospital to get my leg checked out. They did an X-ray nothing seemed to be broken. They gave me some crutches and a knee brace and told me to get some sort of gel/ointment thing and if it was still bad in the week go to my GP for an MRI.

it's been a couple of days now and as the pain in my leg has died down a bit I'm starting to feel all the other hurts I got from the fall. For example I have a massive fuck you bruise on my inner thigh where I cought myself on the lip of the bath.

So that was my weekend.
Technically speaking it could have been worse but the fact that I actually didn't want to go on this holiday in the first place and it was a disaster kind of really sums things up.

*sigh*

First thing in the morning yesterday I sent a email to my letting agent basically saying 'Hey, it's the 2nd of Jan so business should be back open. Can someone please help me with this rat?!'
While I didn't get a reply (i didn't get a reply to my last email either) the rat catcher came out at around 3 and poked around and put down poison. He told me the LL was sending someone out tomorrow (today) to seal up any possible holes the rats were using to get in.

I tried to listen last night to the scratching in the walls in an attempt to narrow down where it was coming from and it did appear to be coming from the wall/ceiling by the sink.

So the guy came out today and had a look. He was able to take apart a bit of the cupboards, the bits that were screwed in as opposed to the bits that were nailed in, and was able to look a lot further along the wall under the sink. And it turns out there is a hole in the wall. The amount of insulation that was dragged out makes it pretty clear that's were the rat was getting into the kitchen. 

So he plugged up that with concrete (or at least a concrete like mortar). He also re-did the hole that was next to the back door since it was only blocked with expanding foam and the rat can chew on that.

He had to clean out under the sink cupboard to do this and there was 2 disassembled rat traps and 1 that was just broken under there.

Hopefully this is enough to stop the rat coming into the house. It'll probably still be able to get into the walls but there not much I can do about that. As long as it's not in the house proper I wont have to worry about it eating my food, nibbling on wires or pissing all over the place.

The version of the game I got came with Harley Quinn DLC so I played that as well.

Good game but I finished the game before I got all the Riddler trophies. So I went back to get them but it turns out you can do the final Riddler mission without needing to 100% it. Which is great and all but once you do all the challenges you're kind of left there like a lump. I know you can see all the concept art and everything but I would have liked something in game. even just a sound clip or something.
I kind of makes it feel like the games just trails off otherwise.

I will admit I did look up how to do some of the challenges but not that many really.
I kind of suck at the gliding so those one took me a bit but I never got as frustrated as the that stupid Tank mission in Assassins Creed, probably because they were all so short.
Incidentally, the instructions for the reverse batarang don't mention that you need the remote batarang instead of the regular one. Which makes sense in hindsight but you only need to use it once in story so it's easy to forget bout it.

I am incredibly grateful that you can turn off inverted controls for the remote batarang because I would not have been able to do any of the challenges involved otherwise.

I do feel a bit dumb that I didn't realise that the Gun Jammer works on the turrets as well as regular guns though.

I'm kind of annoyed I couldn't get all the balloons in the Harley DLC but I did it twice now, the second time with a walk-though, and I'm still missing 1. Since I can't just go in and free roam like in the main game I don't think it's worth it.

Some tips for anyone trying to do all the challenges after the main game:
There's a guy with a Jammer in the subway for you to use the Electric disruptor on.
One of the guys outside the museum will trow a fire extinguisher so you can hit it with a batarang.
There's 2 guys in armorer in the industrial district. Find the one hanging with two others to line them up to fire him into one of the others. The one by the gate is too far away to hit the other guy.
There a big bunch of people in the courthouse the first time you go into if after the main plot, they're good for any of the combo challenges you need. I finished up my Catwoman challenges there.

I do like the mechanic of interrogating various goons working for the Riddler to unlock trophies locations on the map. That was neat. I did accidentally do a ledge takedown on one instead of integrating them & I think it made me miss a few because one final riddle eluded me until I looked it up. But in my defense, it's the same button.

Story-wise it's fine. Lots of running back and forth as your goal keeps getting interrupted with more problems. Classic video-game plot.

The one thing I felt off was that everyone is kind of an asshole. For the Villains it's expected of course, but Alfred was a lot more jerk-like then I think was needed. He's dry and sarcastic sure but it's not like he hates Bruce. And of course Batman has his "I work alone Bah Humbug" bit, even as he demonstrably works with others. But he's got a very "I'm always right" attitude here. And in the DLC it's pointed out by the other characters he's being a jerk.
I know, since I've read the comics and know spoilers for the next game, that it's probably because of Jason's death but they all made it seem like it because of the Joker. Which ... no. Just, No.

The Joker is the one who thinks he and Bat's have a thing, not Bruce. Bat villains having an obsession with Batman (or Bruce Wayne) is pretty common but Batman just wants to stop criminals. His obsession is with crime itself not the individual criminals. That's why he's the hero and they're not.

I don't know. It was just the vibe I got. Maybe I'm just reading it wrong.
It wasn't the whole time, there were just a few moments that stuck out.

Getting to play as other people for a bit was neat but I never felt like I was any good at the combat so I always preferred when I had all of Batman's armour.


Not too interested in the extra challenges, just like last time, So I think I can say I've finished the game.

I still have a problem with my eye.

I mean, it's not really an issue since I'm not in pain and it's not affecting my vision. But the fact remains that I have a spot/boil/sore under my eyelid.
Still.

I took the antibiotics for a week as directed but nothing changed.
I then left it a week to see if it would clear up (and because I had car issues, more on that later)
but no change.

I went back to the GP and they said if the antibiotics didn't do anything then chances are it's not an infection.
It's either a thing that will clear up on it's own after a couple of mounts and I can ignore it. Or it's something that needs a procedure to clear.

So it's back to the eye specialist.

The doctor sent off a note so I'm just waiting to hear back. But it does mean I wasted money on 2 doctors appointments & antibiotics and now I going to have to pay for the option as well.

*sigh*

In other news, I was driving out of the car park after shopping the weekend before last and reversed into a steal pillar I wasn't paying attention to.

I drove around to a bunch of car repair places to get an estimate on how much it'd cost to fix, and my god, it's so expensive.
It was all cosmetic damages, the car ran fine and the lights all worked. But i did shatter the tine window next to the main one and misaligned one of my lights (something I think only matters for the NCT).
So it added up.

Thankfully I found one place that cost less then €1,000. It took them the rest of the week to get the parts but I drove my car into them last Tuesday morning and was able to pick it up the next day at 2pm.
They even cleaned up the nasty green stuff growing in the corners of the outside I never got around to cleaning off.

I had to spend so much money last week.