Glad you're all having a good time
My Christmas hit an all time low last night..... I turned the "NEW" computer on and got a
no boot device available welcome..... the damned hard drive had failed!!! I've been the entire day sorting everything out..... I managed to get an SSD from a friend (thank god) and went home with it but I couldn't get online thanks to the clown who sold me the computer not supplying any motherboard drivers with it. Drove back over to my friend and he downloaded all the drivers for me (what a palaver!!) so pretty much back up and running now.
What a damned month this has been, everything that could go wrong
has gone wrong, roll on January I hope things get better. Probably the best one of the lot was my monitor going bang (during a power cut).... woke up the following morning, power was back on, turned the monitor on and, yup, it was as dead as a dodo. Phoned up Argos (40 miles away) and they said they had plenty of monitors in stock so I decided to drive through and pick one up. Opened the bedroom curtains and there was a friggin' pine tree laid out on the lawn! I was like "really?!!!) The storm must have blown it over.... great!
Got into the garage, went to start the car and NOTHING..... as dead as a dodo. At that point I was in the mood to pick up a hammer and smash the hell out of every appliance I own but I cooled down and remembered the "Aukey" starter gadget that I had bought a few months ago:
Luckily, it was half charged, so I thought I may as well give it a try.... nothing to lose etc.... well, blow me down with a feather, it worked! The 80 mile round trip to Argos pretty much charged the battery but, jesus, talk about everything going wrong at once! The following day I went out to chainsaw the branches off of the pine tree (the main trunk of the tree is way too wide for my chainsaw / it was a good 100 foot tree) and a friend said he would come in a "week or two" to convert the trunk into logs and take them away with him (he's a tree surgeon) for his log fired stove thing.
Well, f**k me...... could I get that bastard chainsaw started? NO!! I nearly had a coronary pulling away at it..... two hours later, after a carb strip down and a new spark plug it started first pull so I went out and started sawing the branches off the pine tree...... believe it or not I "didn't" saw my leg off...... I was quite chuffed to get through that without any major incident
I spoke too soon...... I'd piled all of the pine branches up in a corner of the garden I call "the fire place" with a view to burning them. It was quite a pile (15 feet high and about 20 feet wide) I ended up having to get up on a stepladder to pile the branches on. Anyhoo, got a load of paper and cardboard.... stuffed it into the bottom of the branches and poured 5 litres of petrol over it for good measure (the pine was still slightly damp) Got my trusty zippo out, lit a piece of paper and threw it on the pile of pine branches laced with petrol.
What happened next, I can only describe as a "pow" type of sound and a blinding flash
I'm as bald as a coot these days, don't have much hair on my head and was wearing a wooly hat but, let's just say my eyebrows were (erm) burnt off during the "pow" and blinding flash. I didn't feel any pain, just a hot kind of "yeow! that's f**kin' hot" type sensation so stepped back to admire my bonfire.... and, man, it was some bonfire!! The wind changed direction 30 minutes into it and burnt a fence down. Will, the farmer, was ever so good about it (it was one of his fences) and he put up a new section of fence the following day...... I offered to pay him but he said "that's ok...... you go and put your make up on!"
I didn't understand what he was going on about until I looked in a mirror........ OMG, I was minus eyebrows! The flash / pow had obviously burnt them off..... how could I not have seen that for over a day?!!!!
I've been walking about (when I go into town) with sunglasses on because no eyebrows is not a good look!! A friend (a piss taker) said "I know you like Pink Floyd but that's taking it a bit too far!" he was referring to:
Yeh, very funny. They're growing back quite fast so I'm happy about that..... it's a pity the pow / flash didn't take out my ear hairs and nose hairs.... WTF is that about? You lose the hair from your head and it starts growing out of you ears and nose? FFS, I spend more time these days trimming nose / ear hair than I do shaving.... what the hell is that all about? I've got a dedicated "nose and ear hair strimmer" and it seems to be strimming every couple of days! Shaving your face is bad enough but when you have to start shaving your ears and nose? Enough is enough! The most disturbing part is the ear and nose hairs are jet black (that's my natural hair colour) but the remaining hair on my head is pure white...... what on earth?
Anyhoo..... I'll just put this month down to bad luck and hope things get better in the new year........ Merry Christmas and best wishes to you all
Mike.