A Brave New Year - Part I

You'd think after the strain of mishaps last December, that it could only go uphill for me in the new year. And you'd be perfectly wrong.

First off, after having digested last Christmas, off to the shiny bright new year practically bristling with chances and opportunities. To get me, I guess.

January started off with me working, then getting home, then working again on the stupid presentation. Alone. The astute reader might remember that, two posts ago, Petronius promised me he would care of the oral part of the exam. YEAH. RIIIIGHT. So practically, since politely asking or bitching at him had no effect at all, I decided since I don't want to spend yet another year at uni because someone else is screwing me over, I'll just fucking do it myself. In the second January week then, Petronius kinda woke from his slumber and started to participate, which was good because, while I might be able to make the Powerpoint and prepare myself for it, he also has to be present. (I already had a plan B ready where I would've told him to play sick that day. (And a Plan C involving multiple vehicular manslaughter on my part, buuut let's not dwell on this.)) Because even he seemed to get that while I may try to drag him through this because of our friendship, there are limits of the stuff I can do.

In the end, we lucked out and passed, because 1)we were the first of seven teams, so no one could screw us with their übercompetence, and 2) all questions to the topic were answered by moi, of course. One day, I will find out how a 120-kilo-man is able to blend into the wallpaper like that, while I'm scrutinized by the professor and his aides and asked about the finer points of Likelihood-enhancing model-based stochastic search algorithms in multidimensional data sets (No, I have no idea what that means either). Oh, and 3) Someone must have either slipped a roofie or two into my professors morning coffee, or he forgot to shove his trusty umbrella up his ass, because he was mellow as hell, and didn't start to horribly deconstruct people after around the fourth or fifth team. (Well, someone has to fail in his class, I suppose). So, in the end, yay! Finally! I will be able to sleep again!

But wait, first, I have to get to my urologist. The week after the Horrible Exam From Hell, I get my very own operation! I'm, like, totally enthused about that. Because there's absolutely nothing better than having to tell your (female) boss that you can't get to work next week on Monday and Tuesday, because they're going to operate on your scrotum. Swell.
And Friday, I was supposed to visit my Anaesthesist(the last years, I only had a doc, and a dentist. By the way things are going, I will add "my Toxicologist" and "my Neurologist" to that list in no time), because he wanted to tell me all the nice little horror stories about narcosis and what can go wrong there, so that I will absolutely confident about the whole affair.
Yes, you probably noticed the "supposed" part. But I'm getting way nonlinear in the story-telling again, so to clarify things:

On Monday, it was Little Jay's third birthday. Which I couldn't attend because on Tuesday, the Exam From Hell took place. The entire Tuesday, so I lost time to work again (I have to work 20 hours each week. It's flexible to take, but after taking half of Monday off, and Tuesday again, Wednesday and Thursday suddenly looked very busy (and Friday's out of the question, due to classes I have to attend).

Also, on Wednesday was Little Jay's birthday party (Since M and D are born just two days (and two years) later, it's easy to lump the parties together, at least for now.) I came there, tired and craving for caffeine. What I got was this sentence from F: "Y'know, actually it was a good thing you couldn't come on Monday. We had no party because everyone of us had the Norovirus and we were only shitting and vomiting."
Oooookaaaay, this is kinda like ...not what I wanted to hear. But, given the past topics I had to endure in F's flat lately, and the fact that my Mom was also coming (she's the godmother of the twins, as I am to Little Jay), I was almost relieved. Because while I love my Mom very, very much, if she ever starts casually talking with S about her vibrators and their practical applications with or without my Dad in my presence, I will be leaving. By which I mean, this planet.
INNYway, thanks to an oversugared birthday cake and several cappucinos, I managed to survive this day, too. Go me! I'm on a winning streak!

Thursday. Or not. Thursday starts off at precisely 5.45 am, when my alarm clock throws me out of bed. My barely conscious body shuffles over to the nearest loo, and discovers: my mom, passed out on the bathroom floor. Suddenly, I'm not half-sleeping anymore. I wake her up, and she tells me she has spent the night vomiting. Wow. That was quick. I get her back to bed with a trusty vomit bowl, make her some tea, and tell her to sleep. I check on her before I'm leaving for work, wait long enough for my father to return from nightshift, and hurry off.

I get home at 4 o'clock. Yay me! It's not even completely dark yet! Time to check on Mom. Hm. Mom's not in her bed. She's not in the living room either. But Dad is.
T: Hey. Where's Mom? Is she better?
D: Hi. Yeah, she'll get out on Thursday.
T: Errr...out of what?
D: The hospital. (The "duh" is implied)
T: *Sigh* Could we just...start at the beginning, please?
(now you've seen how communication between me and my Dad works. And why I don't talk to him more often, in order to save brain cells.)
Anyway. Just about half an hour after I left home, my Dad called the doctor, because Mom was getting worse, as in, unusual and severe stomach pains. The doc, half an hour later, then send her to the nearest hospital. Instead of the stomach flu, she had an inflated appendix, and got operated at about 2 p.m. Which was lucky, since the thing had already been thisclose to bursting. They said she would be out of it for today, so visiting would be pointless until tomorrow. Oh well. That sucks, but at least I finally can catch a break...

...of course that means, in the very next five minutes, my cell phone rings:

F: Hey, it's me. I just bought a new laptop, and I can't get Windows installed. Can you help?
Me: Err...sure. Just drop by.

God. I am a stupid motherfucking doormat, aren't I?

So I go upstairs, and flick on my hall lamp. Or rather, I don't. Because the stupid thing has killed off yet another innocent lightbulb, upping the count to three in the past twelve months. So, get a chair, get the screwdriver, to screw off the stupid glass decor on the thing. Just like the last times. Only this time, one of the three screws holding the glass decor decides this is the perfect opportunity to snap in half. and the stupid glass thing crashes onto me, or rather, my forehead. I lose balance on the chair, slam into the nearest wall, and then onto the floor. Floor Lamp 1, Teshik 0.

About five minutes later, the following conversation can be overheard at the doorstep of my home:
F: Hi. Err...What do you have on your head?
T: (looks up) Frozen broccoli.
F: Is...there a particular reason for storing broccoli on your head, or did you just...feel like it?
T: You're an ass.
F: Yes, but I'm not the ass with frozen vegetable hatware.

We determined that I had a mild concussion, and I grew a nice little horn on the left side of my forehead, but except for the headache, nothing serious, so we got to work.

And discovered an interesting conundrum: F's laptop doesn't have an operating system. If you try and install Windows XP, it'll tell you, "I canna do this capn, there's no driver for the funky new S-ATA hard drive! Get me a driver first! And get these Klingons offa me engine room!" Okay. Getting the driver off the internet isn't that hard. But the driver installation program then tells you: "nuqneH?! This program cannot be run in DOS mode, you little P'tach! Get me a decent operating system first, and some Blood Wine! Q'apla!"

F: So...what's the diagnosis?
T: Hmm. I need enough explosives to blow up an certain moon, and a conspiracy plot to get William Shatner deported into a Sibirian prison.
F: Is that the concussion talking, or are you just messing with me?
T: The latter... I hope.

So we tried, tried, tried some more, even called the fucking shop. Who basically told us: either you can buy Windows Vista off us, or you can just keep being screwed. Thanks, you've been ever so helpful, that I'm sure I'm never buying there again, asshat. In the end, I was thisclose to install Windows XP on my USB stick, plug it into F's laptop, start it up, install the goddamn driver, and install Windows XP on the damn thing, but I had a severe headache going, and after Reenacting Star Wreck: The Undiscovered S-ATA Controller, I just hadn't the strength for Star Wreck: The Wrath Of Gates. Yet. F got home, I went to bed, because there's Uni tomorrow. Oh well. Just another day to survive, and then, finally, a weekend. I mean what could possibly happen that hasn't already happen to me this week?

Continue in Part Two when Teshik realized tempting Fate when she's currently PMSing isn't quite the great idea he thought it was.

So this is Christmas? I demand a refund. Part II

Remember my shitty December last year? Yeah. That continued to a major bitchfest on Christmas Day with my family. My dad and I had a disagreement over whether he can smoke in my living room. We two had a compromise worked out in about 30 seconds. But, we then had to wait half an hour for my mom (because he still smokes, despite his rapidly declining health, my mom gets upset a lot), and then over an hour for my sister, who ran out crying because my mom had run out crying, and because my dad and I were "fighting". Tell me, is the following conversation:

Teshik enters the downstairs livingroom.
Teshik: Hey. Mom says you won't come up?
Dad: No, because you won't let me smoke. Or do you?
Teshik: No. But if you can't without, we'll play cards here instead.
Dad: Well, we need a bigger table for seven people.
Teshik: I'll get Scorpio. We'll get the old dining table out of the basement.
Dad: Okay.

fighting? Because, if so, I really need to update my vocabulary. Unless it's Opposite Day.

But Boxing Day got even better. Each year on December 26th, F and S make a fondue with a couple'o'friends, including me. We've done it for five or so years now, long enough to call it traditional, I think. (at least, it is, when all participants are below the 30-year-mark). In the last two years, our numbers considerably dwindled, however. For those of you accusing S's interesting perspective on some things for the shrinkage? I won't judge you. I won't agree with you either, though. (mainly because some day, somehow, one of my real life friends will make the connection between "Teshik" and my real life name, and I've accumulated too many death sentences already.). This year, we were only four, all old good pals.
Innyway. The fondue? Great, as usual. The gaming night afterwards? Eh...started out innocently enough. We started of with F's new Activity game, the Club edition. "Club edition" means "unsuitable for children". Because describing "condom leakage" with pantomiming? Yeah, that's aduld stuff. But good times nonetheless. Also? Those photos you get of those occasions are premium blackmail material.
But then, S dug out another game, called "Truth or Dare". It's exactly like the children version, only with, you guessed it, very adult topics. Thankfully, we left out the Dare part, because if I had to lick whipped cream off of F's manly hairy chest, I would probably write this from the inside of a prison right now. But the Truth part sufficed.
To get this into perspective, I am, or at least, I'm close to, being an asexual. Which means, basically, if you want to have sex like rabbits, go for it, woo hoo, power to the people and stuff. And as long as you don't involve animals and children, or force someone, I'd say anything is allowed if it turns you on. But don't expect me to be turned on myself. And please, please don't expect me to go all "ooh" and "aah" when you tell me about your vibrator collection, because, if you take away the "mmh, aroused" part, you get stuck with a pink dick-shaped object, where you put a battery in, and when it shakes, you insert it into a fitting body orifice. A rectal thermometer is also inserted in a certain orifice, but that doesn't mean I want to see yours. And your vibrator, even if it has a setting that makes movements "just like a fish", falls into the same category. So unless you want me to drop it into the nearest aquarium and see if it swims, drop the topic. Thank you. And that's all I want to say about the events of Boxing Day, Thanks.

Hm. Note to self: If you ever need to squick some visitors out, a visit to the nearest pet shop, and the nearest Good Vibrations will probably suffice. Heh.

You know, actually I planned to write about my current bad luck items in January, but it seems this will have to wait. But I can squeeze in that Sylvester/New Years sucked as well, because partying with my cousin bounced, he unexpectedly had to work on New Years Eve(No, he's not a nurse. Or a fireman. Believe it or not, he is a Gardener. Obviously his customers need mowed lawn on the morning of January 1st. Don't ask.). And since Scorp was picking the party this year, I wound up with no party at all. But, considering my bad luck lately, I'm glad I couldn't blunder across yet another "funny" "party game". Or be the centre of another "fight".
Yeah. That was about the end of 2007 for me. But that also means I can finally bitch about the shittiness of the year 2008. Hooray!