Lessons through Scrabble...

This is going to be a short post... I'm certain I'll put more into it some time in the future because I know it will make quite a funny little story.

So I blew up during a Scrabble game last night. Why, I hear you ask?

Were people cheating? No, I can handle that - I appreciate the forms (or lack thereof) of ingenuity that people will apply to cheating.

Then what was it?

Simple, I had realised I lost the game when we were only halfway through the letters. But the real reason is that I had wound myself up consistently through the entire game (it was at 1am and hey, read my last post - it's been a tough week for me :) ). Still, excuses aside, I believe no matter how well you are or aren't, you can always wind yourself up to eruption (cue unnecessary volcano and guitar string analogies).

I was playing the game one move ahead - like you would in chess. However, EVERY time I was being headed off at the pass. First, I had CHAIN lined up for a triple word score, only to have the N taken away by a "near". You think that's ironic? Read on.

So the game continues and it's pretty close, even though the BANE of my game that was leaving me incredibly PEEVEd had already stolen some cracker words from me. I was still feeling good. I'd accumulated a Q I C E that were just waiting for the U to make use of the H on a triple word score to get a fat 60 to put me well in the lead (you have to remember that a lot of it is luck in scrabble - when you've 90% of the vowels on the board in the first 5 minutes, it's hard to get high scores).

I take my go, take another three letters.

"Z - crap. D - OK, that could be useful. U - yes, I have got this game all sown up, BOOYAH!"

"No, no, please.... NOOOOOOOO!!!"

Cue unnecessary blow up.

Sorry that wasn't someone dying. No, that was my precious H being stolen on me. There was no way to claw back a 60 point deficit with the letters I had. No way (at least, as far as I was concerned at that point in time). I gave up. I huffed. I puffed. And I sulked.

So, the morale of this little tale isn't that QUICHE leads to DEATH (although some nutritionists may agree with that). But it's that by not living in the present and focusing too much on what you want to have (yet do not have) will leave you angry, frustrated and disappointed - a game of scrabble proved it. QED.

Overcoming Illness

It's been a while since I last blogged and I was pretty much at the point where I was going to blog "I should blog something really". But then... Well, what a week!

Sunday started off pretty bad and well, just got worse. I woke up with a throbbing jaw and looked in the mirror to see myself doing an involuntary Popeye impression. It takes a lot for me to ever let the words, "I think I need to see the doctor" leave my mouth so that was a pretty clear indicator to Naomi that things weren't good.

The doctor's was heaving and we were pretty certain they'd just send us to emergency so that's were we headed instead.

Anyway, long dull story short, went to the hospital, eventually got a cat scan which didn't turn up any abscess so they put me on two IV drips of antibiotics and sent me home.

Monday morning - felt like crap, really crap. And the swelling had kept going up. Took the day off work.

On Monday, someone who shall remain nameless (for their own sake!) decided to let me know that the triage nurses "are the most arrogant, incompetent and frustrating people you'll ever have to deal with" - based on which you'd be forgiven for thinking that Nazi regimes are still very much alive and well in Sydney's city hospitals. He then proceeded on an almost laughable tirade against them except that (a) he was deadly serious and (b) I fairly certain I would have been stabbed numerous times, had I laughed. All joking aside though, he did have very good reasons for his statement and isn't that the good old fashioned Aussie way, forsaking all rational facts for heated opinion.

So back to the hospital Monday evening and another IV drip of antibiotics after they drained the swelling. I definitely won't go into details of that.

So it's now Saturday and I've been on the antibiotics for just over 5 days now and the swelling has finally gone down to being nearly not noticeable at all. I've to keep on the antibiotics, which to be honest, are the most painful thing - my stomach keeps playing up and I'm in constant pain. I've been told that what's causing it is the antibiotics killing good bacteria in the stomach so to get onto those new funky bacteria ridden yoghurts (and I suspect Forbiotics would do the same trick). Though that could honestly be nothing more than an old wives' tale so I'm about to go ask Dr Google what he thinks (which, btw, everyone should be aware is nowhere near as effective as actually getting information from a real doctor - we had to write AI patient diagnosis software during uni so I can tell you first hand how dodgy that approach can be).

What a week - still, it is Saturday, the sun is shining so I'm going to drag my wife outside to do something enjoyable this afternoon.

Facebook

Man, I haven't blogged in ages...

Anyway, I finally gave in - I'm now on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=638563178

Still, as good as it is, I don't find myself using it that much... time will tell.

(Though I just find it a whole lot nicer than the whole MySpace/Bebo stuff - it's just way too girly for me!)