Holy crap

I thought that being ill plainly sucked. I thought that this week I might be back to work.... working and such. Indeed to get the work done.
On Saturday I had quite a bit of fever, same on Sunday. Monday morning I got up, stumbled to the bathroom as usual, stared in the mirror as usual and then almost laughed my ass off. I had the funniest rash ever. All my face and hands covered in red spots. I needed to go to the doc anyway and my vague theory about allergy to some meds was confirmed. Antibiotics. Again. Every time I get antibiotics, I get allergy, at least in the last ten years. I got a calcium shot, some other meds and went to the office. People grinned at me. When I went to buy something to eat, the cashier loooked at me as if I were to be buried on the plague cemetery. Soon and deep, preferably.
On Tuesday, second layer of the crap appeared and it started to itch. I went for another calcium shot, complained, got a prescription for something against the itching, dropped at the office, people grinned again but considerably less because I was all swollen and looked rather miserable.
Just now the crap is leaving my face and hands. The other allergy pills make me sleepy but itchless, at least. The worst part of the rash is on my feet - yes, you can have rash on the soles of your feet, too. I have swollen toes and problems squeezing my feet in the shoes. But... it's going away.
I could stand another week of fever, too. I had totally no appetite and lost some four kilos.

But, the spring started. I suppose that next weekend or so I could go out hiking or something.

The second suckiest birthday ever

I'm still ill. I was ill around my birthday too but it was better by then, I just thought I had sinusitis which would be easily cured by the antibiotics. I felt crappy, it sucked, most people cared a damn and such.
Meantime, it showed that the antibiotics don't work. I had fever again and such. My doc on the phone had a good laugh, saying that every GP claims every cold plus headache a sinusitis whereas them, experts, need an x-ray to see, that I should take some painkiller and go to bed.
Which I did. Today I woke up, stumbled to the bathroom and saw myself in the mirror. I have the funniest rash ever, folks. If you're good girls and boys, I'll take a pic.
I went to the GP, she rolled her eyes when she saw me, said that it's an allergic reaction to the antibiotics, I got a calcium and some other crap (I hate shots. It hurts me. I'll have to ask someone about the spray anaesthetic that my dentist has for cases like me, folks who have low pain threshold and tend to howl and fight), some more allergy meds and was told to come for another shot tomorrow. Later on I remembered that I forgot to ask what to do about the fever.
Yeah, and I have totally no appetite. I just stopped eating. I even don't like coffee. It lead me to thoughts that I should have cleaned my place because I might be dying and such.
The worst thing is that I absolutely need to work. I'll get some glucose or something so that the brain has some food but..... I would only too happily lie and doze until it all goes away.

Postal odyssey, part II.

Today I had a headache. It shifted from my neck solely to my head and did its best to become worse as the day went by.

I went to the post office with the customs storage. It's at the other end of the city which makes it a nice trip or at least would make it a nice trip if my legs weren't too heavy to lift and my head wasn't trying to explode upon every faster move of my upper body.
The post office is ugly, there's the canteen for employees and they served sour cabbage today because the whole building smelled of sour cabbage. Yuck. I found the right office, the lady told me straight away They didn't let you know that you were to pick your mail, did some stamping and stickering and I got my yarn. Lovely yarn, for that matter and you'll get a pic when the batteries are recharged. Unless my head explodes before that.

The other job was to buy mohair yarn - I did some stupidly stupid calculating mistake: one 50g ball of yarn A has 55m, one ball of yarn B has 166m, I used up ten of the former, four of the latter will suffice for the same project. In reality, yarn A was 110m/50g meaning that actually I needed over a kilometre and yarn B comes in 100g balls so I would need not four but eight or so. Obviously, they didn't have the yarn I needed anymore. Not in another shop, not in the storehouse, never more. I had to fish something suitable which is mohair/acrylic blend and I should wind it into long skeins (walk that kilometre between two chairs, basically) and dye it grey, burgundy and green but I cannot move. I wonder whether I could knit the sweater and paint the stripes onto it later. It should work. It will work.
And, the yarn is in a 1.4kg cone.

I have a terrible headache, did I mention it? When I jumped up because I remembered that I forgot about the rice I was making, it tried to kill me. I tried to calm down - it doesn't hurt when I don't move, it jsut feels tense, then, but it didn't work for quite a while so I jumped around holding my head as if badly mimicking the Munch guy.
Now, I'm moving around only if I really have to, like, to bring coffee or the remote control. I have to move slowly so to a random observer it might seem that I move immersed in jelly.
Imagining that I just moved today's work to tomorrow and that I have to pick some people at the bus station and take them to the dorms (two hours on public transport), I feel like going and killing myself. Sigh.

Postal odyssey

I might have mentioned (read: I did lots of cursing all over the place) that local post office has some issue with parcels. They are delivered by another bunch of people than letter mail. Don't ask me why, post office is just an entity on its own.

Well, the parcel guys have those nice blue pickups on which "You post today, we deliver tomorrow" is written in neat yellow letters. They should go, bang your door and when you don't open, they should bang your neighbour's door. When there are no neighbours around, they are supposed leave a notice in the mailbox. True, there might be an obstacle, in many apartment blocks, the mailboxes are behind the door, not outside, don't ask me why - only recently the houses are built in such a way that the mail can be thrown in from outside.* In such case, they leave a notice at the local post office and my mailwoman brings a notice two weeks later, which says Hey, your mail will go back the day after tomorrow.

It was September 2006 when I actually got a package delivered by a post guy. Since then, they must be happily having their snack somewhere warm because nobody ever bothers to bang my door. They would succeed, when I'm in Prague, I tend to be at home most days. So is the next door lady who is pensioned and another bunch of people in the house who are stay at home moms, pensioned and such. The mailwoman doesn't hesitate about leaving my registered mail at the neighbour, they are allowed to do that - so why not the parcel guys?
I always get the piece of paper that my mail will be sent back. It happened to me once that it actually did go back, I might be off home for more than two days. The last time I didn't pick my parcel was like two weeks ago and the little problem is that it's from the U.S. I was totally pissed. I wanted to make an angry call to the parcel centre but they never picked the phone. They might know their customers, it seems.
I contacted the person who was selling me the yarn (yes, yarn. Rare vintage) and told her that she might get the parcel back and that I'm not a jerk, the post people are.
However, today I came home and I had a notice in my mailbox that there's a registered letter left at neighbour's. It was from Uncollected Mail Central, that my parcel from the U.S. which I hadn't collected is waiting there. It's all across the town but, good enough. I won't complain anymore that life is boring. And, I'll update tomorrow on new experiences with the post.
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*I suppose that this could go along with typical foods, folklore and such. Indigenous culture.

Just so

I started knitting the black silk sweater around two weeks ago thinking that I'd jsut leave it plain black, there are the little colourful blobs in the yarn anyway but then I got an Idea. That I'll embellish it with the single orphan skein of Tsubaki in blues and pinks. I knit on the train where I discovered that I have only one needle and for my basic sweater I need basically two. It can be done with one but with a bit of difficulties - you need to squeeze two armspans on one needle, in this case 80cm. The stranded part could be done on one only too, but I invested 40 cowrie shells into another 5mm circular (made of undefined grey matter), 5mm is my usual size anyway. I adapted one motif from Stickmönster på Öland and added the frame around it to have a well-defined stripe.
The problem showed when the wonderful light blue changed to dark blue and then into purple. Just way too many colours - and the yarn has pink and a length of green and some teal, too. I ended up with clipping the yarn and joining only the light blue pieces as much as possible - I was too lazy to rip the dark blue at the beginning, bad enough that two rows with purple had to go. But the result is satisfactory although I don't have yarn enough for the solid blue stripe I wanted to make at the back part. It doesn't matter that much, though. I named the pattern Faraway bride, there's something sentimental about it. One day I might even write it down.
The other piece of yarn porn is mohair blend I dyed for one exchange sweater. Just so.




We're having presidential elections these days. The parliament is arguing how to vote.
When we had the parliament elections, it was a draw and the guys were arguing who would be in the government so we were without any for seven months. The state budget of that year was far the best in the last 10 or so years. One wonders what's the politicians good for.
I'm still laptopless - the cable is at home II. so the battery is out. And will be for a while. So, since I don't remember my passwords, I cannot log on to my places and I cannot waste time chatting and such... and I can go home from office, Mommy is making roasted ribs.

Why I don't have a TV

Yesterday I arrived to parents' and there just were the main evening news. Showing a video how some nice boys intoxicated a cat with alcohol and then threw her to a bulldog and then had a good time laughing when that what remained from the cat was screaming in pain.*
I went away.
When I came back, the next piece of news was about a woman who microwaved her baby. It didn't say whether she ate the baby but, why the fucking hell they have to show this? And, why the fucking hell I should watch it?

Sigh.

Action!

I dyed some yarns. Quite some yarns.
I also messed some but it's nothing that couldn't be fixed. It came out of the washing machine pretty tangled - sure, I tie the hanks (one untied itself, the knot stayed, though. It has to be some perverted topology) and I even knot them so that they don't come out of the washing machine as one terrible mess. Today they were particularly evil because they even unknotted themselves.
Note to self: silk takes the cotton dye. That explains why the green and purple guts look like guts, not like pretty tweedy yarn. I'll redye it but it sucks.
The wool/cotton blend worked better although the purple and turquoise yarn has no flair.
The wet mohair looks like dead dog but that's the usual habit of wet mohair. Although I know it, it's pretty unnerving.
No redyeing tomorrow, I have an exam to pass.

Yawn

Of the last two days, I spent around 30 hours sleeping. The result is that I'm tired. It is still an improvement since the last days because then, I was totally drained.

And now about something completely different.

I felt totally drained today again so I asked Hannu to post something. And add some rants, but he's a Finn and Finns don't rant.




Here's some nice landscape photo from Finland. We have snow, you don't. ;) I bet you all are jealous now.