Not in the sink

It was quite the weekend.  You would figure having Mom over for a couple days of sitting by the pool relaxation would be rather subdued, which for the most part was.  Mom said she was coming over Saturday morning after she did a few things around her place.  So we were surprised when she pulled up around 9 ish.  We were still finishing up some last minute preparations.

I was very tired.  I was up until 2:30 am.  No I wasn’t playing WoW.  I was working on two projects.  The first one involved trying to fix my 2 satellite radios.  I bought an old, beatup, used unit off ebay for 6 dollars.  It looked like whomever owned it had very dirty fingers.  However it was the older model that had 2 of the antenna connectors that are defective on my radio.  One of the two was trashed terribly, the other one was in good shape.  So I tore into it and before long managed to remove the connector from the old unit.  Getting it installed into my radio was another story.

Removal of the connector and it’s corresponding cord meant popping it out of a weird connector on the circuit board that had a removable spring like top to it.  The piece was incredibly small, small enough that trying to manipulate it with your fingers was pointless, I had to use tweezers.  When I attempted to reinstall the pirated connector to my radio I literally spent an hour trying to snap this little piece back into place but I just couldn’t get it.  It would slide off, pop off and just would not go back on.  Finally I had enough and decided to try a rig job.  I squeezed the sides of the connector together so it would hold the antenna cord in place with pressure from the sides instead of the top.  It seemed to work.  I put the deal back together, snapped it into the car and viola, it works. 

The other radio repair was much easier. The back of that one looks like it was half melted so it never seated properly into the cradle.  So I just swapped the plastic back piece with my ebay unit.  Once again a successful operation.

The other project I had going was a hard drive upgrade for the server I have at home which also happens to be used as Ali’s workstation.  The 40 gig hard drive I had in it was filling up in the C partition.  Normally a hdd swap is a no brainer.  I have done hundreds of them over the years.  Well this one was not.

  The plan was to go to an 80 gig hdd I had laying around.  I had brought home my ghost boot disk from work. The disk had an older version of ghost on it, 7.5 but I figured I would give it a try.  The copy went along without error, I restarted the system off the 80 gig drive and it came up.  However there was a driver error on boot and after a little digging I noticed that all I had was a C partition and no D partition.  Hmmm odd, I thought.  Maybe I didn’t select both partitions?  So I shut it down and repeated the procedure again, making sure my drowsiness didn’t affect my selections.  Same deal. 

Well I was getting pissed now.  I theorized that maybe Ghost 7.5 wasn’t very compatible with Windows 2003 Server.  I VPN’d into work and grabbed the 8.0 version. Well then the really weird stuff started happening.  The system started acting like it had a hardware problem.  Any attempt to boot off a floppy or CD would result in the HDD light going on solid and just hanging there.  After seating and reseating every hard drive related cable several times it suddenly started to work. 

Well this getting a bit long winded so let me just wrap it up by saying the system is back up, however the C partition is on the 80 gig hard drive, the D partition is on the original 40 gig hard drive and no I didn’t intend it to be that way and no I’m not sure how it even got that way.  But by 2:30 in the morning I was too tired to give a shit. It works, good nuff.   While I was waiting for the multiple ghost operations to finish I spent most of the time going through this guy’s stuff on youtube.  Funny kid.

Well anyway, Mom hadn’t been out to our house since Christmas, yes Christmas.  We showed her the latest and greatest around the property.  She liked all of our new outdoor furniture and our landscape additions.  Within an hour or so we were out on the lanai relaxing by the pool.  Like I said I was very tired.  Tired enough to fall aslep while floating in the pool for a good hour or so. The reflective water helped bake me pretty well in that short period.  My chest got very red.

We pretty much just chilled all afternoon.  We invited the neighbors over for drinks that night.  Mom met Rick before but not Doug.  They came over right on time, bringing wine and some food.  They always bring stuff with them when they come over.  I always tell them it isn’t necessary.  Ali said that is the polite thing to do.  I guess I am not polite.

For some reason I had it in my head to drink that night.  I started out slow with 2 or 3 beers.  But then I pulled out the heavy artillery, the Goldschlager that had been sitting in our freezer forever.  I had had it once before.  It has a cinnamon taste that burns a bit as it goes down.  I did a shot.  Then I did a couple more within 15 minutes.  I was feeling happy but not horribly drunk.  The next 3 rounds of shots I gave Rick one as well.  He never had Goldschlager before.  By the time those 3 were done there was only a couple shots left in the bottle so I decided to finish them myself.

So I had about 7 or 8 shots of Goldschlager in me.  I now was acting more drunk but felt ok otherwise.  I felt good enough to hunt for my next source of alcohol which turned out to be orange vodka.  I made my own concotion which consisted of half vodka, half tangerine juice.  Normally the taste of it would not have been appealing but my taste buds were pretty much dead at that point.  I guzzled down two of these drinks. Now I was doing silly things like cannonballs in the pool, the second time while still wearing my baseball hat.  I did all my conversation from the pool while everyone else sat up on the deck.  Yep I was full bore drunk now.

I had to make several trips to the bathroom, on my final one I decided I was chilly so I would take a warm shower.  As I was in the shower my drunkedness became more apparent, I was feeling a bit woozy, and sleepy.  So after I stumbled out of the shower I dry off and then flop down on the bed. Big mistake.  As soon as I laid down the inferno started.  Even though my eyes were closed, everything was spinning.  The nausea started coming like water in a backed up toilet.  This was not going to be good…..

I went into the bathroom and stood over the sink.  I stood there for a long time.  Ali came in and asked if I was ok and I mumbled something indicating I was although obviously I was not.  The naseau was coming in waves.  I could feel the sweat forming on my back.  Why I chose to stand over the sink as opposed to the toilet is not clear.  I think it had something to do with the cleanliness of one versus the other.

Well I stood there haunched over for a long time, at least 10-15 minutes but nothing came up.  I decided to try laying back down.  Well that did the trick, this time the naseau came surging on.  I stumbled back in to the bathroom and let loose, once again in the sink.  My eyes were closed so I would not see the results but I had the quick thinking to turn on the water to help rinse down the vomit, yea right, smart move.

The act of vomiting is like a snowball.  You vomit and then the smell, taste and texture of the vomit makes you vomit more.  It’s horrible.  I did notice that when you are in the midst of such an episode your world becomes incredibly focused.  All of your worldly concerns, hang ups and problems dissolve.  All that matters is making the vomitting stop. 

Ali came in after the first go round and saw the mess in the sink.  By running the water I managed to fill the sink with vomit soup.  The solid food in the puke instantly clogged the drain.  She told me to move to the toilet which I did.  She was angry with me for drinking to this point, I have not puked from drinking since our honeymoon 8 years ago.

Once I was postioned on the toilet the vomitting continued for awhile.  My stomach ached from the convulsions.  I was covered in sweat and had some puke on my clothes.  Ali came in later and found me on the bathroom floor, barely conscious.  She told me later she was considering calling 911 because I wasn’t really responding to her. Well I laid on the bathroom floor for awhile.  Ali came in again I commanded me to get up.  My world was still hazy but I managed to crawl from the bathroom floor to the bedroom floor where I passed out.  Ali said I was on the floor when she went to sleep, sometime during the night I climbed into the bed but I don’t remember doing it.

The aftermath the next morning wasn’t good.  I felt tired and wiped.  I was afraid to walk into the bathroom.  Ali had left the door closed and the exhaust fan all night so I knew it had to be bad. It was like I was entering a crime scene.  The sink had drained most of the water and left all the dried residue all the way to the top.  There was remnants on the floor, on the toilet, it was horrible.  Of course this was my punishment, I had to clean it up.

Clean up was slow and nasty, I used mounds of paper towels to scoop what I could into a trash bag.  I had to breath through my mouth the entire time else I would have thrown up again.  After a lot of work I had the sink and toilet looking respectable.  I tried to laugh about the whole ordeal with Ali but she would have none of that.  She was mad that I let myself get that drunk.  I told her that wasn’t the plan and it was only the second time I threw up from drinking with her in 8 years so that isn’t too bad.

Considering how bad I felt, my Sunday hangover wasn’t bad.  I felt very drained and low energy but did not have a headache.  My mom asked how I was.  I just vegged out at the table on the lanai for awhile, I didn’t feel like doing much.  I was badly dehydrated. 

Mom shoved off for home around noon.  She could have stayed longer but I think she thought she was holding us up.  It was another great day for sitting by the pool.  Once she left Ali and I tackled the grass mowing, I certainly was not looking forward to it but by that time my condition had improved to the point where I was able to cope.

During the weekend I had to go pick up gas for the mower.  I decided to take Nicki with and take the party van, I hadn’t driven it since we got back from PA. So we hopped in.  As I went to pull out I immediately noticed the gas pedal felt like it was stuck, it didn’t seem to respond to my foot.  Once I got out onto the road, I responded how any man would with something that is stuck, you push harder.

Well now the van took off, and kept accelerating.  Whatever was making it not want to go down was also preventing it from releasing. So the accelerator was basically mashed to the floor.  I immediately smash the brakes to try to slow down.  The brakes were only marginally stronger than the power of the motor so I was only slowing down very gradually.  The stop sign was coming up so I had to quickly grab for the keys and turn the thing off, killing it instantly since it was still in DRIVE. WTF was going on?

So I pop the hood and jam my hand in to the accelerator mechanism and try to move it.  It is very sticky.  So I manually move it back to around idle speed, start the van back up and putt putt back to the driveway.  I am cursing the van as I remove the air cleaner box so I could get a better look at it.  Ali came out in the middle of the process and was my gas pedal girl, pressing and relasing it for me as I tried to see what was binding.  I didn’t see anything obvious besides the springs looked crusted and rusty.  So I figure, what the hell, let’s hit it with some WD-40.

So I grab the can from the garage and soak the accelrator arm while I have Ali repeatedly press the pedal.  Slowly the range of motion returns to the pedal.  What the hell?  I buttoned it all back up and took it for a road test and it was fine.  My theory is with all the rain over the past 3 weeks and the van just sitting there the springs got a light coating of rust on them.  It’s not very reassuring but it’s the only explanation I can come up with.  The incident further cemented the van’s fate. It will be going up on Auto Trader in the not too distant future. If I’m lucky I can get what I paid for it.  I am already writing off the nearly 3k I sunk into the damn thing.

This morning I had my knee doctor visit.  After xrays and a brief examination the doc said he thinks I tore the meniscus in my left knee (same thing I did to the right one years ago)  My right knee looked a bit beat up too but for that one he is prescribing injections of some sort of artificial knee fluid.  The left one is going to get MRI’d tomorrow and then depending on what that reveals, I may have to have that one scoped to fix the damage.  It’s a bummer.

In the continuing saga of growing old, I discovered after I got to my office today after the doctor visit, that I had my shirt on inside out.  Yes, inside out. I have no idea how I didn’t notice. So I was walking around the doc’s office with my damn shirt inside out.  I must of looked like an idiot.

So the lessons learned over the past 3 days:

1. Excessive drinking leads to excessive vomitting

2. When vomitting, the toilet is always a better option than the sink

3. Wear your clothes right side out