Ache, Rattle, and Blow

I can only assume that this will be the first of many posts that begin with the phrase "I awoke with one of my bad headaches today". And it was a doozy too. They start small, a dull ache that invades my morning dreams. When I awake with one of these headaches I know there's a fifty-fifty chance of getting rid of it before it gets bad. Usually popping some ibuprofen and going through my morning ablutions is enough to determine how it's going to go. If it's not gone by the time I'm finished, then it's going to be with me half a day or longer. This morning I was not lucky. I couldn't shake the headache. I also couldn't eat anything and had no caffeine around. After staying up for a couple hours, I grew overwhelmingly tired and went back to bed. I slept a few more hours, fitfully, and awoke with my head throbbing worse than before. But, I made myself stay up, and made myself get a big Pepsi from 7-11. Sipping the caffeine and popping another dosage of ibuprofen eventually broke the pain and got me hungry. After eating, it went entirely away.

One of the reasons I got the headache was probably due to the winds that started up last night. They blew all night and hammered my house through the first half of the afternoon. By early evening they had finally abated.

And, to top things off, there was a nice earthquake this afternoon just before 4:30. (Click this link to read the USGS report.) Even those of you in southern California may not have felt it because it wasn't very big, but I felt it because it turned out to be a mile or so from my house. It was fairly quick and I felt no swaying— just a quick jolt. There don't appear to have been any sizeable aftershocks either.

I discovered that I under-reported the setup time on my laptop by an hour because this evening I remembered to run updates from Microsoft. 70 were found and installed and then another 7 optional ones were found subsequently. That added another hour to my official setup time. On the plus side though, I received the case that I ordered from Amazon and it's nicer than I expected. It's largely neoprene, very slim, and very light. I also received the 16GB flash drive that I ordered for use as a backup and synchronizing device between the laptop and my desktop.

Out of curiosity, I logged onto Starbucks website to check out their wifi options. I know they've been offering some deals. Turns out if you register one of your Starbucks cards and use it at least once a month, you can get two free consecutive hours of free wifi usage a day. That's a good deal and not that hard to keep up on— particularly since I already have a registered card that I use at least once a week or so. I don't intend to use my laptop much for communication and web browsing, but it's nice to know I can use it for such when I'm away from home.

In about 27 hours I'll be leaving home again and heading out to Raleigh, North Carolina, this time to visit my brother and his family. I'm very excited about the trip and wish it were going to be longer than 4 days. (They are all very busy!) I wasn't going to take my laptop, but now I've decided to bring it so I can keep up on my email, etc.

Well, that's about it for my mundane Tuesday. Back soon.

"I was married once— in San Francisco. I haven't seen her for many years. The great earthquake and fire in 1906 destroyed the marriage certificate. There's no legal proof. Which proves that earthquakes aren't all bad."— W. C. Fields