Birthday week

Been a while since updating this thing due to being quite ill. Two weeks ago I went over to special person's place on the Wednesday evening as normal, and realised I didn't feel 100%. The next morning I was clearly in no state to go to work and I ended up being off sick for a week. By the following Tuesday, I was so bad that I went to the doctor. He listened to my chest and said it sounded awful and prescribed me some antibiotics. These hit the spot and by the weekend I was OK.

It was my birthday on the Sunday. Special person and I had a nice, but busy day. We went to my Dad's for lunch, which was nice and then we headed over and met up with Rob and Em, and Jane and Wes, who were up for a flying visit. We got the chance to meet their new baby, Robin, who was only 6 weeks old. The big surprise of the day was special person buying me an electric double bass, as I'd mentioned that I'd thought about getting one before for 'giggles'. It's quite a challenge to play compared to a bass guitar, that's for sure.

After that we had a nice meal with my Mum before heading back. She got me an interesting infra-red heater thing. It looks like a whiteboard but is a heater. Very odd. It works quite effectively though.

I headed back on Monday and then it was special person's birthday on Tuesday, but unfortunately they were working late, so we had the birthday stuff on Wednesday. It was another really nice day, although we did just stay in. The presents I'd bought were much appreciated and it was a great day.

The house works are continuing. The new kitchen is nearly done and it's a vast improvement on the old one. The living room and hallway are hopefully going to be decorated soon.

In other news I finally bought myself a soldering iron so I could do the pickup upgrade on the Dirnt bass and put new strings on it. I think it'll end up sounding great. I also treated the PC to a fancy new gaming keyboard. It's a mechanical Corsair one with backlit switches that can all be customised. I've got it set to blue and green at the moment, but the keys briefly flash red when you press them, which is a subtle but nice effect. I've also relocated the PC off the floor to hopefully make it pick up less dust and given the case a proper clean for the first time, clearing off some old sticker residue and things. It's quite a nice case but it still gave me a nasty cut when I was trying to get at the power and hard drive LEDs.

I've been carrying on with BioShock Infinite on the PC. I'm playing it on Easy because I just want to enjoy the experience of the story and visuals. I also have tried out Assassin's Creed 4 that Rob lent me on the 360, but as with the previous games I find the controls difficult and frustrating, even though the boat driving parts were quite good. The Oculus has been returned but I have since lent it out again since I'm not quite in the mood to use it at the moment for some reason.

My car is due to be taxed, so I thought about changing it for something more comfortable, but it's all a bit up in the air as I might need to change it to something suitable for lugging my Mum around and the dog. But since the DVLA are being indescribably shite about telling her if she's safe to drive or not, I don't know what I should get. Also since I'm not very good a choosing cars, I'm scared that whatever I look at will be rubbish. I'd like something a bit more solid, perhaps German built, but what to get?