A nice, relaxing, excruciatingly painful break

The fun met an abrupt pause last week. I had to go to the dentist to fulfill the latest part of my bi-decennial checkup. Unlike the more mundane fillings, this one was a root canal. My first. I was entirely oblivious to the horror stories that surround this process, and as such the entire thing passed without me even noticing the dentist had done it. I was just about to utter a mild "excuse me, is it done" when the very answer came forth.

Off I went about my business. As the anaesthetic wore off, I felt a tinge of pain but nothing to get in the way of the work I had planned - implementing a simple panel as one of the basic building blocks for my new GUI system, and the others to go along with it.

That night, I worked. I had some successes, but was tired and unusually cold. The next day was not so lovely. The pain had built up, and I sat through work, swirling freezing water around my gums in an attempt to numb things. That never worked, and I came home that night with no plans other than to curl up under a blanket and watch some football. I never slept, the pain was too much. I resolved to burst into the dentists office the following morning, which I did, and thankfully got myself some antibiotics. Antibiotics which wouldn't work for three days.

I couldn't stay in work, so I went home, going through a repetitive pattern of sleep, toilet, pain, sleep, toilet, pain. First in the bed (not the toilet part, mind you) and then on the sofa after I resolved to finally play Bully. That never happened. The house was biting cold, but there was no way that heating was going on after last winter's bill. More jumpers.

Finally, my girlfriend arrived with stacks of pills and all manner of drugs which I'm pretty sure I would have injected straight into the offending gum if I only had a needle. Miraculously, they worked anyway. I could sit up, watch TV, talk! Thank fuck for all that.

Still though I wasn't fit to work. It wasn't until Sunday that I finally loaded up BlitzMax to see if I could knock something more out, managing to do half that button I had wanted to get done during the week. Instead of having most of the GUI work done by Sunday, I had barely started.

Which means that's what I've been doing this week. That button has been completed and I've added some labels, images and a nice combo box that surprisingly works exactly as I wanted it to. This is a breakthrough for me, as I hate coding those fucking things. It's even pretty extensible and the same code can be used for those lovely right-click shortcut menu jobs.

I also learned some more about BlitzMax's 2D system, which isn't the best, but rather than mope as I would have done in the not-too-distant past, I've taken it on board as a challenge. If I have to get stuck into the guts of OpenGL, I'll do it.

There's a solution in there somewhere...