The snow has all been washed away. For the past few days the weather has been bi-polar. On Friday, just when we thought it was all thawing out, it suddenly started snowing again and we must have gotten about six inches at least - I walked Jason to the bus stop in it, Ashley came as well and we larked about a bit while waiting, throwing snowballs at each-other, rolling around in it and the like. We waited for about half an hour and in all that time we just saw one bus - the 22 heading back up to Warrington. The 34 never came, so we headed back to mine, left all our wet clothes in the hall to dry out, sipped tea and tried to warm up again.

Then, last night, I was woken up by the sound of heavy rain, which was really weird considering the snow we'd been stuck with for the past week or so. It's all gone this morning, and it's definitely feeling milder out there. About bloody time as well; it's nearly February!

I tried to get some drawing done yesterday but I haven't been feeling too good. Shortly after Jason caught the bus home yesterday I developed this really severe tinnitus - a loud buzzing in my right ear, and my head feels as if it's about to burst. It's horrible. I had it all day yesterday (except for a brief lull at about 10pm), went to sleep feeling like I was going to die, and then when I woke up this morning I still had it. And I still have it now.

Where the hell it came from, I have no idea. It literally just... happened. This terrible, distracting buzzing and pressure in my right ear, out of the blue. Dad's making a doctor's appointment for Nathan tomorrow (he's come down with a terrible flu after going on his residential with the Prince's Trust) so I might ask him to make me one while he's at it. I mean, it's probably nothing - maybe just some earwax or an infection or something - but I don't want to risk it being something to do with blood pressure or something more serious.

I guess that all I can do in the meantime is get on with things. I need to get some more drawings done today for this project for Holly. Maybe some music would help block out the awful buzzing, at least.

My laptop broke on Friday night! I think I might be to blame because I shut the lid down, then decided I wanted to turn it off instead to avoid it overheating, and I opened the lid up and turned it off via holding the power button, which can mess up some of the startup files if they aren't allowed to run their course. After that, every time I turned it on, it went to this 'startup repair' screen.

On Friday night, this ran for about three hours before I decided I wanted to go to bed and didn't want to leave it on. So I tried it again on Saturday morning, at about 10.30am... and at 11pm last night, it finally finished fixing itself. I was terrified I'd lose all of my stuff; music, photos and all the rest.

So, my laptop's working again (for now...), the weather's more agreeable... but I have tinnitus, out of nowhere. I did a bit of research on it and if it turns out to be incurable then all I can do is just let my hearing adjust. People who suffer from incurable tinnitus eventually learn to block out the tinnitus signal. But I'd still like to see what my doctor says. He's a good chap, always willing to listen, which is more than I can say about some other GPs I've heard of (one horror story featured a girl of 6 with tinnitus whose doctor accused her of making it up for attention). Maybe it's because of a throat/nose/ear infection that has yet to manifest itself beyond tinnitus. I don't know. I'll make up an appointment and see what he says.

It's bloody annoying, though. Typing, for instance, feels like there's an army marching in my right ear. Running a tap has suddenly became an assault on my hearing. The people who say that 'tinnitus isn't a real condition' can bugger off to be honest, because I can see how this would be debilitating for some long-time sufferers.