smacky and bucky

Remember the schedule I posted yesterday? Add this to the beginning of it:

Laura had her follow-up x-ray yesterday, and it turns out the sonic procedure destroyed less than half of the kidney stone. So first thing Monday morning, she is having laser surgery and a stint put in. So I have to take this coming Monday and Tuesday off to take care of her, then figure out when to go be with my mother, who has to be at the hospital at 8:30 Wednesday morning to prep for hip replacement surgery. I'd like to get there before she goes in, you know, tell her I'm there and all that. It's possible Laura's mother can come up Tuesday and stay at our house and take care of Laura the rest of the week. On the phone last night, my mother told me to stay and take care of Laura if she needs it and not to come down. But I could also tell she's scared about the surgery and sounded happy to know I was taking off work and coming down.

What do you guys think? It's about 3.5 hours down. I was thinking of asking Laura's mother to come up Tuesday, then taking off at like 4am avoid rush hour DC traffic and driving directly to the hospital in Lynchburg.

What are the chances there would be two surgeries scheduled in my family in the same week???

Plus jury duty right after that?!?

Holy Geez, I'm getting as bad as De about posting. What's up with that? Well, without going into too much detail about sensitive issues, last week I did my work and volunteered to do another person's work as well. And I did. And I did it well. But it made work days very full, so no time to blog.

So what's new? None of your business!

Just kidding, of course. Here's what the next few weeks have in store for me:

1. Taking a personal day Friday and getting out of town. We've only been to the river once since Christmas, and it's just about March! That means I have Guitar Hero at the river and have only had four days to play it in the three months I've owned it. That's just cruel.
2. My mother is having surgery next week, so I'm heading to the old hometown for a few days to be with the family. Depending on how it goes, I'll be returning the following weekend.
3. But hey, don't get to comfortable, because the Monday after I get back here, I have two weeks of JURY DUTY. It's the second time I've been called for it in five years, which seems unfair. The good thing is that the courthouse is walking distance from my office, so at least I don't have to frantically look for parking each day. Hopefully I won't be called in often or get on a jury, because part of my job is getting books to the printer on time, and the end of the fiscal year is going to be approaching like a freight train in March, so it's not the best time for me to be out of the office for two weeks. The silver lining is that by law my company can't get pissed about it, but that doesn't mean crap if a book doesn't meet the fiscal year. If that happens--even by a week--all sales get credited to the new year and there's a chance our department will fail to meet budget expectations. No pressure, right?

That takes you up to March 20. There. I'll certainly blog between now and that date too, if only updates on my exciting life.

Had a nice three-day weekend. Wife is still recovering from surgery, so we stayed in the city. Went to lunch at a nice place for Valentine's day, and we discovered that this is what people do when they are too tired to make reservations for Valentine's dinner. Seriously, we were the youngest couple there by 30 years. It was cute though.

[For the record, Valentine's day is a jive made-up "holiday" that we generally don't support, but the wife just had surgery, so it was a good excuse to do the whole card and chocolates route.]

Saturday night Laura made fried chicken. Yes, made. Split chicken breasts soaked in buttermilk, cooked in peanut oil. I brought the last remaining piece for lunch today. YUM.

Sunday I basically did errands and cleaned. And we went to the dog park. Finished a book.

Monday we went to the dog park again, then went to a "British pub" (in quotes, because it was in a mall, making it not a pub. But it had a fantastic beer menu. I had a snakebite, which is half Guinness, half Irish hard cider. (Cider on the bottom, Guinness floating on top). YUM. I'll have to make that at home. Wonder if there's a special trick to pouring items so they don't combine? I'll look online.

To offset all the YUM, I cleared off the treadmill and plan to be doing some regular time on it, if only to have an excuse to listen to my iPod.

Yesterday afternoon the wife was watching something that didn't interest me, so I went into the other room. Within 10 minutes, both dogs and both cats joined me and went to sleep on the floor, the chair, etc. Guess they weren't interested in the program either.

The facts:

(1) I've had the same computer at work since I started here six years ago. It wasn't new then.

(2) The IT department told me I was next in line for a new computer, but the department is on a spending freeze at the moment.

(3) A colleague in my department got a new computer three months ago.

(4) This colleague quit out of the blue on Wednesday.

(5) You see where I'm going with this?


Yeah, so Laura had kidney stone surgery on Tuesday, and I took Tuesday and Wednesday off to take care of her. While I was out, some drama went down at the office, and a coworker was gone when I returned. Three hours after learning about it, and after my computer crashed for the 10,542 time, I went to my supervisor and said "This might sound predatory but..." and by the end of the day ex-colleague's new computer had my files on it and was in my office.

I did feel a bit like a vulture, but honestly, should I continue to use a 10-year-old computer that crashes if you try to do two things on it at once, while whoever they hire to replace former colleague gets a new computer?

As if!

We have a three-day weekend coming up, but we're likely staying in town, since wife had surgery a few days ago and all that. I think I'll make breakfast in bed for her on Saturday, it being Valentine's Day (though it's a stupid made-up holiday), and just chill. Probably a trip to the dog park too.

I'm tempted to see the remake of Friday the 13th. Anyone like horror movies, besides my sister-in-law? She'd be great to see it with, but unfortunately she's far too lazy to drive the 45 minutes to come down and see it.

Upcoming music releases that interest me:

• Morrissey
• Lily Allen
• Glen Tilbrook (lead singer of Squeeze)
• U2

Wow, it's been quite a while since I was tempted to buy a new release. The last CD purchase I made was a used Paul McCartney from 1993.

Yes, I'm old, with an old person's taste in music. Don't judge me.

Have you seen the latest commercial for KFC? The one with the white girl saying she's the KFC chef or whatever, and there's a big "Actor Portrayal" note on the screen? The commercial ends with the above typical shot of a platter of chicken. But wait a minute. Look closer...