Good: Kidlet liked the snow and I was able to clean off the car & sidewalk while she played.

Sad: The snow was too dry & powdery to make a snowperson

Bad: It was warm enough that it started melting and it's suppose to be 7 tonight and not more than 20 tomorrow. My street is going to be an icy mess (because it of course did not get plowed) and given I haven't been in the office since last Wed, I really should go in tomorrow. Bleh.


Good: My yearly review went great.

Bad: The rumor last week was norovirus was going around work. So after having to take a sick day, working one day and then being sick again, I really would like to avoid the office until the winter sick season is done.

Extra Good: Girl pup is on special prescription dog food and it seems to be working as I haven't caught any sign of leg/paw chewing in the past week. And the vet is of the opinion that if it works, we can find something non prescription (and cheaper) that will work for her too.

Good: we smart at work for once and told everyone to definitely stay away from work tomorrow or you might end up stuck there when the inevitable public transport shut-down happens.

Bad: going to be a wild next couple of days, even though we're only on the far, far edge of the track of severe tropical cyclone Marcia. Marcia is expected to be category 5 when she lands on the coast in the early hours of tomorrow morning, equivalent to a hurricane, with wind gusts of up to 280 km/h (that's 173 mph to some of you). Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!

Take care dg.

Still long pressure days at weekday job so I have no time for anything else except catlap and sleep.

I hope I'm prepared for our below freezing days which are not the norm here. So far, no frozen pipes or power loss. Heat pump is ineffective in this weather so I'm relying on my little propane logs and a space heater in the bathroom. (Plus catlap)

Thankfully we don't have all the snow mountains they are enduring up north.

Bad: Spent almost all day accompanying my mom on an ambulance trip down to Indy for a pre-op exam (she's supposed to have oral surgery next week) Despite my very specifically informing every person at IU Health that I've spoken with over the past three weeks (including the intake people, of course), it seems no one was aware of mom having severe dementia. No one.

The killer was that, whenever I spoke with anyone directly, I was assured that their staff handled dementia patients all the time. This turned out to be an utter lie. No one at the pre-op testing had any idea that mom had dementia, and no one had any clue how to handle a dementia patient. Needless to say, my day was spent trying to calm-down an increasingly agitated mom, while the nurses attempted to get her BP, pulse, and EKG. Mom wouldn't remove her coat, so the BP was a punt. Similarly, attaching all the electrodes for the EKG was a disaster and yielded unusable data. They got the pulse, though. After all that, they wisely decided to forgo the blood draw. In the end, it was a completely wasted day that only served to upset mom and make me very, very disappointed with IU Health.

Good: Um...Had a beer when I finally got home after all that.

Thorzdad, I'm so sorry to hear that. My grandmother sometimes has mild dementia (usually caused by a UTI) and I can't imagine going through all that.

Bad - Grandma refused to go to any of her appointments this week, because of all the snow/ice (which there was none in our area, but it was on the news!). If this is the worst thing all week, I'm great!

Good - I have a new assistant at work, and she seems mostly really on top of things. I think most of the current issues are brought on by miscommunication, so hopefully we can hash that out in the next week or so. Diet is going well, and I made it to the hoop fitness class that I wanted to go to. Only made a slight fool of myself. :P

Best wishes to dg. Serious commiserations to Thorzdad.

Good: Finally catching up on a ton of reading at work and just cleared the decks of one major project which has been underway the past six weeks.

Very good: Finally deleted my last addictive iPad game, which had turned into a monster time suck. I feel liberated.

Bad: Really not on track health wise. Meaning I haven't been running or biking or eating well for a few weeks now. I need to get back to it.

Aww Thorzdad that sounds so challenging. Your mother is blessed with a kind helpful son like you.

Good I've switched to a cool new programming language as my professional specialty and have found a new job doing that. My current colleagues congratulate me on finding that new opportunity.

Bad The first day that I visited the 70 person company to discuss the project I'll be doing at a big bank the COO said in very forceful language that the programming language is too difficult and that he's against employing the language. Wtf! I quit my old job for this stodgy unit.

Good My 6 yr old daughter sent me an sms recently. She's writing! It was full of emoticons of hearts and kissy faces and spelling mistakes. English is such a difficult language to learn to spell.
She want to go iceskating. Maybe she's a bit Dutch after all. (As a country we apparently dominate the world wide rankings of speed skating so much that we're sending coaches to South Korea so that they'll challenge us more. Because otherwise speed skating will probably cease to be an olympic sport since all the top places are taken up by the Dutch. And a few Germans and Scandinavians perhaps.)

Bad That company doesn't want to employ that new programming language I invested so much in in spite of what they assured me. Godverdomme.

Good My anger at that company and my anguish at potentially unexpectedly being without a job is just an illusion that falsely occupies me. I'm caught up by these vicissitudes. But behind this whirling there's a constant true calm regardless of how things turn out.
(This is me turning on my inner verbiage generator for comic effect. I don't really talk like that. Neither am I that woo woo. )

I've had a beer. Can you tell?

Good We took O to the pediatric neurologist and he said his febrile seizures don't seem to indicate any long-term problems. We'll keep an eye on him to see if we'll need further testing down the road.

Bad I managed to get sick and totally lose my voice in the last 24 hours. No work, no school (there was a makeup class tonight for a session we missed due to the blizzard that wasn't). And I just got back from vacation, too! Feel so gross.

Good I'm at home in a warm house with a cuddly baby.

Bad It's cold and snowy, and feels like it's been that way for a million years. You can't make any plans without starting with, "Well, if it doesn't snow . . . ."

Bad My mother has shingles. She is 82 and feeling quite miserable.

Good I am well and happy and my house is cozy. I am getting exercise and making good food and reading Anna Karenina.

jouke, there is no way your daughter is SIX. That beer was making you count wrong! She can't be more than about 4.