So, about two and a half weeks ago I come down with a hell of a sinus infection that takes me ten days of antibiotics to shake. Three days after I catch it, Peggy catches it, too. We both miss two days of work. Peggy's barely over it when Saturday night she gets hit with a nasty stomach bug that gets her both coming and going; worse, it starts at 3 in the morning and keeps going for 12 or 15 hours. Needless to say, neither of us got any sleep that night.
So on Sunday, while I'm trying to keep her warm and comfortable, the furnace dies on us. No problem, I have a repair service that works 24/7 with a 2-hour response time. Except when the guy gets here, he doesn't have the right part to fix the furnace. It's a standard part, but our furnace uses a proprietary version that's just ever so slightly the wrong size, so the part he has is too big and shorts out against the mounting brackets. No fix until the next day when he can get to a supplier and get the right part.
So as the temperature drops to 24 outside, we bundle up and leave every light and electronic device in the house on. Surprisingly, that works, and it's still like 64 F in the house when we get up at 5:30. Why 5:30? Because despite being sick, Peggy has to go to work because of a quarterly departmental meeting, the preparations for month-end, and a few other things she can't do over the VPN and laptop she just got from her job because she needs to physically go to several people and get signatures and whatnot. However, taking care of Peggy the night before and making sure she had everything for the bland diet her stomach bug requires keeps me up until after midnight. So for the second night in a row, insufficient sleep.
Oh, and do I need to say I need to take another day off from work, the third in two weeks, to hang around for the repair guy?
So I get her to work, and wait in a slowly cooling house for the tech. That's not so bad, I played a lot of City of Heroes. But the initial time the tech is supposed to be there is too early for me to crawl back into bed and catch up on my sleep. So while I'm half awake at the keyboard, I wait. And wait. And wait. And finally the tech shows at 1:15 PM. Apparently it took him three different suppliers and five calls to find anyone who had one of these parts in stock. But yay hooray, one does, and he gets it, and gets back over to our place. Within half an hour, the house is warming up again.
Then I have to pay for it. I was about to start buying parts for my new computer this weekend. Not any more, not with an almost $500 repair bill for the furnace.
A few hours later, Peggy gets home, looking more miserable than she did when I dropped her off at work.
And I have a dentist's appointment after that.
But I get to bed at a decent hour -- not as early as I'd've liked, but before midnight at least.
Now if only Peggy hadn't had to get up and down all night long again, and if only I hadn't woken at 1 in the morning to find my mind racing like I'd taken Sudafed. I could not for the life of me sleep last night -- my mind was stuck on an endless loop of several thoughts and images, and I couldn't shake it, and I couldn't drop off. I essentially spent every few minutes between 1 and 5:30 closing my eyes, trying to sleep, blitzing through the images, thinking I'd gotten to sleep, "waking up", and looking at the clock to see that if I'd slept at all, it was for at most a minute.
So I get Peggy up and ready to work, stumble through my morning routine, and drive off -- very carefully, fortified by a big cup of coffee -- to take her to her job and then head to mine. During which I develop a number of sensations and symptoms that make me think I now have Peggy's stomach bug -- I haven't started on the worst of her symptoms yet, but it feels like it's only a matter of time.
And then my machine at work throws me a BSOD while I'm trying to write the first version of this post.
Gah.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
So on Sunday, while I'm trying to keep her warm and comfortable, the furnace dies on us. No problem, I have a repair service that works 24/7 with a 2-hour response time. Except when the guy gets here, he doesn't have the right part to fix the furnace. It's a standard part, but our furnace uses a proprietary version that's just ever so slightly the wrong size, so the part he has is too big and shorts out against the mounting brackets. No fix until the next day when he can get to a supplier and get the right part.
So as the temperature drops to 24 outside, we bundle up and leave every light and electronic device in the house on. Surprisingly, that works, and it's still like 64 F in the house when we get up at 5:30. Why 5:30? Because despite being sick, Peggy has to go to work because of a quarterly departmental meeting, the preparations for month-end, and a few other things she can't do over the VPN and laptop she just got from her job because she needs to physically go to several people and get signatures and whatnot. However, taking care of Peggy the night before and making sure she had everything for the bland diet her stomach bug requires keeps me up until after midnight. So for the second night in a row, insufficient sleep.
Oh, and do I need to say I need to take another day off from work, the third in two weeks, to hang around for the repair guy?
So I get her to work, and wait in a slowly cooling house for the tech. That's not so bad, I played a lot of City of Heroes. But the initial time the tech is supposed to be there is too early for me to crawl back into bed and catch up on my sleep. So while I'm half awake at the keyboard, I wait. And wait. And wait. And finally the tech shows at 1:15 PM. Apparently it took him three different suppliers and five calls to find anyone who had one of these parts in stock. But yay hooray, one does, and he gets it, and gets back over to our place. Within half an hour, the house is warming up again.
Then I have to pay for it. I was about to start buying parts for my new computer this weekend. Not any more, not with an almost $500 repair bill for the furnace.
A few hours later, Peggy gets home, looking more miserable than she did when I dropped her off at work.
And I have a dentist's appointment after that.
But I get to bed at a decent hour -- not as early as I'd've liked, but before midnight at least.
Now if only Peggy hadn't had to get up and down all night long again, and if only I hadn't woken at 1 in the morning to find my mind racing like I'd taken Sudafed. I could not for the life of me sleep last night -- my mind was stuck on an endless loop of several thoughts and images, and I couldn't shake it, and I couldn't drop off. I essentially spent every few minutes between 1 and 5:30 closing my eyes, trying to sleep, blitzing through the images, thinking I'd gotten to sleep, "waking up", and looking at the clock to see that if I'd slept at all, it was for at most a minute.
So I get Peggy up and ready to work, stumble through my morning routine, and drive off -- very carefully, fortified by a big cup of coffee -- to take her to her job and then head to mine. During which I develop a number of sensations and symptoms that make me think I now have Peggy's stomach bug -- I haven't started on the worst of her symptoms yet, but it feels like it's only a matter of time.
And then my machine at work throws me a BSOD while I'm trying to write the first version of this post.
Gah.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
