Fecal Furor

Unfortunately, much of the remainder of last week beyond Tuesday was not as I had hoped.  It was a veritable "sh*t storm" hence the title.... some brief highlights (that do not represent the full emotional baggage each wrought).... 

• The computer (Microsoft) snafu that began several days earlier began to affect things for us in that my one kid's oversees travel was coming to an end and she was set to fly back and we were to collect her at an airport a few hours away (cheaper prices at the time) at ~9:00pm on Tuesday. After about 5-6 various revisions to her flight plans in which my wife and I were adapting to in order to retrieve her,  the flight that actually brought her to the airport arrived at 3:30am on Thursday morning.  
• My SIL's kidney dialysis suddenly was bumped up the queue during this time.  All manner of things regarding the dialysis were changed from the original plans by the clinician..... on-location versus home, port versus fistula, earlier dates than later dates, training sessions and then cancelling of training sessions, and reinstatement of training sessions. My wife is set to be the "backup" dialysis facilitator (second to my SIL's husband) so all of these changes were affecting her besides the worry/concern we had that things were occurring too rapidly and without care and planning.... just because slots of time became available within the dialysis agency (it was not due to pressing need for this early start by my SIL).  Everyone, my SIL, her husband, my wife and I all felt unnerved by the consistent inconsistency of plans scheduled, unscheduled, rescheduled, and bumped around to all sorts of different times.  
• My MIL fell and hit her head at her assisted living community.  The facility rushed her by ambulance to one of the hospitals in our community where she was then required to stay for several hours for observation and for a cat scan.  My wife needed to be there to emotionally help Mom through this as she was understandably agitated (due to her dementia) about the new location.  Fortunately, the cat scan showed no problems (no brain bleed, etc) and she was eventually discharged late, late into the night so we could get her back to her apartment.
• Wednesday, I received word from the research board (who you know from previous things I have written are damn slow) that one of the folks on the committee does not know how to access the damnable typographical error corrections they requested and I submitted a MONTH ago!  This is now FOUR DAMN MONTHS since I submitted the proposals and they still have not approved anything.  The "theory" is that this damn committee is tasked/pledged with having a two-WEEK turn around time.  That NEVER happens.  It took them three months to get back to me with requirements to fix a few TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS (missing a period, having an additional space between two words, that sort of b*llsh*t.... absolutely NOTHING about the actual science of the proposed research).  And, I submitted the damn typographical corrections nearly the next day.  And, now a month later, they write back that one of the idiots on the committee is unsure how to access the corrections and they are suggesting I should resubmit them a different (non-standard, not following normal committee protocols) way and go thought and HIGHLIGHT EACH AND EVERY REQUESTED MINOR TYPOGRAPHICAL CORRECTION.  This is for nine different proposals each on average of 18 pages in length.  "Furious" is not an adequate descriptor of my feelings towards these yahoos.  
• On Thursday morning, when I was at mile 9.5 (~15 km) of my 10 miles (~16 km), I lost attention or focus (perhaps from not sleeping due to the travel to the airport) and ended up tripping on a bumpy piece of sidewalk and tumbled to the hard concrete in a heap.  Very fortunately, I did not hit my head nor my elbows.  But, I fell hard on one of my knees and it is quite battered and has four large (each a bit bigger than a quarter (each about the size of a Loonie for my Canadian friends) scrapes where the skin was ripped off and bleeding ensued.  It was painful (not the knee itself, but the large scrapes), but I ran the last 1/2 mile (1 km) home (I had to get home somehow) and then spent the next hour or so cleaning, disinfecting and bandaging myself up.
• Parts delays for the vehicle getting repaired (starting about two weeks ago... the one that died while I was driving it in traffic) for one of our kids also has been disrupting schedules as we have been working to ensure the kid is able to get to work. The damn vehicle is now set to be finished Tuesday (fingers crossed).  

So with the above, and my continuing to try to do the needed U work I have to do and trying to get my damn miles in (I did finish the miles for the week on Saturday), it has been a bit more than challenging the last several days.  

I am cautiously hopeful that things have settled into a manageable plan for this week.  There are a lot of things pulling on us, but I think we can make it work, at least if the timelines for the appointments, work, and all else do not drastically go into new chaos.   

So, it is my hope to finish writing about the "Retiree's Cigar Group" tomorrow. It is the best I can do at the moment.

PipeTobacco