neurotwitch

more bad than good so far

Friday night, we decided to take a friend out for dinner and a movie. She needed cheering up and we very much needed a break. Oh how we needed a break.

The entire first seven days of 2005 have been horrible. On the health front, we learned that Stanley has this weird congenital condition called a bicuspid aortic valve, which over the half-century-plus of pumping led to aortic valve stenosis. Which means, eventually, he will have to get his aortic valve replaced. Which means he needs a cardiologist. We have to set up the appointment on Monday since we didn’t get the news until late Friday. Stanley is still mad at me for making him go to the doctor’s.

Earlier in the week, we learned that a member of a client’s staff died on the operating table. Then, a couple of days later, we learned that one of our clients has died. Though we never met him in person, we planned to next time he came through Connecticut and we were very fond of him as he was charming and witty; we never minded spending time talking him through tech support calls. It’s so tragic and he was our age so it makes it even worse somehow.

A family member got some bad news at work which stretches months of uncertainty out even longer. And we found out that a legal problem we thought was over isn’t—it’s not a big deal but we still have to pay our attorney for his time. It’s like a tick we can’t seem to get rid of. Oh, and we didn’t win the Powerball this week. Not even $3.

Another friend went into the hospital so the docs could figure out why she feels so terrible; they removed her appendix and did a liver biopsy but still haven’t figured it all out.

And another friend, a lovely woman, was viciously attacked (verbally) by her borderline, bi-polar housemate (who is truly nuts—we’ve been wary of this woman for years). All H wants is to peacefully share the house, but it’s become impossible so she needs to move. Understandably, she’s very upset about it all. She’s had to put up with way too much at that house so, despite the pain of having to leave the house she’s lived in, and accumulated stuff in, for the last eight years or so, it’s really time to move on. The Brazilian lunatic housemate should be sent back to Rio or whatever hole she came from down there.

And all the technological problems we’ve had over the past few days are not completely over. The restored webserver isn’t running webserver-type scripts properly. I still can’t connect to the ValueWeb site via ftp after having no problem doing so for more than a year. And today, another webserver we manage at Netsonic has started to get alzheimer’s—it “lost” a couple of databases and then later “lost” an entire website. It’s just so very odd that they’d both be hit so close together; we suspect they’re victims of that Linux kernel privilege elevation vulnerability. (Sounds like I know what I’m talking about, doesn’t it?) Friday night, the server was fine. Saturday night, the server is a mess. A server that had no problems for months and months. I wept when I discovered the problem. Really I did. If I didn’t, my head would have blown up, Scanners-style. I know the techies at Netsonic will get it all straightened out, but I really wanted to have that site finished by Sunday night so we could finally launch it this week.

But, Friday night was fun. Dinner, at the Fairfield Diner and Vegetarian Enclave (yep, that’s what it’s called), was good (I had the tuna melt, which has become the thing I crave the most lately. I don’t know why.) Then we went to see Oceans Twelve, which was a lot of fun. A good escape movie, even if it wasn’t near as good as 11. Then I did something I never in my whole life had done: I left my handbag in the theater. I’ve never done anything quite that stupid before. Fortunately, I noticed it as soon as we got into the car and we ran like maniacs back to the theater (which was closing for the night), managed to get in, and found it hanging from the armrest where I’d left it. The usherbots hadn’t started to clean that particular theater yet. So that was one sign that the tide might be turning to good things.

Then, we stopped at the bank to make a deposit. I noticed that my bank card had fallen apart again. My Chase card split into two parts. I thought those things were made out of a solid chunk of plastic, but noooo. Stanley glued it back together the first time it happened and I forgot about it. But, fortunately, I held the two sides together just right, so was able to make the deposit. Good sign number two. (Clutching at straws? Me?)

And the apartment H is considering moving in to is really nice—right next door to the house she’s living in now, so the move wouldn’t be too onerous. Between her daughter and son-in-law, her grandchildren, and Stanley and me, it should be a pretty painless move for her, as far as things like that CAN be painless.

So I THINK things might be turning around. It’s rough being a cynical optimist. I can’t sustain a funk for very long so I’m hoping I wake in a better mood because this is just so exhausting. I don’t want anything bad to happen to anyone else. Well, except the tick.

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