When Blivets Strike

What is a blivet?

In urban-speak, it is 10 lbs of poop in a 5 lb bag.

The past two weeks have been nothing if not a complete and personal blivet bombardment.  I rarely complain when things go awry, but the last 11 days find me stepping slowly and carefully outside, surveying the sky and horizon for hazards and checking behind every door that I walk through.  I've chose to walk instead of drive for most of this past few days and I've refused to work on electric things.

I can't remember a tougher group of days strung together like this in my entire life. I spent three days completely alone....trying to make sense of what was happening around me.  I ate nothing and I drank little.

In these few days, Diane was rushed to the emergency room for her third stroke and was kept in ICU for over a week. I was asked to call the family together as she wasn't expected to live through the night.

With that, I was dealing with news that my last CAT scan showed the throat cancer appeared to be answering a curtain call and that I should prepare myself for the possibility of a radical neck dissection...to include a complete larynx removal.

And just when the fun was really beginning.....

Our facility for Reglue was savagely broken into with thousands of dollars of stuff stolen last Thursday.  Everything else was swept off the shelving and smashed or stomped beyond use. I'm spending most of my Memorial Day finishing the cleaning shards of glass and broken computers while taking further inventory.  Of course we have liability insurance...but little else.  Nothing to cover theft or burglary.  Yesterday I purchased out of my own pocket, a few hundred dollars in enhanced alarm and surveillance equipment. Volunteers are spending Memorial Day installing all of it.

I paid for it because I feel responsible...

I even made sure everything was properly grounded and there were no bare wires exposed anywhere under my desk before I sat down to write this today.

Diane had not suffered another stroke.  A combination of medications set the perfect storm for catastrophic kidney failure.  Emergency dialysis was able to bring her creatinine levels back to normal.  A creatinine level of 1.6 is considered high.  Hers was 8.9.  Her doctor told us that she had never seen a living person with kidney levels that high. She still struggles a bit as this has weakened her greatly, but she's a strong woman.  I find inspiration in that strength.

"Shut up sissy and get back to work...you act like a little girl.  It ain't all that bad".

Indeed, I suppose it's not.  But it seems like it at the time.

I underwent exploratory and biopsy surgery mid last week. The biopsy labs are not back yet but my ENT and extraordinary surgeon Doctor Peter Scholl told me that he saw nothing to be concerned about.  What they saw on the scan was abnormally swollen tissue still healing from a brutal radiation regimen from over two years ago.

If my biopsy comes back clear, I will officially be in complete remission from throat cancer. Some good news will be welcomed.

Above all else, I think what bothers me most is that the person who brutalized our facility is probably someone we  helped.  I can't prove it but in putting together some of the things he said a while ago, it appears that he is probably responsible.  And that's fine.  I don't really know how I am going to replace the stuff that was stolen.  While much of the stuff taken was broken crap, a lot of it was ready for deployment to our Reglue kids. Much of it I scrimped and saved for.

17 laptops, 11 desktops, 30 Nvidia GT 9800 video cards, 29 Intel quad and AMD Phenom processors, 27 sixteen gig thumb drives, 34 one terabyte hard drives for the desktop, 30-some SATA laptop drives ranging from 320 gigs to 750 gigs, Two Asus 36 inch monitors still in the box, 500 feet of cat 5 spooled cable, 184 sticks of various RAM, ranging from 1 to 8 gig sticks, 3 computer technician tool kits, 25 sets of USB speakers, and 2 cases of USB wireless adapters.

I paid for the speakers and wireless adapters out of my own pocket.

But they left some good stuff in their haste.  a $700.00 London Fog leather bomber jacket draped across my office chair, a 32 inch TV/Monitor still in the box, about 3 troy oz of high grade circuit board gold, two Asus Chromebooks still in the boxes, a 500.00 wheeled portable air compressor, a full craftsman roll away tool box with tools, and 300.00 of petty cash in the bottom drawer of my desk. They also managed to bypass a money order for 144.00, with the payee still blank.  It's the payment for this months Internet service at Reglue. 

If measured against all teh suk in The Universe, I suppose a rogue  Neutron star wiping out inhabited solar systems takes precident over my pitifully small troubles.  It's just hard to put it into perspective when you work so very hard to help others and then something like this happens.

I cannot make any sense of it.

And to be honest...I'm tired of trying.  Sh** happens.  Deal with it.

And deal with it I will.

All-Righty Then....