Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Wow...Just...Wow.

My wife came home from the hospital yesterday after a whopping 30 hour stay (including check-in, pre-op, post-op and one night for rest). She is doing fine and if any of my close friends want more info, just buzz me.

We left the hospital at 4:30ish and drove to Target to fill her scripts. We had the same meds at home that were prescribed for me (Vicodin), but we thought to get the new, fresher ones. I kept the van running with the A/C running on full (it was 102 yesterday) while I ran in to pick them up. It took longer than I expected, but I finally got it. We then drove across the street to get a baked potato from Jason's Deli since that is what my wife wanted. Once food was obtained, we headed home. I pulled in at 5 PM or so and told my wife to stay in the van for a minute while I let the dogs out. They had not seen her in two days and I did not want them to bowl her over. Once I got them out and she went in, I grabbed the mail and returned with the dogs and began unloading the van.

Next on the list was feeding my hungry k9's and getting my wife settled. It took a while...a lot of activity and a lot to do, but we made it. A few phone calls were made after dinner my wife started to take care of the 3 bouquets of flowers she received (one more came today for a total of four) then she went to lay down.

After she got some rest, she asked if we could watch an epi of "The 4400", so we did and I then walked the dogs. Once I got back, she wanted to go to bed and wanted me to lay with her until she fell asleep. I read while she rested and slept straight through until this morning.

I woke up later than I wanted, so I quickly walked, watered and fed the dogs, made pancakes for my wife, coffee for me, and headed in to log on to the work system. What I found was a bit of a mess. You can always tell when I am off because the ticket queues are always in a state of disarray. I immediately went to work trying to clean things up as best as I could and then found that my tunnel to the site we support was not working, so I had to trouble shoot that until it was up and running. My TL had been e-mailing me off and on all day and he told me that he assigned my job responsibilities to another member of my team who is stationed in Virginia. We found out today that he was not accessing the correct system and that is why the ticket queue was in such bad shape. Funny they gave me a hard time for not following up to see if my secure tunnel worked from home but my TL did not follow up to see if my replacement was set up properly. Well, we all make mistakes now, don't we?

Now that I have everything under control, the day is going very well. I am not nearly as stressed out and my wife is sleeping (the pain meds make her drowsy) soundly. I plan on running a few errands this evening after I 'quit" work. I started at 8 so I need to stay online until about 5 or so. I guess I could cut early since I took a short lunch, but that is really not needed. I can make it...it is only 3.5 more hours...

I did not get caught up until about 11:30 or so then I took lunch with my wife. We chatted and took a few calls from friends and well wishers and then I washed the dishes that had been accumulating over the past 18 hours or so and headed back to working.

Working from home is ok, but trying to give my wife all the attention she needs and doing my job is not easy. When you are always stopping it is hard to remember where you left off.

Well, back to work!

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