Author: Kevin Lawver

Isabel was a tease. Yeah, we have to boil our water until they tell us we can go back to gargling willy nilly. But, last night actually wasn’t bad. Granted, we live in the sainted little corridor that got the least rain and wind in the DC area. Plus, we live on a hill, so flooding isn’t really a worry. The only thing that gave us pause was all the trees that back up to our yard, but they’re fine too.

Work is closed today, but yes, I still have to work. So, it’s dial-up, TiVo and caffeine for me while I try to work while sitting on the couch.

It was so “not bad” here that our DirecTV never went out. Not once while I was watching. Yeah… Isabel was a tease.

We have lots and lots of D batteries we can put in socks and swing wildly if the terrorists decide that now is the best time to attack our house. I feel a lot better with that out in the open.

I got a message from my doctor that the CAT scan of my head is completely normal. So, no polyps, but still no explanation for The Sinus Infection That Ate Northern Virginia (starting Tyrone Power).

Today is Hurricane Day. It’s’ supposed to start raining this afternoon, and well, I’m OK with that. We were prepared for the chemical attacks that didn’t happen this spring, so we’re ready for a hurricane. We’ve got water, plastic sheeting and duct tape, so if all else fails, we can jury-rig a Slip N’ Slide. We are so prepared that we went to the grocery story after dinner last night, and left with the following important hurricane supplies:

• two decks of playing cards (when mother-in-law comes, must have good cards)

• two bags of potato chips

• jujyfruits

• almond M&M’s

• Hershey Kisses

As you can see, we are ready to weather almost any natural disaster that might befall us.

As good as yesterday was, today is that bad. I didn’t sleep well, woke up too early from a nightmare that refused to leave my head after waking. The horrible thoughts meant I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I got up, showered, dressed, medicated, stumbled out of the door and drove to work, two hours early for no good reason.

The impending hurricane’s pressure (increased or decreased, don’t really care) is torturing my sinuses. It feels like my face might pop and run down my skull any minute, leaving me with gaping holes in my skull, and a lot of goo to explain to the housekeeping people when they come to clean tonight. My eyes are sandpaper on the inside of my eyelids, and the rest of my head is no better.

Today, everyone sucks. Really. I still love you, I do, but you all suck. You suck because your faces don’t hurt, and you’re all so damn smiley. Stop smiling. There’s nothing to smile about. We’re going to get a million feet of rain in the next seventy-two hours, DQ no longer makes cherry Dilly Bars, my face hurts, George W. Bush is still the President, people still go to bed hungry, there’s another worm exploiting yet another hole in Windows, an asteroid might crash into earth any day now and destroy us all, did I mention my face hurts, they freakin’ cancelled Homicide, Firefly and Sports Night but somehow 7th Heaven and Charmed are still on the air, Mark Sandman died so there will be no more Morphine albums but there will be more Britney Spears albums, no one makes good noir anymore, and my face is killing me. You all suck.

Today has been a good day. Even though I got up early, didn’t eat breakfast, had to hold my bladder for two hours after waking up, had two vials of blood drawn, and have had a monstrous sinus headache all day… today has been a good day. I found the super-sweet Listutorial which helped me fix a particularly vexing problem with a new project at work (which you’ll be able to see in a week or so). A weird feature no one thought was possible, that I was able to figure out and implement, was finally approved this afternoon (you’ll see it in a month or so). I smiled a lot, and walked with a bounce in my step, despite all of those things listed above. I’m still wearing my little hospital bracelet (two vials of blood, and they tagged me like a bear in the woods), a bright Hawaiian shirt and my stupid orange hair.

Tonight, I’m going over to celebrate my littlest brother’s twenty-first birthday (wait, don’t get excited – we’re Mormon: 21 don’t mean nothin’), see my mother-in-law (which despite popular perception, is cool), and eat some yummy yummy balls of meat I made myself last night with sausage, ground beef and rolled between my two hands.

Then, I get to go to bed, wake up and start all over again, and hopefully get the results of that CAT scan from last week.