Rain! Yay!

Yes, it's true. I'm happy about the rain. As a general rule I'm not all that fond of rain. Considering our serious lack of it this Spring though, I'm pretty delighted when it happens these days. So even though it's overcast and generally gloomy outside, I'm glad it rained last night and hope we get a little more today too.

As you can see from this picture, that one spot on one side of my peach tree continues to grow. I don't think it will be enough to save the tree, but I'm kind of glad to see that fairly exuberant growth, if only in one spot. The little dogwoods continue to struggle to grow also. Believe it or not, they're not dead yet. I put a frame with a black plastic bag to protect them from the late afternoon sun. It's not pretty, but for now it seems to be helping a little. At least they're still marginally alive. Now if the frame doesn't just fall and crush them, maybe they'll live. I've also been spraying all my growing things, including the peach, the little dogwoods and my roses. Something is seriously munching down on them all.

I have a group of grackles (is that right, "group of grackles"? 4 seems too few to be a "flock of grackles") that spend a lot of time in my back yard. These guys are big! They're known variously as keel-tailed, boat-tailed or large-tailed grackles. There's a big blue-black male and three brown and black females, all with yellow eyes. The male was doing mating show-off stuff for the females for quite a while yesterday. I don't know what they're eating out there. They find good size bugs of some sort in my lawn and then they like to bring them to the bird bath, drop them in and then fish them out and eat them. Washing them off? Whatever the insects are, they seem to have a fairly hard shell because the grackles have to work at eating them. 17-year locust (cicada) grubs, maybe? I never would have guessed that there would be so many out in my lawn. I wish the grackles would eat whatever is eating my peach and dogwoods. Hmmmm. This morning there are two males out there, so maybe it is a "flock". The pictures of grackles in this post are borrowed from the Internet. I'm particularly bad at taking pictures of birds. This picture is the male and the picture further down in the post is the brown and black female.

The cats watch the grackles and make little cat hunting noises, but don't go after them much. Both my cat girls are getting older and stiffer and, in Zoe's case, lazy. I suspect that when the grasshoppers come back this year, Zoe will go after them. She loves chasing grasshoppers and other small creatures that try to escape her.

I've been trying to get organized for a trip that begins next Saturday. It's a nine day business trip and I have to be professional the whole time. I've been figuring out which suits, which dresses, which semi-casual, and which accessories to wear with which outfits. I'm doing this so I don't take extraneous stuff. Usually I pack thinking: "I'd better take this outfit too in case I decide I might want to wear it." I'm just not going to have the space to do that for 9 days of professional travel to opposite sides of the country. So I made a Table, and the rows are: day, schedule for that day, clothes (more than one set if a change will be necessary given the schedule), shoes, accessories for each change of clothes. I've been filling the table in and making sure I have everything and it doesn't need to go to the cleaners first.

*laughing* People who know me would just say that I'm always this anal-retentively organized, but I think I'm usually not on trips. Other things in my life (especially things I collect) are organized to an extreme. I can hear my friend arguing: "Oh, yes you are this organized on trips!" *throws up hands in surrender* Tabun ne. I've already admitted I don't do spontaneity well. At any rate, I should be ready for the trip by next Saturday.

I thought I had seen a swallow already but I suppose it's a little too early for them still. They should be back soon. Instead, there's a pair of house finches that I think are nesting in the old swallow nest. They're certainly hanging out there a lot, but they scram pretty quickly when I open the front door. Well, so did the swallows, but they hovered around unhappily until I left. The finches just fly away. I don't know whether I want the finches to nest there, or want the swallows to displace them when the swallows return. Actually I don't know whether the swallows can displace them if they decide to nest there and are already nesting. I guess I'll see. Birds are so interesting to watch.

Anyway this is short today and I won't be posting again until probably after mid-May when I get back into town and recovered from travels. More when I return.

Spring?

Yes, yes, I know. Texas doesn't really have a Spring as such. We may get a few days where the weather is fairly pleasant before we dive headlong into summer. This year has had some weird weather. We got no rain at all in March, so I've been watering my lawn to get it to grow. We have already had a few days that hit 90, and then this morning it was 50, with a forecast for 41 tomorrow morning followed by 80s during the day. Typical ups and downs for this time of year I guess. I could wish the temperatures were a little more consistent. Of course periodically in the blog I feel required to post pictures of Addy and Zoe. You can see how my lawn's struggling by this first picture of Addy. She likes to lay in the grass and so here she is, mostly surrounded by weeds. You can almost see her saying, "This is less than acceptable!" This pic was about a month ago though. The grass is finally starting to grow up amidst the weeds. I've even got some St. Augustine runners coming back in areas that were totally dead or weed-covered late last year. I'm delighted to see them. There may be some hope that St. Augustine will take over the back yard again. I'll be a little more proactive if I see chinch bugs out there again, now that I know what to look for. Last year when the St. Augustine started dying, I just waited for the Trugreen people's normal scheduled visit. The front yard is slowly coming up Bermuda.

The weather vagaries this year are clearly demonstrated by following my attempts at growing things. Of course I probably can't blame it all on the weather. I've never had a green thumb, despite having two sisters who can grow anything and everything. One of those sisters brought me some little dogwoods and a small holly from east Texas, which my friend and I planted in my back yard on April 2nd. The holly will probably live. If it does it will be due entirely to it's own hardiness. I can't say the same about the dogwoods. They looked fairly good the day after we planted them, but have gone steadily downhill since then. This first picture was taken the morning after they were planted. Not too bad, I thought. Then the wind blew hard that whole day. The next morning before sunup we had a major storm. It was like all the March rainfall we didn't get in March hit us within about a 2 hour time period that morning. Plus I got hail. Needless to say, the little dogwoods didn't do well. Then for the last two weeks it's been windy and warm with no rain, and yesterday it was 60-mph-gusts windy. There's a picture further down in the blog on the right where you can see what the baby dogwoods looked like this morning. Poor things. And those cracks in the ground are not due to dryness. Water runs off out there right now. From the looks of them, it's pretty amazing that they're still alive at all. So even though I'm still trying, I'm not expecting too much from them. Truthfully, I didn't pick the best spot for them. I know dogwoods like the protection of other trees so I put them close to the fence where the neighbor's tree hangs over. Except, I had that tree cut back so it's not hanging over. And that spot gets late afternoon sun and heat right now. The poor little things have sun-burned leaves, and also I noticed this morning that something is eating them! I sprayed them, so hopefully that will help. I'll keep hoping they somehow make it. I may also go to Home Depot or Lowe's and see if I can find some sort of something to place out there to block the late afternoon sun and maybe some of the wind from hitting them for a while.

The peach seedlings I transplanted into pots are doing well, and so are my roses. So I'm not totally incapable of growing things. *laughing* Although I probably shouldn't speak too soon. They could all still curl up. The peach tree itself continues to struggle to survive also. Some of the budding limbs came off in the strong winds we've had, but at least one area of growth is now looking like true limbs rather than a few leaves. You can see how it's doing in this picture. So the peach continues to try to keep growing.

Seriously, anything around me that grows . . . it's due entirely to it's own ability to grow and thrive. I have the exact opposite of a green thumb, whatever that may be. Black thumb, maybe? But I do love Spring and growing things. I'm not so happy when things are dormant and skies are gray.

I thought I'd better get a blog post in because I'm about to start some traveling. The first two weeks in May are hopeless. San Diego for 6 days, followed by Charleston for 3 days, back here for 4 days, then Berlin for 4 days. Can you say jet lag? I suspect that by May 16th when I get back home, I'll be TIRED. Still. I enjoy the stuff I'm doing, and my colleagues. The traveling will be worth the meetings and the socializing. These are all people and associations I'm fond of working with and for. Then the third week in May I start teaching my Summer Biochem class. I've already started putting that together and updating lectures since it starts so close to when I get back from my travels.

I had a period of time in March where my stomach was seriously bothering me, almost all the time. I've had reflux for years, but this was the first time I couldn't control it with antacids. (well, it wouldn't be me if I didn't discuss my medical issues at some point in a blog). So the Monday that I was hurting all day and had been for most of the weekend, I gave up home remedies and made an appointment with my doctor. The upshot is, I probably have an ulcer (very positive test for H.pylori), so today I'm doing the antibiotic therapy. Hopefully this will clear it all up. I also had a sonogram since the pain was in a gallbladder-like position. The sonogram showed a possible cyst or polyp in the gallbladder which we'll follow up if the antibiotics don't work. Easy fixes first, I always say. Actually I'll have a follow up ultrasound in 6-ish months even if the antibiotics work, just to make sure. If the antibiotics don't work, my Doc wants to follow up sooner.

Here's the prerequisite picture of Zoe in one of her favorite places, inside the coiled up hose. I'm not sure why she likes that but she does. This year the birds are disrespecting her as much as ever, but she never gives up trying to be the mighty huntress. She's a little more handicapped this year without the overgrown peach tree to hide in. Hard to believe that tree went from massively overgrown and healthy last year at this time to barely, maybe surviving this year. Interestingly, I found out peach trees are difficult to keep alive anyway, having a relatively short life span for a tree. The life span for a peach is 10 - 20 years and I've been in this house 10 years now. So I suppose my little peach tree's demise is not entirely my fault. It may have just been it's time. I guess I'll see if I can grow some more from the little seedlings, and in the meantime consider what type of tree I might want to replace it with if it completely dies.

My weeds in the backyard need to be mowed again already, but I'm not going to do it yet. The front yard doesn't need it, and the grass in the backyard (what there is) needs to grow some more before I cut it. I'll just have to struggle getting the mower through the overgrown weed areas when I do mow.

I guess that's all for now. Later!

Good News

I named this blog "Any GOOD Reason" because when I started it, I really didn't have any reason to be blogging, let alone a good reason. That's probably still true, but I like doing it. I think it's that 'talking to myself' feeling. I really don't care if anyone reads it. *laughing* Maybe I secretly hope nobody does. For me this blog is a nice way to sort out my thoughts on various subjects, to mourn things I need to mourn and to celebrate things I want to celebrate.

Today is a celebrate day. After last week's mourning for Japan. They still need help and prayers and probably will for a while, but the Japanese people are strong. They will come back.

I've had a week full of GOOD news, which gives me a good reason to blog. Actually some of the good news happened last week, but I couldn't celebrate at this time last week. The news from Japan was too frightening. Anyway on to the good news:

My niece is home in America, safe and sound, after a long and tiring week of travel and limited amenities. Her place in Japan is inside the radiation zone from the nuclear plant, so she opted to come back to the US until things are to the point where she can return.

My other niece matched at the residency program she wanted, so she'll be starting residency after graduating from medical school in May.

My promotion went through. YES! My overall reaction has been a huge sigh of relief. I'm so delighted that after all the political nonsense, my promotion went through. As of the new fiscal year, September 1st, I'll be a full Professor. It feels good. I personally thanked every one of my colleagues, here and around the world, who gave me references, both in the form of letters and actually speaking with the Promotion & Tenure Committee. I'm very grateful that I know and work with so many wonderful people. I'm really a lucky person.

So those are my big pieces of good news. On top of that, Spring is finally here. My grass is beginning to come up, my roses are leafing out like crazy, and the side of my peach tree that was minimally alive last Fall is trying to make a comeback. The picture at the top of the blog is from last Sunday. Tiny new leaves can be seen coming out. The picture at the bottom of the blog is from today. The alive side of the peach is continuing to grow, so maybe there's hope. I just need to try to prevent whatever killed the other side from killing the living side. This morning when I was out there looking at the tree, I found two little peach seedlings coming up, no doubt from a couple of the thousands of peach pits that litter that area. I transplanted the two little seedlings into pots. Maybe I can keep them alive too. I've never grown a tree from a seed before, not being very good with plants. Luckily I had pots and potting soil so I could plants the little things. I bought the potting soil recently for some baby cacti I'm trying to grow, and I cleaned out two of the big pots that held aloe vera until the snow killed them a year ago.

I'm probably going to need to mow my lawn this week. That'll be the first time this year, which is about the same time I began mowing last year I think. I also de-wasped the bird boxes out front. The little boxes I hung up there for the swallows to nest in also attract wasps. In another month or so the swallows will be back, so I stuck Bounce sheets up there to keep the wasps away, and removed a large red wasp nest that was built up there last summer. When I pulled that nest down I stuffed Bounce sheets around the edges of the bird box, and a large red wasp dropped out, nearly on my head! Serious adrenaline surge. If I hadn't been standing on a step stool I probably would have been running. It was struggling and buzzing on the porch, and before I finished the Bounce sheets and moved it was gone. They really hate whatever is in those Bounce sheets. Works for yellow jackets and honey bees too. They just fly away from it.

So, not much to bog about today. Just puttering about the place and I wanted to post briefly about all my good news.

Tsunami

I'm sitting here this morning thinking about "normal". It's a 'normal' Sunday and I'm doing 'normal' Sunday things, normal laundry, normal cleaning, normal everything. And through it all at the back of my mind is my niece, who's life is anything but 'normal' right now. Sarah is in Japan. Specifically that area of Japan that just went through an earthquake measuring 8.9 on the Richter scale. That area that was just totally destroyed by a 23 foot tsunami wave. That area that they are estimating 10,000 people died in.

Sarah is lucky or blessed or both. She "normally" lives just north of a nuclear reactor that is now in partial meltdown. Thanks to an efficient Japanese government with lots of disaster planning and experience, Sarah and the people around her were evacuated much ahead of the explosion and the partial meltdown. Thanks to the townspeople at the center where she was evacuated to, she has food and blankets for warmth, and finally a way to charge her cell phone and tell her family that she's okay.

In this context, I'm struggling with 'normal' this morning. There's so much I want to do, and nothing I can do. So I'm doing the normal things, laundry, cleaning, and also periodically checking the news from Japan and the family Facebook pages for updates. And struggling with the dichotomy. My life is so 'normal' here, and the news from Japan is horrific. I have no way to imagine the anguish of my brother and sister-in-law as they waited to hear from Sarah or news of her whereabouts as more and more reports came in, as the world watched the tsunami roll over everything in it's path, as property crushed and burned and no doubt took lives with it.

Sarah is fine this morning. I find myself reminding myself of that fact over and over. I'm not religious. While I often believe in God, I don't believe in religion, in any of it's myriad forms. But I thank God for keeping Sarah safe and ask Him to watch over all the survivors in Japan and all the people rebuilding their not-so-normal, shattered lives.

Tax time!

Well, actually it's not tax time yet, but given that I used to do my tax return on February 2nd, I'm a little late this year. Hmmmmm. I think last year I was a little late too. Partly that's because ever since I can no longer do the EZ form, it's taken me longer to decide to sit down and do them, and partly I'm waiting to make sure I get acknowledgements from all the charities I donate to. Anyway this weekend it's too cold (again!) to do anything resembling yard work so I decided to do my taxes. For the first time ever, I did them electronically.

That wasn't by choice though. I'm so old-fashioned that I've been doing them by hand and mailing my return in by snail mail every year since I started doing taxes. This year I got a little notice in the mail that the IRS was no longer sending out the paper books with everything you need to file your return, and to please get with the program and file electronically like most reasonable people. *laughing* Well, they didn't use those words, but that's essentially what they said. So I was dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, and I used Turbotax and e-filed my tax return yesterday.

I hate to admit it, but it was actually easier than my old, hand-written method. Plus I got almost $1000 more on my refund than I would have gotten doing it the old way. Turbotax knows what to look for and leads you to it, does all the calculations, and makes sure you don't miss anything. Very nice. I suppose I'll be e-filing from now on because it seems like one of those things that once you start using, you can't live without it. Like microwaves or online banking.

Interestingly, as much as I like online banking, I probably wouldn't have missed paying that bill last month if I were still writing checks each month. The statements for all my bills would be there, I'd write checks and check them off, so I always knew what was still pending for the month. Now I don't keep track of that. I just pay my bills as I get emails that they're due. I'm still trying to figure out HOW I missed that one last month. When the bill comes due, it turns red in my online banking account and sends an email to my email address. Usually I don't delete that email until after I pay that particular bill. But even if I had deleted the email, the bill should have stayed red until I paid it. It was never red last month, even though obviously I didn't pay it. I really don't know how it happened, but I do know that I need to stop relying quite so heavily on the electronics to keep me up to date on things. It makes me wonder. Do I really need to check off each bill on a list as I pay it each month, so I know what's paid and what's not? Or am I getting even more anal-retentive and obsessive-compulsive than usual?

The temperature this morning when I went out to get the paper was 34! And the little birdbath was frozen! I hope my aloe vera didn't take too much more damage. I didn't see anything in the news about freezing temperatures last night although it was damn cold yesterday. Mid-40s with a strong north wind. I took my car and had the oil and filter changed and some minor maintenance done and it was COLD outside. Things are starting to bloom around here though because it's starting to be warmer in general. Bradford pears are all in bloom and redbuds are starting to bloom as well. My peach, if it lives, won't bloom this year. I think I had it cut too far back to survive. It's hard to believe that last year is was so overgrown that my cat hid it it. This year it's a "Y" shaped stump. Here's a picture of what's left of it, with my neighbor's bradford blooming in the background.

The trees aren't really starting to leaf out much but if we'd get some rain and just a little more warmth they'll all leaf out with a vengeance. I really like the times of year when things are green better than the winter. Although it is nice to have a few months of not mowing the lawn.

Addy went out today and rolled in the dirt over by the peach tree. I think sometimes her skin is itchy and maybe that helps. Addy has really thick fur and often has dandruf. She likes rolling in the dirt when she can get out there, and lately they're both getting a little braver about being out there. Plus of course it's been a little warmer. I'm ready to have leaves on the trees and grass in my yard. Zoe's been sitting out there watching, waiting for the first grasshopper to come by probably. She's in stalking mode right now so I guess she thinks she saw something move. Anway, guess that's it for today. Later.

Tucson Trip

February has been an incredibly busy month. I'm just realizing that it's almost over. This last week I realized that I'm going to have to find a better way of managing things, because I'm doing so much that I'm forgetting things. I forgot to pay a bill! That's a serious first for me. The company even said as much when they called. "You've had this card 18 years and never even been late on a payment . . ." , etc. On top of that I forgot a deadline to get a housing form in to one of my organizations. *sigh* Time to get some additional organization into my life I guess. Which is a little scary, when I think about it. I'm already like the world's least spontaneous person, and I'm talking about being more organized. *laughing* Seriously no hope for me.

This month I went to a meeting in Tucson, at a place called the Loew's Ventana Canyon Resort. Awesome place!! The resort is built in a canyon (obviously), but it was built without harming any of the several thousand saguaro cactus that populate that area. Plus it was built to blend into the canyon, so it's weirdly shaped and spread out, and totally awesome. My room was on the third floor, and yet I had a patio that you could step up out of and be on ground level. They also created a nice walking trail behind the Resort. The resort itself is somewhat vaguely shaped like a large "V", and the pool is inside the V and the walking path is partially inside and extends out of it and leads to an 80 foot waterfall. The waterfall is natural some times of the year and artificially maintained the rest of the time. The top of the waterfall can be seen in the first picture in this entry, with the saguaro all around it.

Along with the landscaping, I have to give the Resort staff some serious credit. Every single person I dealt with went out of their way to be friendly courteous and helpful. The food was great. the people were great, the little shops were great. cst was seriously happy.

Besides the purpose of the trip, I learned something about saguaro cacti while I was there. Those babies are old! They don't begin to get arms until they are between 50 and 75 YEARS old. So when you see arms, those are old cacti. There are two in front of the resort that may be close to 300 years old. I managed not to get pictures of those two, but did get quite a few saguaro pictures, like the hillside shown here. I kept meaning to go out front and take pictures, but something kept distracting me every time I thought about it.

Of course, it's February, so the area was very brown and mostly dormant. I'd love to see it when things are growing. Cacti don't go dormant, so that was fine. Plus I like the desert-type landscape or I wouldn't hike out there, but I'd still like to see it growing some day. One of the things that really struck me on the drive in from the airport was the yellow-green trees. Leafless of course, but the bark is a bright yellow green. This picture doesn't do them justice, but you can kind of see what I mean. I learned from walking the path at the resort that those are called Palo Verde. The walking path had small signs naming various plants, and a couple of larger signs explaining all about the saguaro and the building of the Resort.

There was a cactus wren in the area behind my patio that I watched for a while. It ran past when I was out there taking pictures. At first I thought it was a roadrunner, but it was too small for a roadrunner and not the right color. It was large for a wren though, being slightly smaller than a robin, but not small like the Carolina wrens I see around here. Plus it doesn't have the little up-turned tail I've come to associate with wrens, but a longer tail, which is why I first thought 'roadrunner'. I tried to get pictures of it, but like most birds, it wasn't holding still for it. This picture is looking out from my patio and the wren is sort of visible, blurring past, running on the ground to the right of center. I got other pictures that were slightly less blurry, but nothing really good. That wren and a little plain hummingbird were the only wildlife I saw on the trip, but then, I didn't spend a lot of time outside the hotel meeting room.

The meeting was good also. I'm a newly elected member of this particular group so I wasn't sure how it would be, but I'm going to enjoy being a part of this group. They are serious and enthusiastic about their involvement and the dialogues flowed evenly among all members. The group and the organization are well worth the effort to be a productive member.

At work things are moving smoothly also. *laughing* Well, of course there are politics going on there, but that's a given. I've gotten better at becoming part of the flow. I'm still extremely busy, but things are on track, (except a certain book with a colleague who continues to drag his feet on his part) and I've begun swimming smoothly rather than treading water with my nose barely free.

Hmmmm. I seem to be into water analogies this morning. Strange in a blog post filled with pictures of desert landscape. I took a lot of pictures of different types of cactus, but I really liked this "fuzzy" variety shown in this picture.

I guess that's about it. February flew by, but that's nothing new. The years rush past almost too fast to notice.

Later.

It's COLD!!!!!!!!!!

This has been one really hard week, weather-wise. I have to keep telling myself that this is Texas. It's too frigging cold!! This picture is my backyard this morning. The sun's finally out, so the snow should be mostly gone later today - I hope.

Let's see, last weekend was pretty if a little cool, but Monday night changed all that. We got a nice ice-storm Monday night into Tuesday morning. I gave it a shot - the driving in to work thing. I managed to get out of my neighborhood, but not to the highway. I hit a still slushy patch, it sprayed up on my windshield and froze. So I had little visibility as well as little traction. Yes, my defroster was on and functional, but the ice on my wipers themselves kept smearing ice across my field of vision. I gave it up. I just wasn't up for 28.5 miles of it, so I turned around and went home. I worked from home on Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday, I braved the still frozen conditions and made it to work and back both days, although Thursday afternoon going home I gave up on the highways and took back streets. The high temperature between Monday and Friday was 24 degrees (low of about 12), so nothing melted. Street and highway conditions only improved marginally, with passable ruts in heavy traffic areas, but the highways continued to have continuous wrecks, and disabled cars, abandoned cars and cars in ditches. Friday when I got up, Nature had added 5 inches of snow on top of the ice! So even Momma Nature isn't above adding insult to injury. I totally didn't expect it. Yes, the meteorologists were forecasting a 50% chance of a "dusting' of snow. And yes, I know they can't really forecast what it's going to do. But 5-7 inches in the metroplex is a significant difference from a 'dusting'. I drove in on the highways, and traction was actually the best I'd had all week, as long as you were careful and remembered there was ice under that snow. Friday afternoon the temperature approached freezing and roads started to melt. Lots of water, lots of slush and lots of ice still. I did the non-highway route most of the way. The bottom line? The fastest trip to or from work I made this week, not counting Monday which was a normal commute, was 1 hour and 15 minutes for that 28.5 miles. The worst was 1 hour 45 minutes. So not only does that add to my work day, but that 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours is extremely tense time spent - death grip on the steering wheel, watching all the other cars intently for slippage. I'm glad the week is over.

I'm equally glad I don't have to be anywhere this morning. All that water from melting snow and ice will have frozen solid again (temp of 21 overnight). This just doesn't seem like Texas to me this week. And they're forecasting more weather like this next Wednesday. That should about give it time to melt before we go again.

Another "interesting" weather-related development: It's been cold enough long enough for my pipes to freeze in my house! Nine and a half years I've been here and never had this happen before. My kitchen sink and my master bathroom shower froze. Both are opened back up now so hopefully there's no burst pipe damage. The shower I should have expected since it's on an outside wall, but since I use it every day, I didn't think about it. The kitchen sink is not on an outside wall so that one surprised me. The only other pipes I have on outside walls are the ones to the washer. I'll run that today after the temperature comes up over freezing and see how it does. The temperatue is supposed to get above freezing today.

Just so as to not have the entire blog be about the weather, things are going well at work and going not well at work. *laughing* Yes, those can both be true. I got all my lectures in on time and my colleague got me his half of the book, and I'm getting it whipped into shape to submit. Those are the good things. On the side of the bad things, we discovered incorrect units of measure on 1100+ test results that we released. So the lab gang spent two days correcting them, and I spent two days contacting 200+ doctors. Luckily the numeric results were fine and they matched the numeric reference ranges, so the units of measure correction was essentially clerical. A pain in the ass, but not affecting patient care. A worse issue was that a tech placed the incorrect fluid on a main analyzer, resulting in 60 incorrect test results that DID impact patient care. Those are still being followed up and require dealing with the doctors and with Risk Management. I'm not sure why errors of this nature tend to cluster. I can go long periods of time with no lab issues, then seem to have several at once. Something in the water?

It's gorgeously sunny out today, sparkling off all that snow. Yesterday afternoon was the first time all week the sun came out, which is why things finally started to melt. I have hopes that the melting will continue today, with all this sun. Oops, talking about the weather again.

I brought more lectures home to wok on over the weekend. These are resident CP lectures, so I should just be able to update them from previous lectures. Since I've been focusing on the book and those other lectures at work, I decided to bring these home and update them here. Shouldn't take too long, but it saves me the time doing them at work.

My poor garage is semi-flooded. I've really been trying to knock all the major ice off my car before pulling it into the garage, but each morning when I go out there's a mini-flood in the garage from melted ice from the car. I'll have to trash some of the cardboard boxes that are sitting in water right now. Everything that I care about not damaging is up off the floor, but some things are wet. Still, a semi-flooded garage is better than scraping ice and snow off a car as it defrosts in the morning.

My cats don't appreciate snow either. Here's Addy checking it out. Neither of them has ever stepped into snow, although Addy walked out on it this week when it was just solid ice out there.

Guess that's it for now.