Well, after that “excitement” on Friday morning, I’m walking out to my car, glad to finally be on my way home to do some massive cleaning before Mom’s visit.  Cell phone call.  From Philip again.  Asking me to go back to my office and be ready to post another story.  Something else BIG has happened. 

Michael came in and told me, confidentially (until the story was posted), that the whole story about the guy having a gun brandished at him WAS A HOAX.  The campus security officer had made it up. 

[Insert many expletives here.]  So I stayed and posted the story.  What on earth possesses someone to turn an entire campus in uproar with a bogus story about a gunman? 

I really have no words.  I’m still too tired.  When I did get home, after stopping by Zaxby’s to get supper (and getting another phone call from Philip about an addition to the story online), Thomas said he was in massive pain with his back.  He called his doctor, who said he should probably go to the emergency room. 

I broke down at that point.  We spent the evening at the emergency room, he got 3 shots and 3 prescriptions and spent the weekend in bed.  The visit with Mom was great.  I needed her support after all that.  T is feeling much better, and I hope he’ll stay in bed another day, letting the muscle relaxers do their job. 

After Mom left, I took a nap until she called and said she’d made it home safely (2 hrs), then played The Sims 2 until bedtime, with a short break for dinner. 

I didn’t even mention the severe thunderstorms that knocked our power out for an hour early Sunday morning. 

Well, maybe not officially, since I didn’t actually go to the doctor, but I have now been off all week with fever, coughing, runny nose, a little headache, a little sneezing, a lot of weakness.  Dunno if it’s the flu or a flu-like illness.  I think I feel well enough to go get comics tonight at Legion, but it’ll be the first time out of the house since Sunday.  Gah, I hate being sick. 

Fortunately I didn’t get as sick as Thomas has been.  I’m home today with a leaky nose and a chest cough.  But taking Zicam every 3 hours has really helped.  Somehow I even woke up about every 3 hours last night so I could take it. 

Yesterday I led singing a cappella.  Conducting gestures and all.  I wasn’t in very good voice, because of the incipient sickness, but it went well and everyone sang out nicely.  All those years singing without a piano in the Church of Christ, and now it sounds so quiet without one at Mayberry. 

The previous day’s gaming was so fun.  Nice to get back into it again.  I’m anxious to play my new character, Ka-Quindath, giant iron witch.  I got the mini in the mail Friday, plus his dice.  Giuliana is a great character, but just not in the kinds of adventures Scott is running.  And she’d require a completely different party, too.  Oh well. 

The nurse at Whitesburg Gardens recommended to Mom yesterday that she call in hospice for my grandmother.  I didn’t know hospice was for anything but cancer, but I’ve since learned differently.  Mom agreed, and someone came to see her almost immediately.  Mom and I had just been talking on the phone Sunday about how much Gram had gone downhill.  It’s been about six months since the fall that started all this. 

Wow, got outside this morning and wondered if our neighborhood was on fire.  The air is hazy and smells strongly of wood smoke.  We need rain so badly.  The sun hanging over Lakeshore Drive on the way in was an small orange ball, looking like it didn’t have the strength to break through the fog. 

In other news, T went to work for the full day on Monday.  He even walked to Subway for lunch!  He said it felt so much better than it did before the surgery.  Yesterday, though, he only worked half a day.  I think he overdid it a bit.  Fortunately he’s sensible enough to come home when he feels bad. 

Gram is doing well with her rehab.  Mom has secured a larger apartment for her (larger than the studio-sized one we had initially chosen), and we’re hoping she likes it.  I talked to her briefly on Sunday on the phone and she sounded pretty good.  She has trouble talking on Mom’s cell phone, though. 

I’ve been working on the redesign for the Samford home page.  The test designs are at www.samford.edu/~test/. I’m not really happy with the direction it’s going, but we’ll see what I come up with today. 

My bridge adventure between Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde and Expedition to the Demonweb Pits is going well.  I could have killed J’s character–a twilight guardian rolled a crit, but I rescinded it.  Yikes.  She didn’t have sufficient armor, was still going with her 6th level stuff.  She will definitely remedy that next time we play, on Saturday. 

Parenthetical note: The problem with being here before 7 am is that the air hasn’t cut on yet.  Ick. 

OH–my new word for the week is “lolcats.”  T read an article in Slate (!)  on the subject.  Now we have a name for those oh-so-funny photos of cats with l33t-like captions.  My favorites are still those at the PVP site, but www.lolcats2.com is funny too.