14:29 – Barbara is taking her mom to a doctor’s appointment this afternoon after which they’ll meet Frances for dinner. Barbara’s bringing me dinner. I’ll probably watch Heartland reruns while I wait. Meanwhile, I’m making up solutions.
07:44 – Eventful day yesterday. Barbara and Frances fired their mom’s caregiver yesterday morning. What the woman was doing didn’t rise to the level of abuse, exactly, but she certainly wasn’t doing her job properly. The place was a mess, and all of Sankie’s portable oxygen containers were empty, which should never be allowed to happen. The real problem was the caregiver’s behavior. Two of the staff at Creekside reported hearing her yelling at Sankie. Sankie was terrified of her. She was acting more like a drill sergeant than a caregiver.
So Frances told Barbara what was going on and they fired the caregiver. Frances stayed with their mom until mid-afternoon. Barbara left work early and got over there to relieve Frances at 3:00. The replacement was supposed to show up at 4:30, but it turned out she had some kind of schedule conflict, so Barbara called to say she’d have to stay over there until 6:00.
By 6:00 the bad weather had moved in–very heavy rain, thunder, and very high winds. Barbara called shortly after 6:00 to say the replacement hadn’t shown up yet. I told her we were having a bad storm and suggested she just stay there until it passed through. At 6:30 our power failed. I called Barbara on my cell phone to let her know she needed to pick up dinner on her way home. As it turned out, the replacement showed up just after that call. Barbara arrived home round 7:00 to no lights. The lights finally came back on around 9:30. The morning paper reports one death from the storm. A large tree fell on a car on Robinhood Road, not far from here. The guy driving was killed and the woman passenger is in serious condition.
12:12 – We just finished cutting up branches that had fallen during the ice storm the other day from a large pine in our backyard. While doing that, I noticed that our Sven saw needs a new blade. Fortunately, Barbara had two 24″ bow saws, which worked fine.
Barbara will work on labeling and filling containers this afternoon while she watches her shows (the ones I can’t stand, such as Private Practice–and anything else from Shonda Rhimes– Flashpoint, and so on. I’ve noticed that all of them have a lot of shouting to make up for the fact that the scripts suck). And I just noticed something about the medical drama series Off the Map. I expected to like it because it starred Caroline Dhavernas, another Canadian actress whom I adore, and who starred in the short-lived series Wonderfalls. Unfortunately, Off the Map was simply terrible. There aren’t words to convey how bad it was. And I just noticed that you-know-who was involved in it. Shonda Rhimes. Everything she touches turns to shit.
07:42 – I managed to get five kits shipped yesterday. The others will just have to wait until the USPS Click-and-Ship website will allow me to print postage labels again. I’ll keep trying throughout the day. Meanwhile, I have kits to build, solutions to make up, and thousands of labeled bottles that need to be filled.
Barbara is heading over to meet her sister and mom after work and go out to dinner. Sankie isn’t doing any better, and from what I’ve seen and heard I think the chance of any dramatic improvement is nil. Sankie is either unwilling or unable to cooperate, or both, so I suspect Barbara and Frances will have to move her over to the Homestead Hills facility sooner rather than later. They’re doing everything they can to keep her at Creekside, but they can’t do that if Sankie remains unwilling to do her part.
11:56 – I’m going to have to figure out what to do about mixing containers. The largest bottles we use in most of our kits hold 30 mL, which means a 2-liter batch is sufficient to fill 60+ bottles. Our international kits and some of our forthcoming kits will use several 100 mL bottles, which means I need a 6-liter batch to fill 60 bottles. In the past, I’d simply make up three 2-liter batches, but that’s a lot of extra work. So I think this time I’m going to make up 6-liter batches in 5-gallon (20 liter) polypropylene buckets from Home Depot.
09:18 – We’re now in Day Four of no USPS service. I’ve just added three more boxes to the stack awaiting pickup from orders that came in yesterday afternoon and overnight.
We did a Costco run and then dinner with Mary and Paul yesterday. They didn’t get mail Friday, but they got mail Saturday. Apparently everyone got mail service Saturday except our little part of our neighborhood.
Barbara’s mother is still acting out, determined to force Barbara and Frances to allow her to live with one of them. That’s not going to happen, and they’ve made it very clear to Sankie that if she doesn’t stop this they’re going to have to move her over to the assisted living or nursing facility at Homestead Hills, and that once that happens she won’t be coming back to live at Creekside. Despite the high cost, Barbara and Frances plan to continue the round-the-clock home health aide for a while longer, to give Sankie every chance to clean up her act. I don’t think that’s going to happen. There’s nothing more they can do to help their mother as long as she’s not willing to do anything to help herself.
As I’m doing laundry every Saturday, it strikes me how badly the loss of US textile manufacturing has affected the quality of clothing and towels. Barbara has been buying most of our clothing from LL Bean and Lands’ End for 30 years now. It used to be that all or nearly all of it was made the USA, most of it in factories within a hundred mile radius of us. I still have a US-made sweatshirt from Lands’ End that Barbara bought for me probably 20 years ago. It’s still in very good shape. Conversely, I have sweatshirts bought from Bean or Lands’ End just a few years ago that are badly worn. Those were made in Mexico, China, Viet Nam, Malaysia, Peru, and so on. I’m disappointed that Bean and Lands’ End sell this third-world garbage. I’d prefer to buy only items made in the US or other first-world countries, where quality still means something. Yeah, US-made stuff costs more. So what? It may cost 50% more, but it lasts three times as long.
Science kit sales are still slow in absolute terms, but running at twice the rate of last February. I need to get more kits built, so that’s what I’ll work on today.
09:59 – Barbara hates to let the weather alter her plans. So this morning she headed to work in the Trooper. She called when she arrived to say that the residential streets were a complete mess, but the main roads were in pretty good shape. The high today is forecast to be well above freezing, so some of the mess on the roads will begin to melt. But tonight is to be very cold, so the mush will refreeze into solid sheets of ice with deep ruts. Tomorrow morning is likely to be a worse mess than this morning.
We’re shipping kits steadily. February is always the slowest month for us, but at least we’re on track this month to more than double last February’s sales. For the first half of the month we’re at about 1.2 times last February’s total sales. Our kit inventory is in pretty good shape for biology and forensic kits, but we’re down to less than a dozen chemistry kits. Getting more of those built is a high priority.
08:24 – It’s currently sleeting, on top of about six inches (15 cm) of snow. More frozen precipitation is forecast through this afternoon, shifting from sleet and freezing rain back to snow. There’s been zero traffic on our street since before we took Colin out last night.
Colin isn’t used to snow in significant amounts. When I took him out early this morning, he was obviously surprised when he stepped down off the porch and his legs sunk deep into snow. He tried making snow paws, but even that didn’t keep him on the surface of the snow. I just walked him halfway down the block and he kind of staggered at each step. As I just said to Barbara, we won’t yell at him if he has an accident in the house today. There’s enough snow on the ground that if he tries to squat he’ll be squatting his nethermost regions into the snow. Talk about freezing one’s testicles off.
All of the schools and many businesses are closed today, but Barbara’s law firm doesn’t close no matter what. So she’s taking a vacation day today, and will just watch TV and work on kit stuff.
09:29 – I just got email from someone who’d ordered some chemicals from Elemental Scientific. When they arrived, he found that the cap was cracked on a bottle of concentrated sulfuric acid, and wanted advice about how to proceed. So I replied to him and then carried a box of chemicals that arrived yesterday from Elemental Scientific down to my lab. I unpacked the stuff, including a couple liters each of reagent-grade concentrated hydrochloric, nitric, and sulfuric acids and 30% hydrogen peroxide. No leaks, thank goodness.
09:06 – Barbara’s mom was released from the hospital yesterday. Frances picked her up at the hospital and got her home late in the afternoon. Barbara went over to Sankie’s apartment at 4:00 and met the home health people to get things ready for Sankie’s arrival. They got Sankie settled in, but then had to wait for the guy to deliver the oxygen concentrator. Barbara finally got home around 9:30. She’s not sure if Sankie is doing any better mentally, and is concerned that this will turn into a “revolving door” situation.
Speaking of Forsyth Medical Center, this was the lead story in the morning paper. Since 18 January, they’ve exposed 18 patients to the invariably fatal CJD because they failed to sterilize instruments properly. Not that getting rid of prions is easy. Since they’re not alive, “killing” them is problematic. Prions are proteins, so the only solution is to denature them irreversibly, which isn’t easy. IIRC, the best procedure is to autoclave instruments at 136C or higher for an hour in a bath of one molar sodium hydroxide or sodium hypochlorite. That’s fine for hand instruments, but difficult for major pieces of equipment. I’m surprised they don’t make those with disposable tubing, chambers, and fittings for everything that comes into contact with body fluids.
10:40 – I just got email from someone at fedbid.com telling me that the Detroit Public Schools were soliciting bids for commercial electronics kits. We don’t sell such kits, so we have no interest in the RFQ, but what amazed me is that the Detroit Public School system apparently expects vendors to respond. What company in its right mind would deliver products to the Detroit Public School system on Net 90 terms? I wouldn’t ship products to a bankrupt school system even if they pre-paid by check, at least until I was certain that check had cleared irrevocably. Even then, I probably wouldn’t take the chance. Bankruptcy managers have a nasty habit of reaching out and reclaiming payments, leaving vendors holding the bag.
08:06 – Barbara doesn’t know whether her mom will be released from the hospital today. She’s expecting it, but they haven’t gotten final word yet. Frances called from the hospital last night and told Barbara that their mom was acting up again. Barbara thinks that Sankie is angling to get Frances to agree to let her come to live with Frances and Al, which isn’t going to happen. They both work, and there’s no way Sankie could stay in their home unsupervised all day long. With Sankie, one is never entirely sure how much of her behavior is real and how much is an act.
08:16 – Winter is supposed to return this week, with snow and freezing rain in the forecast for Tuesday through Thursday. At least tomorrow is supposed to be decent weather for Barbara and Frances to take their mom home from the hospital.
We’re building the subassemblies we need to get more kits built for inventory.