So what else can go wrong? No, wait, I don't want to know.

Thursday 5/18 AM. I make a trip into Norfolk to get blood tests done (cholesterol and thyroid). The nurse can't raise a vein in either arm and finally has to get it from the back of my hand. Ugh.

Thursday 5/18 PM. I walk into the house after work and can tell immediately that the AC is off. It's stuffy and several degrees warmer than it should be. Repeated attempts to get the compressor to start fail. I finally shut it off at the thermostat and spend the night with the window open. Call an AC contractor and determine it's not an "emergency", but they'll call me first thing in the morning (i.e., 8 AM) to set up an appointment.

Friday 5/19 AM. No call by 8 AM and I need to leave for work. Call contractor who says the service group isn't in yet, maybe half an hour. So much for "first thing in the morning" being the same as "8 AM". I leave my cell number, and drive to work. No call by 9:30. I call the guy who serviced my AC once before. (OK, it's been two years. I wasn't working last year and didn't have the cash for it.) He tries to tell me it must be iced up because it's too cool out but finally says he'll come look at it. I turn around and go back home. He finally shows up after getting lost and calling me so I can talk him in ("You see the shopping strip on the corner with a Food Lion? Turn left at that light. Now take the second left, then the third right..."). After he runs over my ground-cover juniper at the corner of the driveway while trying to park his truck, we go inside and turn on the unit at the thermostate. It starts right up and runs like a top. Shit. He futzes with it for two hours, replaces a valve he says is leaking, and dumps 5 friggin' pounds of Freon into it. Costs me $310 and half a day of PTO. And I get to drive to and from work twice.

Tuesday 5/23 PM. My doctor takes me off my cholesterol meds after hearing about the muscle pains I'm having. That's one of those "rare" side effects that they always tell you to watch out for when taking statins. When I get home, the AC is off again (it ran fin all weekend, dammit) and it's around 77 in the house. I shut it down for a couple of hours and then turn it back on. It runs. It cools.

Wednesday 5/24, 5 PM. Fifteen minutes before my quitting time, my boss (who works out of California) calls and says she's just found out I need to move my office. Well, shoot, we're all moving July 1 to our new office building, so what's she on about? No, this is something different. They're hiring a new software developer who'll be starting Tuesday, and they need to have him at the same office as the rest of the developers. My office is the only place they have to put him, so I win the dubious distinction of getting to move twice: right away, to the other office, and then again in a month when we all move.

Thursday 5/25. I spend half the afternoon packing boxes and taking some things over to my new quarters.

Friday 5/26. I spend half the damned day moving the rest of my stuff, including my PC, monitor, UPS, and a dozen or so cables and peripherals, and getting set up. (Desktop PCs suck. Give me a nice laptop any day. No trouble moving them.) Early evening: I come home to a temp of 81 inside. No telling how long the AC has been off. I "reboot" it and it takes 5 or 6 hours to cool it down to a reasonable level. Late evening: My cable connection goes south and refuses to come back online.

Saturday 5/27, 9 AM. Still no connection. I call Cox and the upshot seems to be that my cable modem has taken a shit. 10 AM: I call a new AC contractor. Since I'm not already a customer, the earliest they could schedule me is week after next. Since the AC is currently running OK, I decline. Afternoon: A new cable modem, from Circuit City, runs me $80 (less a $20 rebate in the offing). I spend the rest of the afternoon getting it hooked up and online and getting my Mac and Toshiba laptops to talk to it. My wireless router still refuses to talk to it, leading me to believe I'm now going to have to replace that too.

And to top it off, I just realized that the DVD Netflix sent out to arrive Tuesday never showed up, so I had to report it missing.

So how has your last week and a half been?