Apparently at around 8 or so this morning, a sewer beneath Oakland flooded. This in turn caused water to spill into the areas containing a main power line which supplies power to most of Oakland. The power line shorted out, taking out power to a large chunk of the neighborhood, including Presby. Presby, being a hospital, immediately whipped out the backup generators.

They failed.

And so Presby's power died. Along with it, the hospital took out the server farms for every single electronic function in my hospital.

Thus when I came in to work this morning, it was to chaos and despair. No patient tracking systems. No patient registration. No physician order entry. No order entry period. No lab values reporting. No imaging system functionality. No e-mail. No internet.

Now, in a situation like this, who takes it in the shorts? (Hint. The doctors and nurses LOVED it. They like working on paper, the technophobes.)

Today was a nightmare of trying to keep the place functioning, being overworked, writing out every single order, calling hither and thither to try to get anything done, dealing with angry patients... In short, somewhere between triple and quadruple my ordinary workload. For twelve hours straight with only half an hour break.

Worst. Day. Ever.

This morning when I got home from work, I couldn't sleep. The police have evidently been inquiring about my old beat-down car, and are threatening to have it towed, impounded, and generally crap on my life a little more. That seems to be 2006's running theme. I have some leads on a donation which I hope will come back to help me soon enough, but I ultimately didn't get to sleep as much as I hoped today.

I suppose that works out since I work 12 hours tomorrow. And a dentist appointment on Friday which I pray is routine.

Oddly enough I have Sunday off, odd because it's my weekend to work. Still, I can't complain; someone let me know if another game day is happening? Getting some gaming action in my system felt deleriously good.

I gave blood on Friday, something I try to do at least semi-regularly. Normally I have no problems with it -- I go in, bleed into a bag for a while, and all is well.

Not this time!
I don't know exactly what happened to cause it. I may not have eaten as much as I normally do before I go in, and I do know my blood pressure was low (for me) when they took it prior to the actual procedure. Whatever the reason, during the final part of donation, I suddenly became extremely light-headed. I mean, extremely, to the point where I nearly passed out. There was also a pretty strong nausea there for a bit. Whatever it was, it must have looked worse than it felt -- it wasn't fun, mind, but I can compare it to standing up too fast and carsickness wrapped into one -- because I freaked out a couple of nurses there. Evidently I looked very pale.

Let's hope THAT doesn't happen again...

Just got in a car accident.

Am okay. Physically anyway.

Son of a bitch, I left myself logged on all day today!

Is it sad I didn't get a single IM?

What lousy news to wake up to.

I grew up with Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, as I'm sure many of us did. The show actually started at WQED here in Pittsburgh, where I briefly interned a year or two ago. I got to see the giant puppet castle. It rawked.

This is a sad, sad day.

Plumber came to fix my sink, my tub, and my toilet.

The first and the last went okay, but my tub faucet committed suicide! Gonna have to get it replaced.

Update, 3:00 -- well, they set my wall on fire...

Oooops!

Ellen got sick and consequently couldn't drive home today -- so here she is still! Not exactly the way I'd choose to have more time with her...