Last week sucked. So much went so wrong for me, my family, and some of my friends!
The week got off to a bad start with a sore throat from the weekend (9-10 Sep). A sore throat has always been a cause of concern for me, since I am prone to catching strep throat; I had it every year as a child and every semester in college. This one didn't last long, but I missed work on Monday. Some other bug came around after the sore throat went away; I had a fever on Thursday afternoon and missed work again on Friday. Normally, I'd welcome a day(or two) away from work, but I'm carrying around more than a bit of anxiety about work right now, so I wasn't pleased that I had to miss and risk appearing the slacker.
On Wednesday, a friend mentioned to me that he wasn't feeling well. I probed his statement, which seemed innocuous enough on the surface, and found that he was afraid that he was having a heart attack. (This person is a heart attack survivor, so he would know what it feels like.) I reviewed with him his symptoms and asked what he might do about about this. Before I left work, I made him promise that he'd visit the doctor when his shift ended and call me when he'd found out something. I spent the evening at home worried about my friend -- hoping that he would, indeed, go to the doctor and wondering what the doctor would find. He called me in the wee hours of Thursday morning, having just returned home from the hospital and reported that his symptoms weren't due to a heart attack, but were the result of recent lifestyle changes (a temporary work relocation) that presented him with too much rich food and too little exercise and sleep. He has since taken measures to rectify his situation.
Also on Wednesday, another friend (whom I'll call Thom) told me that some of his online accounts had been hijacked by a guy in Indonesia. Having recently moved, Thom had been checking some of his online accounts to be sure that he'd updated them with his new address, when he found that information in his E-Bay account had been changed and that someone had bought three laptop computers and an expensive mobile phone. The next day, the cracker had locked Thom out of his two primary e-mail accounts! Thom had to create new e-mail accounts and spent several hours on the phone with his service providers to sort out the mess, parts of which are still unresolved. Though he didn't lose any money (or hasn't yet), he has lost several hours of his time and a bit of sense of security from the violation. At one point, the cracker actually contacted him directly by e-mail! That gave even me an eerie, "the-call-is-coming-from-inside-the-house" kinda feeling. I felt so sick about Thom's situation that I wanted to throw up, myself! I don't know how the cracker got into Thom's computer, but when Thom was reviewing his security, he found that his firewall was off. Who knows if something inadvertent happened to switch off the firewall and let the cracker in or if the cracker got in some other way and turned the firewall off. I've helped Thom scan his computer for several threats, but I've encouraged him to backup his data, reformat his hard drive, and install Windows afresh. Who knows what sort of key-logger or snooping software the cracker might've left on his computer that would allow him to do this again!
On top of all of this, Granny (my paternal grandmother) is in the hospital and not doing well. My whole family gathered at the hospital on Friday night for a round of tearful goodbyes. Granny is 95, very sick, and in much pain with a broken leg; she says that all of her prayers have been answered and that she's ready to go whenever God sees fit to lead her onward. Nevertheless, it'll be tough for whose who stay behind when she does move on and quite a loss for our family. She is still with us as I write this (Monday evening, 18 Sep), but she is clearly continuing on her journey toward her eventual destination.
I do have a few things to which I can look forward to seeing me through this trying time. My LSAT preparation class is going well and I feel good about the skills and strategies that I'm learning. Also, my trip to Manila is little more than two weeks away! Yay! Before I know it, I'll be putting my pencil down and picking my passport up! :J
