AUSTIN, Texas, Apr. 30, 2005 — FFP gets up and gets out of bed. It's quiet and I think he's gone to the club. We have an appointment for my computer technician of choice to call at nine. I want to do something about the pokey way that the bookkeeper's machine is running. It is running, gulp, Millenium Edition. Pe-too-ey. The lost operating system which lasted ten minutes but was named for a long period of time . We got this machine for my mother in January of 2001. When the bookkeeper's machine started making hard disk sounds like it was underwater, I rescued it from disuse (Dad was never going to use it) and installed QuickBooks on it. Which entailed

getting a new version of QuickBooks. Things are never simple. Anyway the machine is pokey and has potergeist in spite of up-to-the-minute virus scans and Spy Ware sweeps. Sometimes I think it is McAfee itself eating the machine and have suspected it for a while before the invasion of two of my other machines (running 2000 Pro and XP Amateur) by some bug from them. It would just be easier to deal with stuff if we had a better operating system. But there isn't much memory (128K) and I figure XP will be pokey without more. (I have an XP Pro upgrade I bought but never used. More memory? Who knows?)

FFP comes down to talk to me about something and I realize that he's never really gone to the club. The tech guy calls and we try to do stuff over the phone. A neighbor calls and wants some wine corks. The tech guy comes over and looks at the machine and goes off to buy some memory. While he is installing an upgrade to XP Pro that I've had lying around for ages, he resurrrects another machine from the junk pile for me. All that installing and checking and reinstalling (McAfee insists on being reinstalled) takes until two.

I've called my dad a couple of times to check on him, but I do it again. He says it's fine if I don't come until tomorrow. Cool. I talk to my friend SuRu who is in the neighborhood and she says she will go by and get his mail in. (When she calls him, he gets her to pick up a sandwich, too.)

I have a headache (well a fuzzy head) around two from not having anything to eat. I down salad with leftover cold salmon, cheese, bleu cheese dressing and eat some leftover broccoli.

I go to the gym, finally, but only do thirty-two minutes on the bike.

I get home and FFP is cooking some more salmon. (To eat leftover.) And then he cooks the tuna I got at Costco and heats up some roasted vegies from Central Market. Delicious. We shower up and get dressed.

"The Marriage of Figaro" has some beautiful music. But it is long, oh so long. However, Austin Lyric Opera's production tonight has this great staging with lots of I love Lucy and she loves operatic ensemble touches.

I'm in a great mood when I get home until I hear on the answering machine: "Hi, my name is Rhonda and I'm an RN at Seton Medical Center. We have your dad here. It's orbigarble." Yes, or something like that. No phone number. No which Seton and no phone number and something neither one of us can understand at the end. Phone call only came a couple of minutes before we got home. No call to my cell (which was on stun during the opera). I track down a phone book and try Northwest. They don't have him. The main Seton does. But they won't tell me anything.

We both go there right away, in our opera dress up clothes. I find him. He's fine but he had an episode with a tingly left arm that wouldn't work well and vision problems. He managed to dial 911 and open the front door. The EMTs thought stroke and took him to the main hospital. But it only lasted thirty to forty-five minutes. Now he can squeeze my hand and he can see fine. TIA? Probably. He hasn't had one in years.

They take him for a CT Scan. We wait. When he is back, we sign some papers and I send FFP home. He says he'll come back for me. I wait to talk to the various doctors until he's admitted. His neck (carotid arteries) 'sounds' OK. They think TIA. They give him an aspirin. I tell him I'm going home to sleep. It's two-thirty in the morning. He'll have to get admitted without my help.

I go home. I go to sleep, but it's hard. He'll be fine but it was a scare. First time I'd been to emergency down there since they remodeled. Nice, but like everything Seton has designed, a confusing set of hallways going this way and that. Place is named after an old boss of mine. But that's a long story.