This day was certainly a mixture of good and bad. It started off bad, with a phone call at 01:15 this morning from the hospital. I went in and I was there until about 06:00... and I only did two patients. The first one, the 01:15 call, was a stat PE study and head CT. She was an inpatient, and, as they were transporting her to CT, she got in more trouble, with her O2 sats (the amount of oxygen in her blood) dropping precipitously. So, instead of going to CT, the went directly to the ICU to put an ET (endotracheal) tube in. They had lots of trouble getting that done, and then they had to get an NG (nasogastric) tube down her too... and she didn't have very good venous access, so they had to get another IV in... all in all, it was three hours from the time of the call until I got the patient. But that was OK, 'cause I did get to spend some time chewing the fat with some of my old friends from the night shift... damn, I miss them every one. Well, not quite *every* one, but pretty much. The other early patient was a drunk who had major lacerations from an MVA, who was a real PITA, and so was another one that I was called in to do later from the same wreck with a major back injury. I went back in a coupla more times, but there is a CT-trained tech who came in at 14:30, so I'm pretty safe until 23:00. And I did get a little nap from 12:00 to 13:30, that was nice, and enough to see me through the rest of the day. Now, for the good news: the sewer is done! The sewer is done! The guy started at about 09:00 and he got done shortly after dark. He replaced the main section of the orangeburg pipe, and it was pitiful pipe indeed, after actually looking at it I'm really amazed that it lasted as long as it did... The section close to the house is good now, instead of replacing it, he shoved a three-inch schedule 40 pipe into it and flushed it out and it's working great now. If that wouldn't have worked, we would have had to tear the deck off, not an option that I relished... especially since the weather has turned so nasty today. It is going to be so nice to not have to constantly worry about that any more. And the guy charged me about 25% of what other people would have. He's the husband of a co-worker, and he just bought his little back-hoe combination digger not too long ago, and he was getting a big kick out of running it, I could tell. It could only dig eight feet deep, so he had to dig himself some tracks about three foot deep before he could get started on the main trench. I am going to go to bed early tonight, in the hopes that I won't get called until about 09:00 in the morning... yeah, that would really be nice, though highly unlikely. In the Mail: On the shelf: