Off to the VA today to take my old man to see a doctor. I've got him vertical and given him his pills and left him to his ablutions while I get breakfast ready.

The morning low clouds are back and the temperature has dropped 10-15 degrees. What a relief! When I get hot, I get overheated and my brain shunts to ground, the gauge on my energy level reads "Lethargic". Unlike the cold, the heat really puts me out of action.

Speaking of things heating up, yesterday at work was definitely a hot situation. My boss was out of town, so things were busier than usual for me: telephone calls, payroll, data entry into Operations. The snafu in all this was timing--people showing up for personal interviews just at the time that the phone rang and then the mail person asking if the mail was ready to go out and to top it off, an urgent Take Care of Me Now fax. You know the drill.

The hardest part is coordinating three levels of departmentalization: calling people at one level to say something is required, emailing the information "downtown" only to discover that the requirements now involve another level higher up; then calling outside the department for further information; and when the issue is resolved, sharing that result with all of the aforementioned.

I'm so grateful for email. Several of the contactees use/check their mail regularly and I can count on them to keep up-to-date. The others have to be called by phone to get any timely results. Part of the problem, I think, is the inability of some people to read with comprehension.

Anyway, off to the VA and away from phones for a while. Time to load the wheelchair in the back of the car and hit the road in the cool, cool, cool of the morning. Tell them I'll be there.