* SIGH *

Life just keeps throwing curves my way when I'm looking for the fastball.

My father, who is 76, had his third open-heart surgery appx. 2 weeks ago.  They did a lot of stuff.  Repaired a valve, performed one by-pass, and did some procedure to fix atrial fibrillation, basically, they shocked his heart while they were in there (electrical cardioversion) to restore the normal heart rhythm.

Anyways, he apparently suffered a minor stroke and lost some of his short-term memories and it affected his motor-reflexes on the right side.  Good news is that he seems to be recovering both of these already.  Bad news is he still has three drainage tubes in his chest, and cannot keep his blood pressure up, so they have him shot up with dopamine to keep that up until his heart is strong enough to keep the BP up on its own.

I spoke with him last night, and he's sounding good, and he had a good day, so hopefully he'll be able to get out of the hospital by the end of this week.  My mother is driving appx. 90 miles both ways everyday to visit him.  Good thing they are both retired.

Then, around the same time, my car decides it doesn't like the key I have for it.  I couldn't turn the key in the ignition.  *sigh*  I took it in, and they informed me that the key that I have is the valet key, and that they cannot code new ignition keys off it.  Worse yet, it's the only key I have for the damn thing. 

The solution?  A totally new computer for the car.  Fuck.  Me.  Car computers are not cheap.  Luckily, Toyota (I have an older Camry) felt my pain I guess, and decided that they would kick in the computer if I paid for the labor and new keys.  I jumped all over that shit.  Only problem, is that it took a week to get here, and I had to have a rental car the entire time.  More $$$ out of my pockets.  The car repair ended up being $350, which saved my ass, as if I had to pay for the computer and install, it would have cost appx. $2k.  Unfortunately, the rental cost me another $300, but still, I'd rather pay $650 then about $2,300.

Hopefully I'll be able to scrounge up enough $$$ to attend the LAN, as this repair, and the $700 I plunked down on our other car has about wiped out any discretionary funds I had.  Luckily, I've already purchased my ticket.