10:35 – Barbara’s dad is in the hospital again, but she’s expecting him to be released today or tomorrow. Dutch had a follow-up doctor visit yesterday, and the doctor was concerned about the amount of water-weight Dutch had gained. So they did a direct-admit to the hospital so they can put Dutch on IV diuretics to get some of the fluid gone. As Barbara said last night, this’ll probably be a regular thing every couple of months for the rest of Dutch’s life. He’s doing what he’s supposed to in terms of limiting fluid intake, salt, and so on, but eventually the fluid builds up anyway. Barbara said the good news was that the blood tests showed Dutch was otherwise doing well, including kidney function.
Barbara already had plans for last night with her friend Bonnie to attend a concert. She decided that Dutch’s condition wasn’t an emergency, so she went ahead with her plans. Frances and Sankie went to the hospital with Dutch. Sankie, who is apparently doing very well mentally, stayed with Frances last night, so presumably they’ll go over to the hospital today. We’re hoping Dutch will be dried out and ready to go home this afternoon.
One of the downsides to our increasing kit sales volume is that we’re ordering in a lot of components, which have to be stored somewhere. Storing one case of 1,100 or 1,500 bottles or 60 test tube racks, for example, is no big deal. Storing a dozen or two dozen cases of bottles and 600 test tube racks is a different thing entirely. So one of my high-priority projects for this weekend–especially since I have cases and cases of more stuff on order–is to get the downstairs finished and unfinished areas better organized. I need space to store all this stuff, and I need to be able to find it quickly.
First up is to get the half dozen or so cases of bottles that are currently lining one wall of the garage area in the basement moved over into the finished area and sorted out by type. There are more cases in the library upstairs that we’ll also move down to the finished area of the basement, along with some of the stuff that’s currently in my upstairs workroom.
Then I want to convert my work/storage area in the unfinished part of the basement into a pure storage area. That means moving out the two 6X2.5 foot work tables in that area and installing floor-to-ceiling 12-inch shelves where the tables were. Those tables will go out into the garage area, where the cases of bottles were.