Been too busy iRL to post much here on FA these last two-three months, had a bit of an urgent situation to deal with. For those that don't know, here's the quick rundown: My Shirlee's part-time job is at a small local newspaper. Newspapers have deadlines, the presses can't be held up by power outages. So in the basement they have a huge machine called a motor-generator, which kicks in if the mains go down. This big device requires checking on a regular basis. Not too long ago, the "person" whose responsibility it was to check it was too busy to do so (more on that later) and he casually asked Shirlee to do it. Shirlee's only seen the thing thru the basement window and has never touched it before. But, being the nice person she is, she obligingly did as she was asked. This jerkoff scribbled her a casual list of stuff to check and mentioned "you might want to wear gloves". Failing to note that there are the right kind and the WRONG kind of gloves for this and the wrong kind give no protection against the chemicals that might be present. (Not to mention that even the right kind might be in poor condition.) A few minutes after she'd done what he asked, the skin on Shirlee's hands was raw and blistered. She had someone call me at work from the hospital. Some people have a skin type that can't handle certain chemicals, Shirlee lost quite a bit of the upper layer of the skin on her hands. Even in as much pain as she was in she begged me not to make a big deal out of it at the paper. I went to the paper after I was sure her condition was under control and I made one insane huge fucking big-assed deal about it. Well, I did want to keep this short, so it all boils down to the reason the asshole handed his responsibility over to Shirlee (he's done it to others, it turns out, and she's one of the last ones he hadn't screwed over yet) was so he could go do other things - which I won't go into much, only to say that they were of dubious legality. And because he's done them before, in other places, and with a criminal record to prove it, he will shortly be leaving the paper and going to one of those places where doers of things of dubious legality are sent. For a long damn time, I hope. >=(

And Shirlee's 100% okay now. But these last few months have been taken up with varous medical issues and treatments and such. Believe it or not, Shirlee felt worse about 'making a fuss' about what happened than the physical injury she suffered. But, as I tell her, she didn't make the fuss - I did. >=)