Murphey's Law

Everyone knows about Murphey's Law: "everything that can go wrong, will go wrong." In my case, it seems to have happened all at once. Allow me to recount my recent misfortunes:

1. My great uncle passed away. The day after we returned from his funeral...

2. My mom ended up in the hospital and has been there for over a month so far, then...

3. The pump in my parents' well quit working while we were in the midst of cleaning their house in preparation for my mom's (eventual) return home. This required us to have a lovely weekend of flushing toilets with buckets of rainwater, washing our hands with rainwater, not showering, and not doing dishes (no complaints here!). My dad then had to dedicate too much time contacting various well companies and dealing with replacing the pump. But I'm happy to report that they have water once again.

4. Then we hear that Edward hurt his ankle playing soccer. This doesn't affect me so much, but it still sucks.

Just when I thought things couldn't get worse (that's a line from a Shania Twain song...) Edward, Dave, and I decided to go on a cheap cruise over the holidays since we've all been so distracted lately. Apparently, right when I was making the reservations this afternoon, Mr. Murphey decided to have a little more fun with me...

When I got home from baby sitting this evening, my labmate/housemate, Eric, was standing in the driveway looking really pissed off. He asked me if our other labmate, Rebecca, had called me when I was baby sitting. I got worried, thinking she was hurt or something. She's fine he assured me, but...

6. We've all been laid off. Rebecca and I are the other ones who are still on the payroll because we're students and our stipends were set aside for the whole quarter. So after December I guess I have no job in my lab. Without money for my student fees/tuition I can't even remain a student for the next quarter. Hopefully I will be able to find a TA position or another source of funding (like with another professor, although lots of other labs have lost funding recently, too, because many funding agencies in CA have put their grants on an indefinite hold until the economy recovers). If all else fails I'll baby sit full time or work for my father-in-law.

So now I'm left wondering what else bad can possibly happen? There are of course numerous things that can go wrong at any given time but I won't list them because that's just depressing. Instead I'm going to go make up a huge batch of Cook Su to put into the freezer for lunches next week and watch some old episodes of Desperate Housewives until Dave gets here.

All in all, I'm very grateful to be in a position where I can laugh at most of my misfortune. There are many, many people suffering job loss, disease, war, etc. right now and I'm thankful that I'm not one of them.