Beth’s ear thing is still going on. She still has the stabbing pain and terrible itch, and running a fever and everything. She saw Dr. D on Monday, and he could tell her that it’s still infected but told her not to irrigate any more so the ENT can get an accurate view of what’s going on. But she couldn’t stand it because the itching was driving her crazy and did anyway. The nurses were able to get her an ENT appointment on Thursday. The 5th time she’s seen someone about whatever it is that’s going on. So the ENT told her… it’s a fungal infection! How totally gross. And that all the antibiotics and drops and such have been making it worse. The ear should be kept totally dry. Except now she has some new drops to take twice a day, and she’s going to continue to be uncomfortable for at least another week. 

Meanwhile on Thursday, Missy and I loaded up the van and the truck with her things and moved her into her apartment (house) in Muncie. We kind of blew it with getting her a new mattress; we didn’t get around to shopping for it until last week and so it’s not here yet, so we had to pull her old mattress down from her bed at home and take it with. Plus all the IKEA stuff that she and Beth bought last month. Speaking of which, the IKEA bed was incomplete. Nobody noticed until yesterday that only 3 boxes of the bed were here, and they were numbered 1, 2, 4. But the website made it look like there were only supposed to be 3 boxes, so we decided to go with it and hope all the parts were there. NOPE we unloaded everything and got to work assembling the bed, only to find that parts were missing before we even got past page 1. And they weren’t parts that you can do without. The angle irons holding everything together weren’t there. The drawers and gliders weren’t there. The whole back side of the bed wasn’t there. So we called Beth to see if there was anything in the garage that we had forgotten (she was still home waiting for Alex to be off work) and there was not. Beth called IKEA and the best they could do for us was to have us pack everything back up again (are you insane?) and cart it back home, and they would come pick it up and deliver a new bed next week. In the meantime, Missy and I assembled her desk and chair and unloaded everything. She has a small bedroom but it’s in what seems to be a nice old house. Beth and Alex were there around 8:00 and we did some shopping at Wal-Mart and Menards to get her a small dresser (since there are no drawers now) and a cot-type thing to get her mattress off the floor, and a fan because it was hot as blazes in there. We had her all moved in and taken care of, and new furniture assembled, by around 10 so the rest of us left her there to do all the arranging and decorating that she didn’t want help with. On to her senior year!

Tuesday I called into the morning show on Pulse again and won Fresh Out of Bed and Head to Head again. No contest, really. I called because I thought they were giving away tickets to the Funny Pharm on Friday, when Corey from the morning show was doing his first headlining show. Turns out they didn’t have those tickets but I asked for them anyway so Corey said he’d get me a couple passes. I won the contest again on Wednesday and Thursday, too, so one more and I’m the hall of fame again. Anyway, by Friday Beth was still not feeling well enough to go and Alex was going out with friends, so I took Natalie with me. High praise from her: she said it was better than she thought it would be. It wasn’t a-list comedy but still it was a good time and Corey did a great job. He even called on me at one point (‘yeah, blue shirt!’) when he was asking the audience how long they’d been married. He also had a joke about Stanley Cups that took me a hot minute to realize he was talking about expensive water bottles and not hockey trophies. 

Friday was another outing that Beth didn’t feel up to: the labs at work had organized attending a TinCaps game. Nobody else really wanted to go either, mostly because it was so hot out. So I went by myself, met up with the ATS folks there. Good seats, lower deck along the first base line. However sometime around the 3rd inning the thunder started and the rain came shortly thereafter. I headed up and under the roof of the stadium when it started sprinkling so I didn’t get wet when the heavens opened and the deluge started. The grounds crew got the field covered pretty quickly and about half of the crowd left. Everyone who stayed just milled around in the aisle under the roof until the rain stopped, which was about 45 minutes. It started sprinkling again as they were uncovering the field again so I was afraid the next round was coming, but it lightened up and they got the game going again. In the end the TinCaps beat West Michigan 3-0 in a not very interesting game. 

Finally, Saturday was a wedding between two kids that grew up in our church, Lily and Derek. They had the wedding outdoors, risky this time of year, but it went well. It was pretty hot but tolerable and there was plenty of shade. It was a nice service, standard except instead of a unity candle, they welded a unity cross. I can say that that is something I've never seen before, and I'm glad they didn't burn a hole in her dress or his rented tux.