And I am very sick.

I kind of know what a healthy colon looks like and now I know what one with uclerative colitis looks like.

After two weeks of trying to make it better at home using the various meds prescribed by our GP, and after a colonoscopy this afternoon, Donna was admitted to the hospital where she could get some stronger stuff via IV. Now via hindsight (which is always 20/20) we probably should have should taken the Doctor up on his offer to be admitted last weekend. And had it been presented as more of a request to stay, not a coin toss decision, we probably would have taken him up on it, instead we picked the option where you go home.

Go back and read Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 if you already haven’t, I’ll wait.

Day 3: cont. A little before 3:00PM I wandered into the caféteria to refill my mug with ice from the machine. This in of itself is not unusual as I normally do this around that same time most days, but had Rob actually gone in there to drop off any ransom he probably of would have figured he’d confirmed my participation in the kidnapping. He was no where to be seen and neither were any Walmart bags.

Day 4: On Thursday morning I made up one more ransom note:

I didn’t take a picture, so I had to recreate it with clip art, but Mark found me a dead cricket and I taped one of it legs to the piece of paper. Using the “roachrobbie83″ yahoo mail address I sent a second check your mailbox note with the subject line “Where’s The Ransom?” Rob replied via email:

please don’t hurt her. Penelope F Chickenetia is a very loving creature. they don’t have blue bags. we need more time. how to you expect a guy to come with with that kinda loot in such a short time.

I’ve got white bags with blue wal mart writing. will that do?

Later that afternoon he accosted both Mark and I separately with one bottle of RC Cola in a Walmart bag. We were sticking with our story of knowing nothing about it, I even tried to toss the blame at one of his cubical neighbors, but he wouldn’t believe us.

Day 5: On Friday I decided that enough was enough and if I had an opportunity I would just return Rob’s dead roach back to his cubical where his was last seen a week ago. About mid morning I stood up to get a drawing out of the printer and noticed Rob walking down the hall towards the other end of the plant, I made a quick u-turn and got the bug. No one saw me place it back and I’m not sure if he was messing around or not, but when Mark walked by and pointed out that his bug was back he seemed surprised and overjoyed.

Later that afternoon Rob brought me the bottle in a bag saying he didn’t drink RC and that I had earned it. I replied, “I don’t really like RC either, but thanks.” and took the drink.

Day 8: On Monday morning when the vending machine guy came in to refill the drink machines I traded him the RC and a quarter for a 20oz bottle of Dr. Pepper. Who says crime doesn’t pay?

The other day when I broke out Spenser book number one to grab a quote for inclusion in my post on the passing of it’s author, Robert B. Parker, it was intended to be off the bookshelf for only a few minutes. Didn’t work out that way, I ended up reading the thing again. I was between books anyway and I was having a hard time finding things that I enjoyed reading…

It’s been five days now and I’ve finished reading the first 3 books. It is kind of a nostalgic ride, not so much because I have read the books before, some even more than once, but because of the scene setting descriptions of the attire of the characters in the books. The first book was published in 1973 which was the year I graduated high school and I can really picture those outfits, even used to dress sort of like that sometimes.

Parker wrote one Spenser book a year, like clockwork, and I have have the first 35, in a combination of paper back and hard cover, that should keep me busy for a while. At least long enough to let me track down bargains on the last two novels.

Go back and read Parts I, 2 and 3 if you already haven’t, I’ll wait.

Day 3: I decide to lay it on thick today. The picture with the newspaper isn’t good enough in this day and age, we need video! Fortunately my digicam, like most today, can take short movies. First I scour the web to find plans for an small origami chair. I found a couple, but they seem overly complex, so I opt for an easier one. A little dental floss and I head off to the same studio with available daily newspaper as yesterday:

I sent Rob the video as an attachment using the newly opened yahoo email account, the body of the message simple stated, “Check your mailbox.” Inside his mailbox was note number three, the instructions for the ransom drop:

We first bought a prepaid cell phone from Tracfone back when Donna’s mom moved in with us in 2000 so she could have a way to get in touch with us when we were away on weekends. We stayed with them for 6 years before their customer service on a non-working phone lost the business for them. We have had an AT&T GoPhone since then. Because we are very infrequent users, the phone never gets turned on until we want to make a call, we go for 25¢ a minute plan where we pay $25 every three months. That is a 100 minutes for 90 days, you would think that would be easy, not for us. The unused minutes roll over, but you have to buy more to keep them. We have now not used the phone so well that we have about $65 in the kitty and another time deadline is fast approaching.

Monday morning we thought we found a good way to “waste” some of those minutes we’ll never use, by texting HAITI to 90999, this will donate $10 to the Red Cross. It was an adventure for me to try and “text” using our little phone, but once I finally got it we were glad to help in a small way. Instantly I received a reply that informed me to text back the word YES to confirm and that it would take 24-48 hours for the money to come out of our account. It has now been 60 hours and our account balance has not gone down one bit. Seemed like a great idea…

Go back and read Parts I and 2 if you already haven’t, I’ll wait.

Day 1 (cont.): Mark and I do not interact with Rob too often, so we couldn’t very well walk up and ask, “Hey. What’s new?” right after he got the fax without arousing suspicion. We laid low, waiting to hear through the grapevine of Rob’s reaction. We heard nothing. Maybe that free internet fax thing didn’t work.*

*We didn’t know until much later in the week that the fax had actually gotten through. And when he got it Rob went up to our “receptionist”, who also forwards all the incoming faxes via email to the recipients, and asked who sent it, she couldn’t tell any more than he could from the ad supported cover page. He did say to her that it had Brian written all over it. Unfortunately my reputation proceeds me as I have really earned my in house nickname of Arts & Crafts Engineer.

Day 2: On Tuesday morning I prepared a second ransom note that we would slip in his mailbox or maybe to be sure, just stick it on his desk. Having watched enough Lifetime TV movies I knew that any good kidnapper would have a picture taken of the victim with that day’s newspaper to show 1) they actually had the victim and 2) they were unharmed (although #2 didn’t really matter in this case):

That afternoon when Mark walked by Rob in the hall, Rob was giving him a look. Mark asked ever so innocently, “What’s happening?” Rob tilted his head and followed Mark’s path said, “I’ve got my eye on you.” Later I received the same treatment as I casually passed by Rob’s cubical. He obviously suspects us, but cannot prove it…