Sweet are the uses of adversity, which, like a toad, though ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in its head. -Shakespeare

Well, I worked and wished and dreamed every single day of 2008 for 2009 to be - in fact and attitude - a year of real change. Change for the country. And personal and professional change for me.

This week, it's become fairly obvious that for at least the next 90 days, I'm going to be working with a whole lot more change than I planned on...

From the election of Barak Obama, to the launch of my new biz blog http://virtualmeetingcoach.com, the pre-launch work with Andrew on Virtual Meeting Startup, and a flurry of new activity in Twitter, January literally burst out of the chute like a bullrider wired for action. Things I'd been preparing for months were rolling out, fast, and despite the insanity in the economy, my hope was riding high.

Then, out of the blue, January 14th, hackers got into the GMail account I've been using for the last 18 months, spammed all my 700 contacts, and then deleted them, along with all my notes tracking new online business and personal relationships I've been developing since I picked up and moved to Ashland, Oregon, after 25 years in Austin, Texas.

Stunned, I did everything I know to do to recover the email addresses. At most I've been able to restore contact with about 100 people, most of them friends and former clients from Austin. Unless they were Facebook or Ning friends, LinkedIn contacts, or people following me on Twitter, almost everyone has just vanished. I'll just have to wait for them to FIND ME since I have no information to contact them.

FYI: Google doesn't "save" your gmail contact information nor will they "restore" it for you. Period.

So. That was some big change. But not exactly the kind I'd been expecting. More like a crisis.

Unable to do much about the facts but moan, I left Ashland on vacation on January 19th with my sweetheart, John. We cried and shouted with joy through Barak's inauguration and cheered "Slumdog Millionaire" in San Francisco. Then we flew from there to Maui where we snorkeled and swam and watched whales play for two weeks in the pristine waters off Wailea and Makena. We stayed at Wailea Ekahi in an utterly beautiful garden condominum that belongs to John's friends, Adam and Sara. I didn't work much at all. I did Tweet regularly, made made some new Hawaii contacts, @nathankam, @bytemarks, and @angelakeen, and learned more about Hawaii's new Online Care program that puts docs and patients together in virtual meeting rooms. Other than that, I cooked, ate, slept, snorkeled, and played games with John and our friend, Joanna.

Adam's Maui neighbor, Claudia, showed us "aloha" by trading food with us and teaching us how she makes paper from recycled scraps and seaweed everyday right in her kitchen. The beautiful people of Little Beach showed us big "aloha" twice in Sunday afternoon drumming-dancing-playing events on the beach. I got more rest that I've had in over 20 years and soaked in the unspoiled beauty and the very real "aloha" energy. I worked so hard all last year in relative isolation that I needed every bit of the time we had to revitalize my body, mind and spirit! On the way back through San Francisco, we cried out way through the beauty of "Grand Torino," had a wonderful dinner with Adam, Sara and their son, Spencer, and then drove back upstate to the winter chill we're still living up in the great State of Jefferson.

It's been six days now, since I opened the door, full of "aloha," well-fed, well-rested, happy to be home and ready to get back to work.

I got home to Ashland the evening of February 7th ...to discover that my home had been "repaired" without my knowledge or consent during my absence. All the equipment and paperwork in my home office was covered with particle board dust laced with a half-dozen varieties of toxic mold. The floors and counter surfaces were covered with debris, the air inside the house smelled funny and was full of dust, and everything in my office was coated yellow-green. All the black surfaces on the wooden furniture in the living room looked the same. I could only imagine what was on the sueded couches and chairs and the brown and tan carpeting.

I spent that first night upstairs in the house, hoping that the contamination downstairs was contained downstairs. But in the morning, I woke up with red, burning and itching eyes, a running and bleeding nose, and my throat so irritated I had to clear it every few words in order to speak.

My neighbors kindly offered for me to stay at their house for the next four days while they were out of town. So I wheeled my suitcase from Maui down the street and camped at Geena and David's with their two huge dogs, two cats, and my dog, Lady.

Every day since I got back home has been a little crazier and more nightmarish than the one before. Despite all the laws that were broken and the seriousness of the threats to my health, the property management company that ordered the "work" done in my house without my permission has spent the entire week denying responsibility for damaging anything, including my health. The office manager's theory is that I've probably got an allergy to my dog and until the air quality tests come back, I should just go home and maybe vacuum up the dust.

Last night my neighbors returned home, so I checked into the EconoLodge and paid to stay here a week. Lady's here with me.

It snowed a ton last night and the ice fog this morning made everything outside look as eerie as I feel inside. This afternoon, between calls from the air quality tester, the mold abatement company, the insurance adjuster, my sister in Seattle, and researching county records to find the name of the man who actually owns the house I've been renting, I got a jar of peanut butter, some fresh fruit, rice cakes, yogurt and walnuts that I've stashed in the tiny icebox under the even tinier microwave that sit between this desk I'm writing at and the TV.

In less than 30 days, I've gone from being a middle-aged woman full of hope and energy, ready to roll out a promising new online business, to a semi-homeless sick woman, living out of a suitcase of dirty clothes, rooming in a cheap motel with a confused, elderly dog, wondering what the hell happened...

How about that for some CHANGE?

My good friend and client, Karl Bayer, a dispute resolution expert in Austin, shared the quote from Shakespeare I used to open this rant:

Sweet are the uses of adversity, which, like a toad, though ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in its head. -Shakespeare

I used Karl's latest motto to title the post:

"Never waste a good crisis!"

Words aren't everything, but good ones have always given me a boost.

So, I decided tonite to follow @nathankam's strategy of using a posterous blog to augment The Virtual Meeting Coach blog and my brief Facebook and Twitter updates.

I need a place to track my progress huntin' that jewel in this toad's head.

If you can see the light glinting off the toad jewel, please drop some bread crumbs below that might point me in the right direction. The underbrush in this brave new 2009 world is pretty thick and it's hard to see...