So Alex has hand, foot, and mouth disease. (Not to be confused with Foot and Mouth Disease affecting livestock which I keep calling it.) When he went to the sitters last week one of the kids came home sick from school with it but we were really crossing our fingers that he wouldn’t come down with it. We had dogged it once before when one of the play group kids got it but our luck ran out this time.

Monday night Alex wasn’t feeling that great and he ran a fever most of the night so Jen took both him and Andrew to the doctor yesterday to get things checked out and they confirmed he had it. So far we are lucky and Andrew doesn’t have anything so with any luck maybe he won’t get it. Unfortunately there isn’t anything you can do about hand, foot, and mouth except try and alleviate the pain with Benadryl and of all things Maalox. The good thing is that he isn’t in too much pain and the only real affect is that he really doesn’t feel like eating much.

So, we’ll have to keep him out of school for the rest of the week and then see how things are going on the weekend to see if he can go back next week.

I always hate when I don’t update this in ages because I just have so much stuff to write about. Jen and I have both been sick but we are pretty much over it now. Jen had it first and I thought for sure that I was in the clear but then right before corporate olympics I ended up getting sick.

It was a rematch from last year where TI won over RISD by one point, 57 to 56. This year was just as close but RISD beat us by two points, 58 to 60.

I swam all events, 50 Free, Back, Breast and then a 50 on the relay and Jen swam the 50 back and the relay.

    Jen    Derek
50 Free          26.56
50 Back   35.20  30.81
50 Breast        35.81

Considering how I felt those times aren’t all the bad but considering how much I’ve been in the pool lately they aren’t great. Maybe next year we can get them.

Alex is picking up words like crazy and most of the time I don’t know where he comes up with half the stuff he says. Like the other night I was putting him down to bed and he said “Dad, I’ve got some gunk in my nose.” Gunk, where did he pick that up? Then today in the car he was drawing on his magnadoodle and said, “Hey look at what I drew.” It was just kind of random lines in a big ball with really no shape to it. “Very nice, what is it?” Jen asked him. “Compost” he told us. Compost?! We finally dug deep enough to find out that he pick that up from a Bob the builder episode he watched the other day where Bob was building an enclosure for the farmers compose pile.

Andrew has started eating his first solid foods and by solid I mean slightly thicker then water. First we started him off with rice cereal and just recently we added oatmeal to the mix. mmmmm. At least he seems to like it.

It still hasn’t rained here but the winds really started gusting this afternoon. The trees in front of the house lost a bunch of leaves and a couple of smaller branches but that’s been about it. So it looks like the worst of it is past us.

Still nothing.  It’s really overcast and dark but still no rain..

Nothing.  Currently there are hardly any clouds in the sky, it’s really calm out, and the forecast has us on the very west edge of the rains which they don’t think will start until tonight.

So it looks like it’s not going to be all that bad for us.

As Hurricane Rita barrels down on the Texas Louisiana coast they expect that by the time it reaches us this far inland they are calling for heavy rains and possibly high winds. As it keeps swinging to the east the less likely we are to have severe weather but we have started to prepare just in case.

We made a small list last night of stuff to get at the store last night. Batteries, an additional flashlight, some water, bread, a couple apples, and the ever important toilet paper. I went to WalMart and when I asked where they had flashlights the lady looked at me like I was out of my mind. “On the back wall if there are any left.” Here I was thinking I’m preparing a well in advance but WalMart was already completely sold out of flashlights. Actually, that’s not quite true. If I wanted to get a head mounted spelunker light I was in luck because that was the only thing left. I already have one flashlight at home so I figured I’d be safe and just get some batteries. No sorry, sold out of those too. The bottled water isle was completely empty, an entire row of bare shelves and in the bread department they were down the last couple of loaves. It is such an odd experience to be in the store with empty shelves where you expect to find the things you usually buy.

After going to WalMart I drove across the street to Lowes just to see if they had anything and to my surprise they had tonnes of bottled water, a bunch of flashlights, but only a couple of packages of batteries so I managed to get everything I set out for. I’m still a little puzzled on why Lowes had bottled water. I mean Lowes doesn’t exactly spring into mind when I think bottled water. I’m not complaining it just seemed a little odd.

On the way home I figured I would stop to fill up the gas tank just to be prepared. The gas station was pretty crowded though I didn’t have to wait for a pump but they were completely sold out of regular gas.

So I think we are prepared for the predictions of “plan on being without power for a while” that they’ve been telling us on the news. I just hope that it doesn’t rain too hard or spawn tornados that come our way but we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

Jen called me at work this afternoon just a little stressed out. When she got to the house after picking up Alex from school she found our kitchen table area just swarming with ants. They were on the floor, on the table, in the light, some of them had wings, and others were biting. What a disaster. From her initial description of flying ants I thought maybe we had termites but I figured that termites don’t bite so it had to be ants.

I told Jen try and get in touch with an extermination company to come out but no such luck. The Terminex number was disconnected and Orkin wouldn’t come out until Friday. What good is that when the ants are flying around the house now? At this point she was just a little worn out so I Googled pest companies in the area and found All-Safe Pest which said they would be out in an hour. Hurray for Google.

The exterminator showed up inspected the situation and he said. “It’s a really good thing you called us, this really needs to be handled by a professional.” Now I’m sure he says that to everyone but believe me there were loads of ants and I didn’t want to kill the ones in the kitchen just to have them show up again tomorrow, or in the middle of the night. He said they were outside ants and when he inspected around the house and found three small ant hills where they were using for launching their house hunting expeditions. He used some heavy duty spray to kill the ants and then said he was going to come back out on Friday to see how things were going. To top it off he said there was no charge for the visit. Holy cow, you can’t beat that. Fantastic service and no charge.

Ahoy maties, it be Talk Like A Pirate Day today. Grab your parrots, put on your eye patch and spread t’ word!

“Black Jack Flint”

Get your own pirate name from fidius.org.

I’ve finally managed to get all the Canada trip pictures together and get them posted on the web sites here you go.

About a week and a half before we left for vacation I ordered dsl internet service. I know, don’t even start. Yes, I’m the last IT professional on the plant that doesn’t have high speed internet service.

Anyway, while we were gone they hooked it up and the day we got home I plugged in the modem and about five later minutes I joined the high speed world. It was a good thing too because I had about 200 messages to download and it would have taken me about and hour to download over dialup and really no time at over over dsl.

The other bonus is that with the house full of Katrina evacuees I’ve had Bob upstairs working with email, Ryan with his laptop downstairs surfing web sites over wireless, and me with my work laptop doing work with my wireless all over the same connection. From a piddly dial up connection to high speed with three users all working at the same time it’s like I’m running my own internet cafe out of the house.