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.

We made it back from our trip to Canada in one piece and had a fantastic time while we were there. The whole point of the trip was to go back for Deanna and Doug’s wedding which was amazing and a lots of fun and at the same time we managed to fit some typical tourist type things.

I know Alex really enjoyed himself. We managed to get in and swim everyday except for one day. We visited the Guelph Children’s Museum, Old Quebec Street in downtown Guelph, and Alex and I went for our very first canoe ride together on the Speed River. Of course there was the main event of the wedding which was lots of fun and especially entertaining when the groom passed out. (The moment he actually passed out wasn’t entertaining but in it is pretty amusing to tell the story after the fact, sorry Doug. It all turned out ok in the end and he recovered and the ceremony went on and the “I do’s” were exchanged.) After the wedding we spent two days in Niagara Falls and visited MarineLand, took a ride on the Maid of the Mist, and one of Alex and I went up the Skylon Tower which was one of Alex’s favourite things. (He keeps calling the “Skylaunch” tower.) Once I get a little more time I’ll pull the pictures together and post them.

Two days before we were due to return to Dallas hurricane Katrina was heading for New Orleans. Jen’s family thankfully evacuated before the storm hit and arrived at our house the day before we did. In addition to Jen’s family we have also had some other friends with us but they are planning on going to Baton Rouge tomorrow as they have been told they will potentially be allowed to return to their house early next week. Needless to say it’s been pretty chaotic around here and our phone has been ringing constantly with people calling. We are still not sure the extent of the damage to the house but the satellite pictures we have seen of the neighbourhood look promising and the water only looks to be about a foot or so. One side of the neighbourhood has water and the other is dry and their house is somewhere in the middle so we are hoping for the best.

Each year the English Department at San Jose State University holds the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest where contestents submit a horrible opening sentence to a fictional novel. The contest is done in honour of Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton whos infamous beginning to his novel Paul Clifford began “It was a dark and stormy night.”

Every year I seem to come across the results and thought I would post a couple of the ones I liked best.

Overall Winner:

As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual.
Dan McKay
Fargo, ND

Winner in the Spy Novel Catagory

The double agent looked up from his lunch of Mahi-Mahi and couscous and realized that he must escape from Walla Walla to Bora Bora to come face-to-face with his arch enemy by taking out his 30-30 and shooting off his nemesis’ ear-to-ear grin so he could wave bye-bye to this duplicitous life, but the chances of him pulling this off were only so-so, much less than 50-50.
Charles Jaworski
North Pole, AK

Winner Romance Catagory:

Billy Bob gushed like a broken water main about his new love: “She’s got long, beautiful, drain-clogging hair, more curves than an under-the-sink water trap, and she moves with the ease of a motorized toilet snake through a four-inch sewer line, but what she sees in me, a simple plumber, I’ll never know.”
Glenn Lawrie
Chung-buk, South Korea

You can read all of the best, or worst depending on how you view it at: http://www2.sjsu.edu/depts/english/2005.htm

Yesterday evening Alex was trying our patience and wasn’t listening to anything we asked him to do.  We were finally at our wits end and were frustrated enough that we sent him to his room for a little quiet time.  We figured some alone time would do him, and us, some good.

After a couple of minutes in his room things got pretty quiet which should have set off the alarm bells that something was amiss.  I was laying on our bed and could see Alex’s bedroom door from my position and he would open it, stick his head out, then when I looked over he would quickly close the door again.  He did this a couple of times so I gave him my full attention and low and behold was I in for a surprise.  At first I thought he just looked a little funny because of the shadows in the hall but then I realized it wasn’t shadows, he really did look a little funny.  He had taken a brown marker and drawn all over his face and legs.  Forehead, cheeks, chin, lips, nose, legs, knees, shins, feet, you name it, he had colored it with marker.

I though I was going to explode.  I promptly put him in the shower and started scrubbing desperately hoping that it was going to come off.  Today Alex was going to the library for a reading group and I could just see him sitting there at story time with marker all over his face.  Luckily it came off his face pretty easily and the legs cleaned up alright.  You can still see a bit of a shadow mustache but it’s not too serious.

When he was in the shower I asked him what the heck was he thinking.

“Dad, I didn’t have a goalie mask or pads, I had to draw them on.”  Oh, well now it makes perfect sense now, you needed a goalie mask and pads, what was I thinking.

I continued scrubbing in silence for a while and he said,

“Dad, you know this kind of stuff just happens sometimes.”

Yes your right son, stuff like this just happens sometimes.

It’s just obscenely hot here. The last four days have been 97, 100, 98, 97, and today it’s going to be at least 97. To top it off we have had at least 75% humidity every one of those days so the happy weather man gets to say things like ‘Well, hey it’s 97 degrees out but it feels likea nice and steamy 104″ all the time with a big smile on their face.

This morning I went for a run that started at 5:45am and it was already about 85. I finished the run, took a shower, got in for an easy 500 swim in the pool to cool down, had my regular shower, and by the time I got to my desk I was still sweating. I had someone stop me and the
conversion went something like this.

“Hey Derek, you feeling ok?”

“Ya ya, I’m just a little hot right now.”

“Oh, ’cause you look like you could have malaria or something.”

So there you have it. It officially doesn’t matter how hot it is in your part of the world because it’s hotter here.

We all took a trip to Plano Fire Station Number One last week and I posted the pictures from our trip here. We had loads of fun even though the trip had to be cut a little short since the firemen got called out for an emergency.