Friday, June 29
Happy Birthday to Nico!!!! It seems like he was just born - I guess because watching his birth was such an intense experience.
Yesterday I got to see two star athletes. Former WNBA start Heidi Burge now works at Erica's YMCA. She is one of the two tallest female identical twins in the world (and guess what? her sister is the other). Oh, and the other athlete I saw yesterday was, er, Tara Lipinsky.
Thursday, June 28
Fun little game I've come up with using Outlook at work: Buzzword Rules Wizard. It all began earlier this week when one of my co-workers, who came up with the word "Webettes" to describe female web designers and developers, used the term in an e-mail. I decided that I should create an Outlook rule to toss all e-mails containing that word into a folder entitled "Litigation". I then added the word "Gal" to the list going to that folder. Hilarity ensued as more than a few e-mails went to that folder (most of which were replies to the original instigators). So I decided to pick a "Word of the Day" each day, and see how much mail is shuttled. "Words of the Day" have so far included "status" and "action item". Who knows what I will pick tomorrow. "Moratorium" will probably work.
Wednesday, June 27
I started a moonlighting project today []. This one is a site in Cold Fusion, which I technically don't know, but it turns out after looking at it that it's much easier than what I code in. It's the database part of the project that will be tricky, which is why I was asked to help with it.
Tuesday, June 25
Oops, I guess I haven't written for awhile. Well, you can check Ed's account of the weekend in Galveston. I would add that we almost bought a Galveston bathing beauties photo by a photographer we learned a little bit about in New Orleans, but didn't. I did by a vaseline glass juicer, because I wanted an old glass juicer and this one was an interesting yellowish green glass. I later learned that vaseline glass is ATOMIC!!!!@#$%. So now I want to collect more of it.
I am working on an interesting project at work, and am in fact working on it at home as well, which is why I've not kept up with this for the last few days.
Thursday, June 21
We are going to go to Galveston for the weekend. Hopefully the bugs won't be too bad at the beach. Ed and Erica will golf, and I'll go shell-hunting. We're staying at The Galvez.
Wednesday, June 20
Ate at the mall. Watched Tara skate. Watched Ed play darts. Also some work stuff.
Ed and Erica played golf today. They sprayed mosquito repellent on themselves, and Erica even wore long pants, but to no avail. The mosquitos even attacked their golf bags! We are being sprayed soon, with government assistance, but I of course have mixed feelings about that. I do appreciate this quote from the linked article: "The number of mosquitoes in the area is measured by how many landings they make on a person's exposed arms or legs per minute. Anything above 25 is considered serious. Rates four times greater than that have been recorded in Houston. "
Just so you know I'm not telling tall tales.
Tuesday, June 19
After the floods came the pestilence. The mosquitoes are worse right now than I've ever seen them, anywhere. Even at high noon, one step outside means ten bites. I think we'll be having tropical disease problems this summer. Then there are the fire ants. Apparently in floods, they form large balls and float on the water. Whatever it is, we have more than we did before. A nice summer to stay indoors. Even though it feels a little cooler than last summer.
Another lunch at the mall, another Tara Lipinsky practice section. Ho hum. We are getting very tired of her music over and over.
Sunday, June 17
Happy Father's Day, Fathers! Ed's Father's Day gift was the arrival today of Erica. Within hours, our family room was redecorated to look like this.
Saturday, June 16
A little bit of excitement at work: I got a new laptop! It's a 650MHz Pentium III with 512 Mb of RAM and a 20 Gb hard drive. Also a DVD-ROM drive. Much better than what I had before.
We've been getting ready for Erica's arrival tomorrow. Today we went shopping at a new Central Market grocery store (an HEB store). It was great, but completely packed. On the drive home through River Oaks, we saw a tow truck hauling away two flooded out cars - both Jaguars, both muddy to halfway up their windows.
Thursday, June 14
Last night I went to watch Ed's dart team (sponsored by The Harp - the team name is Harpany) play their big match against the Mucky Duck team (Java Junkies). The Harp lost, but they're still in second place in the Urban B standings.
Erica arrives on Sunday for the summer. She starts YMCA day camp on Monday. She really liked this last summer. This camp is not far from my office, so I drive her there and back.
Tuesday, June 12
This is a really sad result of the flood.
Monday, June 11
I was anxious to get into work today to see how everybody faired in the flood (I took this way). In my group, only one person had more than a little water in their house, and it wasn't too deep. But two women had relatives who lost everything. One's mother-in-law had to be rescued by boat, and the family still didn't know which shelter she was in, and one's brother was away from the house, so didn't have to be rescued, but went back to total devastation. Other people knew or were related to people who lost cars. There is a little debris in some of the roads, but otherwise you wouldn't really know anything had happened. I took this way home. Actually, it was kind of funny that most people were talking about the Budweiser truck today; they'd seen it on the news. It was within walking/biking distance of us.
Sunday, June 10
I live in a disaster area!
When I wrote Friday's entry at 10 PM, I thought we'd seen the worst of the rain. An hour or two later, when we started being amazed at how much rain we'd had, we decided to measure it. I found a straight-sided vase 8 3/4" tall. I emptied it twice in no time. By morning it had filled 3/4 full again. That means 24 inches fell after the initial deluge. We must have had 30 inches. We are high, but 30 inches is 30 inches. We had a very swift river in the street, with the houses right on the banks. Our area faired pretty well because of the altitude, but others did not. As of this writing (8:30 PM Central Time), there are 15 confirmed deaths, and many missing. It was a scary night, and I am glad we live where we do, even though we had more rain than other areas.
I took some pictures. Here are somebody else's pictures. And some pictures from the Dallas News.
Friday, June 8
Hey, in case anybody's worried (Ed's sister called earlier), we are not getting flooded out. We're getting lots of rain, and we're watching the garage closely because of Ed's car, but the house is high and dry on it's piers. Also, I am logged in to work, so if you have tried to call and gotten voice mail, that's why.
Thursday, June 7
I ate lunch in the Galleria today, and Tara Lipinsky was practicing again. Yup, right by the food court. Ted says he's seen her practice every time he's gone there to eat lately. She must be home more because it's summer.
We are getting a lot of rain. There was flooding in Sugarland today. Flash floods are predicted tonight as well.
Tuesday, June 5
Well, we had a 20% chance of rain predicted by afternoon, and by lunchtime it was 100%, but nobody warned us about Tropical Storm Allison. Once again, the Galveston storm-watchers drop the ball. We have had 6-8 inches of rain, and it's still coming down. The street was flooded, but has subsided. I think the worst is over. Luckily, "The Heights" is 75 above sea level, and 23 feet above the rest of Houston, so if we go under, so has the U.S. oil industry.
Monday, June 4
We went for a long motorcycle ride yesterday around Lake Conroe and the Sam Houston National Forest, about 45 miles north of here. It was a nice trip, but I think we're at the end of motorcycle season until fall. It was way too hot.
Tonight we went for a walk and got to see two incidences - one a man being carried out of an apartment to an ambulance on a stretcher, and the other a pickup truck that had hit a bus. We heard that one, and came across it later.
No, that wasn't exactly newsworthy, but I wanted to write something.
Sunday, June 3
Sorry I haven't been writing more - I keep waiting to do something interesting. Meanwhile, here's a picture of Ron Barnes and his kids that he posted on our reunion web site.
