Humphrelia

It is so nice to have running water. Thursday evening, Malin discovered a giant puddle just outside the house. It was a water pipe leaking – in the same place as before (i.e. 3 years ago – within a year of moving in, the same water pipe busted and leaked everywhere).

Luckily, because it was the exact same problem, our builder helped out with covering repairs even though the home is no longer under their warranty. So many thanks go out to Martin Homes (aka Beta Construction).

When Malin first discovered the leak, she turned the water off at the meter (so no running water in the house at all). It was 5pm and the builder’s office had already closed. In the hopes of getting running water restored that night, I called RotoRooter (the only 24/7 plumber for which I could find a phone number). They said they would come by the house by 7pm. Shortly after that, they called back to tell us that they would be coming by between 8 and 10am the following morning. So Will had to go without a bath Thursday night.

I worked from home Friday so that I could deal with getting the leak fixed (and also because I could not shower or wash my hair, so I didn’t want to go into the office). The guy from RotoRooter wanted $1800 to fix it! He seemed to think it would be necessary to bring in a tractor and excavate a lot of dirt and rocks in order to get to the pipe!

I knew that was ridiculous. While he was checking out the problem, I was able to get a hold of the builder. I faxed them the estimate, and they said they were sending over their own plumbers to deal with it. They came by around 1:30pm and had it fixed by 4:30pm.

And all the choirs in heaven sang in praise, “Rejoice, running water is restored in the Hump-House!”

If you haven’t had to go without running water for a whole day (or more) then you might not see just how bad it really is. Just imagine having to run all of your bathroom exhaust fans to keep the house from stinking – because you cannot flush any toilet. Then imagine not being able to wash your hands after taking a shit. And don’t forget the whining animals that want some drinking water. And coffee won’t help you make it through the day because you have to have water to make that.

Luckily it wasn’t entirely that bad – but it could have been! We had a gallon of water in the garage – our “emergency” supply. We also had ice in the fridge’s ice-maker that we could melt on the stove. And we had lots of hand sanitizer. Despite these serendipitous amenities, it still sucked. And even worse, once the pipe was fixed and the water running again, I still could not take a shower: Malin used up all of the hot water to take a bath!

It is a good thing that I recently started a twice-daily backup regiment.

My computer (the one that hosts this site) rebooted itself earlier in the week upon downloading critical Windows updates. This made for a toxic situation that resulted in the MySQL database being irrevocably destroyed. This is the same scenario that completely killed our website when it was just a websiteling (about 6 weeks ago). Since that first fatality I’ve created a backup procedure that runs automatically (everyday, at 2am and 2pm).

Luckily, nothing was permanently lost. I restored the database from the backups, and everything is running smoothly again.

I have since reconfigured Windows Update so that it will not automatically install updates – thus preventing a situation that could recreate a terminal illness for the database.

Will is finally feeling better – no more stomach flu. So, we have a respit from illness that will hopefully last a long time. Work has been very busy, but there is a potential silver lining: I may get to go to Ireland this year. I’ve never been but have always wanted to. It wouldn’t necessarily be a great trip since I would be there visiting a client and likely doing a lot of work. But there is the possibility of taking Malin and Will and then taking some vacation time after the client visit to see the country… It isn’t a sure thing, but its something I can hope for (the vacation time, that is – I’m certainly not hoping to visit clients).

My friend Bob was in town this weekend. He is a college friend of mine who is living in Manhattan, and his fiancee happens to be living in Fayette County, Georgia right now (hence the reason for his trip down here). But it is always fun to hang out and chat. I got to show off my new draft homebrew setup:

Will, inspecting the system for leaks:

I also took some of the draft brew into work this week. Only a few folks were able to take 20 minutes out of their busy day to come and try some, so I ended up having some to take back home. I discovered that taking a “growler” (or in this case a 2-liter plastic soda bottle) full of draft beer is difficult. Some CO₂ is released when you dispense the beer (hence the head you typically see on a glass of beer), and the remaining CO₂ quickly vacates the beer in favor of the head space at the top of the bottle. I have no way to pressurize the bottle (which would keep the beer properly carbonated). So what I took to the office was less than stellarly carbonated.

Malin got some fabric today with the intent of making some clothes for Will. One of the amusing successes is a pair of PJ pants made from a red fabric that has pirate flags (black flags w/ white skulls & bones) all over it. I’ll have to post pictures of him in some of his new clothes.

Not much else to write about… Hope everyone we know is having a good week.

Willem had a not-so-fun bout with Stomach Flu this past weekend. I should probably preface the rest of this post with the following disclaimer:

Do not try to eat while reading this post. Stomach Flu is not an appetizing illness to read about.

Starting on Thursday morning, he showed symptoms of diarrhea and vomiting. A call to the doctor resulted in an over-the-phone diagnosis of stomach flu (gastroenteritis – which, despite its moniker, has nothing to do with influenza). Will was actually mostly fine Thursday and Friday. His bum was sore from being cleaned up with baby wipes too many times in one day, but he was acting fine.

Saturday is when everything took a turn for the worse. Malin got hit with the three P’s: pee, poop, and puke. And not even at the same time, so she actually had to change clothes three times! Will was in a horrible mood, and Malin and I were terribly worried. The most disturbing facet of the day was (warning: the remainder of this sentence is really gross) that his poo was watery and smelled like vomit.

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I decree that the birthday festivities were a success!

Will had fun, and so did all of the other kids that showed up. There was a decent turnout: lots of kids running around. The youngest was 6 months and the oldest was 8 years. There were three 5-to-6 year-old boys – they ran around like crazy, played pirates, and dropped a bomb in Will’s playroom. I mean no poop reference by that last figure of speech, but rather that the room looked afterwards like a bomb had gone off. Will’s toys were all out and scattered and strewn across the floor with some splash damage in the living room. Luckily for us, it was all easy to tidy up that night.

Last year I made the “Willetini” – essentially a blueberry martini. It was popular enough that I decided to make another drink for this party. Since it was a pirate party, I decided on something with rum in it – something caribbean… sort of. I made an Orange Caribbean (basically a Blue Hawaiian, but with Orange Curacao instead of Blue Curacao). I actually dubbed the beverage “Aaaarrrggh!-etini” to make it sound more piratey. Anyhow, I made the mistake of aquiring only one can of coconut cream, meaning only enough ingredients for one pitcher. It disappeared quickly, and I had no way of making more. At least everyone enjoyed the first pitcher, eh?

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Today is the “big three oh” as they call it. It’s my birthday, and I am no longer a twenty-something.

What is my big special gift to myself? A day off from work? Yes and no.

I had to take the day off of work because, in Georgia, everything expires on your birthday. And being the slacker that I am, I haven’t renewed anything yet (car registration, driver’s license…). I tried last week, but my Camaro failed its emissions test. This turned out to be due to a bad battery: the on-board computer thinks that if the battery is disconnected then the owner must be trying to deceptively reset the Check Engine light. A bad battery looks to the computer like a disconnected battery. After replacing the battery on Saturday, it successfully passed its test today.

So the first part of the day involved getting the car emission tests straightened out. The rest of the day will be filled with waiting in lines at the County Tag Office and the DMV. Yeah…

So, yes, I took a day off from work. But it isn’t really any sort of treat. We will be having a party on Saturday – though that will really be more to celebrate Will’s birthday than mine – so that should be fun. It will at least be an improvement over waiting in lines at the DMV…

Today was one of my first work days in a while. Will was quite helpful picking out tile for Mimi’s kitchen and even more helpful at pooping all over the nice tile people’s beautifully tiled bathroom floor. It was great! Who knew antibiotics give kids diarrhea? Not me. Well, now I do.

Will has adopted a new phrase: “take it.” He says it over and over again. What he means to say is “I want it,” but, instead, all day I hear “take it, take it.” Like I need to take it and give it to him

The party day is approaching and I have been at work getting ready. The next big challenge is the cake – ooohhh will it be cool! Or it could be a complete disaster. One never knows in the world of confections how things will go. It is looking like there will be a good turnout so I will share pics when it is all over.

Malin and Will are still sick. Will has now been to the pediatrician twice – the first time, last Thursday, was a regularly scheduled check-up. But since he had fallen a little sick, we mentioned his condition to the doc, and they recommended ‘PediaCare’ cough medicine (which, according to Will, tastes much better than the cherry-flavored robitussin for kids – despite having the exact same active ingredient).

Malin stayed in bed ill most of the day Saturday. Then on Sunday, both of them seemed to feel better. Alas, it was short-lived. After Will sank deeper into a bad cold, a second trip to the pediatrician was in order. This time he was diagnosed with a sinus infection and he is now on an antibiotic. Lovely…

Today both of them were feeling a little better. So hopefully all will be well in the Hump-house come this weekend…

At my office this evening, there arose a rather powerful odor of smoke in the halls, followed shortly by the fire alarm sounding. So hopefully there will be an office to go to tomorrow!

I’m not actually worried: by the time we made it out of the building, there were already two fire trucks on the scene. And by the time I left, there were no less than eight fire trucks, two police cruisers, and one ‘Cobb County Public Safety Command Center’ bus. Surely that is a sufficient number of rescuers to put out nearly any kind of blaze! After all, I didn’t see anything on the evening news tonight about the building burning down…

I still haven’t been able to convince Malin to post something here (admittedly, I haven’t actually tried). And we are ever working (though slowly and unremarkably) on getting the photo gallery straightened out. So stay tuned – updates and improvements are inevitable.

In the meantime, I hope everyone else out there is feeling better than we are (the “royal” we – I personally may feel fine, but I do, in some ways literally, share Malin’s and Will’s pain).

Well, today Malin was sick and stuck in bed most of the day. She thinks she caught whatever it is that Will has. Will developed a runny nose the other day, and it has since evolved to include a cough.

He likes his other medicine (pediatric benadryl for the runny nose) – he calls it, “candy.” But the new medicine (generic robitussin for kids) tastes horrible, and he really hates it. It is quite difficult to get him to take it, so we do so while he is in the bath. That way, even if he spits some of it out, he won’t make a mess of things. Otherwise, we’d likely have bright red stains everywhere…

Speaking of which, why on earth do they put so much artificial coloring into the medicine?!?!? It doesn’t make it taste better – it just makes it harder to clean up!

Maybe Malin will post something to this site when she feels better. You know, it was partially her idea to create this site – our family blog. But so far, she has been severely neglecting it. Maybe I can convince her to momentarily put her camera down to say hello on this website. Instead, she spends most of her “blog authoring” time talking about photography.

Several people have by now gotten an invitation to the party we are throwing the first Saturday of February. No, Malin didn’t have to bribe me or pay me or slip anything into my drink to get me to pose for the photo. Apparently, I have no shame or humility. I was a little embarrassed at the time she was taking the photo. We were outside and our neighbors were driving around – likely wondering what the heck this guy is doing with this ridiculous hat on and this ridiculous look on his face… If we have even half of the turn-out that we had last year, it should be a good party.

I would say, “you may have noticed the new link at the top of the page that says Gallery,” but I know no one has been to the site to see that. Sometimes when you first start a new website, things are lonely. I should probably send out the URL to this site so that I at least have the occasional friend or family member drop by to see what is going on.

So, anyhow, there is a gallery link at the top. It isn’t by any stretch complete: so far it only has the photos that we had on our old website – which are pictures of Will from his first several months of existence. I’m currently running software called Gallery 2 to manage the pictures, but I think I’ll change it out. Gallery 2 runs too slowly and seems like it will take a lot of work to get it to look good. So you’ll likely soon see it swapped out with photo album pages generated by JAlbum.

Malin has already started using JAlbum for her client galleries over at her photo blog. So we’ll likely start using it over here, too.

Some cool updates regarding our recent database disaster: the tech support guys at Sphere.com have been very helpful! Their site is a search engine for blog entries, and, as it turns out, they indexed Malin’s photo blog before our database crashed. After determining that they had processed her website and actually finding her website in search results, I e-mailed them asking if there was anyway they could send me their cached copy of the blog entries we lost. Today they sent us those entries – so a big nod and “thank you” to those guys. Unfortunately, they did not index this blog – just Malin’s photo blog. But it was cool that we were able to get some of our lost stuff recovered.

So stay tuned, and keep checking the gallery for updates. Eventually, it will have lots of our photos on it: our photographic records of Will’s childhood so far, as well as pics from all sorts of events (gatherings of friends and families, holidays, etc…)