Am I Awake Yet?

I am starting to crash. I am so tired. We ended up in the emergency room yesterday evening because we couldn't control The Little One's fever. When she got up to 104 my wife and I skedaddled to the ER with her. We got there a little before 7 PM and her temp was 103. We got to see the nurse who took vitals around 8 PM. Temp at that time was down to 102 and she went and got some medication to help reduce the fever and sent us back out into the waiting room.

At about 9:30 PM we were put in an observation/treatment room and waited for the doctor. It turned out that there were only two doctors on duty and they were pretty busy. About every hour and a half a nurse would come in and check vitals and The Little One's temperature was slowly going down. She fell asleep around 10:30 PM but woke up about every 45 minutes and would ask if we could go home.

At about 1 AM I was getting really frustrated and tired of this whole waiting routine and asked a nurse how much longer it would be. She apologized and said hopefully the doctor would be in soon. At 2:45 AM The Little One woke up and proceeded to scream and cry because she wanted to go. My wife and I couldn't console her to stop crying. I finally picked her up and walked around the room and into the hallway with her screaming about wanting to go home. It took about 10 minutes before a nurse came by and I said if a doctor doesn't see us soon we were going to leave.

At 3 AM the doctor came and examined The Little One. I showed him the prescriptions the pediatrician had given us the day before and he decided that a couple of injections of antibiotics were needed because he thought one of her ears was becoming infected. A couple of nurses came in and gave the injections and The Little One was a real trooper. We finally left at 3:30 AM.

There's got to be a better way to run an ER.

The Night Before Halloween

Illness Feeds Upon Illness

Everyone is sick in the family with colds. It all started with sniffles when the weather turned cooler a week ago. Now the sniffles have turned into congestion, coughs, and fever in the case of The Little One. She was running a fever of 101 degrees yesterday and last night and complaining of a headache. I called the pediatrician this morning and got an appointment for 1:45 PM. The lady warned me that there were a lot of patients today and that the wait could be an hour or more. Not important when it comes to the health of my child. What else has been going on? Hmmmm...

Saw a real commercial for The Sarah Connor Chronicles over the weekend. Looks interesting but will it last? Went browsing for houses over the weekend also. Funny how a brand new home with the latest amenities and larger square footage is less expensive than comparable existing homes a decade older. Call me weird but I was craving kimchi and actually found some in WalMart of all places. A steaming bowl of rice and some fresh kimchi...mmmmm. After discussion with my wife we decided to stay in town over the Thanksgiving holiday and plan to go to the Dallas area for a few days after Christmas. Also, low sodium V8 is not palatable to me. This blog entry truly is rambling today.

They Ran Away With It

The Boston Red Sox, that is. Game one of the 2007 World Series ends at 13-1 with Boston over Colorado. Colorado? I didn't even know they had a baseball team. Just kidding. Wasn't much to see except for the balk. I can't remember the last time I saw one of those. I just hope the series isn't a runaway for Boston.

Breaking News

Did anyone know that space shuttle Discovery was launching this morning? I certainly did not. It's funny how some things lose their news worthiness when there's nothing exciting to report about. For only the second time in the history of shuttle missions STS-120 will be commanded by a woman. I think that would be news worthy but who am I to judge? Oh yeah, and Discovery will be carrying Luke Skywalker's lightsabre to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Star Wars. Now that's especially news worthy seeing that George Lucas will be on hand to witness the launch this morning. Shouldn't he be working or something? Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.

When Pigs Fly

Yeah, so I was hoping The Tribe would win the ALCS but I guess it just wasn't to be. But I digress. While watching different shows on FOX over the past few weeks, every now and then I noticed two red dots usually at the bottom of the television. The first time it happened I didn't give it much thought. The second time it happened my daughter was with me and she thought they looked like eyes. That's when I started to get the creeps. After that it would appear occasionally but at a different location at the bottom of the screen. And it didn't connect that it was only happening on FOX. I was really disturbed about it until I happened to see a commercial with those same eyes last night during the game. Looked like a Terminator to me and then there was an Internet address...www.takebackthefuture.com. Boy, was I relieved. I was giving myself and my daughter the creeps the past couple of weeks thinking we were being haunted by that pig (Jody?) from the Amityville house. Whew.

Also, while watching the ALCS series, I had a thought. A revolving stadium. Kind of like those restaurants at the top of high buildings which offer dazzling views of the city below. Everyone buying a ticket for the lower deck would pay the same price say $100, the mezzanine would be the same price $75, and the upper deck would be the same price $50. But since the stadium rotates slowly, everyone gets to be behind the plate or down the first base line or right field at some point. Well, it sounded good in my head. Hey, how about the players not using caps during night games? Or not spitting every other inning?

Rock and Roll Will Never Die

I've seen so many teasers for Fox's new show The Next Great American Band that I'm really intrigued and looking forward to tonight's premier. I'm especially curious about the band that looked like a bunch of original Star Trek extraterrestrials. As long as I hear some good music and see good performances I'll be happy. Of course there has to be some really bad group auditions on tonight which I'm looking forward to also. Bang your head or gong or whatever.

Hemispheres To Cygnus X-1

For all the sci-fi fans the top 10 strangest things in space courtesy of MSNBC can be see here. Galactic cannibalism sounds kind of interesting.

Are We Live?

I was doing some searching on Google for Scott Chesner this evening. He used to be a meteorologist on the NBC affiliate in Dallas for many years. He worked with the legendary Harold Taft, who I think had spot-on weather forecasts, and also David Finfrock. I still prefer NBC over the other networks for news and weather in the Dallas area and was looking at their website and saw new faces in their weather department. I found out that his contract wasn't renewed so he moved to a station north of Dallas and eventually landed a chief meteorologist position in East Texas. I also found this video...



And this is an example of almost perfect audio fidelity. There's no denying the incident here. I've never experienced something controversial during live television that I can remember. Oh wait, there was the wardrobe malfunction during Super Bowl XXXVIII. Other than that I really don't remember anything. I guess it's just not in the forecast.

Soon The World Will Be Mine!

What's All the Pus About?

So another week passes without a blog post. It was because I was off all last week with a medical problem and I just didn't have enough time during the days to do any posting while at home. On the other hand here at work I have all sorts of time to do things like that. That's not really true, the part about time I mean, here at work I try to find the time to post during small breaks during the day. Gosh I hope my employer doesn't see this.

I had never experienced an abscess until a couple of weeks ago. It was on my leg and it just got bigger and bigger and painful until it exploded. Before that I had thought it was a bug bite or a zit on steroids and hoped it would go away. By the time it was the size of a half-dollar, very painful to the touch and to walk, and with an angry red tint to it did I start to get worried. Searching on the Internet only made matters worse as I imagined it would open up and little white spiders would scurry out of the wound before I passed out. Of course it was during the weekend at around 3 A.M. when it decided to erupt with a flow of blood and pus. It scared the crap out of me.

So I go to the doctor on Monday morning and he prescribed antibiotics and instructed me to soak in a warm bath with Epsom salt 3 to 4 times a day. Something I couldn't do while at work so I took the week off. Today I had a follow-up visit with the doctor and he and I are both pleased with the results. Too bad I couldn't take this week off too but I really wanted to go back to work. That should pass in a few hours, though.

Boogey Man and Dog Lovers

After reading a few news stories this morning I've decided to make a comment and gripe. The first story I read was about a mother who claims her children had nightmares after shopping at WalMart. I had to chuckle while reading the story because I know what she went through. The Little One was with me on a day of shopping which included stops at Sam's Club and WalMart. This had to be in early September because I was griping to my wife that it was too early to be displaying Halloween items. Well, both stores had Halloween decorations and props set up which included life-sized moving creatures and giant inflatable Halloween scenes. The Little One was not a happy camper. She proceeded to scream and cry until we were out of sight of the displays. She was not the only child in the store who reacted in that manner. There were other toddlers who did not enjoy the displays either. Now when we go into those stores, we have to bypass the Halloween area or ask her to close her eyes when we are within sight of the displays. BTW, she slept soundly that night and didn't complain at all about being afraid after we got home.

The other story I read was about how a city's animal control department found an abandoned dog with a note attached to its collar which said something like "Help me, please find me a good home." The dog was in good health but if no one claimed or adopted him he would be euthanized in a few days. The local paper ran a front page article and photo of the pooch explaining its dilemma. That day animal control received over a thousand calls regarding that particular dog. My gripe is if there are a thousand people interested in adopting an unwanted dog, why did they wait until reading about this particular one before calling. Don't they realize that there are hundreds of other dogs and cats that are waiting for good homes, too? Don't they know that those same animals will be put to death in a weeks time also? I wonder if any of those folks thought about going down and adopting a different animal?

Alright, I'm finished.

Not On My Shoulder

I've been getting into Kitchen Nightmares on FOX and it has opened my eyes to how difficult it must really be to run a restaurant. Especially when you have some dumb people working for you. Typical Gordon Ramsay but it seemed the past two episodes had a lot of crying being done by the managers of the restaurants. Boo hoo.

Better Late Than Never