Mardi Gras

It may not be the same here in McKinney as it was in New Orleans but we had a pretty good time anyway. We use this as an excuse to bring food in to work. I made red beans and rice. We also had crawfish etoffee, stuffed merletones, boiled shrimp, fried catfish, hot links, jambalaya, a dozen side dishes, pies and cakes including king cakes. We even managed to get some work done.

Fourth grading period

Sheela brought home another straight A report card. It's hard not to focus on the grades when they are so obvious but we are really trying to shift the focus off of the grades themselves. Still we are pretty proud. They are doing a great job of keeping her interested and of asking her to do more and more.

Soccer free weekend

Even though today was beautiful Sheela's game was cancelled due to the rain the previous couple of days. So our only commitment today was to go see a play. Sheela and I took her friend Peyton and Peyton's Mom, Andi, to see Alexander, Who Is Not, Not, Not, Not, Not, Not Going To Move at the Eisemann Center for Performing Arts. It was very cute and I like Peyton and Andi.

When 40 hours of sleep is not enough

Perhaps its time to reevaluate your medications. After some 30 years of looking I've finally found a medication that stops the drainage down the back of my throat that make me cough. I've hardly coughed since Thursday afternoon. I've hardly been awake since then either. I would give just about anything to go back to bed for another full day. At least today's soccer games have been cancelled that just leaves Kindermusik. Tomorrow I'll have to go back to coughing.

Christmas Parade Picture

Farhana just sent me this picture of the family at the Christmas Parade back in December. The extra child is Jazmine.

The foster child that never came.

We got a call last night asking us to take in a seven year old, girl from a sibling set of five. She is the second oldest. They thought that they might bring her over around midnight when they finalized all of the kids' arrangements. Apparently CPS didn't like the way the kids were to be split up so they've taken them all to a shelter for a week to create a more considered plan. We may get her yet or they may not mention her again.

"Don't let the night bugs eat you"....

It is finally Winter here in Texas. We've had at least a week of cold and wet with more to come. Almost everyone has either allergies, a cold, bronchitis or the flu. My friend Lynn is in the hospital, she is a lung cancer survivor with a cold. I'm sure she'll get straightened out over the weekend and be back home on Monday. I've finally progressed from allergies to an actual cold so I stayed home from work today to sleep. Actually I've been asleep since 6PM last night and its just now 10AM. I woke up briefly last night to eat and kiss the kids goodnight and again this morning to tell them goodbye. Before Sunil left for school he tucked me back in to bed, gave me a kiss and said, "Dream sweet dreams and don't let the night bugs eat you".

Soccer hookey

I rebelled last night. I refused to drive the girls to their goalie practice. I was tired and cranky. It was cold and wet. There was a pretty good chance that the practice was cancelled but we didn't have a way to check. Instead we went home and spent some time together doing family stuff. Sunil read me a couple of books and then tucked Sheela and me into bed. Then he put himself to bed. Don't tell him but we got back up after he put us to bed. Sheela and I then spent an hour playing on the internet. She looked up the definition of "reign", "monarch", fish (plural) and fishes (also plural), pictures of Harriet Tubman (which Sheela insists on spelling Herriet Tubman so that google will correct her) and the feeding habits of owls native to Texas. Then we spent another 20 minutes playing with different screen savers. Then I went back to bed.

It was chaos but we survived....

We had the parent's meetings for the soccer teams tonight, both meetings more of less at the same time, at our house. That gave us seven boys, eight girls, seven assorted siblings and seventeen parents. We were supposed to be outside on the practice fields but its still rainy and cold (gee its finally Winter). Four girls locked themselves in the bathroom to get away from the boys (who incidentaly were not interested in chasing them anyway), and one of the younger boys kept turning off the lights in Sunil's room and making scary noises which made one of the older boys cry. Its going to be another great season.

Sheela Update

I asked the school nurse to check Sheela's blood pressure today now that the pain has been gone for a few days and its back down to normal. The pulse was still on the high side but not too bad. We did track down the date that Sheela first complained of chest pain and that was way back in October, so it may not be related to the broken shoulder blade. I'm waiting for calls back from a variety of cardiologists.

The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

by Robin S. Sharma (no relation), I finished another book last night. This one was more or less an Indian version of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It was good, short and easy to read. Long story short: meditate, think only positive thoughts, don't waste your time on trivial pursuits, appreciate simple pleasures, do nice things for other people, critic every action and every thought at the end of each day and you will live a long, healthy, balanced life.

Next up: The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver and Losing the Moon by Patti Callahan Henri. Some of my life is wasted in trivia but I do appreciate the simple things and I am happier than most.

Betsy Louise Drawert (3/1/72 - 2/27/05)

I went to a "tea" yesterday held in memory of my friend Amy's sister, Betsy. She passed away suddenly last year 10 days after giving birth to her second daughter. She was a wonderful person and very much admired. It was a nice way to remember her and to get to see both of her girls again. Jenna is now three and a half and Taylor just turned one.

Ice scrapping

I had to scrape ice off my car this morning for the first time this year. Yuck!

Vonage

We have successfully switched over to internet phone service. Our new provider is called Vonage. For one small monthly fee we have unlimited calling (local and long distance), we can transfer calls to another number for example if a call comes in for the Sharmas while they are out I can send it to their cell. We have a mobile router that we can use to make calls while we are traveling (at no extra charge), we can check our voice mail from any computer on the internet. If the internet goes down and we lose our phone service incoming calls are automatically routed to our cell phones. The change became official last night so its too early to say that we like it.

We had to attach another router to our wireless transmitter. The new router ties back into the wiring in the house for the phones (first we had to disconnect all of the phone lines at the box. We managed this all by ourselves.

The Saturday schedules are in

The Hot Wheels have mostly middle of the day games and only twice will they actually conflict with Kindermusic.

The Panthers are scheduled for four games at 8AM, two at 6:15PM and two mid-day. of couse the team pictures are scheduled for half an hour prior to one of the 8AM games. We did that last Fall and the pictures weren't very good.

Now we need the SDL schedule and we can plan our lives.

Chest pain and more

The illusive source of Sheela's chest pain Wednesday night appears to have been a broken scapula (mostly healed). We are guessing that she broke it falling off of Sunil's loft last month. She hasn't complained about it hurting since the day it happened -- though it was plenty sore that first day. They also heard a "click" when listening to her heart, which coupled with the elevated heart rate and elevated blood pressure mean that they want her to go to see a pediatric cardiologist. They've already done an EKG (perfectly normal) and a chest x-ray (great lungs and a healing scapula). Speculation is that the elevated pulse and BP were actually due to pain but they really want us to rule out a heart murmur.

Board Meeting - take two

Well the announcement made yesterday by the Board of Directors was the retirement of our CEO and Group President. He started here about 10 years ago right after I did. His replacement is our recently hired COO. It turns out that they hired him for this very reason but wanted to give him a few months to settle in before taking the top spot. We like the new guy and are looking forward to a new corporate phase.

Hot Grease

While cooking dinner last night I got to see a single droplet of hot grease up close and personal. It jumped straight up into my open eye before I could blink. I may have blinked sooner if I hadn't been admiring the beauty of it. It didn't so much hurt as make my eye really tired and it was very hard to see through for the rest of the night. Much like trying to see through a film of oil, hmmmm. Anyhow my eye rinsed its self clean over night and apparently I didn't actually cook it. I'm back to normal today.

Board Meeting

Roughly once a year the Board of Directors comes to Texas for their quarterly meeting. Usually, that means we spend four days cleaning up our "work spaces" so that we can impress them with our tidiness. Then we all have to come in to work on a Friday in suits instead of jeans so that we may impress them with our professional demeanor. The Board goes to some swank hotel and has their meeting and a few of them manage to stop by for a hurried tour before they bolt back to the airport and jet out of town. Few people actually see the Board and fewer still are actually seen by the Board. It makes the jeans lovers cranky.

This time the meeting is on Thursday (so our jeans day is safe), the meeting its self is being held in our training room, and most of the board members will still be here this afternoon when we all gather for our SOB (State of Business) meeting. This means we can actually look professional in front of a live audience.... it makes the whole thing more palatable.

52" HDTV

Honestly, this isn't really ours... yet. Sid has had to resort to eviction for one of his tenants for the first time. Apparently, when going through this the landlord is allowed to legally seize and hold the tenant's property until the back rent is paid. Should the tenant not pay up before the eviction is completed the landlord can keep the stuff. So he is holding on to the monster television for another week in hopes that she comes up with the rent.

PAL Schedule

The first soccer schedule is in... Sheela has 10 Sunday games over the next 13 weeks. Seven games are against teams a year older and three are against teams the same age. This will also be on a larger field, with a larger ball, a larger goal and more players per team.

We are still waiting on the SDL schedule (also Sunday games) and the two rec schedules (Saturdays) one each for Sunil and for Sheela. Pretty soon we will be able to plan our lives in advance again.

Happy Hallmark Holiday!!

Sid and I were planning to go to dinner after we escape the house for the Gifted and Talented information meeting this evening but we just figured out that its Valentine's Day. This is not a night for going out. Oh well, I'm sure we will find another time in a few months and we can try again.

Gifted and Talented Screening

Sheela has been invited to test for the Gifted and Talented Program. The basic requirement is to test higher than the 97th percentile in one of the three cognitive categories. She was only 93rd in quantitative, but she did 98 in verbal and 99 in nonverbal, and her composite score was a 99. Then you need a teacher's recommendation. That wasn't much of a stretch goal Mrs. DeWaters loves her. The next step is to take both the Iowa Test of Basic Skills Achievement in both Math and Reading plus the Critical and Creative Writing Assessment. Those tests will be administered on the last Saturday in April with results due on the 2nd of June.

The hazards of not pitching in

Soccer team practice sign up began this morning at 7:00 AM. In spite of my request to the parents of 14 other kids not a single person could be found that would agree to go stand in line to assure us a good practice time. The first guy in line arrived at 5:00 AM. The bulk of the coaches arrived between 6:00 AM and 6:30 AM. Our coach couldn't drop off his son until 7:00AM so he didn't arrive until 7:10 AM.

What we were hoping for was a 6:00 PM slot for the boys followed by a 7:00 PM slot for the girls at Celebration Park. Celebration has the right size fields for the boys but no lights for night time practices (at least not on the little fields). The earliest slot available for the boys at Celebration was 8:00 PM -- 5-year old boys practicing in the dark until 9:00 PM. Not a good option.

The girls couldn't get a field at Celebration at all so we moved both practices to Ford field. That's much more convenient for our coach but worse for me. The best time slot we could get was still 7:00 PM, so now the girls will need to be out there until 9:00 PM. This also sucks. So we signed up for both practices at the SAME TIME, 7:00 PM. We will just hope that both of the assistant coaches actually come to the practices. If no one signs up later than us on that field we will be able to stagger the girls back a little bit.

Colleyville Spring Tune Up

Sheela survived the Colleyville soccer tournament. It was only two games on each Saturday and Sunday. But the winds were gusting to 40MPH and Saturday was COLD. Anyhow the girls played well and had fun. They lost one game and tied one game on each day. Participation ribbons were awarded all around (look at the wind blowing the ribbon). As a reward there will be no practice tomorrow. Yay for me, it was my turn to drive.

$20 Monitor............

I owe Sid an apology. He finally bought me a new monitor for our computer, not so much because he was bothered by the corrupted lines across the top but to shut me up. I know it, he knows it, we can live with it. Anyhow he spent a whole $20 on an eBay special. He even drove over and picked it up. It is a 19" monster and the quality is one would expect for $20. We've been using is for a couple of months now and it is like reading underwater. I have done nothing but complain about him being cheap for months. Finally I moved from complaining back to whining again (this is why you never give in to whining -- it just begs for more).

This time I went out and spent $20 on an old monitor from work -- every bit as large as the last one and crystal clear. I checked it out before I bought it. The plan was to take the good $20 one for us and move the terrible $20 one to the kids computer which we are finally setting up for them. So we move the bad one and low and behold its wonderful. Luckily for us, when we hook up the new one it too is great. I was afraid that there was a problem with the video card on the new computer. We could probably have made some adjustments to the old one if I stopped whining for two minutes and actually thought about it.

Sorry Sid, your $20 monitor was a great purchase and you aren't any cheaper than I am.

PAL and SDL

Sheela (and six of her teammates on the Academy team) have been asked to try to play two games every Sunday. The primary team is playing in the Premier Academy League and the second team is playing in the Super Development League. The top competitors will play PAL, the more passive players will play just SDL and those in the middle of the pack will do both. The extra game time is supposed to get them caught up to their peers (who started multiple weekly practices a year or two earlier). Yikes, I can't see either Sid or Sheela thinking that this is a good idea. Maybe I wont tell them and they wont notice.....

Exiling the Nightingale

I learned long ago that I enjoy books more when I read them one at a time. But every once in awhile something comes up and I end up with more than one in process. As a slight variation, I'm listening to "books on tape" in the car and then reading in the evening. The car book is Across the Nightingale Floor (Tales of the Otori Series, Vol 1) by Lian Hern. I love it and it is one of the few books that I've preferred to have read aloud to me. The pronunciation of the names works better than if I'm making it up for myself. The book that I'm reading in the evenings is The Exile by Allan Folsom. This is the first of his books that I've read but I will have to go back and read the others.

The problem with all of this is that I tend to dream about the books that I read and with two at once the dreams get rather convoluted. Two nights in a row now I've woken up confused rather than rested.

Friendlies tournament and more

Super Blue hosted a tournament for themselves on Saturday. Sheela's team played against another team of the same age, a team a year older and one a year younger. They lost two and won one but they played well and had a great time.

Sunil and I took Travis and slipped away to go see a Junie B. Jones play. The tickets were Sunil's Christmas present this year. The play was great and the boys were very well behaved. I would take them again.

When we got home we cleaned up and turned right around to go have dinner with friends. They have just moved in to our neighborhood and gotten their place all fixed up.

The pharmacist knows me by name......

this is not such a good thing. Sheela was sent home from school today with ear pain and a slight fever. Of course that means double ear infections and a slight wheezing. Maybe the kids are allergic to the doctor's office?!? Anyhow Sheela is home for the afternoon with the Sharmas and I'm back at work.

St. Petersburg at night

I can't believe that it is already February. I've just updated my desk calendar. This year's theme is World Travel. St. Petersburg at night looks a lot like Venice to me.... not that I've ever seen either one for myself.

Funeral

I've decided not to attend Linda's funeral tomorrow. I will go to the visitation at the funeral home this evening instead. Linda felt tired last week at work went home and apparently died in her sleep. Not a bad way to go I guess, but it would have been better if she'd lived long enough to retire and enjoy it. She was one of the first people to make me feel welcome at Orthofix (then American Medical Electronics). She was one of the smokers. I knew the smokers before I knew anyone else. I had to walk past the smoker's porch to get from the main building to my building. Days would go by when the only people I talk to at all were those outside taking a smioke.

If that weren't bad enough, her best friend out here is in the hospital for observation. We are all assuming this is a stress related issue from knowing that Linda died.

And a third smoker has disappeared. She is one of the original company employees. The rumor is that she is out for a medical reason, but usually there is some pretty specific gossip that goes along with that. This time no one seems to know anything and when we ask, the response is "ask HR". No one ever sends us to HR. They either know, don't know or don't want to say. Those are three answers that we can understand. "Go ask HR" just feels funny.