When it rains, it pours

It rained over the weekend, more than it has in this area since 1882. Its still raining, actually. As it rained more and more on Sunday, the water on the patio started to creep up toward the house. I went outside to start to suck up the water that was filing the window well. Useless. As soon as I would suck it up, new water would replace it.

A friendly neighbor came over and noticed that I was trying to deal with this situation. He offered some sand (about a quarter of two garbage bags worth) and that seemed to help at least slow down the flow but I needed more sand to really make a difference. So, the neighbor (Geoff) and I took the Jeep and set out to Home Depot (HD) since all the local places were closed by this time on Sunday afternoon.

As we're driving on the way to the HD, we see all kinds of water falls, water coming from drain covers in the street, off mountains, from everywhere. As we get closer to the highway where the HD is located, we see barricades and lots of traffic being diverted. Turns out that highway is closed because its flooded. We turn around and set off to anther HD. 15 minutes later, we get off the next highway and see that many cars are stopped and starting to turn around. Another road flooded - the one where the HD is. We take an alternate route, go through some back roads (I'm very fortunate Geoff is there because he knows how to navigate to alternate routes) and see that coming from the other direction, there is a police car blocking one side of the road. I waited and watched while a couple of other cars went through a parking lot to get around this situation and he wasn't chasing anyone. I decide to go for it. Fortunately, the intersection where the HD is was flooded but not bad enough that I couldn't make it through in the Jeep.

As we entered the store, there were very few people there but I'm sure 90% of them were looking to solve some flooding issues. There was an announcement on the PA, "All sump pumps are sold out". Fortunately, I wasn't there for a pump. I wanted sand. I bought 200lbs of sand and we left.

Fortunately, that did fix the problem because the sand helped slow the accumulation of water in the window well which meant the sump pump can take care of the rest. To our surprise, the entire patio was clear in the morning - even though it was still raining.

Working at Home

Working at home is pretty nice. I'm not sure I'd like to do it all the time but it certainly makes the commute easy (walking up a flight of stairs). I'm around here to make sure I follow Hope's schedule more closely as the baby is due pretty soon at this point.

So I recently got a new machine at work. Its an HP NC6400. Pretty nice machine - for a windows box. :-)

Chasing the Picture

After a short round of research, we narrowed our selection for TV's to add to the newly renovated upstairs office area to the Samsung 19" LCD and the LG 20". It was Tuesday that we were going to go there but had some other things come up. So last night I set out for a second attempt to make this purchase.

I plug in the address to the GPS, and off I go. I get to the store, need to make a quick comparison between the two TV's. It didn't take long and I've decided on the LG. I call the sales guy over and ask for help getting the LG wrapped up for me because I'm ready to make the purchase. Sure, let me check on availability, he says. He comes back and says, "I sold the last one 15 minutes ago". You did not!? So I make the purchase there and decide to pick it up at another store.

I arrive at this store (10 minutes before they close) and happily glide my receipt across the counter and ask for my TV so I can finally get home. The guy looks in the back, comes back around, goes out to the showroom floor, goes to the back again, comes out and looks on the computer for something (meanwhile, I'm getting nervous - how come I'm not in the car on the way home by now). He finally says to me, "I can't find it". But you verified with the other store that you do have it - FIND IT. Not to extend this story any further, you'll be happy to know that they did eventually find it (kept in the wrong place in the back apparently) and was able to make it home, 3 hours after leaving the house. Always an adventure.

Can I Finish My Sandwich ?

Back on Tuesday, Hope was working from home and I was in the city. We planned on making a trip out to Circuit City to purchase a TV we'd been researching (more on this later). I got home, picked Hope up and we went to get a bite to eat at the local Subway. On the way there, she complained of some cramping and lower back pain. It lasted for about 10 minutes. With the lower back pain, I thought she should probably check-in with the doctor but give it a little bit to see if it goes away or if it comes in waves like labor pains might display themselves.

She decided to call, the doctor said, "Go to the hospital immediately". I asked Hope, "Really? Can I at least finish my sandwich first?" I'm sure you can figure out what the answer was. So we made a trip into the city and we finished our meals on the way.

As we suspected, what she was experiencing was not labor.

Send to Car

I love discovering new gadgets. I read about this one a few weeks ago and thought it was pretty cool. I'll be looking for this functionality in my next car.

Getting settled

It seems like we're always trying to get settled. Especially now with a little one on the way. We're at 36 weeks so it won't be long since the baby will be delivered at week 39 at the latest. We're in pretty good shape at this point. Not too surprising since we're planners. Unless its totally out of our control, we plan for most things. What we know we can't plan for is how we'll feel after the baby's born. I'm sure there will be lots of joy followed closely by fear. We'll get through it, I'm sure. :-)

We're usually shopping for something. Recently we purchased a new washer and dryer, a desk (which is finally all put together upstairs), and now we're on the hunt for a small TV to mount in the newly furnished office area and a monitor I can use as a second screen. You get real used to having this and then its hard to work without it.

By the way, I think I've finally figured out the feed reader deal. I've kept it simple and all that's needed now to subscribe to this blog is to copy the feed URL (right-click on the icon, copy link location), then paste that into a feed reader.