Another Storm??

I am beginning to believe that "someone" doesn't like the fact that we moved to northern Alabama.

Last night there was a major storm in which we sustained 70+ MPH winds and torrential rain for almost an hour. If you have read previous posts then you will already know that our area is prone to flooding. Well, luckily I think the wind was blowing hard enough to push the rain into the next property so it did not come up to the door as usual. Don't get me wrong there was a lot of water in the yard and the driveway was flooded. It looked a lot like hurricane Elena (from 1985 I think) when we were watching through the window.

We lost power around 7:45PM and spent quite a few minutes in the hallway wondering if the roof was going to blow away. Trees were uprooted and branches scattered. Just take a look at the photo of half a tree from our neighbor's yard which was trapped in our tree. We ended up with only limbs (some huge) down and power outage until around 2:00AM (cable and net out until 8:00pM tonite) so we consider ourselves lucky.

The kids had a grand time though running through the house with flashlights and getting to stay up late. Cathy and I have began saving for a return trip to Chicago! I will take shoveling snow and blizzards over hurricane-strength wind and flooding any day.

Another Noah?

Well, it happened again: the near flooding of the homestead! On Friday night, Decatur had nearly 5 inches of rain and the sewer system is just not able to handle that much water. The water level rose to just lapping the doorframe, so we had almost all of our towels positioned to hold back the water at the front and back doors. Luckily, the rain ceased at just the right moment to allow drainage and prevent in-home damage. This happened again on Sunday, but the water did not come quite as close this time.

We are frustrated since the city will not fix the situation and is not available when these floods occur. We called many agencies including public works and the police department and just could not get anyone to answer. I do not guess it has to be said that we will not be settling in this area for the long haul.

On the other hand, it did take care of 4 anthills and the wasp nest that had started in a log which lines our carport. It helps to look on the sunny side sometimes.

Plans to deal with this in the future include the previously mentioned making sure the drains are clear when we have flood warnings and the purchase of sandbags to shore up the doorways to help prevent house flooding.

The Battle is Lost

Well it has finally happened. IT has won the battle and I will be giving up my PowerMac at work. It turns out they found a way to block my MAC address on the network so I am dead in the water via internet. So I'm in the process of switching back to windows (insert sigh here). At least it will be an XP machine with 4gb RAM instead of vista with no hardware power.

So I am beginning to look for windows alternatives to the many Mac apps for which my productivity has come to depend. Here is a short list of what I have found so far:

Mac : PC alternative

Dashboard and Spotlight: Google desktop and sidebar

Adium: Digsby

iPhoto: Picassa

Spaces: I will try microsoft powertoys first

1password: KeePass

Textexpander: Texter

iWork: MS Office (ugh)

Safari: ie7 (IT is blocking firefox, safari and chrome)

garageband: audacity

I am still needing alternatives for: quicklook, imovie, quicksilver, SnapzPro, automator, pdf editing and apple mail (they also block outlook trying to force us into using firstclass).

All in all, I am not alone in thinking our IT department has lost the realization that they are a service department and have become way too controlling.

Easter Egg Hunting

We went to the Citywide Easter Egg Hunt in Decatur Yesterday and the denial I had tried to hold onto was finally lifted. I had tried to convince myself that it wasn't that different here, but when we pulled up to the park and heard the musical entertainment, I was shocked. They were playing countrified gospel music!! Not the obvious choice for a children's event, but I guess it reflects the area.

In better news, at least they had actual eggs (plastic though) for the kids to find instead of the paper cutouts they used in Evergreen Park. They let all of the kids go hunt at the same time, so the bigger kids dominated. Ashley was able to get one egg, but Ryan was to small to get any.

We discussed amongst ourselves ideas to make the hunt more fair, but in the end made our own egg hunt this morning. To paraphrase the commercial, "you live, you learn and then you have your own egg hunt!"

Out of the mouths of babes!

Ryan, Ashley and Cathy are playing "Mario and Sonic at the Olympics" for Wii and as usual there is some trash talking before the race starts. Cathy tells Ashley, "You're going down!"

Ryan turns around and says to Cathy, "You are going down, I'm going up!"

A lesson in Marketing

Ryan sits on the couch next to mommy as she reads the farm animal book to him.

Mommy: What does a horse say?

Ryan: Neighhhhh

M: What does a pig say?

R: oink, oink, oink

M: What does a duck say?

R: quack, quack

M: What does a cow say

R: moo, moo chick-fil-a!

Ashley's 1st Grade Play

Ashley was Cat#2 in this year's Eastwood Elementary 1st Grade Play "Eastwood at the Zoo". The Cats opened and closed the play and just plain looked cute throughout. Look for some video to come soon via youtube.