Amusements
Make your very own McDonald's sign! I made one that read "Bite Me". I suppose one reading "Where's the Beef?" would be pretty amusing too. :o)
In other news....
We tried to have a tornado tonight. Apparently the area of rotation passed more or less over where I live. Conveniently no funnel actually touched the ground. During the torrential downpour just prior to the storm sirens sounding, I did *not* hear any rain hitting my bathroom ceiling. I presume that means the catch-tray I set up in the attic is doing its job. I'll go up there tomorrow and re-bait the mice and check on the water in the tray.
I suppose it's a good thing I didn't try to caulk the vent pipes tonight after work because the caulk wouldn't have cured completely before the rain started. Maybe in the morning it'll be dry. Only a 50% chance of rain the whole weekend.
Yardwork
I tore up some more poison ivy tonight. I wore gloves and long sleeves. I was very careful to wash my tools thoroughly and to wash myself thoroughly. I think I'm going to end up killing a lot of the grass between the poison ivy trees and the fence. The poison ivy is growing through it so I'm having to use Round-Up pretty liberally.
I'm trying to decide if I want to plant a cool season grass on that slope, then put a ground cover around the trees (to simplify mowing) or to just plant ground cover on the whole slope. I'm leaning toward the former mostly so that I don't have to till up the entire slope and amend all that soil. It's somewhat rocky soil and I'm guessing the rock has washed out of the neighbor's/farm's parking area. I can't decide between English ivy and vinca as the ground cover.
Eating
Well, I took my lunch to work today, but ended up going out for Mexican food. One co-worker had a birthday was today so we all went out. Someone also brought in homemade brownies and I had a couple of them too. They were very very good. Really fudgy and just the right amount of sweetness.
I'm planning meals for the next week so I can get a decent grocery list put together for tomorrow. I'll have the remains of my "beef" stir fry for dinner tomorrow. Later this week I think I'll make tamale pie and use up some of the TVP (texturized vegetable protein) I have in the pantry. It cooks up to the texture of ground meat. I'm going to make spinach soup too (using frozen spinach) and use up some of the other veggies I have on hand.
Work!
We picked up two more WNV cases this week in our area. Well, one of them was technically from August. Apparently the infection control folks at one of the hospitals haven't been doing a very good job of reporting the reportable diseases to the health department. This was discussed between the health department folks and the head of infection control and apparently a "talk" was going to be had with the infection control staff. We'll see if we start getting things on a more timely manner now.
Some of the diseases aren't that big a deal to not report because the infected or sick person isn't a risk to anybody else, as is the case with West Nile. But for some things, like a cook or kitchen staff with an enteric disease like hepatitis A or salmonellosis, that's a real problem and the risk to the public is significant. For things like TB and meningitis, close contacts to the sick person have to be tracked down and given medication to prevent disease.
We now have one case of E. coli O157:H7 related to the ongoing spinach outbreak. The case is not from our region. I don't know anything other than the person is getting better and the isolate from the patient matches the outbreak bacteria strain.
I read a bunch about rotavirus today. I'm trying to write up a newsletter article about the new pediatric rotavirus vaccine which was licensed in February 2006 and made an official part of the pediatric vaccination schedule in August 2006. It's a live, oral vaccine in three doses given at 2, 4, and 6 months. It won't keep a kid from getting all gastroenteritis problems, but it does protect against one of the worst bugs. The "neat" thing about rotavirus is the immense amount of virus shedding that occurs, which is why it's so darned contagious. Virus is shed at a rate of up to 10e12 virus particles per gram of fecal matter. No wonder it rips through families and day care centers so fast. The virus co-opts your gut to grow a whole lot, then escapes and moves on. Isn't that cool?
In other news....
We tried to have a tornado tonight. Apparently the area of rotation passed more or less over where I live. Conveniently no funnel actually touched the ground. During the torrential downpour just prior to the storm sirens sounding, I did *not* hear any rain hitting my bathroom ceiling. I presume that means the catch-tray I set up in the attic is doing its job. I'll go up there tomorrow and re-bait the mice and check on the water in the tray.
I suppose it's a good thing I didn't try to caulk the vent pipes tonight after work because the caulk wouldn't have cured completely before the rain started. Maybe in the morning it'll be dry. Only a 50% chance of rain the whole weekend.
Yardwork
I tore up some more poison ivy tonight. I wore gloves and long sleeves. I was very careful to wash my tools thoroughly and to wash myself thoroughly. I think I'm going to end up killing a lot of the grass between the poison ivy trees and the fence. The poison ivy is growing through it so I'm having to use Round-Up pretty liberally.
I'm trying to decide if I want to plant a cool season grass on that slope, then put a ground cover around the trees (to simplify mowing) or to just plant ground cover on the whole slope. I'm leaning toward the former mostly so that I don't have to till up the entire slope and amend all that soil. It's somewhat rocky soil and I'm guessing the rock has washed out of the neighbor's/farm's parking area. I can't decide between English ivy and vinca as the ground cover.
Eating
Well, I took my lunch to work today, but ended up going out for Mexican food. One co-worker had a birthday was today so we all went out. Someone also brought in homemade brownies and I had a couple of them too. They were very very good. Really fudgy and just the right amount of sweetness.
I'm planning meals for the next week so I can get a decent grocery list put together for tomorrow. I'll have the remains of my "beef" stir fry for dinner tomorrow. Later this week I think I'll make tamale pie and use up some of the TVP (texturized vegetable protein) I have in the pantry. It cooks up to the texture of ground meat. I'm going to make spinach soup too (using frozen spinach) and use up some of the other veggies I have on hand.
Work!
We picked up two more WNV cases this week in our area. Well, one of them was technically from August. Apparently the infection control folks at one of the hospitals haven't been doing a very good job of reporting the reportable diseases to the health department. This was discussed between the health department folks and the head of infection control and apparently a "talk" was going to be had with the infection control staff. We'll see if we start getting things on a more timely manner now.
Some of the diseases aren't that big a deal to not report because the infected or sick person isn't a risk to anybody else, as is the case with West Nile. But for some things, like a cook or kitchen staff with an enteric disease like hepatitis A or salmonellosis, that's a real problem and the risk to the public is significant. For things like TB and meningitis, close contacts to the sick person have to be tracked down and given medication to prevent disease.
We now have one case of E. coli O157:H7 related to the ongoing spinach outbreak. The case is not from our region. I don't know anything other than the person is getting better and the isolate from the patient matches the outbreak bacteria strain.
I read a bunch about rotavirus today. I'm trying to write up a newsletter article about the new pediatric rotavirus vaccine which was licensed in February 2006 and made an official part of the pediatric vaccination schedule in August 2006. It's a live, oral vaccine in three doses given at 2, 4, and 6 months. It won't keep a kid from getting all gastroenteritis problems, but it does protect against one of the worst bugs. The "neat" thing about rotavirus is the immense amount of virus shedding that occurs, which is why it's so darned contagious. Virus is shed at a rate of up to 10e12 virus particles per gram of fecal matter. No wonder it rips through families and day care centers so fast. The virus co-opts your gut to grow a whole lot, then escapes and moves on. Isn't that cool?
Comments
Very nice!