Barry’s Daily Web News

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Today, of course, is Sean’s third birthday. We already postponed his party until next weekend because he was sick this week. He was feeling a bit better today, so we went out to a local carnival. It was supposed to be an Italian fair, but it seemed like just an ordinary carnival to me. Sean had fun riding the kiddy rides. After we arrived home, we had Sean’s birthday celebration. We put three candles on a cupcake, and sang “Happy Birthday”. Sean blew out the candles himself, one candle at a time. He wasn’t very interested in eating his cupcake, so we quickly moved to the presents. Sean had already spotted one of the presents before it was wrapped, and it was hard to keep him focused on the other presents. This present was Scoop, the backhoe, from Bob the Builder. Other than the distraction of Scoop, Sean did a decent job of tearing the paper off of the presents. And just think, Sean can do it again next week!

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I went running today, the first time in a long time. I took a nice slow, pace, and had no problem finishing three miles. I did feel a few sore muscles afterwards though.

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I was disappointed with the Law & Order show last night. If you blinked, or joined the show before the title sequence, you would have missed my uncle’s house. They didn’t even show the house itself, just the backyard. Oh well. At least my uncle was well compensated for this short footage.

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I forgot to mention yesterday that Sean tried to take his own temperature yesterday. We have a digital thermometer that takes the temperature from the ear canal. I was surprised to see Sean do this, because I remember many a time that Sean squirmed away because he didn’t like the thermometer placed in his ear. We tried to take a picture, but Sean kept pulling the thermometer away just as we clicked the shutter button.

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Sean may just have the croup, rather than fifth disease. At any rate, we rescheduled his birthday party until the following Saturday. No need having other parents mad at us for getting their children sick.

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It was beautiful park weather today, but Sean wasn’t feeling well, and so we didn’t go to the park. I did get at least some time outdoors. I walked over to the nearby strip mall to pick up some chinese take out.

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Make sure you watch Law and Order, Special Victims Unit, tomorrow evening. My uncle’s house in Manhattan will be in the show. The show comes on at 9:00pm MST in Phoenix, but check your local listing.

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I’m not a big fan of managed health care these days. After two different incidents, I’m really peeved. The first incident was when I found out Ethan was not covered for the year 2002. I was told I had to use the company web site to enroll Ethan for benefits. That web site was broken, and is still broken today. As I was working with tech support on the issue, the enrollment for next years benefits became activated. I mistakenly assumed that by enrolling Ethan for the year 2003, he would be covered in the year 2002. Big mistake. The benefits people are now telling me that 90 days has passed since he was born, and there is nothing they can do about it. Ethan’s two office visits and vaccinations are surprisingly expensive when you have to pay the bill out of pocket.

The second incident involves Cortney’s prescription. Cortney was given a year’s prescription, and I sent it for mail order for a 90 day supply, since the 90 day supply costs $50, and a single month at the store costs almost $30. When the package arrive in the mail, I was surprised to see I was only given one month of the prescription. I called and was told that 12 monthly refills is not the same as 4 90 day refills. Only a managed health care person would think that way. At least with this incident, it only cost me around $13, the difference between 1/3 of the $50 and the $30.

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We found out today that Sean may have been exposed to fifth disease. Yuck. Sean had a slight fever this morning, so we are worried he may have caught it. The only good news is that by the time he has the rash, he is no longer contagious.

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Sean had a birthday celebration at school today. Cortney brought in cupcakes for the other children, and Sean’s teacher gave him a birthday gift. Here is a picture showing the celebration (click to enlarge):

There is a story to go along with the matchbox cars. Sean was caught hiding the cars in the classroom, presumably so he could play with them the next day without sharing the cars with the other students. There’s no question that he has the idea of object permanence down pat.

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I tweaked the my pictures a bit (the one in the top left corner, and the “thumbs up” on the bottom of this page). I decided they weren’t bright enough.

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I played around with the programming feature of radio, and wrote a short macro to help me display pictures. Entering the following code in my post:

“postPix(”/pix/s_e_giraffe.jpg”,”120″,”160″,”Sean shares his giraffe with Ethan.”)”

results in the following (click to enlarge):

Nifty! Hold your mouse pointer of the picture to see the text note.

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We had a mystery this afternoon. Ethan was fussy while he was in the bouncy seat. I went to check on him, and I found out that his outfit and the bouncy seat were soaked. So I lifted him out, and took off his outfit. I started to change his diaper, but it was bone dry! Hence, the mystery. The best I could guess was that Sean dumped his water cup onto Ethan. Sean was acting up around dinner time, so I suspect this as the probable cause for Ethan’s soaking.

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Today is one of those days where there isn’t much to write about. Or, perhaps I don’t feel like writing; it’s hard to tell the difference some times. So how about a joke?

Did you here that they are closing the K-marts and Wal-marts in Iraq?

They’re being replaced by Targets.

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I’m worried that we are dithering over the Iraq situation. My worst fear is that Saddam gives away a nuclear bomb to some terrorist group for “free”, with the stipulation that the bomb be used on the U.S. It’s too bad those peace protesters can’t be used as a human shield to prevent a bomb from damaging the rest of us. And how many last chance resolutions is the UN security council expected to pass?