The Washington State Department of Health has the cause of the "intestinal illness" that broke out at a recent cheerleading competition in Everett: norovirus.

OLYMPIA — Testing at the state Public Health Laboratories confirms that norovirus caused hundreds of illnesses during and after the February 4 state high school cheerleading tournament. Norovirus is typically transmitted person-to-person.

The number of people reporting they suffered vomiting and diarrhea during the event or in the days after is now 229. At least 33 have reported seeking medical care though there have been no overnight hospital admissions. The numbers are expected to grow as state health officials receive answers from surveys that were sent to participants and families.

The Washington State Department of Health is leading the disease investigation, working with local health partners and the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA), sponsor of the event in Everett.

As a survivor of a bout or two with norovirus, all I can say is: gross.

With all the fuss lately about what’s going on in libraries, here is an interesting story out of Canada. The Ottawa libraries are sponsoring the Human Library program:

Instead of a book, patrons of Ottawa’s city libraries will have a chance to check out a stripper, a prostitute, a Somali refugee, a judge, an HIV-positive man, a Peking Opera performer, a woman born as a man, a police officer, or a bipolar man as part of a Human Library program. Billed as “real people, real conversations,” the Ottawa Public Library is bringing dozens of people with diverse experiences into its branches, encouraging patrons to check them out for a 20-minute, one-on-one chat.

“I’m actually really nervous. I’m going to be sitting in a chair with a sign behind me saying ‘HIV-positive.’ Does it feel a little like a human zoo? To some degree, but my hope is that anyone who comes to this is interested in a two-way conversation,” said Grant Cobb, a peer-engagement worker with the AIDS Committee of Ottawa who has volunteered to be loaned out.

It sounds like a great idea to help patrons see the world from another person's perspective. Each branch will have a different array of human books to choose from.

Just read this and take the handy quiz and you'll be all set.

Sometimes it pays to be on the Washington State Department of Health's email list:

State and local health officials are investigating a possible intestinal illness outbreak among attendees of a cheerleading competition in Everett last weekend.

According the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA), which hosted the event, more than 3,000 people attended, and more than 1,000 competed in the State Cheerleading and Salute to Spirit in cheer and dance/drill.

“Our immediate concerns are for those who have been affected by this illness and our thoughts are with them,” said WIAA Executive Director Mike Colbrese. “The WIAA appreciates the cooperation of Comcast Arena and of state and local health partners for addressing the entire scope of this situation.”

I'm imaging a melange between Bring It On and the infamous community-barfing scene in Stand By Me.

This assault-rifle-chainsaw combo has everything—a saw, a rifle, rainbows, ponies, some sparkly dangly shit—a child/gay lumberjack could yearn for. Allow me to present the OMG-AR15 Unicorn "zombie gun" (via Boing Boing):

I don't know squat about zombies but a gun like this would instantly improve my prey-to-tree kill ratio, just as my Flossing Cleaver™ did wonders for my gums and tenderloins.

Hat tip, Marc.

02/03/2012

Hello Prayer Warriors!

Please tune into the Rush Limbaugh Show today. I will be on with Rush during the third hour.

Thank you in advance for praying that my time on the air with him will honor our Lord.

Pastor Hutch

Go over here, put the video in full-screen mode, and relax. No jokes, no sarcasm, no schadenfreude (sorry), it's just awesome, in the truest sense of the word.

Absolutely heartbreaking.

Then I rode the bus home, encountering many cute women while sporting dirty hands and pants. She said, "Well, you've done your good deed for the month." Then at the end she changed it to two months. Exactly how long is this good deed good for?

Mount Rainier snowshoer burned money for warmth

Originally posted last November, before the last snowstorm that destroyed Seattle, and reposted here to promote the general welfare. Also: PANIC! RUN! ZMFG!!!

Shoveling DO:

Do shovel a path from your house or apartment to your car/the street and spend five extra minutes shoveling the sidewalks to the edge of your property line. If a little old lady lives next door, shovel a path from her door to the street and the sidewalks in front of her house. If your neighbors are away, skip the path to their front door but shovel their sidewalks too. And don't bitch about how hard it is to shovel three inches of freaking snow. You need all the exercise you can get in the run up to Thanksgiving.

Shoveling DON'T:

Don't shovel a skinny little path from your front door to your fucking car and leave snow all over your fucking sidewalks. Asshole move. Spend five fucking minutes shoveling the sidewalks in front of your house before they turn into a sheet of ice. And don't give me this, "We live in Seattle! We don't own a snow shovel!" bullshit. There are three or four inches out there, tops—you can shovel that shit with a broom. And if you shoveled a path from your front door to your car, then you own a damn shovel. Shovel your fucking sidewalks too, you lazy motherfucker.

Also: if you own or run a store, bar, club, restaurant, movie theater, grocery store, school, crack house, domination studio, etc., etc., shovel the fucking sidewalks in front of your place of business.

Thank you.

At noon today on KUOW, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s most famous speech will be broadcast, along with the first of five lectures he gave on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in late 1967 regarding the labor movement. (And right now on KUOW: UW professor Michael Honey, who has collected Dr. King's speeches on the topic in his book "All Labor Has Dignity," which sounds fascinating if you can stand Steve Scher's questions.)

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I arrived home last night to the unwelcome sound of rushing water.

The hose connecting the water supply to the tank on my toilet had burst during the day, dumping hundreds (maybe thousands?) of gallons onto the floor, then through it, and into my basement. The vinyl floor, the bathtub, and the six-inch-high plastic molding created a waterproof seal in the bathroom that prevented the water from soaking through the walls to the rooms on other side, and my hundred-year-old house has conveniently settled in such a way that the first floor slopes toward the bathroom, confining the water to the bathroom itself and the narrow, fir-floored hallway outside it. As far as I can tell, the water mostly drained through the hallway floor. It's too soon to tell how the fir flooring fared (though it looks okay at the moment), but for now, the upstairs damage appears limited to the rug in the hallway.

The basement is another issue. Much of the basement has floor drains to accommodate water that occasionally seeps in with the winter rains, but there's one finished corner with a bathroom, kitchenette, and carpeted bedroom that I use for storage... and that's where I found as much as five inches of standing water. It's not like there's water damage to anything I use, so my monetary loss is minimal, but it's a fucking mess, and it's going to be a race against time to clean everything out before the mold sets it.

Regular readers will know that this flood was somewhat my fault. Last weekend I finally took on the awful task of replacing the wax ring on my toilet, only to be forced to replace the gasket and seals in the tank after it leaked on reassembly. It's not that I did anything wrong, but in retrospect, I guess I should have replaced the aging flexible water hose too, which, either weakened by jostling, or perhaps subjected to higher pressure when I turned the water back on, gave out a few days later. Now I know.

Ah, home ownership. The American dream.

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