need Processing message to be modal

we have a few tables in our app that handle over 100k records, and coupled with column text searching/filtering it can take a few seconds to query the db and come back -- I'd like to implement a modal version of the Processing box to keep users away from the keyboard till the ajax query has returned the data and the table is ready to take the next user inputs. We're seeing commands stacking up causing Ux problems, queries take up to 2-3 secs to return data due to heavy use of mysql LIKE and text searches

I saw this from last year at this time: http://datatables.net/forums/discussion/6482/plugin-or-core-modal-div-on-bprocessing/p1

wasn't sure what the status was, have sent PM to author

any other suggestions?