Now this brings me to an update on the things that I hope to have time for with the extra hours every day:

1. Exercise:  I’m currently 290 lbs and I want to be 230 again by this time next year.  I’m off to a pretty good start as I started watching what I  was eating about two weeks ago and I’m already down 10 lbs from then.  I’ve swam 500 meters twice and run 3 to 5 miles 3 times in the last two weeks.  Prior to that… I hadn’t run since February probably. . .
2. Writing:  Steven has started a writing group and I really want start getting some of the ideas in my head out on paper.  My week to submit came right as my finals hit for my math class… so I was the first person not to submit during their week.  Not going to happen again!  I want to actually get chapters ahead so I’m always submitting something I’ve written weeks ago.. we’ll see if it actually happens
3. TV!:  Has TV ever been as exciting as it is now? Lost is over, but I really want to catch up on all these shows:
                Caprica – Awesome spin off of Battlestar Galactica.
                Castle   -  Awesome show with Nathan Fillion (captain from Firefly)  If you like Law & Order..       You’ll love Castle!
                 Fringe  -  This is an X-Files meets Lost kind of show, but they have Leonard Nemoy playing a character so I can’t help myself but want to watch it.  
                 Stargate Universe – I’ve heard a lot of good things about this show, but a few bad things.  I’ll judge for myself. 

   I can’t even remember the last time I got to watch any of them.  I may have to download since hulu only caries the last 5 that aired on TV.

The girls are doing nice, the older is making progress with potty training, but mommy and daddy need to gain some patience with the little blunders.  And we need a bark collar for the younger one… I’m not joking.. she screams until Sarah picks her up… and she screams loud.. all day long.  Since I’m obviously kidding about the bark collar..  any advice on how to get her to be a little less dependant being held 24/7?

Mommy and Daddy were probably around mile 18 at this point

Well.. while at walmart, I saw a man digging through a bin of the discount dvds.  His head was FLAWLESS.  The entire backside of it was as smooth as a cue ball.  I thought to myself.. you know what?!  I have NOTHING to lose by asking him what his technique is.  The WORST thing he can say is, “No, I’m not going to tell you.” 

So I took a deep breath..  walked over and tapped him on his shoulder.  Even as he was turning I began, “Excuse me, sir.  I’ve been in the military for 4 years already and I can not figure out people get their head that smooth!  How do you get all the hair off?  What’s the secret?”

He finishes turning… and promptly replies without any hesitation.  “Cancer.”  I then see the scar running across the front and top of his head, where evidently he had brain surgery or something.  He nodded, turn back around and goes back to selecting his movie for the night.

True Story.

I’d like to say this goes right above ‘Peeing on an electrical fence’

Since we got the girls our lives have been running at full speed.  Sarah wakes up in the morning and gets the girls ready and takes them to school.  I get up and goto school, goto work, go home and do homework,  Sarah gets off work and picks up the girls and comes home.  I do ‘distract the kids’ while Sarah cooks, Sarah cooks, and I do bath and bedtime.  Sarah and I get about an hour of exhausted talk about how we are going to join a kool-aid drinking cult… and wondering how the human race has continued on without killing off their offspring… and then Sarah goes to bed and I get back on doing homework.  I finish up about midnight to 1 AM and then goto bed to do it all over again.  I don’t say this for you pity, but merely for you to understand that life is VERY busy for us, and neither of us really ever get a break. 

Friday night I suggested to Sarah that she could go have some girl time and hang out with a friend, and I would watch their kids and our kids until they got back.  Sarah kind of laughed and told me that it wouldn’t be fair, but thanked me for the offer.  I could tell she wanted to, so I texted her friend and arranged the whole thing.  The next morning, I told sarah about an hour before her friend was to arrive that I would be watching the kids and Sarah could goto town and do whatever she wanted.  She hugged me and I was hero of the morning .  (I always like being the hero).  She gets dressed and her friend drops off their 3 boys.  So let me do some math for you:

4 boys: (26, 4, 3, and 2)

2 girls:  (2, and 1)

About two hours into this experience I  was like.. who is the responsible adult here?!! Who is running this show!  and I realized… that it was supposed to be me.

I realize now that I desperately need a 4 year old.  Her oldest was amazingly helpful.  I would tell him to watch the baby for me while I went to the restroom.. and he seriously gave me updates every 5 seconds about what that baby was doing.  “She getting up… she’s putting something in her mouth”… “Okay I took it away from her”..  

Another funny thing was that our 1 year old would follow at her pace behind the other 4.  So all 4 would go running down the hall and then the baby would crawl after them.  ABout the time that the baby got to where they were… the rest of them came running by her in the opposite direction.  Did she cry? Nope.. She just looked up at me with those brown, knowing  eyes and said “Slow and steady wins the race…”  Or it could have been:  “Hey, Taxi,  what’s wrong with you… pick me up and follow those kids!”  I always get those two confused…

So after 3 hours I decided we needed a snack.. and a little nap..  So when I woke up an hour later the kids were still running around and the house was on fire!                     Just kidding .  So I gave them all PB & J  and laid them down in each room.  One was in my bed,  Our oldest was in her bed,  The baby was asleep in the computer room, and the middle child of their family was in the bed in the computer room,  and their youngest was on the couch  in the living room.  I walked into the kitchen and waited for all the screaming to stop…  I gave a big sigh of relief and decided to go have some me time..  until I realized that EVERY room in the house had a kid in it.. and there was nowhere I could go.   *sigh*

I broke out my new blue tooth and called some friends.. walked around the kitchen and stepped outside for some fresh air.   I changed about 5 diapers.. which is much better than 20… and when the womenfolk got home.. I pretended it was the easiest thing I’d ever done.. 

I was able to come out of it with my sanity in tact, but I was probably about an hour away from becoming a super villain!

Phew! close call.. I’d probably look horrible in a helmet with big antlers!

Goodbye my Friend,

You will be missed.

It’s pretty bad

When I was a kid, my Grandmother made sure that I knew how important hygiene was. She made sure a bath was had every day. She made sure that we always washed our hair. She made sure that we always brushed our teeth. When I lived with my Dad, things were a little more lenient. I mean it was just generally accepted that these things should be happening, but he didn’t feel he had to lean over my shoulder and MAKE SURE they were happening. This isn’t bad about my Dad.. this is bad about me .

Now fear not, oh faithful readers. I am not informing you that I shower twice a year to save natural resources or anything. I do in fact shower every day, and I would say I probably take showers 350/356 days a year. I mean we’ve all had those days where you are just exhausted and fall asleep without showering. Or you wake up 30 minutes late and have to run out dressing on the way to the car. This is not my confession.

I brush my teeth probably twice a week.

Yeah.. I know. You are all vomiting in your mouth right now. When I wake up in the morning I hope in the shower, get dressed, get my stuff together, hop in the COMPUTER, and look up when it’s 1.3 minutes left to get in the car and make it where I’m going on time. I just have not made it a habit even since childhood. I always tell myself I will do better, and for a month or two I will brush EVERY morning.. or make up for it at night were I to forget. But I slip for a day.. then another. And soon I’m back to brushing every once in a while.

So this New Year’s resolution is to brush EVERY SINGLE DAY. And if I fall off the bandwagon.. I’m gonna hop RIGHT BACK ON. Here’s for white teeth in 2011!!

Now for the rest of you. MAKE your CONFESSIONS now. Be honest!

Just 2 years ago

Everyone give her lots of luvs if you can!

These will true stories about me… that are incredibly awkward or stupid.

A few months ago, I was late for work, and I was eating the fruit out of my lunch as I did 90 down the highway.  The fruit Sarah packs me is breakfast, and the meat and veggies are lunch.  I got into the elevator and pressed 9 and reached down to take another bite out of my apple.  I noticed that the sticker was still on the side, but because my hands were full (one with apple, other with laptop)  I made a note of it and told myself to take it off when I get into the office.  I walk down the hall, talk to a co-worker, put my stuff down on the desk, and get confronted with a peer about work put on hold from yesterday.  While he told me about what needed to get done that day, I started to munch on the apple between sentences again.   At the end of the conversation, the co-worker says to me,  “Have you ever accidentally ate the sticker off of an apple?”

I was taken a back a little bit, and having been confronted about a work error, and then asked about a mindless act such as taking a bite out of an apple…  I replied, “Not that I know of, why?”

He simply replied, “Just wondering.” and left the room to go back to his desk.

I was a little confused and looked down at the apple… checked every side.

No sticker.

True Story.

Or this one:

Mary Strey: Somebody’s really drunk driving down Granton Road…

Dispatcher: …Which way are they going?

Mary Strey: They are going, um…

Dispatcher: Towards Granton or towards Neillsville?

Mary Strey: Towards Granton

Dispatcher: Okay are you behind them, or…

Mary Strey: No, I am them

Dispatcher: You am them?

Mary Strey: Yes, I am them

Dispatcher: Okay, so you want to call and report that you’re driving drunk?

Mary Strey: Yes

Amazing.

Steven and Everybody.   If you haven’t seen the 6th episode of Season 2  of “Castle”…  Stop reading my post and go watch at least the first 5 minutes of the episode… you are going to LOVE what happens.. LOL

Dollhouse is getting better.

Terminator got canceled…

I wonder if there would be any money in a firefly II (series or movie)  probably not…

Okay, I’m done.

If you drive a car… but you don’t know how to:

Put Gas in it
Put Air in the tires
Change a tire
Check the Fluids (and know all the fluids to check)

Sell it, and buy a bike. You have no buisness driving a car if you don’t know how to maintain it. That is DIFFERENT from being too lazy to maintain it.

That’s it… no more soapbox…

After Al Gore and Barrack Obama…  I think we can safely say that the Nobel Peace Prize can be renamed and discarded.

The main Beau’s destined to be with the main female singer but he yet to realize his relationship with the ‘queen of celibacy’ (said with great hate by the main girl)  is doomed.  They flash to a makeout session with the main Beau making out and petting with this cheerleader under a picture of Jesus…  the boy grabs her butt.. she gets a naughty look on her face… and then she sits up and says.. “we must pray”  Then puts her hands together like we teach our 4 years olds to.. or like Jeanie was about to appear and grant Major Anthony Nelson a wish that will eventually blow up in his face.

There is a growing relationship coming from a school counselor who is seriously trying to get with the teacher running the Glee club.  They of course paint his marriage as something not worth saving, and teachers as underpaid public servants and the true salvation of the planet.  And for the people who want to send me hate mail on that last tidbit:  I’m majoring in History and minoring in Education..  Guess what I’m going to be doing for the rest of my career…

In short:  I don’t understand why no one can latch on and have a REAL Christian on a tv show.  There is plenty of conflict they could throw in there without making all of the religious right look like losers, idiots, or judgmental hypocrites…

Scaled 1 to 10:  Glee is a 4

(Edited after watching another episode)

Episode 2 has a dramatic moment where these kids are part of the “celibacy club” ??  They were… grinding on each other through balloons or something?  If the balloons were to pop the sound makes the angels cry??  Yeah… so then the main glee girl gets to give her 30 second planned parenthood speech about how celibacy has been ‘proven’ not to work and the only way to really deal with sex is to just be ‘prepared’ for when it happens… because  (and this is a quote)  “. . . Celibacy doesn’t work in highschools… Our hormones are driving us too crazy to abstain. . .”    Yeah…  So I guess we’re all just crazy animals that can’t stop ourselves…  Yeah

Scaled 1 to 10: Glee is a 1

I won’t be watching any more of this crap, I hope you don’t either.

I say all this to tell you to come be obsessed WITH ME!!  here’s a video:

that “live” recording isn’t really that good, but a better “Song quality” is this one:

As my birthday approaches,  I would note that typicaly I never mention my birthday to test and see who would remember and who wouldn’t,  I would GLADLY take my gifts from all of you to be the receipts of YOU going to go buy their album on itunes for yourselves.  A great early Christmas present would be for you to make a video of you singing along and acting the fool while enjoying their music.  AND I EXTEND AN OPEN INVITATION  to share my home and I’ll buy your way into the concert I am going to in Rockwall, Tx on OCT 24th**.   Please share in my obsession, and if you have the resources and the lack of responsibilities live my Ambition of Nothingness and follow them around and enjoying their music (take photos and videos for me too!)!

** Sharing of home offer is only good during the weekend of Oct 24th, and offerer has rights and ability to veto based on personal knowledge of person or lack-therof**

I will deviate for a moment to discuss some backstory I may have never told you. People in the military frequently get kicked out of bootcamp for a body condition known as ‘shin splints’. I would dare say it is probably the #2 way people get out medically (I”m guessing #1 is claiming to be suicidal). It is pretty well ribbed among those who make it out to their first duty station that ‘shin splints’ is a whiners way out of the Corps. In all my years of running in the Marines I always rolled my eyes at guys who would fall out of runs due to shin splints. Some part of my inner being would almost judge them instantly as ‘wussies’ who just needed to get over it. In my defense, I believe I once had shin splints, though they were a minor annoyance, and I just kinda limped for a few hours before I went about my day. I think you might see where this is going.

So as I walk in, singing the praises of a weinie dog who put me to shame, an overwhelming pain in my shins hit my legs really hard. I kinda waddled for a minute, but eventually I had to collapse onto the floor. My legs would support my body no more. I am officially a whiner.. I’m one of THOSE people who have too much weight for their body to adequately use it the way it is supposed to be used… I’m really in a ton of pain…

I took some tylenol, and I think i’m going to take the day off tomorrow. I may walk for a few days (at a Speedy Gonzales’ Grannie’s pace), but I’m not giving up. My goal.. and I set it broadly before all who choose to read this blog… (which based upon how many people comment on my posts.. is.. Steven and Maria…) I want to be 270 lbs by Christmas. This whiner wants his shins to stop hurting.. Anyone want to join me in my quest for unwhinerhood?

lol, I would totally put this on my car.