Natural Ingredients

What was the pepperoni made of before?!?!

Piratic Justice

I know Kathleen has a fascination with pirates based on her posting here and here. This story that I found shows some good ol' poetic justice regarding pirates. Serves 'em right!

Cool Christmas present

Since Alex and I don't have kiddos yet, we went all out on our nephews, Jackson and Brandon. We got them this awesome Black and Decker workbench. They are pretty ecstatic and so are we. Jackson asked me to help him build the birdhouse 2 times. I'm sure that will become a headache eventually, but it's cool for now.

Fire meats desire

This news story caught my attention for Flame. A new fragrance from... Burger King?!?. It's described as "the scent of seduction with a hint of flame-broiled meat." Yum.

Last time I checked they were all sold out :(.

Update: I seriously suggest if you go to the website that you click on the spray bottle repeatedly. You will be rewarded.

Sam Bradford

1 word. Boomer!

Good Christmas Songs

I posted on Cloark's blog about how there is a group that is great for Christmas music. Their name is Straight No Chaser and they are talent and ingenuity all mixed up together. Here's the song I was referring to. In my opinion much more depth than Barenaked Ladies. Don't get me wrong, the Barenakes Ladies are great, but this is better. I think you'll agree.

Sirius the Rat Terrier!

I haven't posted in a while, but there was one that I've been meaning to for about a week now. I've been running with Sirius my dog for the last few weeks. It's been good for me and for him since we're both overweight. The unintended consequence that came out of this is a bit of agression that Sirius has started showing... towards mice.

Alex and I have had a bit of a mouse problem that we've been trying to remedy over the last month or so. We've been plugging all of the holes and cracks in our subfloor with foam and steel wool. We've also been setting traps for the ones that may already be in the home to get rid of them. So far, we have had 7 fatalities (I know a lot!).

Last week I was up really late since it was the Thanksgiving holiday and I head a snap come from under the sink. Sirius heard it too. He was over by the sink before I was and as I opened it, he started lunging to get in there. I blocked him with my arm as I looked in there. There was the mouse, but it was only caught by the tail (those with weak stomachs for mice stop reading here).

As I tried to pull the thing out by the lever on the trap the mouse was scurrying, trying to get away and suddenly Sirius lunged at it. I couldn't stop him this time. He grabbed it, chewed on it and spit it out. It was very dead at that point. All the while I was yelling at him not to eat it. I was relieved that he didn't. Anyways, he's got the bloodlust in him now and is on the prowl every time he hears something coming from the kitchen like our filter system regenerating or something like that. Pretty awesome if you ask me.

Barry Manilow is torture!

...at least according to this judge.

bill one down

Got a bill this week for the surgery. It was the hospital stay, ER use, etc. The initial charge was over $22,000. I ended up paying about $850. Sigh.

You can do it quick, or you can do it right

For those of you who have been reading this blog, you know that I'm no stranger to toilet stories. I just thought of an anology regarding all of the bailouts. I'm likening those in favor of the quick as the ones who are for the bailouts. The ones against it are "right".

The reason is because of perception. In reality, the ones who think that the bailout will cause the recession be quick and easy are in for a surprise. Just like those who do number 2 quick. A quickie may ease the pressure right now, but it just means that stuff will come back to haunt you that much sooner.

Running with Sirius Part 2

Shortly after I had my appendectomy, I caught a nasty head cold. Not something to take joy in. As a result, I haven't been running like I've wanted to. I decided to take Sirius along with me this morning again. He still drags behind. I started dragging also. Fun fun fun!

Woolly Mammoths...

So Alex and I were on our way home when I mentioned this article about how they are now able to clone animals that have been frozen. This is actually pretty amazing seeing as to how scientists have said that they previously thought that cloning animals that had been frozen would have been impossible due to the theory that the dna would be damaged in the freezing process.

So, I said to her, "they may actually end up cloning woolly mammoths."

Alex responded, "Isn't that pretty Jurassic Parkish."

I asked, "How's that?"

Then Alex said the awesomest thing ever.

"Didn't they eat the Vikings?"

Don't worry, it gets better....

Then I said, "No honey, they were plant eaters like all the elephants."

And then...

"That's impossible. It was the ice age, there were no plants!"

And one for the road.

Jogging with Sirius

Since since my surgery I can't do lifting, I've decided to go ahead and start running. I've done it every day except Sunday since last Thursday. I've decided to take Sirius along with me. When we walk he pulls, but I've found that when we run... well, he drags.

Need blood pressure medicine?

I like the natural kind.

Anchors Away!

So I was driving to church on Sunday when I realized that the car was making a rattling noise. I got out and looked all around and saw nothing on top, so I looked underneath. The muffler anchor was broken and my tailpipe was banging on the wheel well. AWESOME! So I took it in and I didn't have a broken tailpipe, just a broken anchor and it ended up only being $70. In my book, not too bad. Thank goodness since I just had a surgery and all of those bills coming up!

Who knew?

Stayin' Alive might actually keep you alive.

Back to the grind

Well, I'm feeling well enough to work. I started back to work on Wednesday. I was a bit tired during the day, but I made it through - not bad for 8 days post op. Today work was a bit more interesting in that I have a meeting at 6:30 for the Homeowners association. I have to convince the HOA board to let my wife and the students have seminary at our clubhouse. It's going to be interesting to see what the reaction is. I have the hardest time with one of the members. I think our personalities clash a bit too much. I try to be professional, but sometimes I think she doesn't like me or something. I guess you have that kind of people in all walks of life.

My side of the story

Many of you have been following Alex's story about how I had apendicitis and almost died, so here's the pre-op to op story.

I got home from work on Monday at about 5:30 and had some leftover lasagna and proceeded to go about the normal business when all of the sudden, my stomach started hurting really bad. I had a really sharp pain right in below my ribs as if someone stabbed me. I went up to bed to lay down and rest it off and after that didn’t work, I came back downstairs. I started with a tiny puke, then I just started puking over and over again.

After a bit, I asked Alex to go to Walgreens and get me some pepto, which she did. In the meantime, I proceeded to hurl the rest of my dinner up. When Alex got back, I took some pepto and then, you guessed it, I puked that up too. After that I decided it was bad, so we went to Mercy After-hours. At this point I figured it was the left over lasagna, therefore food poisoning. The way it tasted while it came up sure made it seem that way, so I told the doctor that’s what I thought it was. He checked out my stomach and pressed a bit here and there for pain. When he pressed on my lower right side all of the sudden I had a dull pain there and I told him that it hurt when he pressed there. He said that he agreed with me that it was food poisoning and gave me a shot and a prescription for pain (which I have yet to take any of the medicine).

It turns out that the nausea shot did absolutely nothing for me. When I got home, I puked again and again, so finally I called Dad and asked him to come over to give me a blessing so that I could get to sleep. Dad and mom came over and I told them how my lower right hand side was hurting and they were very concerned and told me to go to the hospital.

So we went up to the hospital (12:30 AM). By now it was midnight and pouring rain, so we went in and I told the nurse that I thought I might have appendicitis and all of the sudden I had another nurse scoop me up in a wheelchair and I was whisked away to the ER. They laid me down on the bed and took some blood, gave me some shots for the nausea and some delotid (a pain medicine). After that I was feeling good. I got Dad to call Nate and they gave me a blessing.

I was then taken to radiology and they put dye up my you know what in order to get "contrast" in my bowels. They took pictures and then I was carted back to the ER.

A while later they came in and said that the white blood count was high and that the pictures were conclusive that it was apendicitis and that they wanted to operate ASAP. By now I was pretty much out of it (I am told that it was 4:30 AM). They told me that they would have me in the OR by 6:30 and took me to a room. I don’t remember much more except when I woke up at 6:30 with a super dry mouth and tons of pain. They doped me up with some morphine and then the doctor came personally and told me that I would have to wait a bit longer because he had to perform some other operations. After that I was out again.

Then next thing I knew I was in the prep room, Alex was changing my clothes to a gown, and I was wheeled into the OR onto a tiny table. They put some arm rests under my arm and then…

I woke up with a stinking tube in my nose to my stomach, a tube in my side, oxygen in my nose and oh yeah… stiches in my front.

It was a pretty wild ride. Don’t wish it on anyone, but it’s over now and I’m doing quite well. I had a drainage sack for a few extra days, but that came out today and I’m going back to work on Wednesday, so all in all not too bad.

I saw this in a class at BYU... Did you? It's how I feel.

WARNING Don't play this around your kids!

Hurl squats

So today is Thursday and I had the hack squats again. I made it through the whole session without a problem... but when I went to pick up my wife, I was so overheated that, yup the funk wanted to come up again. Joy! Good thing I only have one more week left of this combo.