Have you noticed the recent cliches going on in America? I have and they are starting to get to me because they are used so much. It is almost so bad as to get on my hated words list. The first word I am going to talk about is the word "look". In essense what "look" means is, I am thinking of something to say but it may be bad so you better be prepared. Obama likes to use that one alot, especially to the press corps. And I think it is catching on in the US. Like when they ask "Is the economy going to get better". The response is "look...it may or it may not." That word is used alot as if we can actually see it in his mind. Another cliche that has been given popularity is "here's the thing". It also means "I've got something to say and you may not like it." So when someone uses the two cliches together you better run cause you are getting some bad news - "look, here's the thing."

A good managerial cliche used by leaders is "going forward" or "moving forward" and "the road ahead". That means you are thinking about the future and want to forget what happened. Like,"Sure the economy is bad, but going forward it may get better. The road ahead looks better." The most popular one last year was probably "perfect storm". This year it is probably "bailout". The word "socialism" is also making a comeback, let's hope not for long. Towards the end of last year "main street" to "wall street" were big ones. If you are not an executive apparently you live on "main street". Other popular words include insurgent, recession and depression. So whay do I point these out? Look, here's the thing, maybe if we become aware of our using these words so much, moving forward the future socialist economy brought on by the bailout of the recession will help main street out of the depression as well as wall street. Or maybe it won't. As long as the road ahead is better we are good. Or are we just fooling ourselves with clever cliches?

So this Friday night was kind of a stay at home night. I even got on the treadmill and did it to get my heartrate up to 156 - the recommended rate by my doctor. The problem was, after 7 minutes my ankle started hurting and I had to get off. I sometimes forget that I broke my ankle twice in college playing basketball. I remember when I wore a cast for like 2 months. It was itchy. I got it casted by the Texas Tech Medical School. When I got it taken off at the base hospital they were like,"who did this? it is all wrong." Needless to say it never healed right, which is why I still walk a little wierd, and the Texas Tech Medical School will forever be called the "quack shack". So I know I need to put a brace on it before I exercise. I was also thinking about inventing a counterweight for treadmills. The idea is you strap on a belt that has a rope tied to it to like 100 pounds. Then you have a bar above your head that you put the weight over it and it goes to the other side of the bar. It then lifts you up and makes you 100 pounds lighter. Then you can run on the treadmill and have less impact to your joints but still get the cardio and heart rate increases. I call it the "weightless harness". Eh, it is a good idea but I am no mechanical engineer.

On Saturday we went to Cheesecake Factory and saw Monsters vs Aliens in 3-D. It was pretty good. The 3-D was excellent. Although I admit I fell asleep towards the end of it. I would give it 3 1/2 out of 5 stars. And on my movie scale that makes it the best movie I have seen in a long time. On Saturday I also started to straighten out this identity theft thing that happened to mom. Apparently her next door neighbor has something to do with it and mom is actually ok with it. That drives me crazy knowing that they stole from her and mom says it is ok cause the neighbor had an abusive ex-boyfriend who "demanded" money from her. The whole thing is a touchy situation because her neighbor does take care of her by making her dinner and checking her blood sugar and her husband keeps the car working and moves her cactus. And mom refuses to let anyone outside help her like meals on wheels or something. I will be submiting a statement to the credit card company saying mom is not responsible for the debt and this person is. Then I will be done with it. Let them sort it all out.

Anyways, life goes on. Holly is getting bigger. She is 16 weeks now but we won't find out the gender until the next sonogram which will be when she is 21 weeks along, even though we know they would be able to tell right now. We got the band room painted white so that we can paint it when we find out the gender. Holly got some maternity clothes and we are talking about getting things like carseats and the crib on craigslist. I think around 7 months is when we will have a baby shower. Hopefully we will get some useful stuff in it. Having a baby is expensive nowadays. Thank God I got medical insurance. Anyways, how was your weekend?

Ah so you might be wondering what happened at my nucular stress test. Plano Heart Center was very professional. I go in and fill out the forms and then quickly get seen. They weigh me and I get to see that I am now at 282, my biggest weight ever. Then they give me an IV of radio active material. Then I go in and lie down on this machine with my hands above my head. They have this spinning thing that takes pictures of my heart for like 15 minutes. I think I dozed off during it. Then they hook me up to an EKG and have me go and run on a treadmill for as hard as I can. I lasted 7 minutes. The lady said I should have at least gone 15 minutes. I am outta shape and got told what I need to do diet and exercise wise. She also had to shave part of my chest to put the EKG things on it. I look like a balding dog. It'll grow back in a few days. Then after the stress test while my heart is beating fast they have me go lay down at the machine again while they scan my heart for another 15 minutes.

Then they take me over to the sonogram machine and make a songogram of my heart. I told the doc I just saw something like this when my pregnant wife went to get checked. Then the doc gave my results. My (EF)Ejection Fraction is 67. That is perfectly normal as it should be between 55-75. There is nothing wrong with my heart. Thank God. She did see how my blood pressure is always at 130/90 and thinks the chest pains may be related to high blood pressure so she upped my dose of blood pressure medicine. Let's see if that works. If not my chest pains may be an ulcer or a daily muscle spasm. Personally I now think it is the daily muscle spasm. Some people say those are caused by stress. I know I have been stressed with my job situation the past three months and have gained 15 pounds, but everything should be calmed down by now. We shall see. All in all I am glad my heart is OK. I guess nothing is stopping me from all out exercise, except for my mind of course.

But I am changing my mind. I have to see things in a different perspective. I notice from things like the biggest loser and those morbidly obese shows on Discovery that fat people get told to diet and exercise till they are blue in the face and they just don't listen and take what they are told to heart. It is because they don't listen like that and I am like that. You cannot be told. Change has to come from within. For me it is the logical equations that are hard to deny. I am gluttonous because I have a no self-control in eating. In order to have self-control I need to be serious about controlling what I eat and how I exercise. I need to use the word "enough!" whenever I eat and order food. I have to be empowered to change and I have to do it myself. I am empowered to change because I will not let laziness and taste buds deny my efforts to lose weight. I have to find something enjoyable about dieting and exercising and become obsessed about that and use that to motivate me. I will not fail.

So I sleep in through my alarm today. Luckily I already had requested time off to go to the cardio doctor since I have an appointment at 11:30. First let me setup the story. I have for years been getting 10-15 calls a day on my home phone. Usually they are hangups and charities wanting money. I think it relates back to when I had "yesitis" and said yes to anyone that asked. So these past couple of months I have turned off my answering machine and set it to fax. It actually worked and now we only get 2-4 calls a day on the phone. So I get in this morning and the lady says "we tried to contact you, the doctor had a death in the family and can't do it. We will need to reschedule for the end of next month." So I am thinking this is ridiculous. So I get on my iPhone and type in "cardiologist" and it pops up with someone in the same building. Since I was already in a medical center so I go walking down the hall to the plano heart center and they said they can see me tomorrow from 11 to 1. So now I get to take tomorrow morning off as well to go this appointment. Right away they seemed more professional. I am going to do a nuclear stress test where they inject dye into me and I run on a treadmill and then they scan me and get a 3d image of my heart. Then they will tell me the results. That should be neat. I hope I'll be cleared to play softball that evening. We shall see.

So there I was in high school. I had just gotten out of one class and was going to another when I realized I was barefoot. So I went to my locker but I couldn't remember where it was, I just knew it was right next to a door. So I went door to door and eventually found my locker. I opened it up and the only shoes I had was part of a scuba suit. So I put the scuba shoes on and dragged the scuba suit behind me. I had to walk outside to get to my next class. When I was about to open the door I remembered I had forgotten my books and notebook. I knew I would be late but I had to go back to my locker to get it. I figured it was better to be late and prepared than not be late and not be prepared. So I went back and got my stuff. Finally I open the door 10 minutes late. The teacher looks at me and says,"you being late is unacceptable". I then proceed to tell her the tale I just told you. Obviously I didn't care if it was unacceptable or not. There was nothing the teacher could do. I had a good excuse. So then I woke up, remembering that I am no longer in high school and no longer care about such trivialities.

This dream is tied to me going through all of my stuff this weekend and finding all of my old high school stuff, as well as reconnecting with high school people on facebook. It is also connected to when I was told writing "I forgot to fill it in" on my timesheet was unacceptable and thinking "whether or not it is unacceptable, it is the truth." It all combined into my neurons and came out as a dream last night. Now the whole scuba shoes and being barefoot. I don't know where that came from... Wait, I think I was barefoot when I was throwing stuff away. It's amazing what the inner mind retains...

On Friday Holly and I went to Putt-Putt and golfed and I stepped into the batting cage. I was able to connect with the ball, but it really can hurt the hands and wrist. I need practice for Thursday, my first time ever to play softball. It takes place at 9PM at the church fields.

On Saturday we went and got paint at the store for the baby room and rented some movies at walmart's red box. Why? Those movies cost only $1 to rent. It is much better than blockbuster and even pay per view. We decided to go the tame movie route and got Beverly Hills Chiquaqua and Madagascar 2. Bev hills was good and I fell asleep in Madagascar 2. Sunday we did the usual. Today and tomorrow my Russian handyman is getting all of the glue off of the walls and painting the baby room white and replacing the window. The band room has been moved back into the loft. It almost makes we want to set it up and start playing again. I just might. How was your weekend.

Well after my last post I determined it was a cold and not allergies. Simply because I started getting real weak and a little quesy. So I took off work early went home and slept for 3 hours then got another 9 in making it a total of 12 hours sleep. I also took some Tylenol cold and sinus medicine and took a drink of that nighttime cold remedy made by teachers. The one made by doctors is probably better. As I awoke this morning I still felt weak but I could breathe. So I am back at work learning how to design a good Windows interface. One of the things I love to do is learn on my own. I think that is how this whole thing got started when I was 9 and we had the Apple IIe. Mom got me some computer books and I would read them over and over and work every single example. It was fun typing them in and seeing what it would do. Now that I look back I was reading books that were college level and I didn't realize it. Maybe we'll give our kid the theory of relativity at age 4. See what happens... Some parents like to show their kid off doing math and the alphabet and reciting Bible verses. I think it would be cool to recite theoretical physics or the quadratic formula at age 4. Nah, I don't want to be pushy. I'd be happy if the kid knew its name. Have a good weekend!

So my head is all stuffy. How in the world do you know if you have a cold versus allergies? The weather is 80 today and we are in for a hot summer. When the weather changes alot of people get allergies and get colds. I think maybe if you have something else than just sneezing and a stuffed head then that counts as a cold. I just had vietnamese pho soup for lunch, or in my terms - chicken noodle soup. That cleared things up for 10 minutes. Having a stuffed up head does some interesting things with the sleep apnea machine. It blows everything deep in your head and at times can cause you to wake up in the middle of the night, like last night, gasping. I do have two separate masks, one nasal and the other full face one. The full face one is just uncomfortable but allows the mouth to breathe. Next Wednesday I get to get a heart exam. How do you know if your squeezing chest pain is a heart attack or an ulcer? I suppose if you don't die from it, it is something else. Anyways, that is my health. Better safe than sorry I always say.

Nothing new to report. I was thinking the other day about all of my Facebook friends. It is like I have not heard anything from them since high school 15 years ago and now I see daily status updates. Talk about freaky. Most of them are married and have kids. There are still a few stragglers here and there. About a quarter of them still live in Wichita Falls. I could not imagine living there at this age. It is like time stands still there. Nothing changes and there is always nothing to do. It was an ok place growing up but most people there do live in the past, reliving some kind of glory days. I was never like that. Even in high school I dreamed of being free to live on my own. I accomplished that goal. Now, college was where the real fun was at, and yet I dreamt of being in the real world without having to study. Now that I am here I can see we really did have alot of free time in college, we just didn't realize it. My time was spent playing guitar, video games and magic card games. There is a reason why young 20 somethings are good at video games - that is what they train themselves to do. I popped in Dracula Unleashed the Game the other day and died rather easily. If memory serves me correct Peetey and Mr.T spent months solving that game. But as I look to the past and the glory days of beating a game I still get this feeling like something was missing - why didn't I beat Bayou Billy?

So on Friday Holly went to her first geekfest. It was better than the average geekfest as there were many rooms with events like learning how to do Japanese dancing, learning about caring forball-joint dolls, belly dancers, and a room with people riffing(we watched an episode of Star Trek TNG with people cracking obscene jokes the whole time). Then we left, but later in the evening they were going to have Rocky Horror played with a team of people who do the acting out. Apparently that weekend there was events in 5 separate locations like costume contests and Miss Star Wars. On Saturday we went to Benz's kid's birthday party and hung out. Later that evening we went to an Irish Pub and watched an Irish band play. Sunday we did the usual and ended up at Main Event bowling with some friends. Monday morning we had our doctors appointments and we thought Holly was getting a sonogram but that won't be until May. We did hear the baby's heartbeat. The doctor was like - it keeps moving, there it is, everything is fine. We heard Holly's and the baby's at the same time. Things are getting more real. I think her odds of miscarriage are really down now to like 4%. This is really happening. So last night Mr.T came over and helped me move all of my band stuff out of the band room and ripped all of the sound proofing off of the walls. We need to take a before picture. The nesting has begun.

So there is this article on the annoying habits of geeks:
http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2009/03/10-annoying-hab.html

I think I have alot of them. My favorite one is to pull out the iPhone and answer someone's question: Is that the guy who played in that movie? Before I used to use my old standby of Dabney Coleman and now I jump over to imdb.com and tell people who it is. Or say we are looking for a treadmill. I'll go to google maps on the iPhone and the gps will find my location then I will type "althetic equipment" in the search box and it will find all althletic stores nearby. It is useful. It's like you don't have to think and can find places where you would never go. For instance when we were in L.A. a year ago we put in the GPS our hotel location and just drove around and didn't care where we were going and then when it was time to go home the GPS directed us back. I just got back from lunch and used the iPhone app Joost to watch an episode of Welcome Back Cotter. You know up until this month I had never seen an episode (it was a comedy back in the 70s with John Travolta in it) They also have episodes of Gilligan's Island, Freinds and Growing Pains. I guess it might annoy people at the restaurant, but I do wear headphones.

As far as dissecting movies, both me and Holly are good at that. Mom laughs at us when we talk back to the movie(usually they are lifetime movies) because of how stupid those movies are. Even the latest Watchmen movie, the world's smartest person had a password that was cracked in 3 attempts. I am like, that is ridiculous. Smartest person my foot. As far as geeky T-Shirts, I do own a star trek shirt and some star wars shirts and some microsoft shirts, so yes I can get my geek on. As far as requiring extra room for geeky things I am proud to say I still have some star wars stuff in the living room. As far as needing to watch a show to avoid spoilers the only thing is football because everyone always says the score of the game. But I don't think football can be counted as being geeky.

Anyways, I am a geek and am proud of it. In other news we are having our next sonogram on Monday so wish us luck!

Here are some of the things I like in no particular order:
The wife and all her pleasures
our families
our friends
programming
church and Sunday school
guys night
Star Wars
Star Trek
sleep
waking up whenever I am ready
burgers
brazillian
steak
pizza
scuba diving
fishing
the outdoors when temps are good
vacations
Christmas
swimming
playing guitar
making music
blues rock, christian rock, worship music, classic rock, shredding
guitarists
making websites
thinking up businesses
playing the wii
my iphone and all its uses
my 400 DVD collection
my mp3 collection
both our Altima and Pilot
movies that are good
when people are honest but not brutal
people who are warm and loving
68 degree weather
relaxing and being at peace
fond childhood memories
grilling good meat
Fav TV shows: Seinfeld, Worst Week, Smallville, 90210, Lost
Writing blog posts

There is more but as you can see my life is pretty simple. What is on
your list?

So. Not much happening. Just workin alot, fixing bugs, taking names. I
am coming on the new lifestyle of being a parent. Maybe I should do
something wild and spontanous before The birth. Holly has her spring
break next week. I think that is when the band room gets tranformed
into the baby room. Maybe I should do some nesting as well. Like,
prepare a video baby monitor system or something. Or go out and build
a custom crib or something. Thoughts?

Daylight savings time has messed me up. Last night I barely got any
sleep yet I was still late for meeting #1 of the day. I just got
through with meeting #2 and will spend the afternoon at meeting #3.
Then, since upper management is in town I will go to happy hour/
meeting #4. I will probably fall asleep in meeting #3 so I should
position myself on a cormer or something and hope I don't snore. How
is your work day?

Quick update. Went to see Watchman on Firday. I'd give it 2 out of 5 stars. A little slow and confusing. Also, another movie with yakking and sh-longs. Saturday we actually cleaned up a little. We staying in and watched a Jackie Chan movie. Sunday we went to a baby shower. Yes, those things are now co-ed. I better get used to that stuff anyways. Holly is doing well. How was your weekend?

So what is the latest? I have a new softball glove and am now getting ready to play softball for our married's sunday school class. It is going to be interesting. I told them all it would be counted as a miracle if I actually hit the ball. So my goals will be the following: 1. don't get hit in the face or fingers with a softball and 2. don't have a heart attack while playing and 3. try to hit the ball. If I can accomplish those three goals I will be the greatest softball player ever. I remember seeing at least 3 people with softball injuries. I think they were all women and they came in looking all beat up with stiches in their face. Naturally people always think - is she being abused?  even though they are not. Like if I got hit in the face with a softball people would see my black eye and say - did he get into a bar fight? Anyways, softball combined with our treadmill should get me in shape to run around and chase after our kids. Maybe. I haven't clocked the speed of the average toddler so who knows.

 

In other news, Holly surprised me last night with a chocolate dessert and a massage. I have a book of love coupons from Valentines day and I redeemed some. It was relaxing, just what I needed. And people nowadays say marriage is illogical...I do forget sometimes that this is the good times because I am so career oriented and fret over stupid things at work. Reality is, work comes and goes, but life needs to be lived. We should all be enjoying life, having fun and not worry about stupid things. It is easy to say now that I have a job, but I need to be reminded of this when things are bleak. So make sure to remind me ;-) I know Holly will remind me ;-)

As spring break is coming up for Holly, I had a flashback to a funny moment back in high school, one that could've made America's Funniest Home Videos. It was spring break of 1992. Me, Peetey, Kristen, my sister, Jeff and mom and Robbie packed up the van and headed to California. It was at a rest stop in Arizona where our tarp on top of the van was messed up. So naturally Kristen and Melinda get out to fix it. I grab the camcorder and start walking around saying some dialoge:
Me: "Here we are in New Mexico. Kristin is up on the roof fixing the tarp."
Melinda: "And Brian is doing nothing as usual"
Me: "Ah, but I am the supervisor, I am making sure things get done."
Jeff: "So your the supervisor? Who's going to supervise the supervisor?"
So I start to walk around and look at the other cars there. I notice a car with a perfect looking tarp on top of it. "Look at that tarp over there. That's a good looking tarp. Let's get it together people!" Kristen looks at me with a stern look as I move the camcorder back and forth to show the viewer at home,"Look at their tarp! Look at our tarp!" I repeat several times. Finally at the end when Kristen gets down I say,"But it doesn't look like the others!" and get more looks.
I just remember watching it back with everyone and hearing people laugh at the situation and my dialogue. I was just stating the obvious. Let's get it together people!

As I am busy at work I don't have much to say. This weekend we went to Wichita to take mom out for her birthday. I'll give you a guess where... IHOP. I think Holly knows the entire wait staff there now. Anyways, life goes on. Before you know I will be a dad. Hopefully a good one. How was your weekend.