Awesome!!!

My previous post got a tad maudlin, so I offer you all this to balance things out.



And yes, I do realize I'm giving Verizon free advertising by posting this.

To Do List

Year 38 begins today, and here's what I still have to do. According to the Magic 8-Ball I had as a kid, I have 11 years left to get it all done.

* Learn to play the guitar, and play it well. It would extra nice if I could rock out on an electric guitar, but I'll settle for strumming chrods on an acoustic. Guitar Hero, while awesome, does not count towards this goal.

* Visit all 50 states. This means actually stepping foot in each of them. Airports don't count (leaving Minnesota and Texas officially unvisited.) Nor does driving through without stopping (Rhode Island: not on the visited list.) And flying over them at 10,000+ feet is way out (leaving Utah, Arizona, both Carolinas, at least one Dakota (South), and maybe Wisconsin Wyoming, New Mexico, Arkansas and Maine on the to-do list.)

Currently, I'm more than halfway there. With Nevada being added over Christmas, I'm now at 28 states visited or lived in. I could have potentially made it 29 with a trip over the Hoover Dam and into Arizona (and stopping for lunch there instead of Boulder City,) but traffic kept that from happening.

* Run a marathon. Has it really been 10 years since I became dead-set on this? Well, no, it's been nine years and a few months, but saying ten years is close enough. I started training for the 2000 North Central Trail Marathon (an almost completely flat course) in the Fall of 1998. And then Winter 1998-99 came along and I stopped running. I seriously need to move to a warmer climate.

At this point, I'd say I have my work cut out for me on this one. I'm about 40 pounds overweight, and my knees are bad. But who knows what I can pull off if I can just get off my lazy butt. And move to someplace warmer.

* Get my mile time back under six minutes. I managed to get under 7 minutes (or was it 8?) about five or six or seven years ago, so I know there's a chance. I doubt I'll get back under five minutes ever again, but if I can get to sub-six, I'll revisit the possibility.

Hell, I'll settle for sub-seven, really.

* See my daughter graduate college, get married, and give me grandchildren (if that's what PG wants to do, of course.) The 8-Ball says I'll be checking out at 48, when PG is a mere 12 years old (and she dang well better not have given me any grandchildren by that point,) but I'm willing to take the prediction with a grain of salt. Which means I still have some control over how long I live, so I have to start taking better care of myself. Did I mention I'm 40 pounds overweight? I get out of breath from just walking these days!

* And, of course, the short-term stuff. Find a new job, clean up the boxes so I can get a Wii, get the next batch of PG pictures captioned and uploaded, figure out the issue my video editing software is having with my computer. That sort of stuff.

Two Words: Aw. Yeah.

Between this and Iron Man, it could be a very good May this year.



I got this from Yahoo Movies. You can see a larger version (HD versions too) there.

Civic Responsibility Begins In The Cradle

Yesterday were the primary elections in Maryland, and, despite the snow and ice storm going on, we went out and did some voting.

I got to come home early from work because of the storm, and thus was able to go to the polls with M and PG when they went. And so, PG's first trip to the polls was a family affair.

Not much to tell about it, actually. I voted for my candidate, M voted for hers. One of us voted for the eventual winner one-handed while holding PG in the other arm. So she may be able to say that she helped vote for the 44th President of The USofA.

After voting, the election judge put the "I Voted" sticker on PG, even though PG did not, in fact, vote. If she had, she probably would have thrown her vote away on Elmo or something. Though I must admit, Elmo's pro-sharing platform does have its appeal.

It's All In The Motivation

When M and I were moving into our first house together, back in November 2005, I made an effort to cut down on my possessions - mostly old magazines and video tapes - but I ran out of time. So I packed up the remaining stuff in boxes and promised I'd get back to sorting through it all and throwing out stuff at the new house.

So it's now February 2008, and most of the stuff is still in boxes in our laundry room, taking up space. I find its presence annoying and inconvenient (probably not as much as M does,) but I have so many other things I like to do, and the boxes always just get put off for later, y'know?

But then M and I went to my cousin's house this past weekend and played a lot on his Nintendo Wii. We really liked it, and M, possibly impulsively, told me that if I get the boxes taken care of, we can get a Wii of our own. With Guitar Hero.

So my plans for the next couple of weeks are to work on the boxes every night. If I hurry, I could have Guitar Hero in time for my birthday!!!

Surfing The Wave of A New Era or Just Drinking The Kool-Aid?

It's Primary Election day here in Maryland, and, for the first time since we've known each other, M and I will be voting differently. I try not to make things political around here, so I won't say who's voting for whom, though my enigmatic post title might shed some light on my choice.

I can't speak for M, but I'm cool with either her candidate or mine. I just like one of 'em better, that's all. I just hope I'm making the right choice.

I probably shouldn't worry - any of the three remaining front-runners is an improvement over the current situation. I just hope the Little Right-Winger That Could doesn't pull off anything miraculous at the last minute.

Fourth Times The... Nah, I'm Just Kidding With Ya

It took about three weeks, three oral antibiotics, three injections of another antibiotic (my word, how she hated those,) and something like five or six visits to the doctor before we could finally put the whole ear infection business behind us. And thank goodness it came to an end when it did, since the next step was to put tubes in PrettyGirl's ears.

The doctor is hopeful that, with winter coming to a close soon, PG will be spared further ear infections this season and will mature enough over the next few months that next winter will not bring with it more ear infection fun and the need for those tubes. Dare to dream.

There was some concern that PG would be so used to waking up in pain several times a night and being soothed back to sleep by Mommie and Daddy that she would continue to wake up a lot, even without the pain, and that we would have to get her used to falling back to sleep on her own again. I'd probably jinx things if I told you how long it took for her to get back to sleeping all the way through the night (assuming that waking up at 5:30 AM counts as "all the way through,") so I'll just keep that bit o' info to myself.

Now all we have to deal with is the new tooth coming in and all the sneezing PG was doing this morning.

At some point during the whole ear ordeal, when I wasn't really much in the mood to give PG updates, she started crawling like crazy. So the salad days of being able to put her down somewhere and be fairly confident that she would stay where she was has come to an end. Sigh.

As an extra added bonus, she's pulling herself up on stuff. Did I really neglect to mention this before? It seems like she's been doing that forever now. It's rare to find her not standing up in her crib after she wakes up in the morning or after a nap. It's just a matter of time before she walks, now. I might find that preferable to crawling. It'll be easier to see where she is if she's on her feet and her head is sticking up over the furniture.

The Cold Is Piercing My Soul!

It's remarkable how cold, lousy weather will sap your motivation to do much of anything, including posting everything that's been going on to the blog. It's probably just a coincidence that I'm finally getting around to posting on a day where the temperature is almost 70 degrees, but then again, maybe it's not.

Anyway, more updates coming today. Or at least started today and posted sometime in the next few days/weeks/months/whenever another 70 degree day comes along.