A Scattered Brain

I know you have all ready this article: Mystery Donors Give Over $45M to 9 Universities and have been wondering who it could have been.  I am afraid it may be given away because of the way the money was given.

The gifts ranged from $8 million at Purdue to $1.5 million donated to the University of North Carolina at Asheville. The University of Iowa received $7 million; the University of Southern Mississippi, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the University of Maryland University College got $6 million each; the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs was given $5.5 million; and Penn State-Harrisburg received $3 million.

I wanted to give it all to Purdue but was afraid that you’d all catch on too quickly.  I just had an extra $45M lying around and said, what the heck, let’s give it to some schools. Of course the article mentions that they weren’t supposed to try and find the donor (me, of course) but aren’t they trying to find me by running the article to begin with.  It appears Purdue was one to actually keep its promise by not submitting comments for this article.

I have half a mind to ask for that money back, but it was so hard to arrange anonymously the first time, that getting it back would probably prove way too difficult.  Just remember universities, say nothing more!

NOTE: THIS IS JUST A JOKE, I AM NOT THE DONOR.  How sad is that; most people can’t take a joke so to be safe, I’m adding this kind of qualifier?

Greetings friends,

I have worn contacts on and off (mostly off lately) since I was in 6th grade.  When I wear them, I’ve never had any real problem with them and my eyes tend to take to them fairly well.  The only issue as I’ve gotten older is the lack in desire to put them in and take them out each day.  It’s hard to put my finger in my eye around 5:00 am.

I had heard about extended wear contacts but had never inquired about them with my eye doctor.  My yearly exam was yesterday so I thought I’d ask.  He told me my current lenses were approved for extended wear and told me to wear them for a week, take a break overnight, and then wear them for another week before throwing them away.  I can sleep in them and everything.

Excited, I put in a new pair yesterday and am seeing how this works out.  For the first time, I slept overnight in my contacts.  It was a bit strange.  When I woke up in the middle of the night, I could see; and this morning could see the alarm clock time without squinting.  So far, other than my eyes feeling a little dry periodically (I’ll pick up some drops the next time I’m at the store as it isn’t a major issue at this point) I’m liking it. Of course, it will take a few weeks to really determine if this will work for me.

As part of our goal to get healthier and lose weight, both Kylah and I had wanted to find something we could do to have a more steady workout.  We thought about a gym membership but that isn’t overly feasible since we’d have to go at different times in order to watch Connor.  I have my bowling but that is only once a week and while helpful, isn’t the best way to really help get in shape.  We wanted something we could do together, at home, and not too expensive.

Enter the Wii Fit.  After a couple of weeks of looking for one and stores sold out, we finally got one yesterday.  The process starts with analyzing your balance and taking your weight to calculate your BMI.  From there, you can set a goal; and start your training in four different areas.  Yoga, which helps with stretching and breathing; Strength, nothing with weights, rather using the Wii Board and your body; Aerobics, get that heart rate pumping; and Balance, exercises to help improve posture and coordination.

After we both got our first body analysis, we went through some of the exercises.  It was actually quite a workout and fairly difficult.  The board is very sensitive so maintaining good form throughout is essential and tricky.  There is a bit of a learning curve, but we like what we see so far.  We finished up doing a two person run which really got our heart rates up.  Our plan is to each do a workout on the Wii every evening after we put Connor to bed and before we relax/watch TV for the evening.

Nintendo has really stretched the limits with their Wii console.  They came up with ideas that are so nice and fresh to help get people active while playing video games.  I’m quite impressed with a lot of the things they are coming up with.

Last night I had one of my better nights of recent memory.  I had 215, 218, 140 for a 573 series.  The first two games were as good as the scores indicate with only one bad miss between both of them.  The last game, despite the score, also only had one bad spare miss.  The lane conditions had really changed, and no matter how I moved, I kept coming high and leaving some weird spares.  I even tried to take a deep line and yes, threw a first ball gutter; and it was right where I was aiming, but didn’t recover at all and slid off.  I don’t know if I should have changed balls or what, and maybe I’m too afraid to move left of center on the approach.  I’ll have to figure out what to do when the lanes break down like that.

I also wanted to go ahead and use this space to do my New Year’s Resolution Update:

• Weight: 204.4; Only lost a bit and that can be considered standard fluctuation so no real loss this month. We did have a lot of company and I’ve been eating dessert quite a bit this month, so no gain is probably just as good as loss would have been.
• Devotional: Weekends are still tougher but getting better.  Weekdays are still pretty good but sometimes I rush through more than I should.
• Bowling blog: I think I wrote, even if shortly, about each week this month so that’s good.  Also the last two weeks have seen my average going back up and that’s always good. 🙂

Overall grade: B.  Still room for improvement, but staying with all three through 2 months is better than I’ve been able to do usually.

In my efforts to maintain my New Year’s Resolutions; I want to give the following update on all three:

• Daily Devotional – I’m still finding it harder on the weekends than the weekdays so that is something still to work on.  On the weekdays, I do it nearly first thing in the morning; that isn’t as easily an option as often times I’m getting Connor up first thing.  Perhaps on weekends I should do it just after putting Connor to bed.  I hadn’t thought of that before but will try that from now on.
• Weight Loss – This is still going well.  I weighed in at 204.6 tonight so another 3 lbs or so this month.  I will be excited if / when I break under the 200 mark, but still have the goal of 190 by year’s end.
• Bowling Blog – I missed this past week of bowling so nothing there.  I hope to post again on Thursday after this week’s league session.

So, overall I’d give myself a B-.  Still areas to work on going forward, but want to remain accountable so I will continue these monthly updates.

On a couple of other quick notes:

1. NCAA Tournament site for 2009 is taking shape.  I’ve added in new visual styles for results and picks viewing that took quite a while to build but helps make the site even more dynamic and will allow me to reduce the amount of data that I have to FTP each time there are updates.  I’m more excited about March Madness than many and really hope the website does it justice this year.

2. This president is just doing a bang up job, now isn’t he? He’s everything I hoped for and so much better (exchange hoped for feared and better for worse, of course).  Nice job on an $800 billion stimulus package where almost all of it is just bloated spending and has no chance of helping the economy.  Here’s an idea: get out of the way and let the economy fix itself as it usually does.  The last time a president tried to fix an economy through wreckless spending we sunk even more into the Great Depression.  I just hope we don’t need another world war to get us out of this one… any more and I should make this a topic by itself. 🙂

Take care everyone!

Greetings to all of my friends and family and Happy New Year.

I’ve never really been big into resolutions since most I’m sure are broken each year.  But for some reason, I feel like setting some this year.  More importantly, to help hold myself accountable, I want to make mine public.

Here they are in no particular order of importance:

• Daily Devotional – Most days this past year, I would read “Our Daily Bread” online.  I want to make that more of an automatic habit each day.
• Continue to lose weight.  My all time high was 263 lbs about 3 years ago.  Since then, through moderation, and don’t laugh, bowling, I’ve dropped about 55 pounds to around 208.  I would like to continue this trend even though it may start getting tougher here soon.  If I could be around 190-195 by next year, I’d be ecstatic.  I will settle with going under the 200 mark since I can’t remember when.
• Bowling Blog.  I hope to start it back up after next Wednesday’s night.  While I’ve kept track of scores, I’ve not done much reflecting and that always helps to improve.

Those are the three things I want to work on most this year.  Hopefully I’ll post more regularly too, and the bowling posts should help out with that.

I hope everyone has a healthy and happy New Year.

Greetings to you all.  I know it has been a long time since I’ve posted and I apologize for that.  There are many reasons for the lack of posting, but most of them come back to just being too lazy to write about something in a timely manner.  I had lots of great comments about the election season, the bail outs, sports, and life in general, but they’ve all stayed up in my head.

I probably won’t post again this year, but wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and my New Year’s Resolution will be to write on a regular basis.  Even if that means just bringing back my bowling summaries. 🙂  Take care and be safe and we’ll see you next year!

Second verse, same as the first?

Well, not exactly, but close enough.  I’ve decided that Houston doesn’t like me.  Yesterday, I had another client in Houston that I had to fly out to meet with.  I scheduled the same flights as before so that I could do all of my travel in one day.  Last time, if you recall, my flight was stranded mid-air and we were diverted to Austin and I missed my meeting and flew straight home as soon as I finally landed in Houston.  This experience wasn’t quite that bad, but it wasn’t good either.

The flight from Vegas to Houston was uneventful and we even arrived a little early.  Great.  I was able to meet up with my co-worker and we got to the meeting and the meeting went well.  Great.  Afterward, got to have Chick-Fil-A to eat.  AWESOME!!! Highlight of the day!  Got to the airport to fly home… and this is where the story unravels once again.

My plane was supposed to leave around 6:44 pm CDT and arrive in Vegas at 7:52 PDT.  I would have gotten home before 9:00 easily and still had some time to relax before bed.  Around 6:30, we hadn’t boarded yet and they finally changed the departure time from 6:44 to 7:16.   Not a big deal, that happens.  We board the plane and after everyone is on and they’ve closed the door, we get an announcement.  “Thank you for flying with us, we’ll be at the gate here for 30 minutes or so.”  Upsetting but whatever.  30 minutes pass by and the voice comes over, (using valley girl paraphrasing from our captain) “Umm, yeah, like there are 4 planes behind us blocking us in so, like, we’ll be another 30 minutes here.  Y’all can use your cell phones if you want to call anyone… oh and by the way, once we pull from the gate, we’ll taxi for about another hour before we take off, there were like, awesome storms that came through.  Totally cool, huh?”

About 45 minutes later we push from the gate and get the message (no paraphrasing). “Greetings from the flight deck, we’ve pushed from the gate.  You can probably feel us moving now.  It’ll still be about an hour before we take off as there are a lot of flights ahead of us due to the storm that passed by.”  That’s great, come on the speaker just AFTER we start moving to tell us we’re moving.  Our captain was a real winner, I think she liked the sound of her voice on the PA.

Now we’re on taxi and again the captain comes online and says, “If you’re on the left side of the plane you can probably see the really long line of planes we’re behind and that magnificent storm in the distance.”  I don’t care.  We’re on the taxi with the engines off, it doesn’t really matter how many planes are ahead of us.

30 minutes later, still on the taxi, the captain graces us with her presence again, “I’ve been asked to move the plane up so I’m going to start the engines and move.”  Did we really need to hear that?  Come on.  Around this time, almost 2 hours of sitting on the plane, they come around and offer a glass of water.  Great customer service.  Couldn’t they have at least run some programming on the TV’s during this wait; or even better not board the darn plane until we could have pushed away.  Continental’s customer service leaves much to be desired from my last two experiences.  It’s one thing to have delays, but the way the staff handles them could make things much more bearable.  Continental gets a D for service.

40 minutes later we’re taking off and I seriously hear clapping behind me.  What the ??? You’re clapping because we’re taking off 2 and a half hours late?  What an accomplishment!  As we’re just getting airborne, the flight attendant comes on and says, “Thanks for handling the short delay, we appreciate your business.”  Short delay, as if to say it could have been worse; which yes, it could have, but don’t try to placate me by pointing that out.  We took off around the time I should have been landing in Vegas.

The flight was uneventful from that point and I got home around 11:00.  Missed the entire Celtics game and any reasonable time with Kylah before bed.  Houston just doesn’t like me apparently.

I’m sure that when the time comes to fly again to Houston, I’ll be able to complete a saga.  Stay tuned!

So now comes the final chapter in our house hunting adventure… we finally moved in yesterday.  There were issues with worry all the way up until last Friday when things finally recorded.  Title was still working on some money issues due to a rate lock extension and the seller had forgotten to sign some documents but those all got worked out in the nick of time.

Originally, our plan was to rent a truck and move ourselves.  We had thought about hiring movers but decided against it.  Last week we changed our mind and did hire some movers… boy was that the smart thing.  Without them there is no chance we would have gotten everything over in one day.  No chance.

Even with the movers, Kylah and I were busy moving smaller stuff and keeping things organized.  Connor and Grandpa spent the day together hanging out at the houses.  Grandpa was amazing to keep company with Connor and Connor was just the bestest little boy in the world.  He took one nap in his stroller after he had been up for 5 hours and didn’t complain at all.  His second nap was in the new house just as soon as we got the crib and even though it was a new house and totally new environment, he went down like a champ!  I couldn’t have been any prouder.

There are still some outstanding issues.  We are getting our RO system serviced and Cable phone installed today.  We will need to get garage door openers and a mail key.  With bank repos, many of those types of items get lost in the shuffle and it is up to the new owners to correct.  Something we’ll take care of soon but at least we are all moved in.

Overall, we are over a major hump and that is very satisfying.  The new house already seems to fit us well and I’m excited to be there for many years to come.

So after the last two months of looking, submitting offers, waiting on very slow banks, and a lot of headache and frustration; we finally signed our paperwork yesterday afternoon.  We still have to wait a bit for (you guessed it) the bank to sign their part but it looks to be a done deal.

Our original plan had us moving today but that can’t happen so now we’ll look to move near the beginning of June.  Hopefully nothing more will hold this up.  Once we move we can more aggressively market our current house for rent or sale.

I’ll be so glad when this is all over.  I really thought the buying process would have been easier this time than last.  It wasn’t… different headaches, but still headaches one after another.