8/19/08 - New York pictures, finally...

I am going to put these on Facebook as well, but not everyone has an account, so I'll put them here as well.


The view from the trolley car as we went over the river from Queens to Manhattan, a shot from inside Grand Central, Rockefeller Center and the accompanying massive tower.


Radio City Music Hall, Madison Square Garden, the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty and the Late Show Studios.



Personally, I was a little disappionted with Times Square. I don't know what I was expecting, but I wasn't as impressed as I thought I would be. It was really crowded, to the point of not really being able to enjoy anything. Plus, it was really dirty and there was a lot of construction going on which probably took away from the atmosphere. But here are a few pictures from the area, including shots of Hard Rock, MTV Studios (I think), what I believe was the ABC Studios and ESPN Zone.


On 5th Avenue is where we spent most of our time, walking back and forth between things we wanted to see. The first picture above is from right in the middle of the street. This was taken on a Sunday afternoon, but you can imagine this being much busier on week days. Of course, on this famed street is Tramp Tower (where there were actual trees growing on some of the overhangs), Tiffany & Co. (which was closed when we went by), and the Apple Cube.


I have proof that we were on Broadway, Park Avenue and Wall Street. I'm not sure why I didn't get one of 5th Aveneu. And of course the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street...which was MUCH larger than I realized...look at the size of that flag.


The first shot is another from 5th Avenue where not only was it strange to see a Best Buy and Circuit City store front like this, but for them to be right next door was even more odd. There was a Home Depot with a really fancy store front down the way, but I didn't get a picture of that. During one of our evening walks through town, we got to see the famous NYFD respond to a call in a grocery store that happended to be on the bottom floor of a mall...yes, a grocery store in the mall. The next picture is the wall of TVs at ESPN Zone. We were watching at least 8 different baseball games at once, plus a few other misc. sporting events going on. The last shot there is of my dad getting his first New York street vendor hot dog. Sadly, he didn't think it was as good as it was going to be. His next few purchases fromt he street vendors were much more satisfying though.



The main reason we went to NY was for the baseball games. This was the last year for both Shea Stadium and Yankee Stadium. We went to the afternoon game at Shea on Sunday where we watched Johan Santana throw a gem of a game against the Cardinals. During the game, Beltran made a leaping grab over the wall to rob a home run. It was Sportscenters top play of the day. Here you can see my dad posing, and then the four of us at Shea. The next picture is where we thought our seats were before we were asked to leave just as the first pitch was being delivered. The next shot is where our seats really were...quite a difference. We were all surprised to see that Mr. Met didn't forget about the little people as he made his way through the nosebleeds.




We went to the Yankees night game, where they got pounded by the Orioles as you can see by the shot of the scoreboard still early in the game. Although our seats did not allow us access to Monument Park, we could still see it pretty well as we were sitting virtually on top of it. The view for the game was pretty good as well considering we paid about 20 bucks for tickets that at game time were going for as much as $160. The fourth picture there is currently my desktop at work, I really like that picture. As you can see, my dad and I really had a great time for the whole week, and getting to see one of the last games at Yankee Stadium really topped off the entire weekend.

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8/13/08 - Great sporting events in history.

As a followup to my post about the 4 x 100m men's freestyle event, Here are some of the most emotional sporting events I can remember. There are other great moments, but these are the ones that I can recall that brought me nearly to tears due to the events leading up to and/or surrounding the moment itself.

- Obviously, the swimming event mentioned previously

- Kerri Strug's vault in 1996 on a virtually destroyed ankle.

- 1994 NCAA Basketball Championship when Scotty Thurman hit his three pointer to all but clinch the title for the Razorbacks

- 1993 World Series, Game 6 when Joe Carter, in the bottom of the 9th inning down by one run hit a three run homerun to win the series for the Blue Jays.

- Derek Redmond in 1992 finishing the 400m race helped by his father across the finish line after pulling his hamstring.

- 2007 Fiesta Bowl where underdog Boise State pulled out two trick plays to beat Oklahoma in overtime. Following the game, which was straight out of a movie and enough in and of itself to make the list, Ian Johnson proposed to his girlfriend.

Feel free to leave your own emotional sporting moments in the comments below.

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8/12/08 - Proud to be an American

Two nights ago, in the Olympics, I was able to witness quite possibly the greatest sporting event I can recall watching. Michael Phelps, Garrett Weber-Gale, Cullen Jones, and Jason Lezak put on an amazing show in front of the entire world. For those of you who have not heard, the French team was talking quite a bit of smack beforehand, primarly stating that "Americans? We are going to smash them, that is what we came here for."

Everything about the event was incredible in my eyes. From Phelps getting destroyed in the first leg, and then Weber-Gale taking the lead on the 2nd leg, followed by Jones losing the lead on the 3rd and then Lezak losing ground on the first half followed by a miracle comeback in the last 25m and then winning by .08 seconds on his last stretch.

The first five teams (USA, France, Australia, Italy and Sweden) all raced under the previous world record time. Followed by Canada who missed that mark by .03 seconds. According to Wikipedia, Lezak also swam the fastest split time at 46.06 in history, breaking the previous record by .6 seconds. In comparison, the current record for the 100m freestyle is 47.24 seconds set on the first leg of this race (previous record holder was Alain Bernard who made the quote mentioned at the top of this post and the anchor leg of the French team who was overtaken by Lezak).

Not only were the numbers staggering from the results of the event, but watching the race, even in replays (http://www.nbcolympics.com has the full coverage avialable. I would provide a direct link, but it is blocked here at work) is a huge adrenaline rush. Even coming into the final 50m, knowing that the US pulls out the win, it is amazing to watch Lezak come from almost no where to win it. Then, to watch Phelps and Weber-Gale cheering from the side of the pool and then watching the reactions of the entire American team...I just can't put it into words.

The one thing that needs to be mentioned is that Lezak won that race. The other swimmers held their own, but Lezak should have been awarded all four medals for his performance. Pat Forde at ESPN said it best, stating that if Phelps does go on to win all 8 gold medals and get his million dollar bonus from Speedo, 1/8th of that million should be in check to Lezak.

I wanted to post some of the most memorable sporting events, but this post is already too long. I'll leave that for my next post.

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8/5/08 - Nashville...really nice

So the last few weeks, I have spent quite a bit of time out of town. Olathe, New York and most recently, Nashville, TN. We had a softball tournament over there, and I had a great time. Although we lost all but one of the games (the only team we beat was without a doubt the worst team there), I felt like our team played well, tried hard and in general had a good time. There were moments when some of the team decided to act like babies, but that is to be expected.

After the weekend though, I was reminded how much I enjoy softball. In came at a great time considering that the tournament typically signals the end of the season for me. I'm hoping that my brother can get me on a coed team he is going to be playing on, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Makenna has started figuring out her tongue. She just likes to stick it out and hold it there for short periods of time. This past weekend, while Cristi was at work and I was bottle feeding her, she really started to realize what the bottle meant. Any time she was hungry and saw the bottle, her eyes got huge and she would start reaching for it. On top of that, she also started to figure out that she can hold the bottle on her own. She still needs a little bit of help keeping things under control, but she's got the right idea.

I still have plans on getting my New York pictures up, but bare with me, I'm a pretty busy guy and now that I'm back in town, I've got a lot of stuff to catch up on.

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7/31/08 - New York...not so great

I spent the last several days in New York City seeing the sites and taking in a ball game at both Yankee Stadium and Shea stadium. This is the last year for both stadiums, and so we wanted to see a game in each.

I'll have a longer write up when I get back from Nashville this weekend, but for now, we did have a good time, I just felt that New York was a let down from what I was expecting.

I'll have pictures also, which I will probably be hosting on facebook as opposed to on here. I haven't decided yet.

Although I did not get a picture of him, the most intersted person I came across was an older gentleman, I would say mid to late 50's probably about 5'6". He had a 10" spike of hair on the top of his head wearing a kilt and a long sleeve black shirt. He had big black army looking boots and on both of his arms had metal studded pads. Somehow, everyone else with me did not see this person so I am now beginning to wonder if I dreamed this guy up...I'm actually hoping that I did dream this guy up.

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7/18/08 - Things I miss...

- My stereo system that was originally in the minivan...yea...the 1986 Dodge Caravan.

- being young enough to not have a job, but old enough to be able to do stuff

- high school basketball, games, practices, travel, all of it...even the running

- the 1996 Chicago Bulls

- sub $1 gas prices

- my 1996 gmc sierra

- spending virtually all my time on hostboard.com

- Goldeneye for N64

- old school cartoons like roadrunner, tom and jerry and the original scooby doo

- Just for the heck of it...Vanilla Ice

- poker, Raw and Nitro, wrestling video games, monopoly, bowling, or whatever we felt like doing that night...not so much what we did...but knowing we could do whatever we wanted

- a flat stomach

- not needing to shave daily

-Saved By the Bell, especially kelly kapowski (thanks Jason, I can't believe I forgot this one)

If I think of more in the future, I'll add them to the list...feel free to add your own in the comments.

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7/15/08 - Easy Cheese does expire

Those with a light stomach, heart condition, pregnant women, children, pets, or those who enjoy the taste of easy cheese should read this post with caution...although not puke inducing, you might change your views on certain food products.

So the other day, I was in the kitchen at my office, looking for salt and pepper in the cabinets. I reached for what I thought was a salt container only to realize that it was Easy Cheese. It was in the back on a fairly high shelf, so I figured it had been there for a while. The first thing I checked was the expiration date, I saw June 28 and thought, "No big deal, if it takes this stuff years to go bad...a few days isn't going to hurt".

I haven't had easy cheese in forever, and it sounded really good so I took squirted a long string on my hand and ate it. It was fairly tasty although there was a bit of a...I'm not sure the word to use...a bit of a "funk". I wrote this off as being part of the flavor as this was a can of Cheddar Bacon. I figured that processed bacon flavor in processed cheese was probably the culprit.

Today, I decided that since it had expired, there was going to be no one in the office who would claim it and if they did, they would just throw it away and chastise me for wanting to eat expired food if I asked for the container. I took matters into my own hand. When I fixed my morning oatmeal and coffee, and stuck it in my pocket and came back to my cube to wait for my lunch...I couldn't wait.

Literally, I couldn't wait...a few minutes later I decided I had to try some more. I pulled it down from my food cabinet and took a nice big bite. While consuming this bite, I noticed that the flavor just wasn't really "cheddar bacon" at all. Still not wanting to admit it was bad after a few days past the expiration date, I had a second and third bite. At this point, I started reading the packaging and once again made it to the expiration date on the bottom of the can. Although I had accurately read and remembered the date of July 28, I had either misread or failed to notice the year affixed to said date. As soon as the "06" registered in my head, I began to very sick...

That funk was not due to the bacon flavoring, or the processed cheese flavor...but rather the flavoring of ancient easy cheese. To keep my sanity (and my lunch down), I have tried to believe that the brownish color in the cheese was due to the bacon flavoring, but the more I think about it, the more I'm afraid that the brown was just the aging process coming through in the color...

That boys and girls is the reason that they put expiration dates on packaging. Read them and read them carefully. If you are unsure what the numbers mean, you are probably better off just throwing it away...or putting it back in the cabinet for some other foolish soul to sample the joys of moldy, rancid processed cheese product.

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7/8/08 - Kansas....not that bad

I spent the last weekend in Olathe, KS with Phillip visiting friends from camp. I had a great time and we managed to get in quite a bit of tennis and a game of ultimate frisbee. We had an incredible game of Mau, played quite a bit of speed scrabble and several other games, some of which I've already forgotten. Even without the games though, it's always nice to be in the company of friends. Big ups to the entire Nelson family for being totally awesome...they let us stay on their couch and wound up feeding us for several meals while we were there...in fact I think all of the meals while we were there.

On a side note, I've lost about 10 pounds in the last three weeks or so, starting the day before I left for camp. I dropped below 170 last friday and lost another two while in Kansas somehow. I really don't want my weight to drop that much, but the location of the weight is the problem. Since I'm not lifting weights and adding mass in the right places, I'm going to have to settle with the loss for now.

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7/1/08 - No complaints here...

I've been in a pretty good mood the last couple of days. I'm not really sure what it is. I feel pretty stress free, and in fact, on Sunday, I spent quite a bit of time in the afternoon just floating in our pool (which I finally got put together and filled). I don't remember the last time I just laid around and did nothing (nothing as in no television or video games or some other form of stimulus). It was really nice, not including the nice sunburn I got.

Speaking of the pool, what a mess. I still don't have it completely leak free, but it's close enough that I'm happy with it. At some point this summer, I might decide to replace the hose and seal that is leaking, but I just can't be bothered with all the other stuff I had to do to get this far.

Sunday night, the family came over and we had a cookout thanks to Greg's big idea. We asked if the pool was ready, I said come on over, he said let's have a cookout. Four hours later everyone was at my door ready to grill out some food and swim for a little bit. We had a great time.

Makenna is four ounces away from 10 pounds, so that is a huge deal. She is supposed to be 11 pounds at her next appointment which is in two weeks, but a little over 10 pounds should be about right for her length from what we've read. Hopefully the doctor is satisfied and we can cut back some of her night feedings. That way not only will we both get a little more sleep at night, but Makenna hates having to get up every 3 hours. I overslept the other night and almost exactly four hours later, she was ready to eat. I can only imagine how important that extra hour would be for Cristi every night.

The weekend of the 4th is coming up, and I'm really looking forward to it. I have this Wednesday off as my flex day at work (we've started working four 10 hours days), and then I go in on Thursday, where we typically get off 2 hours early the day before a holiday. Friday we have off, which I plan on spending the morning and early afternoon with family, probably playing in the pool, grilling out some steak and just havinga good time. That afternoon, around 3:00 or so, Phillip and I will be headed up to Kansas City to hang out with a bunch of people from camp. We'll come back Sunday afternoon/night and then I'm taking off next Monday as my flex day to catch up on sleep and relax after the 14+ hours worth of driving over the weekend.

I'll save the rest of my summer plans for a later post, but I've got New York and Nashville coming up pretty soon.

Huge news...a really good friend of mine from Australia, who we jokingly refer to each other as "internet husband and wife" (and yes, Cristi knows all about her) just told me that she and her current boyfriend are planning a trip to America sometime in 2010. They will be in new york and las vegas, but that's probably as close as we will ever be, so I'm thinking I might see if cristi wants to travel around the same time to be closer so we could actually meet in person. that's a long shot, but it was really exciting news for me.

I've got a few pictures I need to put up including Makenna and her first boyfriend as well as a few pictures that my mom has apparently taken over the last several weeks. Cristi was telling me that there are some really good ones of Makenna smiling and laughing. Last, but not least, several weeks ago, we had some professional pictures taken of Makenna by a friend of Cristi's. As part of the sitting fee, she is willing to shoot anything, so since Cristi's mom and grandma were in town, they got a few family shots. Here is a link to the flickr page of all the shots. If you are interested in ordering any of the pictures, leave a comment, call me or send me an email, I can get you the order forms and stuff. Here is the main link...and here's my favorite

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6/23/08 - I'm back...

I'm back from camp and I am very refreshed mentally. That is of course until I got to work and within 30 minutes, my stress level increased tenfold. I had a great time. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this was the best year I've ever had as staff. We had tons of people helping out in games which allowed everyone to relax a little more than in years past. I made some great new friends and got to hang out with old ones. I managed to get a great tan over the course of 8 days and even lost a few pounds around my midsection.

On top of all that, i just feel good. I feel more laid back, I always come home with a massive ego just from all the attention I receive, praise I'm given and in general just knowing that a lot of people are looking up to me. A lot of years, this year included, camp helps me get my priorities back in place. I think that video games might take a back seat to other areas in my life. It might be a tough transition for me, but I'm just reminded how trivial things can be.

Life is great...I just wish work didn't suck.

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6/3/08 - Almost 8 pounds

Cristi took Makenna to get weighed yesterday, and the little girl has gained 9 ounces in the last five days or so to put her at 7 pounds 14 ounces. That puts her at a pound gained in just under 3 weeks. At the rate she is going, she should reach her fighting weight in about 20 days based on cristi's calculations.

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5/31/08 - Bulk is not always better

So I actually have my wonderful dad to thank for this post. Because it is his fault that I am the way I am. For me, going to the grocery store is not a trip to purchase food, it's an opportunity to work on my math skills. As nerdy as that sounds, it's the truth.

I have several memories of when I was younger, getting the chance to go grocery shopping with my dad. I had to make sure I didn't have anything else to do for the rest of the night, because I wouldn't be home for a couple of hours. This did of course have as much to do with my dad having to buy groceries for three boys, plus himself and my mom as the fact that he always made sure to get the best bang for his buck on EVERY product that got put in the buggy.

This, of course, was nearly 20 years ago when you would get a better price per unit purchasing the bulk item rather than the smaller size packages of the same product. My dad always checked the prices on all the sizes, so I'm sure he probably recognized this shift in marketing long before I did. For me, though, it was just about 2 or 3 years ago that I noticed a huge change in unit pricing. Suddenly, there were quite a few bulk items that were more expensive per unit than their smaller counterparts.

I believe the first time I noticed it was for a bottle of Suave Shampoo or Conditioner for my wife. They had a two pack deal where the bottles were larger. Instantly, I picked it up and checked the price. After a few quick division problems, I realized that for the money, you could get more product by purchasing the smaller bottle.

More recently, I started eating eggs for breakfast every morning and then sometimes for dinner. At the time, Cristi and I would buy a dozen eggs basically every week during our shopping trip and it would last a week. My diet change required us to buy two and three dozen a week. I had never priced the bulk egg packages because I never felt that any price difference would merit having such a large number of eggs on hand. When I did finally price the eggs, I was surprised that the 2.5 dozen egg packages were more expensive per egg. It was a differnece of only about a penny or two per egg, but the principle was still there.

For me, the bulk egg packages came off as "off-brand" products, so I was expecting an even larger discount. Most other consumers probably thought the same thing. In fact, every time I've seen someone purchase the larger package of eggs, they appear to be living on a very tight grocery budget. I base this primarily on both the food they already have in their cart, and their clothing (very superficial, I know, but without taking a poll, it's all I've got to go on).

My last example is a comparison of Tide laundry detergent. We get the basic Tide product, mainly because I'm apparently allergic to all the other scents and special versions of Tide. Cristi and I have a Sam's Club card and use it quite often. Primarily we have used it for chicken, but more recently, diapers and wipes (which I will have a future post about). Every once in a while, we will price shop an item or two and compare it to Wal-mart prices. These are tyipcally non-perishable items such as detergent, batteries, etc. One of our price comparisons was for detergent and other laundry related items. Of the three items (Tide, Downy, Oxi-Clean), we expected Sam's to be greatly discounted because you were buying such a larger quantity. We were suprised to find that only one was a significant savings. The five pound box of Oxi-Clean saved us several dollars overall. Downy saved us about 25 cents a month on average and the Tide was actually more expensive (by only a fraction of a cent per ounce).

What brought this up is that one of the rss feeds that I read noticed that at many supermarkets and grocery stores, when product sizes change, they don't adjust the unit price. The example used was for Breyer's Ice Cream (I think) who recently changed their packaging from 1.75 quarts to 1.5 quarts without changing the sale price. My exact numbers might be off, but it made a significant difference in the unit price which could cause a consumer to purchase this new package thinking it was cheaper than another. I'm sure this is an honest mistake, but it makes me feel better about always checking and double checking the store posted unit prices.

In summary, I don't really trust unit prices that the stores put on their products. On top of that, many times, they don't provide this information, especially for non-grocery related items. At the end of the day, I might save 2 dollars every trip to the grocery store, but that can add up (assume the savings is put into a Roth-IRA diversified over multiple mutual funds averaging an annual rate of return of 8%) to the tune of $8 tax free (after 35 years). But really, it's my way of sticking it to the man, and that makes me feel good.

Next time you instinctively pick up that large bottle of (insert item here), think twice about whether or not you are getting the best deal. And on the other side, just because the bulk item is cheaper, doesn't always mean that you need 10 gallons of mayonnaise.

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5/21/08 - Have I mentioned I hate the dentist?

So yesterday, I went to the dentist for a routine checkup. It's been about a year since I had been, and I had noticed a rough spot on one of my teeth I wanted to get checked out so I set it up.

Now, I have to say, I have several strange fears. Holes in clothing for example freaks me out. Spiders terrify me and strings in general bother me quite a bit. But of all of these, my biggest fear is teeth. It's difficult to explain. Some people hate the thought or feel of metal on their own teeth. That only bothers me when someone else does it. I can rub a fork along my own teeth all day long. Some people are simply disgusted by dirty or dead teeth. For me, it was difficult to even type that line, in fact, I got the chills before it was finished. At the end of the day, I can do anything to my teeth, but no one else can get near them, and no one should ever have to touch anyone's teeth but their own.

Because of this, my trips to the dentist are horrible. I'm nervous from the time I walk in the door until I walk back out after the appointment. Several trips ago, I found that holding a wash rag in my hands helps, although my hands are sore from squeezing by the end of the visit. Lucky for me, my teeth were actually pretty clean, so she didn't have to scrape (typing that makes me cringe) very much. She did use a chocolate flavored paste to polish my teeth so that was a positive in the trip, it tasted great.

The bad news is that I need a filling that will be completed in about 6 months when I have to go back from my next cleaning. I've already signed up for the gas because it does help a little. The last time I had work done on my teeth, I got the gas, but I still had plenty of anxiety during the procedure. In fact, I had everything going for me, they had ESPN on the television, I had my mp3 player blaring music in my ears, and I was sucking in laughing gas like it was going out of style. On top of that, they were pumping the max amount of gas to my nose that their system allowed. Still, I was cringing, squeezing the rags and shaking through the whole thing.

I don't even want to think what this next one is going to be like because they don't have cable and they only run...get this...video of other patients who had really bad teeth. So they show before and after shots of some really bad teeth. Also, I should mention that most places have pretty pictures of like the beach, or relaxing type scenes hanging on the wall. Not at this place, they've got all sorts of teeth advertisements showing what your teeth will look like before and after using their product. I'm just hoping that I can stay focused on the gas enough to virtually put me unconcious through the whole thing.

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5/19/08 - Short weekend...but nice

Friday night, I went to the massive Arkansas town of Monticello. I headed down 530 through Pine Bluff and then I believe it was 425 to Monticello. There is nothing down there. I went down to watch my of my favorite people graduate high school. Cheyenne was a junior bridesmaid in my wedding and we have been great friends both before and since then. She was in fact the valedictorian of her class of I believe 142 and has been accepted into OBU with a very lucrative scholarship. I know she's going to have a blast down there. (plus, she said she would get me tickets to Tiger Tunes next year).

While I was down there, I ate at a place called Ray's. I don't think it was Ray's Diner or Ray's One stop. I think it was just "Ray's". Whatever the case, I had high hopes because Cristi and I have been watching Diners, Drive-ins and Dives on Food network with Guy whatever his name is. They always have great food, great atmosphere, and so on. I was not so lucky with Ray's. I asked the girl at the counter to order for me and get whatever was best. I ended up with a barbecue sandwich and an order of onion rings, both of which I typically love. The onion rings were supposedly homemade, and had more fried batter than actually onion ring. I would not recommend them. I thought the sandwich was very good, but it just tasted like the barbeque you get in a cafeteria when the stuff is made in mass quantities. It filled me up, but didn't leave me begging for more.

Saturdsay was completely uneventful as I hoped it would be. Cristi and I stayed in bed with my wonderful baby girl until around noon. We watched TV, talked, laughed and basically just "wasted" time. Around 2:00 or so, we headed up to Kroger to get some groceries and when we got back, I helped a friend of mine move his two incredibly awesome new TVs into his new house. I can't wait to see them hooked up. I had another errand to run after that, but was home not longer after. The rest of the night was spent hanging out with Makenna and then my parents came over and my dad helped me run surround sound in the living room. I finally finished it all last night, but it sounds AWESOME.

Sunday, we made it to church for Bro. Horton's last sunday as the church's pastor. It was a really cool service and very touching as he passed the torch to Bro. Jason. Afterwards, our sunday school had a picnic in Toad Suck (yes, that really is a place) on the river. We had hamburgers and hot dogs and basically just talked. I did find out that my website apparently has more fans than I realized. After we got back home from the picnic, I spent the afternoon spreading mulch in flower beds and then taking my parents out to eat for dad's birthday and a late mother's day dinner.

Next weekend is Memorial Day which means a 3 day weekend. I'm hoping that we will be able to get our pool setup over the weekend, although I'll probably start doing some of the work as early as Tuesday of this week. I'm really excited about getting the pool setup because this summer, my job is offering flex time which allows you to work four 10 hours days and get a day off every week. I get Wednesday's off so hopefully every Wednesday for the rest of the summer will be nice and sunny so I can hang out by the pool with Makenna and Cristi.

Softball game tonight which should be interesting because it's at 8:30, I'm already tired and I'm trying to get sick. I do have tomorrow off for doctor's appointments so it's not as big of a deal that I'll be getting to bed late, but I don't want my fatigue to have a negative impact on my performance this evening.

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5/13/08 - I'm busy

Seriously, way busy. I took on a landscaping project that has taken up more of my time that I thought. I haven't been on my computer at home in over a week. I haven't turned on the 360 since probably last Wednesday.

Quick notes, that I'll go into more detail hopefully sooner rather than later. The landscaping job is pretty cool, we got our economic stimulus payment, makenna is awesome, scholastic books has already upset me, medical bills are ridiculous and not just because of prices, it's the inability of companies to properly handle and process through insurance, and more things that I can't think of right now.

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5/6/08 - Today is a good day

So far, today has been great. I have nothing really to share with anyone, just that it's a good day.

A while back Cristi had some pictures taken of makenna, and they are now on the photographer's website.

Makenna pictures

I haven't been posting, simply because I've been pretty busy. Softball has been awesome and lawncare, although not taking up ALL my time, has consumed a fair amount. On top of that, I haven't really had anything to share. Also, with the PayPerPost deal, for some reason, they lowered all my rankings so I am no longer eligible for any of the offers. That really sucks, because I don't know what happened to cause my rating to drop.

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5/2/08 - Goings on

Wendesday was one of my the best days of my life. I guess that is actually an exaggeration, but it was a great day. Well, that evening was nice. Here's the story. Cristi's mom came in that afternoon, so it was nice to see here again. She'll be here for a week so she can spend some time with Makenna and of course Cristi. Since she flew in, she didn't feel like cooking so Cristi decided she wanted to eat at Bennigan's. We used to have one in Little Rock off of University, but it closed and a new one opened off of Pershing attached to the Holiday Inn.

I've eaten there a few times and enjoyed it, but never wanted to go out of my way to eat there. I perused the menu, and decided that a hamburger sounded pretty good. After looking through my options, I came across this gem: GUINNESS® GLAZED BACON CHEESEBURGER - A juicy grilled beef patty brushed with our Guinness Stout Glaze and topped with bacon, cheddar cheese, crispy fried onions, lettuce, tomato and pickles. Served with a side of Guinness Stout Glaze. Not only was the description incredible, there was a picture of this half pound monster. I couldn't resist even at the seemingly overpriced $8.29.

That's about the time the waiter walked up and took our drink order. He also kindly let us know that Wednesday nights at Bennigan's, all of their hamburgers (not including their pitaburgers) are priced at $4.99. EVEN THEIR GUINNESS® GLAZED BACON CHEESEBURGER. Needless to say, I ordered it basically on the spot before he could change his mind. Cristi's mom also ordered the same and Cristi got the Monte Cristo.

The burger was incredible. The fries were cooked and seasoned perfectly and the glaze made for a wonderful dipping sauce. All said and done, we all ate for less than $20 and took about a full order of fries and half the Monte Cristo home which is large enough for another meal. I HIGHLY recommend that if you are in the mood for a burger, head over to Bennigan's, especially if it's a Wednesday.

In other news, one of my favorite sites, Digg has now been blocked at work. I don't spend much time surfing the web at work, but when I do, it's for a pretty good reason...my brain is pretty much fried. It is a social networking site that allows the users of the site to submit news stories and then vote on them. The most popular stories get promoted to the front page so other users can then quickly get a glimpse of the most popular things happening at the moment. I'm very saddened by this turn of events.

Hopefully within the next couple of days, I'll get some more product reviews put up from Cristi. She wrote up four of the items she's used for breastfeeding that hopefully someone, somewhere will find interesting.

Quick, brief Makenna update. She's been really good. She has struggled with stomach aches (she can thank her mom and dad both for that) the last couple of days which has kept her pretty fussy during the day. At night though she has averaged about 9 hours of sleep every night so we can't complain about that. She is really starting to be able to hold her head up on her own which I assume is good since she just turned 7 weeks old on thursday. She has a doctor's appointment on the 13th, so I guess we'll find out then if she is developing on schedule and stuff. She still weighs under 8 pounds the last time we weighed her even though she eats almost non-stop.

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4/28/08 - We had a great weekend

This past weekend was Makenna's first weekend to be out in the world. Last Thursday was her first day out with a trip to Cristi's doctor's appointment, Corky's for dinner with her dad (ME), and a trip to her Mimi's office.

But Saturday, she went to Home Depot, Lowes, Wal-mart, back to Lowes and Home Depot and finally to Sam's. I was shopping for lots of tools for GrassGuys, so she got to come along. She even got to ride in a wheelbarrow. We forgot the camera, so we didn't get a picture of it. She did really well, sleeping for most of the day and only had to eat once, right before we went in Wal-mart. We left the house at 11:00 that morning (having gotten up at about 8:00 to start getting ready to go) and didn't get home until around 4:00 or 5:00 that evening. We got a lot done, but we were exhausted.

When we got home, I had to put my new tools to use, so I spent the rest of the day working in the yard and flower bed. I've still got several hours of work to go on the flower beds, but everything is really starting to look pretty nice. I've got to prune, weed, till and finally put down a layer of mulch. It will take the rest of the summer I think to get it looking really good, but this was a start and mainly just an effort to get it to a manageable position.

Saturday was the draft, and my beloved Raiders came through and picked up Darren McFadden. I was hoping it would happen, but I just knew something was going to get screwed up. When McFadden declared, my biggest fear was he would get picked up by the Cowboys or the Patriots, but then he is now playing (assuming a contract can be agreed upon) for my favorite team. I'll probably have to order a jersey and get some collectible items for my room. I think what would be awesome is if I could find a half jersey with one side being Raiders and the other being the Razorbacks. It would have to be Raiders black and Razorback red, but that would be an awesome jersey.

Tuesday, Grand Theft Auto IV comes out. I won't be getting it yet, as I want to make sure it's going to be as good as everyone is hoping. From what i've read to this point, it sounds like there is more online stuff than actual game play. I'm hoping that is not the case, but considering I'm hoping to get Live in the next month or so, it wouldn't be the end of the world.

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4/24/08 - I need to write something

I have nothing important to write, but I need to just talk/type, whatever.

Medical bills and insurance are ridiculous. It's no secret that Cristi just gave birth and then only a week or two later, we had to take Makenna to the emergency room with a fever. I had budgeted for the delivery, but the ER visit was fairly stressful for me because Cristi kept trying to prepare me for the huge bill we were eventually going to get. Well, the bills are slowly starting to come in and I'm more frustrated with the process than actually having to pay for the stuff.

For the delivery, I've gotten at least four different bills at this point, I might be forgetting one or two. The lab sent two bills, one each for Makenna and Cristi. Makenna has a pediatrics bill and of course the delivery bill for Cristi. Not to mention, we have already prepaid the OB doctor bills. Now, what gets worse is that I have no idea which of these bills I received have been processed by insurance. Nowhere on the bill does it actually say this. Plus, the lab work for example, was listed on the bill from Baptist AND the actual lab bill. Baptist billed nearly 1200 dollars for lab work, but the lab bill from the laboratory was less than $100. WHAT GIVES!!?!?!

At the end of the day, the bills will get paid. The hospitals will have to write off well over 50% of their charges (which is a different rant altogether), insurance will cover the whole 80-20 deal, and then I just have to get reimbursed from our HSA. The bills are going to be lower than what we had budgeted (I think) so it's all going to work out. That of course doesn't include the hours I will spend on the phone verifying the charges (I've already found over $100 dollars we were overcharges for Cristi's natural delivery) and making sure insurance paid before I send a check.

In other news, I've gotten the itch for a new TV again. We went to Sam's a week or two ago and saw that Samsung now makes a larger DLP. I thought it was a 65", but their website shows a 67". Either way, I realize this is way too big. Here's the next problem. I have been wanting a DLP since I knew the difference because for the same money, you can get a screen over a foot larger. Since the size no longer matters to me as much, although I still have to figure out what size TV will look best in our living room, I've started thinking about going LCD or Plasma. This of course opens up several more options. Cristi and I think that a 50" would look the best in our house and I have been in love with Samsung TVs since Greg's old roommate got his Samsung DLP several years ago. I might spend some time this afternoon researching some stuff. I know that Roxane, over on her website, wrote an article about how she picked out her TV, I'll probably start there.

PayPerPost has confused me once again. Last week, I was eligible for nearly half the opportunities out there. Then, for some reason, they reset my website ranks (which are probably more accurate now). Now, I am eligible for only one offer and it has currently met it's maximum offer acceptance which means I can't get paid for it. What's even more confusing is that I had written and finished a blog post for an offer and went to enter my information, only to find out that I could no longer complete the offer. I'm going to wait a few days to see what happens with my ranking, but regardless, the offers I have completed will still pay out.

If anyone knows anything about 529's, let me know, I'd like to talk with you. I need to set this up for Makenna soon. Every day that goes by is a day of interest that I'm not earning. My calculations show that $20 today will be worth $80 with compounded interest in 18 years. $100 would be $400, so on and so forth.

That's all I've got, I need to get back to work.

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4/8/08 - Amazon purchases

Quite some time ago, I found out about Amazon's associates program. It's a simple setup, very similar to Google Adsense, except you have more control over what shows up and you can actually put the links in the context of your posts. Of course, with Google Adsense, I make money (about $.02 a click) anytime the links are clicked.

With Amazon.com I only see a return when someone clicks the link I have provided here. I have also put the link in the top right hand corner of the website where I link to other websites that I frequent. Another thing that I do, is that when I review a product, or mention a movie, book or other product, I try to link to the item using a special linking code Amazon provides me. By clicking on those links and purchasing the item, I make money that way as well. Currently, it's only 4% on purchases, but hey, it all adds up.

In summary, if you are going to be doing some online shopping through Amazon, I just ask that you really try to remember to use the link at the top of my page to get to Amazon's homepage and then shop from there. I don't believe that you can bookmark that particular page, I think you have to come through OrtOrt.com each time.

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4/7/08 - Bottled water is not good. Period.

Here's the thing. I don't have any scientific proof for what I'm about to talk about. I don't have any fancy charts or pretty graphs. My research is limited to only what I've read in passing over the last however long I've cared about this topic. I am not an expert on the environment. I have not won a Nobel Peace Prize or studied the effects of "Global Warming". I have never studied directly under Dave Ramsey. I am not a CPA and have never invested in Mutual Funds.

What I do know is that bottled water is NOT good for the environment and is financially "not smart".

I'll hit on the environmental aspect first. Plastic is not biodegradable. Water comes packaged in plastic bottles which are single use entities. Every time you finish off a bottle of water, it gets thrown into the trash, which is then taken to a landfill (or in some cases, dumped somewhere you wouldn't expect). Once in the landfill, that bottle will be there for years to come. I have no data, so I'm not going to throw out any specific time, but I would guess that it will be there for your grandkids grandkids, if not longer.

Financially, it just doesn't make sense to me. I recognize that bottled water is not incredibly expensive and is much cheaper than soft drinks. This does not change the fact that there are other MUCH cheaper options than bottled water. Your kitchen sink is the first that comes to mind. Recently, I decided that I would start drinking a glass of water every night. I have no idea why I decided that, but it seemed like a good idea. Instead of going through a bottle of water, I chose to actually drink tap water, out of a glass and I was amazed that I actually enjoyed the taste better than the bottled stuff. What's even better is that I can add ice cubes in a glass of water, but I have to refrigerate the bottles for several hours to get them chilled.

You might say immediately that to you the quality of the bottled water is much better. I find it hard to believe that that is truly the case. Their are two different bodies that govern and regulate the quality of water both in the bottled water industry and the municipal water sources. From my understanding, tap water is held to a higher standard and is much more readily monitored. I wish I had better facts, but as I said at the beginning of this post, I'm just regurgitating what I've heard in the past.

Evian spelled backwards is Naive. The entire bottled water industry has been increase in popularity primarily from marketing which emphasises both the convenience and the "higher quality" of the companies product. Marketing is an amazing thing, it works, but I believe that this country should be more educated regarding bottled water.

I recognize that bottled water is very convenient. It comes prepackaged, you don't have to fill up anything or worry about spills. But at the end of the day, how long does it really take to fill up a reused bottle. This is what I would recommend, go ahead and buy a pack of bottled water. Put three or four in the fridge and when you empty one of them, fill it back up with tap water (or filtered water, more in a second) and put it right back in the fridge. It takes all of about 20 seconds and in that time, you saved a little bit of money AND helped out Mother Earth. Now, I have read research that states after about 5 or 6 uses, the plastic can start to degrade. I don't even reuse a bottle but maybe four times tops. After that, I throw it away and put a new bottle in the fridge. This is still slightly wasteful, but four times better than not doing it.

Several years ago, Cristi and I realized how silly it was that we were going through so much bottled water. What we did is went and got a Brita filter. It had an easy dispense spout on the front and held a gallon and a half or something like that. We would use that to fill up our bottles and that way, we had the convenience and had the "clean" taste that some people prefer. (I still can't tell the difference between cold filtered water and cold tap water).

Last but not least. Something that I've found works really well to increase the flavor of water that doesn't require any bottles, filters or anything like that is ice. By getting the water as cold as possible (obviously without freezing it) the flavors almost completely go away. Here's my favorite recipe. Take a regular glass, fill half way with ice cubes or crushed ice, top off glass with regular cold tap water and enjoy. Give it a try, see what you think.

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4/5/08 - Simple update

It has been quite some time since I have updated the site. Quite frankly, life has been busy (obviously with little Makenna around) and there hasn't been anything really exciting.

I did get the first two customers of the year with for GrassGuys and I'll be mowing their lawns tomorrow. These two for the rest of the summer won't be enough to break even. I had nearly 15 customers last year and I just barely did. Of course, this year, I've got all my equipment paid for, I'm just paying maintenance costs.

Thursday was a very eventful evening with the weather and stuff. Normally, I would not have retreated to the bathroom until I started getting really worried, but with a newborn baby, as soon as the weatherman said tornado, we were headed to our safety place. For some reason, the sirens near our house stayed on for about 30 minutes after the first wave of bad weather had passed. It also kept going during times of low wind and rain and based on the radar images the local news channels were showing, there was nothing in our area. That was frustrating because I just didn't want to take any chances with Makenna, so we stayed in the bathroom for most of the evening.

We finally ran into a situation where our Dish service became a problem. With the bad weather, we lost signal twice for about 10 minutes at a time. Obviously, we weren't looking for entertainment (although one of Cristi's shows didn't get recorded because of all this), but it would have been nice to have kept up with the storms.

Along those same lines, I am now a fan of Channel 11 news coverage. Growing up, we were a Channel 7 family. We watched the news every night and when bad weather came around, it was Channel 7. Quite frankly, something has changed because 7 sucks. Although we could get 4 and 11 just fine, for some reason the 7 signal was not strong enough for us to pick up. And when we did get it, the information they shared and the radar images they were putting up were useless. I switched between all three channels hoping to get as much info on the storm as possible but eventually, I quit going to 7 altogether. From now on, when bad weather is threatening, I'll be watching Channel 11. Although, I didn't check in on Fox 16, so I might have to give them a chance next time.

Raider had been sick since last Sunday, the day after we brought Makenna back home. He threw up about two days worth of food and so we took his food away so his stomach could settle down. The next day, I heard him drink some water, walk into the living room and throw up all the water he had just drank. Because of that, we took his water away. Typically, after about 24 hours, his stomach settles down and we put everything back down for him to have. He continued to throw up until Thursday night. We called on Tuesday to get an appointment with the vet and Friday morning was the earliest we could get. We did give him water in small quantities to keep him hydrated, but we took away his food. The vet gave him a couple shots and some antibiotics and he hasn't thrown up since (knock on wood). I'm pleased with how Cristi and I handled the situation because the doctor said everything was fine, he was not malnourished and his hydration level was very good. We are going to try to give him some more food this evening and see how that goes.

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3/24/08 - You don't own the road

This is going to be one of my personal rants. If you don't really care how I feel about things, you can skip this post altogether and visit Rainbow Land. This particular situation has not come up in quite some time, simply because I haven't been shopping or in an area where many people are gathered.

Here's the basic problem: There are some people in this world that thing they are owed something. People who think they have been wronged somehow and therefore think they own the place. Of course, there is a smaller subset of these people who just don't care, and they have other issues I don't care to deal with.

I believe that about every other time I visit Wal-Mart, Target, or pretty much any other large parking lot area, there is at least one person who things that those wide lanes were designed and created so that they could walk right down the middle of it. News flash people, those lanes are wide enough for two cars to drive down it, and they were not designed primarily for use by pedestrians. There have been times that I have come into this situation, and the person turns around to see that a car is coming and they get out of the way. This post is not about them. I'm talking about the person (typically with their five children) who does not even bother to look around to see if there is a car around. Not to mention the fact that unless you are driving an electric car, vehicles are not made to be stealthy. You can hear when a car is approaching. Now let's say that said person (with multiple children, none of which they are paying attention to) can not hear the vehicle and therefore is not moving. I'll give them a little bit of a break on this, but at the same time, why in the world are they allowing their children (assuming they are related somehow) to walk down a road (that's what it is, it's a road, a slow road, but a road with moving vehicles) virtually unattended, that's a different rant altogether.

But then there are those people who hear the vehicle, turn around and look, and continue to walk right down the middle...that really gets me, that gets me good. In fact, when this situation comes up, (and Cristi hates this) I will get basically as close to the person as possible (still with plenty of space to stop, of course we are only going about 5 miles an hour) and rev the engine. Basically, I'm tailgating the person/people, and they aren't in a car. I've been tempted to honk, but if I were to do that, Cristi would probably beat me to death with her backhand.

Here's another situation. Wal-mart has the largest pedestrian crossing area in the world. I think the entire area in front of the store is marked as pedestrian crossing. Now, I understand that they have the right of way, but out of consideration, there is no reason to take 5 minutes to cross a 20 foot space. When I come out of Wal-mart, I immediately look both ways to determine if there is anyone coming. If there is, I will simply travel down the sidewalk towards my car instead of impeding the flow of traffic. Once there is a break, I cross and head to my vehicle. Now, if it's busy, I will slowly creep towards the road and wait for someone to pause before entering the crossing zone. Once I'm allowed into the street, I will move at a brisk jog, or at a minimum a fast walk. I recognize that even though I'm not in a hurry, someone else probably is. I'm sure I've been guilty of the things I've mentioned, but I really do make an honest effort to prevent myself from doing these same things.

Last but not least, it's a similar situation in the parking lot, but then when you get into the store, and I'm using Wal-mart again as an example. I will be the first to admit that my wife is guilty of this just as much if not more than anyone else. When you are shopping, and the aisles are just wide enough for two carts to pass each other, DON'T STOP IN THE MIDDLE OF AN AISLE! If I had to guess, I'd say this happens anywhere from 5-10 times every single time I go into the store. What makes it even worse is when you are walking down a major aisle, such as the one in front of the check out counters, someone is in front of you, you've got heavy traffic going in both directions (everyone following the rules of the road, drive on the right), and suddenly the person in front of you, with there entourage of people stops. Comes to a complete stop and you've got to either swerve to avoid hitting them or come to a complete stop yourself and hope the person behind you doesn't hit you. The way I see it, treat the aisles just like you were driving. You don't own the road and you don't own the road, so why do you think you should own the aisle.

Let's say you need to get Tomato soup (a common item on our grocery list). If you have been to wal-mart recently, you know that there are roughly 725 different kinds of soup made by Campbell. And every time you go, they rearrange them. Chicken noodle is on the top row on the left one day, and the next day it's in the middle row on the far right. I understand you have to look for it. But I simply ask this of you, don't park your cart in the middle of aisle next to the macaroni and cheese 20 feet away and walk to the soups. Take the cart with you. Park directly across the aisle from the soup and search while still monitoring your cart. This way, you should be out of the way as people can still pass on one side of you. And if you are in the way of someone (say someone is looking for the tomato paste which you are now parked in front of), you can easily slide your cart a few feet in one direction and everyone is happy.

Some might think that I life a miserable life because there are some many things that get under my skin. I really don't, I just always expect the best out of people and do everything I can to treat others the way I expect to be treated. The above items seem like simple common courtesy and I don't understand why other's can't feel the same way. I do let these things get under my skin more than I should, and I'm sure my blood pressure rises. I would love to get feedback from anyone on why my feelings are wrong, what I should do, or basically whatever you think about what I've said.

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3/21/08 - Newest pictures of the baby

So yesterday, we had the doctor's appointment, and Makenna is a very healthy baby. She has grown 1/2 an inch in length and has lost 1.5 ounces which is normal. The doctor was very pleased about her weight, and her yellow color was not a concern at all.

Today, Cristi got to take Makenna for her first walk since it was so pretty outside. She said it went great, except for the 2nd half of the walk when Makenna started getting hungry and fussy.
Other than that, I don't have much else to comment on, but I thought some pictures might be nice for everyone, so here they are.



Makenna loves sleeping in her grandparent's and parent's arms. She also likes to sleep in the big bed with us, as long as she is swaddled well.



She got her first bath at home the other day, and although you can't really tell from the pictures, you would have thought that we were beating her. Not before, or since, has she yelled and screamed as loud as when she was getting cleaned up by Cristi. Of course you see in the pictures how she left when her daddy held her.



We were told we had to take pictures at out doctor's appointment, but I wasn't sure what we could take pictures of. So here she is all bundled up ready to go, and then with me holding her, wrapped up in a blanket.



Last but not least, these are just a few of the pictures I thought were really cute of her. That is how she fell asleep in the first one. I picked her up like that, she stretched and fell asleep almost instantly. The striped shirt is a 0-3 month outfit and you can see she still doesn't fit in it great. You can also tell she's not a fan of getting her diaper chagned. Finally, it might not be the safest thing in the world, but she stays comfortable and Cristi and I are comfortable with the safety of. But doesn't she just look cute all wrapped up like that?

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3/20/08 - First doctor's appointment

Makenna has her first doctor's appointment this afternoon. We were hoping to see Dr. Robert Choate, who was my pediatrician for the first 20 or so years of my life. He was also my brother's doctor. Instead, we are going to be seeing Dr. Frazier in the same clinic. Dr. Frazier is the father of one of the girls that Cristi and I went to high school with. She was also on the same cheerleading squad as Cristi.

I'll have another update this evening with more pictures, and some information about the appointment. We are hoping that Makenna's yellowish color is not too bad and we can continue breastfeeding. The color has gotten MUCH better in the last couple of days, and her diet and dirty diapers has remained constant and healthy.

This will be her first experience in the outside world (with the exception of the ride home from the hospital. It's a pretty exciting day for her (as well as her proud parents).

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3/17/08 - She's an interesting one...

So far, I can't complain at all about Makenna's personality or behavior. The first two nights were pretty rough, mainly because we didn't know what was going on. We were trying to get her to sleep in her bassinet, but yesterday afternoon, realized that that won't work at this point. After 9 months of being actually part of Cristi, she has separation issues if she is too far away. Because of this, Cristi stayed up all night the first two nights, to make sure she would sleep and eat and stuff.

Last night, we put her in our bed, right between us, surrounded by pillows so we wouldn't roll over on her, and she slept for over 4 hours without waking up once. Needless to say, we both got great sleep last night and if future nights can be like that, I won't have a complaint in the world. In fact, it worked out great for me because I was able to get up super early with her, Cristi fed her, I changed her diaper and she and I watched an episode of SportsCenter together, and then went through my RSS reader, email and other misc websites, all before about 10:00.

I got out this afternoon to pick up a few things and then came back home only to spend the last several hours trying to get my computer setup so I can work from home. I'm almost there, but I basically lost an entire day trying to get things working. I should have it done by in the morning and I can get started on some work. I'm really grateful to Midland for letting me have the opportunity to stay at home for two weeks and only use a week of vacation (this assumes that I work at least a half day average during that time period).

That's all I've got for now. As we start using different baby products, I might start writing about them because I know that there are plenty of other pregnant people out there that just don't have a clue about stuff. My first review will probably be the Diaper Champ....it's sweet.

Last but not least, Makenna is once again an internet superstar with her pictures up on the Baptist website (actually a company they outsource to). You can see her pictures on their website. I have to admit that I personally don't think she looks very cute in those pictures, but you can be the judge.

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3/16/08 - Non-Makenna related....

This is a sad announcement that I will not be hosting a March Madness Pool this year. I am usually able to get plenty of help from my brothers in picking up brackets and getting more players, but this year, with Greg in graduate school, Phillip working and living in Conway, and of course Makenna coming into my life, I will not be able to get the brackets together in time and will not have the energy or the extra time to organize everything. I have all intentions of getting this back next year in full force and I still plan on filling out a bracket. In fact, I will be forming two leagues (not for money, and no work on my part in two places. I will have an update later on showing where they will be hosted. One will be a Google widget, the other will be on Facebook.

That didn't take as long as I thought. Here are the two groups, with links to the respective groups:

Facebook Group - open to everyone

Google Pages - You will need to add the gadget to your Google homepage and then join the league "Walker Pool 08" with the password "walker" and you'll be part of it.

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3/15/08 - A few pictures

I have no idea what the easiest way is going to be for me to get these pictures up with some captions on them. I could easily do it on facebook, but then only people with Facebook accounts could see them. I'll try to group them in sections with generalizations and see how that goes. Enjoy the pictures and there are plenty more where that came from. We have close to 400 pictures of the first 24 hours of her life. Luckily, it has slowed down a little bit, so hopefully she will not be blind from all the flashes. I say that, knowing good and well that once I have a little more energy, I'll be taking picture after picture of her myself.

As for the first night at home, it was very very very long. It stormed, so Raider was very nervous and freaking out. I don't think Makenna was comfortable with anything going on, so she would not sleep unless you were holding her. On top of that, even when she would sleep it was in about 30 minute increments and then she would kind of try to feed. This allowed me to get a couple hours of sleep, but if Cristi got more than about 2 hours last night, I'd be surprised. We did get it worked out today though in that while she as sleeping (in 2-3 hour increments), I took her and let Cristi sleep. This allowed Cristi to get several hours of sleep and up until about 30 minutes ago, we have both had plenty of energy.

With that said, here are some pictures. The blurb beneath will be the captions/descriptions of the images. Also, I know some of them are sideways, but you are going to have to use your imagination for now because I'm way too tired to be rotating them right now. Also, you will notice that there is a red mark, just below Makenna's nose. That is a birth mark and she gets it from her Aunt Diane. It has already faded quite a bit, but it is very noticeable in many of these pictures.



This was on the way in to the hospital. As you can see, Cristi was not feeling her best. Next is Dr. Singleton, who is a great guy and we both HIGHLY recommend him as a doctor. They gave me a Daddy shirt with her footprints on them and proof of her weight at birth.



That is one proud dad :D



This would be the proud grandmas (nana, grandma, and mimi) and a proud dad comparing noses (and yes, they match).



Look at the size of those feet in that first picture. 2nd picture - we are all in so much trouble...I'm pretty sure I speak for all of the men in that picture that she already has us wrapped around her finger. The rest of those pictures are family getting to hold the new baby and the entrance to our room that my mom made up for us.




She was not happy with us for some reason, I don't remember what we were doing. Then we had to get her all pretty for her pictures in the nursery. We were hoping to get pictures like the next one, but instead, she decided to start acting up right after we got one good one. The nursery pictures came out alright, but they didn't show off how cute she really was. What you may or may not notice is that with that beautiful dress, Cristi let me put some white and pink Raider (the football team) booties on her. Of course, with her long skinny feet, they didn't really stay on very well.



Here are a few more pictures of her all dressed up, and then a shot of her as we walked out of the hospital. Yes, that's a Razorback hat she's got on.



This last group of pictures shows mom, dad and makenna on our way home. Then Raider got to meet Makenna first thing. He sniffed and sniffed, but I still don't think he's figure out what he's supposed to do with her. He will just walk up and sniff her every once in a while, otherwise, he leaves her alone. I don't even know if he hears her when she cries as it doesn't effect him at all. The last three pictures are from today. Makenna and me laid on the couch and watched the Razorbacks play and eventually, Raider wanted to join us. I was enjoying hanging out with the two of them, I decided to eat my dinner without moving too.

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3/14/08 - Welcome to the world Makenna

On Thursday, March 13th at 6:50 PM, Makenna Nicole Walker was born into this world. She weighted 6lbs 10oz and was an amazing 19.5 inches long. Mom (aka Cristi) did an amazing job and had Makenna completely natural with no drugs or outside assistance whatsoever. We came home tonight at roughly 8:15 and Makenna is currently snoozing away as she is being passed from grandma to grandma. We were very blessed to have had all of our family at the hospital and everyone came back today to say hello to the most beautiful baby the world has ever seen.

Between all of the cameras I have access to, I believe we might have close to 400 pictures. Over the next day or two, I'm going to go through and weed out some of the blurry and obscure ones and pick out the best. I'll have them on the website by the end of the weekend, assuming I get some sleep at some point.

I'm also going to try to post a bit more about the entire birth process and will try to get Cristi to write her view as well. This has been an amazing experience so far, and am simply waiting to see what's next.

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3/13/08 - My grocery store experience

So last night, Cristi, her mom and I went to Wal-mart to do a little bit of shopping, but mainly just to walk around (supposedly it will help induce labor). Once we had done all our shopping, I went to the checkout on my own and they just kept walking around. When I got to the check out line there was a lady in front of me and she kept looking at me kind of funny. She did that several times before she finally turned around and said, "you look almost identical to my son." My humorous self, I came back with "Well, he must be a very attractive guy." Her response made me feel very awkward however as she said "he WAS a wonderful young man, but he died in a car accident about a year ago." I didn't really know where to go from there and right before it was her turn to check out, she turned back around and asked me if I would do her a favor. At this point, I was willing to do just about anything as I felt pretty bad about cracking the joke. She simply asked that after she checked out, if I would wave to her and say "Bye mom" as she walked away. Thinking that it was the least I could do to put a smile on her face, I agreed. As the clerk was processing her stuff, I started reading about Nicole Richie and Lindsey Lohan and all the other train wrecks on the covers of magazines, you know, the great role models of our day. Next thing I know, she is walking out, so I did as I said I would, waved and said "Bye Mom". As the clerk scanned my few items, which should have totalled all of about 15 bucks, the total came to 85 dollars and some odd cents. Immediately, I asked what was so expensive. The guy said, "it was mostly your mom's stuff, not yours". I immediately realized what had happened, so I ran out the door after her, as I got close to her, I actually tripped (embarrassing as I'll get out) and pulled on her leg....just like I'm pulling yours.

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3/10/08 - Going back to the old stuff

So I decided to go back with my old layout. Originally, it was called Greenery, but of course, I preferred to go greyscale with everything and this is the result. I've got it setup to easily change the middle image. Right now, it's a picture of the falls at petit jean when we went a few years ago. I'm do believe there are some problems viewing this in IE that I never fixed from the first time around, but I've tested it in IE6.0 and 7.0 and the latest release of Firefox with no problems. Safari or Opera might have some issues with it, but I don't use them and haven't tested it.

The main reason for the new design is because I wanted an easier way to update the blog, without spending a crapload of time writing my own update method. With asp.net's incredible toolkit, it wouldn't have taken me a super long time, but it was really easier just to create a blogger account, point it to my ftp server and let it do all the work. This will also allow me to use the built in comment functionality, the rss reader and archive that I have been wanting to add for quite a while. The problem with using blogger is that I am slightly limited with what I can do with multiple pages and the menu at the top. I might figure out way to get it to do what I want, but for now, I'm just going to make do.

Another great thing about Blogger is that it is very easy to use. I'm actually going to set cristi up with an account so she can write about stuff that she cares about. I'm not sure how much she'll update, but she had mentioned it quite a while ago, and since I have found that Blogger is VERY easy to use she might actually use it. (and if she doesn't...well, it's free).

I'm still unsure about the whole label thing, but I'm trying to figure out how to implement that into my menu at the top. I've got mainly two labels right now and would like to add a few more. 'Blog' for all of my normal posts and 'McDonald's' for all of my posts following that experiment. Once I get all my old archives loaded up, I'll have a 'Lean Cuisine' tag and I might try to get a 'p90x' tag since that has been a very popular page on my site. I've also got the 'memories' tag, but I'm thinking about deleting that one altogether as no one seemed to care about it the first time I posted, even though I had comments enabled for that post.

Friday night, we bought Army of Two and played it for a while. As excited about this game as I was, I should have known I was going to be dissapointed. Although it's not a bad game, I was hoping for a few things that just aren't there. It is true that you rely on partner game play quite a bit, but most of it is preprogrammed stuff. Things like opening certain doors are cut scenes, back-to-back is something that you are automatically put into, and the lifting/pulling to a high ledge is pretty weak. The ability to upgrade your guns is a neat feature, but there should have been more options. Many of the sniper rifles for example have only one upgrade to them. I'm on level four right now in single player and could probably beat it with an hour or two more of play. The great thing is that there are many side jobs that you have to do that make the game very replayable. On top of that, many of the achievements require that you play through the game multiple times. I would not be surprised if I play through at least 4 times or so.

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3/4/08 - snow...are you kidding me?

So I wake up this morning, shave, shower and do the rest of my stuff. I get dressed and step out to let Raider use the restroom and I'm greeted by a completely white backyard. The snow was very heavy and blowing sideways and the everything was covered. Normally, that's not a big deal, but seriously, it's March and only two days ago, it was mid 70's. I can't deny that it is very pretty, but I just hate cold weather and I'd much rather have had this several months ago, say around Christmas.

I can't think of much more to write about, nothing overly exciting has happened. Cristi hasn't progressed any in the last week and a half or so. We still have satellite and I'm amazed how little of TV that I watch. I have yet to watch an entire session of SportsCenter and last Saturday I actually did watch some basketball. I've spent most of my time on the 360 where I am currently trying to complete Forza 2. This is going to be much more difficult than I had originally realized. I'm also going to try to start playing Marvel Ultimate Alliance with Dan and Wes in hopes of getting some more gamer points and I am still trying to complete Rock Band with Chris. You can now look us up on RockBand.com, we are called "77 car pileup". At last count we were at 41million fans and ranked in the top 1000 all time bands by fans. If we can hit 50 million which we should do next time we get together, we will be in the top 500 bands.

This past weekend, I did get to setup some shelving in the garage thanks to my wonderful Aunt Bev letting me know about one of the local hospitals giving away these units. They are each nearly 8 feet tall, about 3 feet wide and 18" deep. I was able to get my hands on 12 of them (two loads on my trailer) and I'm going to be giving at least 3 of those to my parents. I've already got all of my lawn care stuff organized on these shelves as well as all sorts of other stuff we had laying around. I'll try to get some pictures up. Which reminds me, I'd like to get some pictures up of the house, especially the nursery as I'm sure someone out there actually cares about Makenna's living arrangements.

We did get our video camera, so I might start a youtube account and start posting videos of my dog (although 8 hours of watching him sleep might not be too exciting), but once Makenna starts doing all sorts of crazy stuff, I'm sure it will make for some interesting viewing (at least for grandparents).

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2/26/08 - Nothing Important

So I've really had nothing important to write about. I did have a very horrible customer service experience basically for all of last week, but I really don't care to write about that because now looking back on it, I think I blew it out of proportion. I also realized over the weekend, that I expect too much out of people for the most part. I expect the best out of people, no m