General Stuff that is up

So this past Sunday night / Monday morning (a week or so), I'm laying in bed when I hear one of the kids screaming / crying. I'm kind of half asleep, and it wakes me up. In my half-asleep stupor I wonder where Carolyn is. Not that it's her job to get the kids when they wake up in the middle of night, but typically she does that. So I roll over and I notice that a) it's like 4 a.m. and b) Carolyn is not bed. Again, remember I am half asleep so I think "hmm well that's weird"

The 2 possibilities I entertain are that perhaps she is in the bathroom, or maybe she is tending to one kid and a different kid is crying. So I think okay I will go investigate. So I start to make my way out of our bedroom and into the main living area. As I do this I start waking up and I realize that it's not one of the kids - It's CAROLYN who is crying / screaming. I hustle to the sound and she is laying down at the foot of the stairs in obvious pain.

The combination of dark, tired, pregnant (so not as agile as she once was) and a new house (so not as familiar with number of steps and such) caused her to miss the last step or two. I guess she thought she was on the last step and so took a normal sized step so she fell down the last step or two. Ended up breaking her foot and spraining her ankle. You can read her take here.

I was joking around and told her the other day that this was not a very convenient time for her to decide to break her foot! But then she told me that it would have been way worse say 6 months from now. Touche, touche!! My mom has come down from Cleveland to stay with us for awhile and we've had lots of friends come over to help unpack some and bring us over some meals and such. We are very grateful to all our helpers.

In further annoying news, everyone else besides me was driving home from the library on Saturday during a crazy thunderstorm when all of a sudden the van stopped really working. Power steering went out, the engine started overheating and in general craziness ensued. They managed to limp home but it turns out that the van's drive belt slipped off its track. It looks like the belt itself is still in good condition but we were not able to get it back into place. And of course when I say we I mean I stood around and watched while one of my more car-savvy friends tried to do it. In an interesting coincidence, I had just called Midas the day before to bring in the van to have them put on our new tires that I bought off the Internet. I had already been planning to take the van there so this just made it that much more fun!!

Complicating the matter was the fact that the side door had accidentally been left open all night, meaning that the battery was dead when we went to try and start it on Sunday morning. We managed to push the van out of the driveway with my mom's car, and then I pushed it over to the side of the street. And of course by "I", I mean I flailed around barely moving it until thankfully some random guy came by out for a walk and he helped me. It was much easier with 2 people, surprisingly enough :-). One funny thing was that we kept trying to push it over to where I had parked the little car (preparing for a jumpstart), and it was getting harder as the road was starting to go uphill, till I realized that maybe it might be easier to put the van in park and actually move the car that could actually work!?!?!? :-).

We jumped it and the van started up. I let it rev for awhile and put the window down so I could hear things. But as soon as I removed the jumper cables, the van died. I tried that twice with the same result and then decided to give up for awhile. I got ready for church and went there, and in the meantime, eagle-eye Carolyn noticed that there was something hanging below the van. That turned out to be the aforementioned belt. Perhaps by losing the ability to walk her other senses have been honed? I charged the battery and in the evening, our friend came over and we tried for awhile to get the belt back on. In the end, we just took it up to Midas. I guess you can drive without a belt but you don't have power steering and you only have a limited amount of juice before the battery dies. So my friend offered to drive and I tried to follow him. But he was driving like a maniac because he wasn't sure how much time he'd have. He passed a few cars on the double yellow and he told me he ran every red light :-). Good times....

We'll see how much the damage is....

Facebook

So I recently set up an account on Facebook. Well actually I had set up an account awhile ago but never really got around to doing anything with it. For whatever reason a few days ago I started adding friends and setting up a "real" page.

It's interesting - I consider myself fairly technical. From programming in BASIC on my TI-994A (and saving not to a disk but to an actual audio-cassette!?!?), to "surfing" text-based BBSes on my 300-baud modem to seeing the evolution of Mosaic / Netscape and the beginnings of the WWW when I was in college, I've enjoyed technical stuff like this. I mean I am a computer nerd to the extreme after all!

But it seems like I've never been an early adopter of some of the more "social" Internet applications. I remember one of my friends sending me a link back in 97 or 98 to use this "new" thing called AOL instant messenger. I believe she was on AOL and it was recently after AOL had opened IM up to non-AOL users. I remember thinking "This is dumb". I of course signed up later and now IM on a regular basis.

Similarly blogging - blogs were around long before I started in April 2005. I actually think I was a bit earlier on this one - I was certainly the first one in my (at least somewhat close) family to have one - a trend that has certainly expanded.

So now we are on to Facebook. Again as with IM, part of me thinks "this is dumb". But another part of me thinks this might be a good way to keep in touch with some people. I was reading a comment on the Facebook page of someone I went to high school with saying something along the lines of "I wish they had had this when we were in HS - I lost touch with so many people" and that rings very true to me. There are lots of people that I was good friends with in High School that I no longer talk to. Of course there are also plenty of people that I'm glad to have lost contact with :-). So with that in mind, let me introduce Dan's 5 categories of Facebook Friends!

1. The real friends. These are people that I am fairly close to already and / or talk to / see in person on a somewhat regular basis. People like say my wife or my mom etc.

2. Acquaintances / friends / family that I don't see that often but that I am interested in following along with. This might be cousins or church-friends or work-friends etc.

3. Acquaintances / friends / family that I'm not really that interested in following along with but I added as friends because hey why not. If you're not sure if you're in group 2 or 3, I'll let you decide :-D

4. People that I've lost touch with and I want to see what they're up to. For me, this is mostly friends and such from High School or my mission. It will be interesting to see how many people I catch up with here. It's challenging to go from the "Hey what have you been doing for the past 10 years" to a real fake Internet relationship.

5. Then there's the "friends" that I add just because I'm a "friend-whore". They're the people that you vaguely know. Like anyone that may have ruined the Forest Elementary School touch football game in 5th grade (yes he's on there) or people that I barely knew in high school. Actually I don't have too many of these (yet). I just haven't brought myself to that point, much less trying to add people that I don't even know (which I guess some people do).

Anyways we shall see how it goes... I do think that social networking sites like this (or MySpace or Twitter etc) are not going anywhere. As this technology matures and even more kids that have grown up on this start becoming adults, it's just going to continue. My friend Jeff wrote a post about this the other day. He was mentioning what advice he would give new computer programmers and he said "The ability to communicate with others (read: business leaders) will be the single most important thing you can work on as a developer. Your ability to think and communicate effectively to your management will go MUCH farther than your ability to apply polymorphism principles to your application. Trust me." I think this is very true.

So that's about all I have to say on this. We got a renter for our place and will be moving to the new house within a week or two!!

Competitiveness

So I occasionally get labeled as "competitive". This happens often at work where we have various things going on. I can kind of agree with it, but I've never really thought of myself as overly competitive.

This past week though, I realized that there are 2 kinds of competitiveness. I usually think of someone that is competitive as someone that just hates losing. You often see this in pro sports. There are stories about Michael Jordan or so just really HATING losing and when they lose they are just livid.

I'm not really like that. I really don't mind losing. This is in contrast to my early life when I think I did hate losing much more, and I also had a pretty bad temper. I'm much more mellow now-a-days.

But my philosophy is that if I'm going to play, I might as well win, right!!!

So I do get a little competitive in the sense that I seek out every advantage / loophole I can in an attempt to win. I don't cheat or actively break the rules but here's an example. A few years ago, the IT department where I work had an "Amazing Race" around Mason. So in the few days before, I drove around Mason looking for possible clues, including visiting the Chamber of Commerce seeking possible locations that we might be sent to. We ended up finishing 2nd there due to this one guy sinking a crazy half court basketball shot at one of the stations. Of course, the fact that I still remember this maybe means that I do hate losing a little bit at least. I think it's mostly due to the luckiness of that other team. I don't really mind losing to a team / person that just played better; but I do get a bit singed at playing well enough to win only to lose due to luck or other factors out of my control.

But anyways... it was once again National Employee Health and Fitness week at work, along with the various competitions that they had. I of course signed up for just about everything.

Monday there was kickball - despite successfully instituting a no bunting rule, our team lost the first game and were eliminated.

Tuesday we had Ultimate Frisbee. We ended up winning that, and then my friends' volleyball team needed one more player so I played that afterwards. I typically do not like volleyball because people get so particular about the various rules like "in the net" or "carrying" that makes it not very fun for me, the not very good player. But this was a pretty laid back game, and fun. We ended up losing in the finals.

Wednesday we had a relay race. It was pretty lame. 4 legs and only 2 teams showed up. First team finished in 45 seconds and then we finished in 31, winning. Then we went over to the croquet station. While not quite the Extreme Croquet that I prefer, it was still fun. My team won 2 games and the overall championship.

Thursday was an off day.

Friday we had a scaled down version of the Amazing Race, just around the campus at work. My original partner had a "production work issue" (supposedly!) so I had to find a backup partner. The sabotage of the other teams was very much an issue as I got a flat tire on the way to work which delayed me. The first clue had us finding a particular emergency pole (we have 5 or 6 around in the parking lots and out back and such that I guess if you are mugged while walking around the path you can get help?). My new partner just happened to know which one was pole #5 and that was pretty much the ballgame. We ran around to the various stations and ended up winning in about 14 minutes, about 5 minutes ahead of the 2nd place team. In fact, we finished, got our food (free picnic at work also that day!), came back and sat down and ate outside and watched the last few teams arrive!

So we ended up winning 4 events and finishing 2nd in another one. It was a lot of fun, even if some of the events were not organized quite up to "Dan standards" :-D

What we've been up to

Haven't posted in awhile. I've had a few blog posts milling around in the ol' noggin, but just haven't gotten around to posting. I've been really busy over at the new house. I haven't quite reached my breaking point, but I have been quite busy and worn out.

In addition to the various physical labors that I've been doing (mostly painting and tiling in the bathroom floors), it's my responsibility to coordinate with the various contractors. My general contractor (Ron) has actually been very good, though there are times like when he shows up an hour or 2 later than when I was expecting him when I have to remind myself "he is still a contractor". This is the guy that I have used to fix up my other houses and I've been happy with his work and his overall communicativeness and just everything really. I really feel like we've been blessed in my starting this rehabbing business a few years ago mostly because of the connection we made with Ron; I think that we would not have come close to being able to afford this new house if we had had to go with a construction firm - most of them were bidding $30-40 thousand more than I think we're going to end up spending on this project.

We've had fairly good luck even with most of our subs. But let me share one story about the electrician. Him and his crew had gotten all the electrical work roughed in a month or two ago and then I hadn't heard from him in awhile. This in and of itself was not a problem, because there wasn't anything for them to do until we got things all drywalled and painted and such. But after a few weeks, we were getting close to ready for him and so I called him up to see what his schedule was like. And called him. And called. I left many messages but never got a call back. One time I did get a hold of him and he said "Can I call you right back?" I said sure, but he never called.

Finally, (after maybe 2 weeks of messages) I get an email from him saying "I'm back from Iowa - I'll be over tomorrow". When he said that, it did sound vaguely familiar that he was going to be out of town. After talking to him, it turns out he was involved in some sort of custody soap opera, the details of which I will not go in to here, but the good news is that he's back in town and back on the case. Switches and light fixtures have started to go up.

Oh, and my other job is making sure we have enough money to finish this dang house! We currently are in the positive (And that's a good thing! ™) But there's always things like "Oh we're going to need another $100 to pay Ray to finish mudding out the drywall" or "well since we took out the chimney, we need to either move the gas water heater so we can vent it out the side of the house or buy a new electric water heater").

One of our friends is coming to watch the kids today, so we're planning on going over there this morning I think - I'll take the camera and try to post some pics later.

Some walking adventures

So I have decided to add walking to my list of exercises on my running log. In fact, if you read this blog post in a timely manner, you will see that I did some walking back on April 8th. 4.5 miles as a matter of fact. Why would I do something like that, you might ask? Well... read on.

Red Robin has a free birthday burger that they email you. Well, they don't email you the burger (that would be tricky) - just a coupon for one. I was going to go on my actual birthday since I was out in the area for lunch, but alas, I had forgotten my coupon, and I didn't feel like driving back to work to get it. I thought that I could probably have gotten away with it by showing them my license or something but just decided to do it the next day.

So the next day dawned and around 11 or so I decided to walk to Red Robin. I looked it up and it was only 2.5 miles (turned out to be about 2.3 as I cut through an abandoned golf course). It was a beautiful day (about 70 degrees or so) so I thought eh why not. Plus, I had just read an article about hypermiling so I was being all fuel conscious.

I think that had I realized QUITE how far 2.5 miles is (while walking) that I might have reconsidered. I know I definitely rued the long sleeve black shirt I picked out in the morning...

Pretty uneventful. The burger was good, and came with fries. It was interesting in seeing how just because the fries were there, I ate them, even though I'm trying my revolutionary diet, and as such didn't really want them. I did not eat all of them though, which is unusual for me (I have a big "clean your plate" problem when it has food I like). I ate by myself and then tipped the waitress with a buck or so of change I had in my desk.

At least they didn't bring me out a plate of nothing but a candle!

I do want to point out that I am not counting this walking time toward my goal of 4 days of exercise. I also want to point out that if you did NOT read this post in a timely fashion (so as to be able to see my walking outing on the exercise widget well then what's wrong with you? You need your recommended daily allowance of DanMiller after all.

More toilet fun

Well then since we all seem to be so enamored with talking about toilets, let me offer up some rules for everyone.

The Toilet Rules

The toilet is not a toy.

Toilet paper is not a toy.

After I use the bathroom I get 3 squares of toilet paper.

I count the squares: 1-2-3.

I tear off only 3 squares of toilet paper.

I wipe myself.

If I am still dirty, I can count 3 more squares of toilet paper.

I count the squares: 1-2-3.

I tear off the 3 squares of toilet paper again.

I wipe myself some more.

I am clean.

I do not play with the toilet paper.

I flush the toilet one time.

I do not put a lot toilet paper in the toilet.

Helpful information, wouldn't you agree? No reason for sharing at all... Nobody in our house dumped an entire double roll of toilet paper in the toilet. Nope, nobody at all. Though if somebody DID do such a thing, I bet it was one of those "wants the seat down" type people.....

The mistake I made was trying to plunge it before reaching in to try to de-clog. Carolyn informed me of this after the fact. Why yes, this isn't the first or even close to the first time such a thing has happened.

Luckily we are borrowing a wet-dry vacuum from a friend (originally for our basement cleanout). Came in very handy today. The trick was not to just suck all the water out but instead to shove the vacuum end all the way as far as it would reach BEFORE turning it on. It took a few tries but eventually we sucked that TP all the way out.

Oh and in case you were wondering, basement grime mixed with toilet paper is VERY disgusting...

Oooh that's brisk

So our hot water heater died on Friday. Or actually what I have since learned is called the thermal couple died.

We called our home warranty folks on Friday and a guy came out on Friday night. He (thought that) he had the part to do it so he got to work and it turns out that our thermal couple is left-threaded. According to the plumber, nearly all of them are right-threaded and pretty standard.

He tried to go find one but could not and then again yesterday tried to find one at a particular store but no dice. Yesterday we went to step aerobics at the Y but for some reason the teacher didn't show up so Carolyn and I just went and worked out in the exercise room. I did some elliptical and then about 30-40 minutes of weight training so I am awful sore this morning.

Naturally, showering at the Y was called for. At this point we still thought he was going to hook us up yesterday but no, so now there is no hot water today either. We entertained notions of going to the Y again this morning just to shower (like good bums do), but it doesn't open till 11 and there's no childcare. So Carolyn washed her hair with a pot of water she heated up on the stove and I took a polar bear shower (hence the title of this post).

Yesterday I also went to FleetFeet to get a new pair of running shoes. They brought out a bunch of shoes and tried them on but they were all in the $90-95 range. I tried to deal with them but no dice. I was getting ready to leave when they said they might have a discontinued pair in the back. They did and I ended up getting them for $65.

In which National City caves (Satisfaction part 2)

Oh yes National City, you WILL be mine. Following up on the post from the other day, here are the updates on my saga with National City.

Attempt 7: Going back on what the lady in Attempt 6, I called up what is apparently my "home branch", which is where I opened the account some 10 years ago, although I don't think I've been back since. Spoke to the lady that answered the phone and explained my problem. Well actually I didn't really explain my problem so much as just tell her I wanted these fees waived. She of course said she couldn't do that and I'd have to talk to the manager, who was conveniently on vacation until Monday. I pulled out one of the good phrases from that blog I linked yesterday - "I see this fee here and I'd really like to get it waived. What else can you do to help me?" Turns out there is also an "office manager" who can do it. But she was with a customer, so I could call back in 10-15 minutes. I instead opted to leave my name and number and have her call me when she was free.

Attempt 8: No call for an hour or two. So I called back - ended up speaking to the same lady. I introduced myself again and the lady explained that the manager lady was in with a different customer. I said nothing and eventually she put me on hold. After a moment or two, the manager lady answered. I again said I wanted the fee waived. Actually I said I got 2 of these overdraft charges and I'd like one of them waived, but she saw my trick and said that one of them was already waived, so I had to restate that I wanted the OTHER one waived too. She asked me if this is the first time my balance has been negative. I danced around the question since the answer is no and I didn't want to lie about it. And then she said "Okay I'll do it". We talked about various other overdraft options (none free :-/) and that was that.


And there's the proof! I'm kind of glad because I was totally going to drop National City if they didn't cave on this. And that would have been annoying.

I will not GIVE you the satisfaction

So a friend of ours was talking to Carolyn the other day. She was telling us a story from a few years ago. Apparently she got upset that she was the only one doing the dishes and that her husband never did them. So one day she decided to go "on strike" (i.e. not wash the dishes). As soon as I heard this part of the story I knew it was a bad idea.

Sure enough, as expected, nobody did the dishes forever, they both got angry at each other and the problem was not solved. This must be a guy thing, because as soon as I heard the story I told Carolyn "Man if you did that to me, I wouldn't do the dishes because I would not give you the satisfaction" For me that kind of passive-aggressive behavior would make it not only about the dishes but just about the principle.

Recently the cafeteria at work decided to (once again) nickel and dime us. You are now charged 21 cents if you want to use a cup (like for water). Also, if you take a to go container - ooh that's 25 cents. Errr wait. I mean if you DON'T use a to-go container, you get a 25 cent discount. But... conveniently, the price with discount is exactly the same as the old price. Hmmmm... The other day I forgot my water cup upstairs but I instead opted to just have no beverage with my meal. ARAMARK I WILL NOT GIVE YOU THE SATISFACTION!!!!!!

And now, fast forward to a week or so ago. I get a notice from National City about 2 overdraft charges. This is not the first time this has happened to me. I have money at National City, but in various accounts. And so sometimes the money just is not in the right place at the right time. I have fought these before with pretty good success (just this once). As this dude points out, a bank's cost to attract new customers can be up to $3500. So they have an incentive to bend over backwards to keep their existing customers.

This time though it's complete crap. I transferred enough money on March 11th to cover 2 transactions I knew were coming in on the 12th. They cleared, leaving me with a couple hundred bucks in the account. But due to "holds" on the card of $671.80 that triggered 2 over draft notices. Even though my account statement never shows me going negative. And oddly enough none of the future transactions (from the 12th to the 17th) add up to $671.80, no matter what combination you try

Added to that is that I have an alert set up that is supposed to email me any time that my balance goes below $250. Never got an email, despite supposedly having a negative balance.

But I WILL NOT GIVE NATIONAL CITY THE SATISFACTION

Here is my saga:

Attempt 1: Called up the customer service number on my overdraft notice. Spoke to a guy who was pretty rude. Got nowhere.

Attempt 2: Following the SlickDeals mantra - I immediately hung up with him and called the same number and spoke to someone else. She went on and on about those holds, and I countered by going on and on about where does this $671.80 come from - show me the transactions. Finally she offered to refunded me $34 (the cost of one of those overdraft fees) "as a courtesy". I told her hey that was nice, but I want them both. She wouldn't do it. I asked to speak to someone else. She said there was nobody else. I kept at it. Finally she said she'd take my name and number and have her manager call me.

Attempt 3: The next day I talked to the manager. I again wanted to know where this $671.80 came from. She said she couldn't tell me. I said I'd accept the $34 if and only if she could tell me where this money supposedly came from. Again we go on and on. Finally she tells me that I can get that information if I go into my branch. I say fine.

Attempt 4: I go in this afternoon to my local National City branch. I go up to the desk and say "Yes I have 2 things here - first I'd like to deposit this check for $35,000" and then I have this overdraft charges that they told me you could take care of. I figured if they saw what a high roller I was maybe I'd get better treatment. Of course, they don't know that I'm not REALLY a high roller (the check was the latest draw on the new house and has to be deposited so I can pay off the sub contractors) but hey :-). She couldn't do it and had me wait to talk to some other lady.

Attempt 5: A few minutes later I got called back into the office of said lady. Did the whole thing with flashing her my bling. She again gave me the whole rigmarole about holds and all that. I countered with talking about how much money I have (ha!) and how much business I do with them and how I don't want to have to go to 5/3 or PNC or wherever. She says there is nothing she can do unless it's a bank error. I say well to me it IS a bank error. I ask if there is anyone else that can do it. She says her manager will be in tomorrow. I leave it at that. Seriously folks - what is the interest they'd get in even ONE day on $35K? Not to mention that thanks to the wacked out Federal Reserve laws in the US, deposits of $35K mean that National City can make loans of I believe $350K!

Attempt 6: After reading those finance blog posts I linked to above (I had them in my memory but had to search for them), I decided I'd use the tips he had in his post and looked up National City's number off their website, which, oddly enough, was different than the number that I had called before (from my letter). This time instead of asking about these fees that I got, I straight out said "I see these fees and I'd like them waived". I thought she was going to do it but in the end gave me the excuse that the only place that could do that was my "home" branch, which is the branch where I opened the account up 10 years ago (down in Clifton). I suspect that is bogus but I will give them a call tomorrow and if that doesn't work I will keep calling. It just takes one person.

NATIONAL CITY I WILL NOT GIVE YOU THE SATISFACTION. I will seriously close down all my accounts over this $34. Just ask UC who will get ZIPPO of my millions until they apologize for screwing me on health insurance in summer 2000.

UPDATE - See part 2 for the thrilling conclusion

Saturday Problems

Wanted to recap my Saturday excursions (last Saturday - the 15th). We had decided to go up to the Y to swim as a family. Afterwards we were going to get some pizza. As part of our move (even though we haven't really moved yet), we got on some mailing list where we're getting all these free coupons from local businesses as they want to get our business.

You know what time it is baby? It's bizness time - ooh!

Oh, sorry, got ahead of myself there. Anyway among these free coupons was a coupon for a free 2-topping medium pizza (2 topping - this is important later) from Mio's pizzeria as well as $5 off any order at Larosa's. So as we are heading home I call and order the pizza from Mio's (pepperoni). I couldn't find my coupon book so we held off on the Larosa's till I could find my coupon book at home. So then we got home and

Problem 1: I left my coupon book at Meijer (where somebody apparently stole it as it still has not been turned in)

So we decided to just go get the Mio's pizza and eat that and something else. So kid #2 and I went to get it. On the way we stopped at Kroger for some 19 cent Toaster Strudels. We were in the van and since I don't drive that regularly I forgot that I can just lock it once we're all outside with the keyless doohickey. So I'm waiting for him to open the door so that I can lock the doors and then get out. He does, I do and then

Problem 2: I shut his hand in the door (and right before his big recorder solo - I keed I keed)v

So I realize I've done this and go to open the door and

Problem 3: I can't open the freakin door because (as I have mentioned) I already have locked the doors

Luckily it didn't take me long to reach around and open it. His fingers weren't broken or even that swollen or scarred. He could move them all but was understandably freaked out. I consoled him for awhile and then we decided we could make it into Kroger.

I know what you're tryinnnnn to say; you're tryin to say it's time for business - it's bizness time - ooh!

Oh sorry - I don't know why that keeps happening to me. Anyway before I continue I should back up and mention that I am very much a creature of habit. I put my keys and wallet and such every morning on my nightstand. And in the morning, when I get ready for work, I take them off the nightstand and put them on. If someone (yes kid #4 I'm looking at you) moves them - I am very likely to just forget them because they're just not in the right place. So my routine when I get out of the car is that I open the door, lock it, and then shut the door and then put my keys in my pocket. But all this hand shutting in door disrupted my routine so my keys were on the van floor (and very much NOT in my pocket), so...

Problem 4: I locked the keys in the van

So I called the Mrs. to come and get me which she did, even though she had to fit 4 people (and 3 should be carseat / booster wearers) in the little car.

Then we headed out to Mio's. Got the pizza and gave the lady the coupon. And....

Problem 5: She was having problems with the register and I thought I was going to get some static about the coupon

But... that one turned out good - apparently because the coupon was for a 2 topping and I only got a 1 topping, I deserved a refund. So in addition to a free pizza, they handed over $1.25. For those of you that know me, I think you'll agree that's classic Dan Miller.

Siiiiiiiiiiick

So, a few weeks ago, I commented to someone, "you know, we really have been incredibly healthy this winter!!" I was pretty surprised since with the freakshow in full effect, and the number of cesspools of infection that members of my family frequent (YMCA, school, church, etc), it is not surprising to go pretty much the entire winter with at least one person sick at all times.

I TAKE IT ALL BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!

We've spent the past 2-3 weeks in bad-times-ville. I have probably been the healthiest - just a few days of vomiting and it feels like I'm starting to come down with the next wave. Various kids have been in various stages of sickness. A. went to one day of school last week (though that was actually only one "official" sick day due to 2 snow days and a fake holiday.

Aaaaaaand it's currently snowing again

Why is it so hard to exercise?

I'm not sure why it's so dang hard to exercise. Or why it's so dang hard to get up in the morning. This is something that I've had issues with for quite awhile. Being at a job that doesn't require a "strict" arrival time, there's not a whole lot of incentive for me to get "up and at 'em" at any specific time. Except maybe the dirty looks given by my wife as I lay in bed while she gets all the kids ready for the morning? :-)

But even having said that, I do want to do better. I have set the goal to wake up with the alarm. And I have a goal of exercising 4 total days this year. But for some reason those are not motivating me. When I came to the great awakening last October that to hit my goal of exercising 1000 miles I needed to do 62 miles a week, that was very motivating to me. I would go to the Y most mornings, and would go sometimes in the evenings, including one evening when I rode the exercise bike for nearly 39 miles.

But 2008 has not been great for me. I started out okay, but then I horked my back, and couldn't really do anything, and got out of the habit and boom - here I am.

I do have those above-mentioned goals. I am also planning on repeating my adventure in the Miami triathlon. But maybe I need more immediate "harder" goals.

Thoughts anyone? For the record, as you can see over to the right in my handy exercise log widget, I did exercise this morning - I went 25 minutes and did 2.79 miles.

A 10 point day baby

Yup it's a 10 point day today. I figure if I'm going to get publicly hounded for publicly announcing my goals and then publicly not doing them, I can at least publicly get rewarded for publicly doing them. (Publicly)

Today I woke up with the alarm and then this evening my productive thing was fixing the DVD player. It has not been working for the past few days and "ate" one of the library DVDs. I was a little reticent to tackle this because the last time I tried to "fix" a DVD player, I umm "fixed" it. And of course by fix I mean completely destroyed to the point that I gave it up for free on Craigslist. Anyway this one was much easier. I unscrewed it and it turns out umm cough cough someone put 2 DVDs in there at once. I jiggled it, they came out, and I am done with my productive thing at 8:19 p.m.

Silence thou clamorers!

Yes, that goes out to all those of you posting over on my last post wanting nay NEEDING your Dan Miller. And I can understand how that can be a problem, so I am here to provide.

I thought of that title on my way to work today. I also like coming up with catchy titles, though not necessarily with 3 dots.

It reminded me of some of my favorite scripture passages, that where Jesus or whoever is writing gives the smackdown. In the DR, we called that a boche. I like to imagine prophets (and Jesus sort of) as just regular guys. Of course the best example is 2 Ne 28 which I like to call the "Fire and Brimstone" chapter including verse 15 with the good old triple wo.

Speaking of scriptures, I have a scripture of the day desk calendar that has various scriptures for each day and as I was turning the leaves over this morning the one for February 9 (Saturday) was Proverbs 8:11 which reads

For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it

Of course on my version, which was handed down to me on my mission, part of it was crossed out and it now says:

For women are better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it

Can you tell that was written by some repressed 20 year old that wasn't gettin any? :-D

In any case, all that was just a nice preamble to get to the REAL point of this post, which was to give a report on my goals. As some people have noted, my goals have not been going so hot. As some people have also noted, that is one downside of publicly posting your goals. But alas, dear readers, the one upside of that is that it does provide some incentive to "repent" (to keep the scripture theme going) and start up again.

So I was up at the Y this morning. I decided to run - I went for 2 miles. I set the treadmill at 6.0 mph (a 10 minute mile), though it took me slightly over 20 minutes due to the ramp up time. Rest assured I was hitting the up arrow as fast as I could, but it cost me 5 seconds. My other goals have not been going that great either (though I have also not been updating the sheet), but I am redoubling my efforts.

You may also note that I added a 1 hour "elliptical" entry for last Monday. I helped a lady move down in the OTR. I actually had intended to make a full blog post about that (but didn't, obviously), so I will comment on it here. It wasn't that bad. This was in the middle of massive family sickness, so I thought hey, either doing all this exertion will cause my body to reject all the sickness and I won't catch it, or it will just weaken me so I immediately fall ill. (As it turned out, it was neither as somehow I made it all the way till Friday till I got it or something). It wasn't even that scary although Over-the-Rhine is the #1 scariest part of Cincinnati. It's now in our ward after the recent ward split / redesign. We also picked up Price Hill which is another not so nice place.

Anyway we were down there about 2 hours or so, and after the move, we were heading back through downtown-ish areas, in this big hoopty van (I had ridden down there with another guy from the ward and 3 of his sons, and we rolled the windows down because we were all hot and sweaty and I was like "Ooh we need to start pumping the bass" so we found some rap song and cranked up the bass, so we were pimpin and stylin YO!

Then yesterday I saw the lady at church and I asked her if she was all moved in and she was like "Oh yeah Brother Jacobson and Brother Blackwelder came down on Monday and helped me move" and I was like "Oooh daggers!" No recognition!! :-)

Anyway that is all I've got. Oh no new house pics yet because there's not a whole lot going on that you can see. They're doing plumbing and electrical and heating ducts and such. The windows and back door are in now so that's nice but you can pretty much imagine what they look like...