Shallow Thinker

My wife and I cook supper on occasion. And, when we have left-overs, she sweetly puts some into a container for me so that I’ll have lunch for work the next day. Last night was such an occasion and this morning Kelley informed me that my entire lunch was in a bag in the fridge ready to go. So after hugging Butterfly and getting an extra hug from Ladybug, I grabbed my lunch and headed out the door.

When I got to the cafeteria, I opened one of the containers and found this odd substance inside…I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I don’t know that I’ve ever eaten anything like this. Luckily, I work with some people who have eaten this kind of thing. One of the guys told me it is “salad.” So, like any other man who has been given something healthy to eat, I traded it for a Snickers…now that satisfies!

About a year ago, my employer held a health & benefits fair. I was excited because I love going to the fair. I wasn’t sure how they’d incorporate health into it, but I was really excited about the benefits part - seeing the people juggle, getting a smoked turkey leg…maybe even some rides!

Apparently my employer has a different view of what a “fair” is. (I’d hate to see the ones that they went to growing up.) This one involved walking around and talking to people about retirement and exercise and blah, blah blah. Apparently I’m not saving enough money for retirement. Also, I’m overweight (see below). But, being the smart person that I am, I think that this is a brilliant combination! If I’m overweight, then I’m much more likely to die early. And, if I die early, I don’t need too much retirement money….right? So, I get to eat what I want now and spend the money to buy stuff that I want and I’ll die right on time. I really feel sorry for the people who are eating healthy and saving. They don’t get to have anything, and they have to live much longer without it, too! Losers!

At any rate, the point of this post was to discuss what “overweight” really means. The most common tool for determining this is the Body Mass Index (BMI). This is a formula that compares your weight and your height. If you’d like to see where you are, just click the picture to the left and it will link you to the place on the CDC’s website where you can figure it out. (If you’re a teen or a child then you’ll need to use a different link - click here. Also, if you’re a child, why are you calculating your BMI? And can you read this? Wow…impressive!)

So here’s my deal. I’m 5′11″ and last night I weighed in at 186 lb. So, you put those numbers in and…..overweight. But let’s tweak it a little bit. I’m actually 6′ when I wear my shoes and I need to take off a pound or two to account for clothing. NOW, let’s try it again and…..overweight. Guess there’s no getting around this one….I’m a big boy…

The only thing worse than doing a bad impression….is doing it in a different language. For your viewing entertainment here’s a remake of “We are the World” by Japanese impersonators.

The concert last night was indeed amazing. Steven Curtis Chapman never fails to put on a great show. I’ve gone to a few concerts in my day and I usually enjoy them, but the two SCC ones that I’ve been to have left me thinking that it was well worth the money. But last night’s was cool for another couple of reasons, too…

First, my father-in-law and sister-in-law (Empress Katie) watched the girls so that we could enjoy the concert. (I think that the girls love their Aunt Katie.) But with their help, we were able to breathe for a moment and actually enjoy the music.

Second, our seats were awesome. The story is a bit convoluted about how I got such good seats so late in the game, but we were 10 rows back and I was dead center. I think that Steven had to consciously avoid making eye contact with me all night.

Third, Steven played had his sons playing with him at the concert. His oldest son, Caleb, opened the show and then did some back-up vocals and accompanying guitars the rest of the night. His youngest, Will Franklin, played the drums. Young Will was quite impressive, I might add. I told the wife during the concert that perhaps the only thing cooler than doing something like that with your kids would be siting back from a distance and watching them do it by themselves.

Finally - and this is the coolest part - Steven had a thing on his website where you coud request a song for them to play. Since this was the last night of this concert tour, the band and the stage hands were joking around a bit. But, my friend Rob had his song sung Steven even said that it was requested by “Rob”. He did several other songs, all were told who they were requested by…first name only, though. Then, the last fan-requested song of the last night of this entire tour was requested by….ME!! (That’s right. I told you that I was gonna ask Steven to play a song!) And not only that, but he told the entire audience that I had requested it. First and Last name! My wife was so excited…because the closest I’ll ever get to performing on stage is having a performer call my name…on stage. I’ll take it!

I’m reading the local paper today to see if there’s any mention of it, but I haven’t found it yet. I suspect the headline will be something like “Fan Requests Lead to Fun Times: Local Man Requests Best Song Ever” - I’ll post the article as soon as I find it.

On occasion, my knees feel good enough to let me run…so I try to take advantage of that and punish them by running. It’s a vicious cycle that I enjoy thoroughly. At any rate, I got a chance to run this evening. My time wasn’t anything to blog about….but yet here I am, blogging away. But why run…what’s the goal?

Each year, I do the Run4Missions 5. The first time I ran it, I didn’t know what to expect because I hadn’t run in a while. I finished in 25:43. Last year, I trained a little leading up to the race and finished in 24:22. So, I’ve set a personal goal of 22 minutes flat. I don’t know that I can achieve it this year, but I do think that this year’s run will be a great indicator of if it’s actually reachable or not.

Tonight I ran 4 miles in 36 minutes. That works out to a pace of 9 minutes per mile. If I want to complete the 5K in 22 minutes, that works out to a pace of just over 7 minutes per mile. WOW….I need to trim 2 minutes per mile….2 whole minutes!! In the words of the song from Smokey and the Bandit:

He’s got a long way to go and a short time to get there. He’s gone’ do what they say can’t be done

Well, I don’t know about that second sentence, but the first one definitely applies. Have I set my goals too high?

It’s amazing to me how much I enjoy working outside. That’s good because there’s still a lot of work to be done to our backyard, and a lot of it revolves around the playset. For a good ground covering, I’ve decided that mulch is definitely the best way to go. But before the mulch goes down, I’m putting down a bunch of sand to help level the ground around it. But what good is all this sand if my girls can’t play in it?

This week, I’ve been working on upgrading the the sandbox. The original one that I had made was an odd shape because it had to fit under a tent that we had setup. The tent was our idea of letting Butterfly play outside during the summer without the danger of mosquitoes. With the new playset, I don’t think there’s any way we could keep her in a tent, anyhow.

At any rate, I wanted to build a sandbox that was big enough for both girls to play in and allows me to sit and play with them without having to curl up into a yoga position that will leave my knees hurting for 6 months. So, with everything I do, I built this thing entirely too big with too many features. Here’s how I did it…in case you’d like a sandbox that’s too big, too.

–First, I dug a hole about 18″ deep into the ground in what would be the center of the sandbox.
–Next, I covered the ground with 2 layers of “landscaping fabric.” Basically, this helps to prevent bugs and weeds from coming up into the sandbox. However, it’s much better than using plastic because it allows the moisture to seep down into the gown. Plastic would hold the water at the bottom of the sand and that could get nasty in a hurry. My first layer ran one direction and the second layer was rotated 90 degrees.
–Once the fabric was in place, I cut an “X” into the fabric on top of the hole that I had dug.
–I purchased 4 pieces of 2″x8″ untreated wood. Each was 10′ long. Basically, the untreated wood is much safer than the chemicals used for pressure treating. Sure, eventually it will rot away, but because of the way this is set-up, the boards shouldn’t be sitting in moisture, so they should last longer that the girls’ will to play in the sandbox.
–I cut all of the boards in half and made two squares
–I stacked the squares on top of each other….and fastened them together a few steps down.
–Now, I used the 4×4 post that I purchased (and didn’t mention yet) and stuck it into the hole I dug so that about 18″ stuck out of the ground. Then I packed the dirt in around it.
–I too a 4ft x 4ft piece of birch-venier plywood (because it was a scrap piece) and cut off the 4 corners to serve as seats. Then I cut out a hexagon to serve as a center table/seat.
–I fastened the hexagon table to the top of the post that was sticking out of the ground. This serves several purposes. If I need to sit in the sandbox, this will work. If one of the girls needs a little table, this will work. And finally, when I cover the whole contraption with a tarp, this will be a high spot and will force all of the water to run down, and keep from settling. Genius? yes….yes it is.
 –I took the left-over bits of the 4×4 post and put them in each corner to hold the sides together.
–I took the corners of the plywood and made seats for each corner of the sandbox.
–I made a bunch of trips with the wheel barrow to fill-up this monster. Butterfly enjoyed riding in both the empty wheel barrow and on top of the sand. She didn’t help much with filling the wheel barrow or the sandbox, but she sure did have fun riding!
–I purchased a special-designed cover for the sandbox. I’ll call it “random blue tarp from Wal-Mart”.

There you go.  That’s how you over-engineer a sandbox that’s too big.  Any questions?

This one I couldn’t resist. Wow….there’s no way this is real….is there? Oh, and they have more videos. You Have to check out their other ones.

I know that I take pride in having a good place to *cough* ahem….um…*cough* “sit and think“, but this lady must have had a La-Z-Boy for a pooper…

Lady Sat on Toilet for 2 Years

I took yesterday off work so that I could visit various doctors for various reasons. One of these happened to be a dermatologist. I went to him because I’ve been getting some really bad headaches. My theory was that I have been working out so hard that my muscles are expanding too fast. As a result, the skin is pulling too tight and causing headaches around the head area. (Because headaches around the arm area are untreatable.) At any rate, I wanted to see if he could cut some slits in the skin so that it would stretch out and relieve the pressure.

While I was there, I figured I’d get him to check over all these spots on my skin. See, some people have this amazing ability to cope with sunlight. Their skin turns dark as a defensive mechanism so that they absorb less of the light….but not me. No sir, my skin turns from pasty-white to blood-red….then it dies and falls off, allowing a new wonderful layer of pasty white to appear. On occasion, I get lucky enough to have freckles. So if I’m really far away from you and you squint so that I look blurry, it might look like I have a tan….but I don’t. But, if I ever get really bored, I could play connect-the-dots…for a long time.

At any rate, the doctor told me lots of things to do to keep from turning into leather. Here are some of the things that he did not advise me to do.

• get burned at least once or twice a year…it keeps up your pain threshold
• for rough spots on your skin, try sandpaper
• if you have a spot that you think needs to be removed, try using a sharp knife and do it yourself - it saves insurance money
• a soldering iron will work well, too
• honey makes a great moisturizer
• if you can’t tell the different between your skin and beef jerky, then you’re doing it right

What will you be doing on Sunday evening? I’ll be jammin’ with my friend, Steve. That’s what I call him when we’re chatting….”Steve” or “Stevie” or sometimes “S-Man”.

Apparently you can request a song for him to play for this tour. So I requested “Baby Got Back” - I hope he plays it for us. Looks like the place will be packed:

…but why so many clocks?  And why aren’t any of them set to the same time?  I’ll ask the “Steve-Meister” about that next time he calls up…

Yesterday I got the wonderful opportunity to hoop it up with some friends. I was out of practice, but the good news is that so were the rest of the guys. I was a mad basketball machine. Lance couldn’t handle me in the lane, Jonathan was scared of my dunking skills (which I did not have the opportunity to show off), Marty couldn’t handle me draining 3’s, Rob cried a few times because of my defensive prowess, and Chuck had to leave early because I shut him down. I was intense.

I’m trying to remember if my team ever lost a game….I must be really good. So out of all the short, white guys that played basketball in Bolingbroke, Georgia yesterday, I was definitely in the top 6. I’m waiting on the call from the NBA. They’d better hurry, because I might go back to college to play football for my Alma Mater…if they ever get a team.

I was so on fire that after I got home, I could still feel the heat. Then my wife informed me that it was actually the sunburn. Apparently, when it’s cool and breezy outside, you can still get sunburn. Geez, I wish they’d tell you this stuff beforehand.

I’ve documented it here before, but my wife enjoys the TV show Lost. (She got hooked on it because a dealer gave her a little bit and now she’s addicted.) I’ll openly admit that it is a very intriguing series and if you haven’t ever seen it, it’s worth borrowing the DVDs from a friend and taking the first season for a spin. While the show is well-written and very entertaining (drama, romance, comedy, suspense, etc.) the whole concept is a bit cumbersome to me. I feel like I have to devote 300% of my brain to each episode just so I can read the label on a can in the background because it provides some clue as to why Character A is wearing a belt which he/she will use to save him/herself from a random scenario that Character B already warned them about.

In the past weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to sit in the room while my wife has enjoyed the show. Granted, I’ve been doing work on my computer during the show, but I’ve been able to keep an eye on the screen and talk with my wife a bit as the scenes unfold. For instance, I explained who the scientist Faraday was and what he did and then unveiled a previously unpublished theory about advanced particle dynamics and the whole time-travel thing made sense to her.

So with my new insight into the show, no longer do I feel that the episodes are too cumbersome to watch….I have a new reason to not care.

There we were, watching the episode last night, and there is a discussion on screen about a mysterious character. So our discussion went something like this:

Wife: I wonder who it could be?
Me: I dunno
Wife: …it must be someone important because…
Me: Ah-Ha! It’s Locke’s dad
Wife: It can’t be! Locke’s dad is dead…
Me: …oh… (goes back to working on computer)

Silly me, how could I have suggested such a silly thing. A dead guy being involved in the plot of this story. That’s just crazy talk……hey, wait a minute…..we’re talking about a TV show where people TRAVEL BACK-AND-FORTH THROUGH TIME!! HEY, THAT’S NOT POSSIBLE EITHER, BUT IT’S STILL IN THE SHOW! And let’s not forget that it wouldn’t be the first time that a DEAD PERSON WAS IMPORTANT TO THE PLOT!!

And that’s when it hit me…the show constantly keeps people guessing because their minds are trying to establish some logical reason for the occurrences that they are shown. But the shows creators don’t even have logical occurrences, much less logical reasons. Now tell me again why I have to maintain rational theories for a show that likes to invent irrational things?

So I have decided that it no longer matters how absurd my theories are, they are probably equally as valid (if not more so) than some of the others out there. Now if you’ll pardon me, I’m going to go perfect my theory about how Jack is really Sayid’s cousin because his sister, Juliette, gave birth to Kate at a very young age. Sound crazy? WELL SO DOES TIME TRAVEL!!