Let The Holidays Begin...

Oh.. Hell... No...

 

Flip-Flip Socks?!!?

 

Not OK

Hallelujah!

 

Ann Coulter's Jaw Wired Shut

 

Now, that's something to be thankful for!

Spectator

I think that my level of motivation is directly proportional to my recent level of activity.

For the last week, per Doctor's orders, I have not run, played soccer, lifted weights, or done anything exerting or might cause me to actually break a sweat.

Know what I have done this last week?

Nada.
Nothing.
Zip.

I haven't done anything active or non-active. Haven't cleaned the house, haven't really run errands, done anything to be proactive, not even walked the dogs. Nothing. (Yes, the dogs hate me right now, no doubt.)

I have had zero motivation. Just not really interested in doing. I have been in a fairly decent mood, especially since my eyes finally stopped aching on Thursday.

I have a soccer game this afternoon. First game in 9 days. I am going to be sucking wind.

Hopefully, it will get my blood flowing again and bring back my interest in doing shit. I have got to get my shit in gear too. We are leaving to go to the Outlaws' on Wednesday evening so I have a ton of shit that MUST be accomplished between now and then.

Oh yeah and I am just super-excited about Thanksgiving.

One More Time: Let Them Die

 

Big Three CEOs Flew Private Jets to Plead for Public Funds

GM and Ford say that it is a corporate decision to have their CEOs fly on private jets and that is non-negotiable, even as the companies say they are running out of cash.

Another Great Example Of...

Shut the Fuck Up.

 

The Dems have been rattling the saber at Lieberman since he supported McCain.

 

Get over it.

 

I am not a Lieberman fan at all, but he decided to do what he thought was right and damn the party line. I'm fine with that too- have a fucking brain and don't just be a lemur. Fine.

 

If Lieberman betrayed anyone it was the people who he represents and they will get their say.

 

Imagine if all of them started voting for what they actually thought was right for the country as a whole. Not what's best for them, or the lobbyists, the party line, or the religious right...

 

Never happen. I know.

No Bailout

Alright. Someone mark it on the calender or make a note somewhere.

I actually agree with the Republicans.

Yeah, I know seriously. It makes me nauseous to admit.

I did not agree with the $700 Billion Dollar Bank Bailout. I agree even less with the concept of the Automakers Bailout.

Maybe there was some necessity to the banks, I am not an economist, so I'm open to the idea.

I don't care how much cash you dump into the industry, if the UAW refuse to make any changes and the same management is at the helm (make them biggger! use more gas! Don't make anything that can be sold overseas! Kill the electric car!) the companies can never run leaner and more competitive.

The UAW has been slowly killing the auto industry for years.. like a parasite that ultimately kills its host. Some union line workers actually make more than multi-degreed college presidents.

When enrollment goes down in the college, the college president shares the responsibility to correct the problem and increase it. He/She has to get up off their ass and get out there and fix it. When an auto assembly line goes down those workers sit on their ass and wait for it to be fixed. They don't try to help fix it, look for the problem, or pick up a broom and clean up- that's someone else's job. So they sit. And wait.... minutes.. hours...

So let them die. The Republicans are right, in the current state they are dinosaurs. Let them die.

If they are going to save them, they have to do a complete reorg and there's too many lobbyists out there to do that.

Death sets the stage for rebirth. A new auto industry will emerge (where there's an open nitch, there's going to be succession) that will be capable of running leaner and making better decisions because they aren't saddled with the past constraints.

Take the money the automakers want and dump it into universal healthcare so at least the people who lose their jobs will have health insurance while the economy evens out and the new jobs emerge.

Americans cringe at the idea of universal healthcare. Well chew on this. The current estimate for universal health care is $50B/year. Sounds like a lot of money? It is.

We just dumped $700B into the banks- that's 14 years of universal health care coverage!

What a bunch of crap. This isn't a society based on capitalism, it's a society based on politics.

Politics is based on opinion. Fine. My opinion is to let them die force them to Chapter 11 and dismantle them piece by piece until they drop enough fat to actually run.

20/100 x 20/200

Okay. I am a believer.

On Friday morning before my surgery, my vision was 20/200 (l) and 20/100 (r).

At my Sat morning post-op appointment (less than 24 hours) my vision was 20/25 (l) and 20/30 (r).

It' still going to be a few weeks for me to totally heal and everything to level out, but the Doc seems to think I am going to end up with better than 20/20 vision.

Wow..

Post-Op

It looks like Lasik was quite successful.

It's supposed to take a few weeks for your overall vision to improve to the final level, but as of my post-op visit Sat morning, I had 25/30 vision. A vast improvement on what it used to be and in less than 24 hours.

I am bathing in like 3 different kinds of eye drops- one every four hours, one every hour, and one as needed. I have some super-sexy blu-blockers to wear in the sunlight and some retard goggles to wear while I sleep.

To top it all off, I have blood over the whites of my eyes so I kinda look like a Halloween character.

HAWT!

They say that the surgery itself isn't that bad, that they numb your eyes so you really don't feel anything.

Let me make something clear here. That is a big fat fucking lie.

It's incredibly uncomfortable when they suck your eyeball out of your head to cut the corneal flap (the cut itself isn't painful, but you do feel it). You know that sound a cigar cutter makes when it cuts off the top of a cigar? It sounds like that.

And this is only the beginning. In my case, after the flaps were made I was walked into another room (full of student residents to observe the surgery). This was where it really sucked.

He tapes the other eye shut, wrenches open the other one and manually opens the flap. Then the machine thing gets all lined up to start etching your actual eyeball. What I remember vividly about this is that I could actually smell my eyeball tissue burning.

Yeah..

I think I was in there about 20 minutes while they did both eyes. Then they returned me to the husband to drive me home. I swear it was the longest ride home. I had hot flashes and battled nausea the whole way.

They tell you you have to keep your eyes closed for the first 7 hours. No problem. Rob put me on the bonus room couch and I slept for the next 7 hours.

I still have to limit my TV-watching, computer time, reading time, etc. No soccer for a week, no running, no lifting. No sweating.

So basically, it sounds like I can eat and drink. Fine. Bring me wine!

My right eye seems to hurt on and off, but according to the docs every thing's great and I am healing a lot faster than the norm. I don't need glasses or anything even now.

I have been sleeping a lot since the surgery. I think because my eyes are tired and probably also because I am physically exhausted from the trauma.

My right eye aches this morning, but other than that I feel pretty good. I think I am going to try to get out of the house this morning and see what I can get into.

Discount Surgery

I am getting my Lasik done.

It's been on the immediate plans list for a while now. We set up the flex spending account to do it this year, so I basically have until year's end to do it.

Obviously, it hasn't been super high on my priority list, but now I am running out of time and I'll be damned if I am going to lose the money so here we go. Evaluation was yesterday and the surgery is scheduled for tomorrow morning at 10:30am.

A decent excuse for a day off of work if nothing else, no?

I'm not nervous about it, honestly I haven't give it much thought. The guy doing my surgery is the guy who does Lasik for the Duke Men's Basketball Team. If he wasn't the best, they'd have burned down him home and run him out of town by now.

On an amusing (and slightly disturbing) note, apparently with the economy in the shitter elective surgeries have really taken a hit.

They told me that normally the procedure is 3K per eye, but they are "running a special and right now it's only $2550/eye."

..Oh good. Lucky me....

I am about to have discounted surgery.

Okay, that concept in it's is a bit unnerving.

On the bright side, the customer service level for elective surgery is off the charts when compared to the normal doctors office/routine surgery. So I guess that's something.

Decorative

So this is what it feel like to be a cat in my own house.

Since I got home from the race yesterday I have done absolutely nothing. Is there a word for less than nothing? Then maybe that.

The farthest I have gotten from the couch is the kitchen to feed the dogs and myself or the bedroom to nap. I watched a bunch of Tivo yesterday and then was so exhausted I had to take a 3 hour nap before returning to couch to watch more Tivo and eventually a movie.

After which I spend a few hours reading my book.

I woke up this morning, let the dogs out and went to bed- not because I was still tired, but because I had failed to come up with something else I wanted to do.

I'm up now only because I decided I wanted coffee. After this? Who knows. Read probably.

I do have a soccer game at 3pm so that will prevent me from being totally worthless.

I am enjoying my random drifting. This must be basically what it is like to be a cat in this house.. decorative. I'm digging this.

I figure eventually I'll get stir crazy and I have a list of errands to run, I can go do that. But if the desire never really arrives, I don't feel much like doing anything about it.

Quitter

This morning was the Free to Breathe 5K over at NC State. It absolutely poured on my way down there and I had visions of another race through a torrential downpour like the race in Durham back in the spring.

The rain did stop before the race actually started and by the last mile or so the clouds began to part and blue skies peaked through. The humidity never eased, thank god it wasn't any warmer.

I crossed the finish line at 27:11. I ran with a racing chip so in a couple of days my actual time will be posted on line. I am sure a couple of seconds will come off my final time- it took a while to cross the starting line in the crowd. There were probably 800 people or so.

My goal was to stay under 27 minutes and so it looks like I probably missed it by a couple of seconds. Pfffft. Damn it. Next time I guess.

It was quite an event. I saw hundreds of runners who were running in honor of loved ones who have lung cancer, have survived lung cancer, or have been lost to it.

While smoking isn't always the precursor to lung cancer it is a huge risk factor.

According to the CDC: Cigarette smoking causes lung cancer. In fact, smoking tobacco is the major risk factor for lung cancer. In the United States, about 90% of lung cancer deaths in men and almost 80% of lung cancer deaths in women are due to smoking. People who smoke are 10 to 20 times more likely to get lung cancer or die from lung cancer than people who do not smoke. The longer a person smokes and the more cigarettes smoked each day the more risk goes up.

I smoked for almost 9 years.
Both of my parents smoke.
I have a lot of friends who smoke.

So I get it.

And I quit.

It's never too late to quit.

Today, I ran in honor of the quitters.

Wish List

Okay.

 

So NOW I want an Otter

 

 

AND

 

a baby pigmy hippo!

 

4 Years

 

Today marks 4 years since my last cigarette. 

 

....and to celebrate I think am going to run the Free to Breathe 5K Race on Saturday.

 

Yeah, me too.

World hopes for a 'less arrogant America'

Crowds gather all over globe to follow historic U.S. elections

"From my 'ouse, I can see Belgium."

Holy crap.

If you haven't heard this need to. It's hysterical.

A French Canadian DJ from station CKY engaged Palin in a friendly 7 minute phone conversation before he finally revealed to her that she had been pranked. You can listen to it here.