Thermodynamics and fitness

It's no secret that I've been trying to increase my activity over the last few weeks. Before we left on vacation in May, we joined a gym here in town (see the post where I complained about the showers) and I've been pretty good about going. I know that I'm still in the honeymoon phase of it and at some point - read: any minute now - the bloom should fall off the rose and I'll find some excuse to not do it any longer. I'm pushing past that and I think that's as much of a success as anything.

When we joined, you got one free session with a personal trainer which Heidi and I both signed up for. She went yesterday morning and I went yesterday afternoon. In many ways, it was a bit of a let down because it felt a lot more like a sales pitch than anything else. I get that they have to make money - as I say, I don't work for free and neither should anyone else. But it was hard for me to believe that the person I talked to would be as interested in my personal fitness if they weren't trying to sell me a pack of personal training sessions costing in the hundreds of dollars. Still, she was very nice and listened and answered some of my nagging questions about the equipment, like how accurate are the heart rate monitors on the treadmills (quite accurate) and do you really burn more calories on an elliptical than a treadmill (no, the calories burned on an elliptical is not based on any type of formula and is more of a guess.)

Still, I can't shake the feeling that it really is something I should do, sales pitch or no sales pitch. There's so much I don't know about getting active, and there are so many things that I need to learn how to do to make sure that what I'm doing is what I need to be doing. Additionally, there's so many things that you can do that if you do wrong, you can end up really hurting yourself. I'm thinking mostly about strength training. My dad's showed me over and over again, but for some reason, it never sinks in. And I HAVE hurt myself using free weights in the past. Not terribly, mind you, but I really don't want to experience that again. It put me off any kind of physical activity for a year and it hurt like a motherfucker.

So for my birthday this year, I'm getting three sessions to start. The first thing I do will be to take a cardiovascular fitness test to see where I am right now. I know that I regularly get myself to maximum heart rate for my age and weight without much trouble - it's good to know I could pass a stress test if I took one - but I want to know what my baseline is. I know there are all sorts of ways to do cardio and that there's really no wrong way, but I really need help knowing what's best for me so that when I go on my own, I know what I'm doing and that I'm doing it right. The same thing goes double for weight training which I know I need to add in as well but am very nervous to do so. I am such a weakling! I'm very glad there's no sand in the gym for someone to come kick in my face.

But with the help of the personal trainer, at least to get started, I think I can really figure out what it is I need to do to maximize my cardiovascular fitness as well as throw off some of this pesky extra weight I've managed to put on since my metabolism downshifted somewhere in my mid 30s. I was at the pool the other day and as usual, was very self conscious about how I looked. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror in the locker room and decided that for a guy pushing 40 that is just now starting to get active, I don't look too bad. And just think of what I can do if I actually start working at it.

It reminds me of the thermodynamics and every systems tendency toward entropy and disorder unless energy is used to counteract it. And since I can tie fitness to thermodynamics, my geek cred is still intact.

Pants and plans

I gave in this morning and bought four new pairs of pants. It mostly makes me feel like a failure, but oddly enough, it also feels like a call to arms.

Over the last few weeks, I've noticed that my pants had not been fitting as well as I would like them to. Mornings have been a struggle because the combination of my pants not fitting and having the worst case of closet malaise in recent memory usually had me getting out at least five different things to wear, only to reject them all and wind up wearing what I started with. But that hasn't changed the fact that they have been uncomfortable to wear.

This is frustrating on many levels as I really have been eating better this year. French fries are an infrequent treat and I do try to watch how much I'm eating. It's hard at work where the selections are not the healthiest but you can always eat off the salad bar. But the fact remains that I have gained some weight this year - probably not so much that you can notice it unless you're invading my personal space - but I notice it, primarily because of my previously mentioned ill fitting pants. I also battle a less-than-desirable blood lipid profile that is at least 60% genetic. Whenever I vocalize that I would like to lose weight, I'm usually met with a chorus of WHAT??? I may not look it, but alas, according to the highly-flawed-but-still-best-measure-we-have BMI, I am overweight.

I know that the key component that I'm missing is exercise. I used to walk to work all the time, but this, that or the other thing always comes up at the last minute and half the time, I end up driving. I always feel like there's no time in my already packed life for exercise when clearly, it's something I just need to make time for. Part of my trouble is that I'm constantly tired and trying to muster up the ambition to do anything that's remotely like exercise seems like it takes a Herculean amount of energy. I had grand plans earlier this year when I vowed to make some small changes slowly over time so as to lessen the impact. While my attempts at eating better have been mostly a success, I have still caved to emotional eating on many occasions (especially recently) and my efforts to work even mild activity in have met with complete failure.

The purchasing of new pants was met with a lot of resistance. As I said, I equated it with failure. When I was out with Heidi buying them this morning I said "I don't want to buy many because I'll be back in my old pants soon." Who knows if that'll happen or not. I'm realistic enough to know that unless I change careers and become a male escort, I have to have pants to wear to work.

A lot of people I know are trying to increase their activity. I'm still not sure how I'm going to do it, but I do know that it'll involve baby steps. I am not going to announce a bold new initiative to create a new me that runs a marathon daily because for me that's just an invitation to failure. But hopefully I can find something that holds my feet to the fire a little bit better than an interventional cardiac cath procedure. Ultimately, fitness is a solitary journey and I'm not usually the best when left to my own devices. We shall see.

(Note: the pants pictured are NOT the pants I bought.)

Decade old Oscar mix

Oscar weekend is nearly upon us. As I mentioned in a previous post, we have seen 60% of the Best Picture nominees which is a sight better than last year when the only Best Picture nominee we had seen was Up. The Oscars are kind of a Big Thing around here. It's probably less about the awards and more about the company and camaraderie that have come to characterize every year's Oscars. I enjoy the core group of people that we always get together with - they truly are family. We are always open to more people coming in (if they dare) because honestly, the more the merrier. I work this weekend but it's day shifts so it should be okay, plus I have Monday off so I won't have to worry about having to get to bed at a decent hour.

All the talk of Oscars got me to thinking about the year that we made an Oscar mix CD for everyone. I don't think we've done that in years, and let me tell you how it's NOT happening this year as I haven't the time to put something together like that. Anyway, I dug through my big old CD wallet that houses all my burned CDs from the early 2000s. I kind of quit burning CDs en masse when I got an iPod, and it's kind of fun sometimes to look through them as they all have cover art thanks to Microsoft Publisher. It didn't take me long to find the Oscar mix CD which was creatively titled "Oscar Mix 2001."


If that is not a motley mix, I don't know what is. A few points:

• The video mix of "What It Feels Like For A Girl" was undoubtedly a Napster of Audiogalaxy acquisition. A full mix of it was released on the CD maxi-single, but the edit is still unreleased on CD.
• The themes from Mommie Dearest and Supergirl are nods to movies that had been viewed at previous Oscar parties as it was our tradition to watch a movie that had been "snubbed" by Oscar.
• Two mash-ups in a row and four Madonna songs? My mixing skills have improved in ten years - that would never happen now.
• Any CD with "Pump Up The Jam" and "The Bad Touch" (do it like they do on the Discovery Channel) can't be all bad, right?
• I still kinda love that Samantha Mumba song.
• It kind of blows my mind that Heidi was probably very very early in her pregnancy with Anna when we made this CD.
  

I think I might have to make this into a playlist for my iPod. But first, I have to get my tax shit together. I'm not remotely ready for our tax appointment tomorrow.

Karaoke as bravery

A few weeks back, I watched several people that I follow on Twitter tweet about being at a karaoke event in Des Moines. I remember trying to figure out if this was a big thing or if it was just a bar that was having karaoke that several people happened to be at. I have never done karaoke - not even one time, but it's one of those things that I wouldn't mind doing some day.

For me, karaoke is one of those things that would require me to be extremely brave to do it. It's not that I've never sung in public before, it's just that the last time I did that I was in 6th grade and playing Santa in the school Christmas play. My voice hadn't changed yet so it sounded like Santa was a eunuch. I remember having to sing a song about a Super TV Set that would broadcast Santa's travels to the entirety of the North Pole. There was also a part that required me to pretend that I was on the phone and I put the microphone up to my ear instead of my mouth before I started talking. I was mortified because, naturally, that was the performance that was recorded and that we had to watch in music class after the program was over.

I sing in the shower, in the car and around the house doing chores. Anna and I take turns singing on Guitar Hero. Heidi always says that she can tell I'm doing well and feeling good by the amount of singing in falsetto that I do. It's true. I don't know that I sing particularly well, but it's fun. I don't really remember my dad singing around the house when I was a kid. He famously didn't like to sing hymns in church or anything like that. I want my daughter to have as one of her childhood memories a dad that sang in the car with her or around the house or whatever.

I've toyed with the idea of going out to do karaoke many times. In 2003, I went to visit a friend in Cincinnati and that was totally on the agenda. Well, I got sick with a cold toward the end of the trip and for a million other reasons, it didn't work out. My friend Jess, whose bravery I admire on a nearly daily basis, does karaoke quite a bit. She's a really good singer though and even does it in places outside the confines of her own home. She has even invited me out with her several times when she has gone but for whatever reason, it just has never worked out.

I always used to say that I would need to consume a considerable amount of alcohol to do karaoke. The trouble with that is that alcohol may be liquid courage but it's also liquid brain mush. It also causes me to talk non-stop and for those of you that know me, I know that's hard to believe, but it's true. How can you be expected to do a decent job singing a song when you're sloshed? You can't. It's just impossible. Some people would say that performing a song badly is the point of bar karaoke. I would disagree. If you're going to do something, why deliberately do it badly? Even the people that made Mommie Dearest thought they were making a classic - that it turned out to be a camp classic is beside the point. And if I ever do karaoke, I would hope to God that it sounds something like the episode of House where Chase, Foreman and House all sing Gladys Knight & The Pips' "Midnight Train To Georgia" at a karaoke bar. The actual video from the show is fucking embedding disabled, but watch it here (really, do it. It's worth it and essential viewing.) Here's the audio of it that is embeddable. Chase is Gladys and Foreman & House are the Pips.



I suffer from no delusion that I would sound as good (or look as good) as Chase does in that clip. But I'll admit it - there's a Chase in me dying to get out. I push him to the side or squash him down with relative frequency, because it doesn't fit in with the image I've cultivated over the years. But you know what? Fuck that. Heidi and I have been talking a lot about bravery lately and really, to be brave means you really have to take the chance. I may be pushing 40, but I'm not dead yet.

The thing I've learned over the last year is that, like it or not, I am the sum of all my parts, even those parts I would rather bury in a tub of cement a la True Blood. The trouble with that is that even when you do that, it's still a part of you. Better to just embrace it all and be a whole person. I would love to not have to deal with anxiety issues. I would love to be more outgoing and less tentative. The fact of the matter is that those things are who I am. Period. That doesn't mean I can't change them, but at this point in my life, those things are pretty hard wired. And if there's something like a songbird version of Chase ramming around in me, I'd best pay attention to it as well as the parts of me that I'm accustomed to dealing with.

So who's with me? Who among you are ready to be the Pips to my Gladys Knight? I know that if my brother Ryan were here, he'd totally do it. But he's been singing the Pips' part of "Midnight Train To Georgia" for the better part of a decade now. Now that I've done shots, maybe I need to cross karaoke off my list as well. And who knows? I might just like it. And then again I might not. Regardless, it's called living and I intend to be doing more of that.

Gas, car wash, subway, don't walk

On the way home from lunch today, I was stopped at a stop sign and I couldn't make a left turn that I wanted to. Heidi was with me and I said "no left turn?" which immediately made me start singing "no right turn...no left turn...what can you do?"

Heidi was floored when I continued with the following bit that I think she hadn't thought of in 30 years.



This is the kind of stuff that if I could get it out of my brain, I'd be thousands of times smarter. And probably be able to find my car keys.

(This video has a scandalously low 33 views on YouTube. This needs to be remedied.)

Staycation is over

As of tomorrow at 9AM, the real world will start hassling me again. It's probably more than time. It's been fun being off work for 13 days, but I am ready to get back in the swing of things. I think Heidi's ready for me to be back to work as well. I know she loves us dearly, but there is something to be said about having the house all to yourself.

There's a snowstorm that's creeping its way across Iowa right now. It's kind of stalled out over western Iowa so my folks are probably getting covered in the white stuff. It hasn't showed up here yet but they're predicting anywhere between 5 and 9 inches by the time it's all said and done. I took Tuesday off (nothing like wading back into the real world) to go to Lobby Day down at the State Capitol but judging from the forecast, it looks like it's a toss up as to whether we'll go or stay home.

We also got the tree down today and all the Christmas stuff is awaiting its annual trip back down to the basement. It actually wasn't a terrible job - we all worked together and it went pretty smoothly. I'm not sure when it'll actually get to the basement, but I'm sure it will eventually.

Overall, this has been one of the more relaxing staycations I've had in a while. And it wasn't because I was completely lazy and did nothing. As I said, I got a lot of continuing ed done (final tally = 22 hours) and did some stuff around the house. We decluttered a significant section of our basement (miles to go.) I watched a shitload of Netflix which included all four Eddie Izzard shows that are on Netflix streaming. I swear, those get better with each viewing. We've seen them so many times that it's the anticipation of the joke that is funny rather than the joke itself.

But all good things must come to an end and all in all I'm just glad I have a job to go back to. So many people in this economy don't and, well, I will be thankful that I'm not one of them. Time off wouldn't be time off it you didn't go back at some point. As Mary Chapin Carpenter said (more accurately, Mark Knopfler, but whatever) - you gotta know happy, you gotta know glad/because you're gonna know lonely and you're gonna know sad. And vacation without a job to go back to is unemployment and let me just say that I'm not super interested in that right now.

But for now, I'll leave you with these sage words of advice -- never put a sock in a toaster, never put jam on a magnet, never throw your granny in a bag, never suck all the juice out of a vampire and never lean over on Tuesday (unless you're covered in bees.) Just watch this:

Documentaries, Part 1

I have been on staycation all week this week. It's been the best thing that's ever happened to me. OK, perhaps that's a bit of an overstatement, but it has been EXACTLY what I needed after all the traveling that goes with the holiday season. It has been so worth it that I may do this again next year. Anyway, I've been massively productive in many ways that don't appear upon first glance to be productive. I've over half way through my continuing ed that I need to do for my license renewal in June, we've made tremendous headway on our Hoarders-ish basement, and I'm nearing the end of a second book. Crap, I wish I were doing the 25 book challenge this year!

I've also done a lot of sitting on my ass and watching TV. Loads of it, in fact. This is notable as I'm not usually one to selfishly sit in front of the TV. We don't have cable so my temptation to do so is not what it might be if we did. But between Netflix, Hulu and Roku, I have found a shitload to watch this week. And really, all I've watched is documentaries. I was going to give each one of them their own blog post, but really, that's just overkill. But I did want to highlight the ones that I've deemed worthy of my staycation time, so here we go with the first three.

Cropsey
My friend Matt recommended Cropsey to me which is a good thing because I'm pretty sure I never would have discovered it on my own. The name "cropsey" refers to an urban legend of a Boogeyman like killer, some say he has a hook for a hand, others say he was a crazed Boy Scout counselor, other versions have him living in a subterranean series of tunnels. Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio, both raised on Staten Island, tell the tale of a series of child abductions that might have been (or might not have been) perpetrated by a man named Andre Rand, who worked at the Willowbrook State School - a home for children with mental disabilities famously exposed by Geraldo Rivera in 1972. The story unfolds slowly but never too much so. I watched this from midnight till about 2AM one night and I had myself so freaked out that I really didn't want to turn the lights off to go to bed. So in other words, it was right up my alley, as most true-crime stories are. Highly recommended.

Unforgotten: 25 Years After Willowbrook
I was inspired to watch this partially because of the role Willowbrook State School played in Cropsey but also because I was scouring the net looking for Geraldo's original documentary footage from 1972 when he exposed Willowbrook as being basically a cess pool and dumping ground for kids that had nowhere else to go. This documentary highlighted four different families that had a family member, either a son or daughter or a sibling, that was in Willowbrook prior to its closure in 1987. Consisting primarily of new interview footage (although there was some Geraldo footage in there as well), this was a good but not great documentary. I think I was expecting more dirt on Willowbrook and less of the personal family drama. It was still worth watching as it barely clocked in at 60 minutes, but not exactly what I was expecting. One of the things that impressed me was how much care for the mentally disabled has improved over the last 25 years. This film was made in 1996, so it is pretty old by documentary standards, but I still felt that the message was relevant. May we never forget the atrocities of Willowbrook so that we are not doomed to repeat them.

A League of Ordinary Gentlemen
I stumbled across this in the documentary section of Netflix Streaming. I'm not a big sports guy (no, really?) so I usually shy away from sports documentaries, but I figured that I was at least sporty enough for bowling. A League of Ordinary Gentlemen is all about how bowling lost its cool and the steps the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) was taking to get professional televised bowling back on the map. The film followed four pro bowlers - three seasoned professionals from pro bowling's hey day (Pete Weber, Walter Ray Williams, Jr., and Wayne Webb) as well as a younger, less well known bowler (Chris Barnes.) The documentary followed these men for a year culminating in the 2003 PBA World Championship in suburban Detroit - the first time pro bowling had been on TV since 1997.

Like I said, not being a big sporty guy, I wasn't sure what to expect, but I have to say that it was very entertaining. The guys take their bowling VERY seriously. I think I felt most sorry for Wayne Webb, who won over a million dollars in prize money in the 80s but squandered it all away, marrying and divorcing multiple times and declaring bankruptcy twice. The world championship round was a nail-biter and I was really engaged so I guess they accomplished what they wanted. I also learned more about pro bowling than I thought there was to know.

See how much you can learn just watching TV? I have a few more to watch before I head back to work next week and I'm still trying to decide if I have it in me to watch 8: The Mormon Proposition which is streaming on Netflix. We'll see what happens.

Kiss it better?

As a late 30s straight Midwestern guy, this article in The Guardian was fascinating to me.

Straight Men Kissing More

My first reaction was "you've got to be kidding me." Is this for real? Really? I have certainly not seen this taking place in rural (or even urban) Iowa, but then again, this IS Iowa. We're usually a pretty pragmatic, live-and-let-live bunch - the last election notwithstanding - but if I were to venture a guess, I'd say this phenomenon is pretty rare here. I found it even stranger that the studies mentioned in the article were all based out of the UK, where I would say that men are as stoic if not moreso than men in Iowa.

I think it's pretty safe to say that most every straight man I know (myself included) would be uncomfortable with this. Hell, I would argue that most men our age are not super-comfortable with hugging each other - how in the world would we ever feel comfortable kissing each other? I think the vast majority of men would balk at even giving another guy a peck on the cheek which wasn't what this article was talking about anyway.

Once again, as is made clear in the article, it's a generational thing. And I, for one, applaud it. If this is a sign that homophobia is on the wane and the definition of masculinity is changing subtly yet again, more power to young adults pushing this change. It reaffirms what I've always known about marriage equality - it's a foregone conclusion because subsequent generations will care less and less about it.

I saw this in spades at my sister's wedding this weekend. As I watched them in the receiving line, countless guys came up to my brother-in-law to shake his hand and he would always say "give me a hug." I loved this. His family is the huggiest family I have ever seen - and I mean that as a compliment! As I have stated before, I'm a pretty huggy type of guy, but the vast majority of my friends are not.

But I still think that kissing is a hell of a long way off. I mean, we still have to get rid of the buffer seat at movies! Thankfully, none of my friends who accompany me to movies require one of those because honestly, buffer seats are just stupid.

(image via)

Vinyl trim

Those of you who have been to our house know that in my office, I have a border of vinyl around part of the room. I love old album art and really kind of miss it nowadays. Anyway, there's always been a big blank section which has never been filled despite getting vinyl from people every time I turn around. Co-workers bring it to me, I get it for Christmas, my birthday, you name it. Well, today as we cleaned the house for the annual Very Tina Christmas next weekend (yes, that's a Mommie Dearest reference.) As part of that, Heidi helped me clean up my office and I decided to finally finish hanging up all the vinyl I had never gotten around to putting up.

Warning: my guilty pleasures are on full display here. Like that's ever stopped me before. I'll post the pictures in order as you go around the room. (Play along: Do we share any favorite albums and what else can you spot in these photos?)

Is it kitschy? Probably more than a little. But wow, is it ever Dan. Heidi asked me if when I walk in my office, I feel like it's "me" and yeah, I do. Almost all of these, from the Madonna and Stevie ones to the Linda Ronstadt and Helen Reddy ones that were given to me as a joke, have a story in my life. Fun times, sad times, but nothing I really ever want to forget.

She ROCKS

I had kind of a fair-to-middling day (at best) yesterday. No real reasons, just the way it worked out. Heidi, on the other hand, had what can only be described as a fucking fantastic day. The Rainbow Awards are put together by Elisa Rolle and are. as Heidi put it, pretty much the LGBT fiction equivalent of the RITAs. The winners were announced yesterday and Heidi was all over the place. Heidi's post is here, but I wanted to post the results here as well.

Best Gay Erotic Contemporary, First Place - Special Delivery
Best Gay Fantasy, First Place - Hero and Miles and the Magic Flute. (They tied each other.)
Best Character, Third Place - Special Delivery
Best Writing Style, First Place - Special Delivery
Best Overall Gay Fiction, Second Place - Special Delivery

In addition to this, both Special Delivery and Double Blind were listed by Sarah Frantz at Dear Author as two of the best of 2010.

I am so amazingly proud of her that words can't possibly express it. I frequently say that she is living her dream, something that many people wish they could be doing but for whatever reason are not. She does all this while being an amazing mother to our 9-year-old and the best partner in my life I could ever hope to have. I love her so very very much and couldn't be happier that her dreams are finally coming true.

And hats off to Special Delivery, the little book that could. As I've said before, I had a small hand in making sure the book got finished and boy, am I glad I pushed her on it now!

Hooray for the man love! I never thought it would help pay the bills!

(she has three more books on the docket for 2011, the first of which will be out in February.)

NaBloPoMo wrap-up

Well, I did it. Almost. While I missed one day of posting in November, I managed to get 30 posts in 30 days and folks, that's a NaBloPoMo success. So what in the hell did I get out of this second annual experiment in blogging?

Well, the first thing I got out of it was that I really do enjoy writing. I kind of already knew that, but whenever I do this I remember how much I enjoy writing about whatever the hell happens to cross my mind. Sometimes I can get five paragraphs out of it and sometimes not. Most of the time, the posts don't go in the direction I expect them to. Nowhere was that more apparent to me than in my private dining post, which started out as an examination of a day I spent on the Iowa State campus as a late 30-something and became something more akin to a confessional.

Last year I mentioned that I didn't think that posting daily upped my traffic at all and that it certainly didn't net me a ton of new readers. This year, I stepped outside my comfort zone and pimped this space a little bit more than usual. I linked to every post on my Twitter account and to most of them on Facebook. The advent of lists and the ability to control who can and cannot see content I post on Facebook has made me a bit braver in that respect. Doing that roped in a few new readers and saw some days' hits actually hit triple digits, although I think those were due in large parts to a whole bunch of apparently unrelated hits from Italy looking for a picture of Corpse Bride. I rarely get more than about 40 hits a day which is so minuscule in the grand scheme of things that it's the blog equivalent of a speck of dust. Not that I live and die by blog hits. Nor do I live and die by comments - although feedback is always nice. You simply cannot measure a blog based on the number of comments that it receives.

My favorite posts out of the month were the previously mentioned private dining, as well as the one with me confessing I've never done a shot, the Friends post and the Roxette/Heidi one. I am also pretty fond of the pictures I posted for Anna's birthday but there was not much actual writing on that one. I also did four of my book challenge posts. I'm never sure if those are worth the time or not, but I enjoy writing them so whatever. Skip them if they are of no interest to you.

There's no way I will keep this up in December, but I do want to try to blog on a more regular basis. NaBloPoMo always proves that I am not short on things to write about but what I am short on is time and energy. So we'll see how I do. What I am going to be doing is tweaking the site a little bit and adding in Blogger's pages options. You'll notice them along the top. There's an "about me" section that has nothing in it (apparently, I'm shallow and empty.) I'll also be adding a "greatest hits" section. There I will link to some of my favorite posts and the ones that continue to get the most hits. I think it'll help to serve as a starting point for anyone that may randomly stumble across this space or, more likely, someone I know personally that I send to the blog and keep them from being overwhelmed by the 1400+ posts. It'll be the zero-depth entry section of the blog.

Mostly, this month has been a fun time to write about what I like. And that's the biggest thing I learned. Write about what you love, not what you hate. Sure, there'll still be criticism of those things that do not live up to expectation, but I find that I am much more excited about writing about those things that I love and am passionate about. I'll also continue to share the occasional confessional post which might reveal more than I want it to, but honestly, it's in the little stories that we really get to know each other. And sometimes they're easier to write than they are to tell in person.

And THANK GOD I finally got more hits than just people looking for pictures of the monster from The Relic or trying to find out about rumbling appendicitis - probably the most common searches leading to this blog, although "Madonna remixes" is starting to give both of those a run for their money.

Thanks for continuing to read and thank you for sharing the month of November with me.

The written word

And now for something completely different - to be legible, you'll have to click on the images to make them bigger.


I got this idea from another blog, but sadly, I can't remember where.

NaNoWriMoBloPoMo

It's almost November which means only ONE thing around here - we're about to lose Heidi for a month. Monday starts the beginning of National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo for short) in which participants attempt to write the first draft of a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. Last year, Heidi wrote Double Blind during NaNoWriMo. This year, I think she's planning on writing the third book in the Special Delivery series so fans of that series, the wait is getting close to being over. There will be write-ins all over central Iowa for the next month and I'm sure I'll be at many of them providing moral support and drinking overpriced coffee.

Me, I'm not that ambitious. But what I AM planning on doing is participating in NaBloPoMo or National Blog Posting Month. I did this unofficially last year but this year, I'm jumping in with both feet and have signed up on the web site. While it was originally developed as a counterpoint to NaNoWriMo, it no longer is just a once yearly event taking place in November. However, in honor of Heidi's attempt (and the attempts of all others in the Central Iowa Authors NaNo group), I'm choosing November and, according to the FAQ on the web site, it's still the most popular month for people to participate.

I can't promise something witty every day, but there will be new material at least once a day in November. Some days, it may be no more than a YouTube link with some sentences to go along with it, but I do hope for some longer posts as well. I know that blogging is ancient history, but my dogged determination to keep this space going is stronger than ever right now.

I have a few posts I've saved for November, but expect me to catch up on my book posts. But if last November is any indication, who knows what I'll get up to.

Pharmaceutical influence

This is National Hospital and Health-Systems Pharmacy Week, or as we like to refer to it Pharmacy Week. We're having a potluck at work tomorrow (which reminds me, I still need to hit the store for my contributions) and the techs at work all have t-shirts that they've gotten the approval of administration to wear through the week. I don't know if retail pharmacies are celebrating this week, but we are.

I've said it before that if I had it all to do over again, I wouldn't change a thing (cue Kylie.) And it's true, I wouldn't. I can't imagine doing anything other than what I'm doing right now. Being a pharmacist is so much a part of who I am that doing any other job is just an alien concept to me. There are days that being a pharmacist makes me crazy, but I imagine that it's no different than any other profession - you have your good days and your bad days. But the simple fact of the matter is that I am well suited to this profession both because I am smart enough to do it competently and because it fits in with my personality quite nicely.

If you can believe it, there was a time that being a pharmacist wasn't even on my radar. For most of my high school career, I was interested in going to medical school. I was always pretty bright and I was interested in science so I figured why not dream big? That started to change in August before my senior year of high school started when I got a call from a local pharmacist offering me a job. He owned a small pharmacy that was attached to a medical clinic in the town I grew up in. Each year, he hired a high school senior to work in his pharmacy doing deliveries, waiting on customers, restocking. What it amounted to on the surface was performing rather menial tasks but it was also an opportunity for him to give back to the community as a local business owner. Unfortunately, I had already signed up for community college classes that were in the evening, so I turned him down. However, my folks encouraged me to call him back and see what it was all about. I did, and after a very informal interview, he hired me on the spot for $3.60 an hour. This man's name is Don Jones.

It's fairly safe to say that I wouldn't be a pharmacist today if it hadn't been for Don Jones. The more time I spent in his pharmacy, watching him do the job he did, the more I realized that this type of health care profession was really much more my speed than any other I could get into. I was fascinated by drugs and how they worked and learning what they treated. I remember taking package inserts off the bottles and putting them in a file folder at home so that I could learn more about the drugs I was stocking every day. Don nudged me along the road to choosing pharmacy as a career very subtly. When I finally spilled the beans and said I had changed my mind, I think he was a little bit surprised. After I graduated from high school, Don hired me back every summer and Christmas vacation (and some spring breaks) until 1995 when I finally graduated with my B.S. in Pharmacy and he sold his pharmacy and subsequently retired. It was his influence and quiet role as my first pharmacy mentor that really set me on the path that ended up with me becoming a pharmacist rather than a very unhappy M.D. It's quite possible I would have seen the light along the way, but because of him, I didn't have to do it that way.

If Don Jones is responsible for me becoming a pharmacist, then John Hamiel is the reason I'm the type of pharmacist that I am. John was my boss in my first "real job." Looking back, he was my boss, my colleague and my friend - a situation that required him to wear a lot of hats. He was also, oddly enough, one of my students when I T.A.'d the P4 parenterals lab at the U of Iowa College of Pharmacy when I was doing graduate work. This just goes to show you that you should be nice to everyone you meet along the way because you never know when they might become your co-worker or even your boss. This is doubly true in the small world of pharmacy.

Anyway, the notable thing about John is that he really took a chance on me when he hired me. Here I was, applying for a hospital job with zero hospital experience. My only real pharmacy experience was retail, which included the years I'd worked for Don Jones and my part-time job at Drug Town in Iowa City that I used to help pay the bills while I was getting my Pharm.D. But for some reason, I didn't want to do work at Hy-Vee my whole life and on the encouragement of my friend Dr. Lynette Iles, I applied for the hospital job where John was the soon-to-be director and Lynette was on the medical staff. Despite my lack of experience, I got the job.

I am fond of saying that retail pharmacists and hospital pharmacists may both be pharmacists, but they speak in totally different languages. The learning curve I experienced my first year in a hospital setting was a steep one, indeed. There were times that I didn't think I could do it. When you work in a hospital, there's a whole subset of drugs that you never see in community pharmacy. The patients are (naturally) sicker than they are in an outpatient setting, so learning that sometimes we can do everything right and still not save the patient was hard for me. It's still hard for me. I think if it isn't hard for you, you need to check and make sure you still have a pulse. But John was always supportive and helped me learn lessons not just about hospital pharmacy but in the politics of working that everyone needs to get at least a little bit good at. Both sets of lessons ended up being invaluable.

My practice style has been so influenced by John that sometimes I find myself saying things that he said, even saying them like he said them. In a lot of ways, he was kind of "future me" although I didn't realize it at the time. We got along well and shared a lot of the same geeky humor and interests that define some of the strongest friendships I have. It was hard to leave when it came time for our family to change our scenery and move to Ames. But I owe him a debt of gratitude. Because he took a chance on a 27 year-old newbie, I've learned more about pharmacy than I ever thought I would and have more knowledge in my periphery than I thought humanly possible.

So during this Pharmacy Week, I want to take this time to say thank you to both of these men who were friends and mentors to me. Their influence is palpable in my life and career.

And because we don't want to be too serious and because I still have a 12 year old boy in me somewhere, here's the Top 11 Reasons to Date a Pharmacist:
1. Pharmacists do it twice 3 times daily
2. You can see your pharmacist the night before the morning after.
3. Pharmacists have a long duration of action.
4. Pharmacists are Rx rated.
5. Pharmacists find new routes of administration.
6. Pharmacists do it over-the-counter.
7. Pharmacists are patient lovers.
8. Pharmacists accept 3rd parties.
9. Pharmacists have a quick reconstitution time.
10. Pharmacists do it without breaks.
11. You will want no substitution

Happy Pharmacy Week to all my pharmacist friends and colleagues!

(Hug your pharmacist today. Especially if that pharmacist is me.)

Seven years on

Due to the busy weekend which saw us traveling across the state to attend my brother-in-law's wedding, the seventh birthday of this blog passed on Friday with relatively little fanfare. It's probably for the best as seven years into this thing, my output has slowed. 2010 is on track to be my least prolific year since 2005. I don't think I'll crack 200 posts this year. Of course, this might all change next week when I'm going to try to do two posts a day (I'm off work for a week.) Then in November I plan on taking part in NaBloPoMo as a show of support while Heidi does NaNoWriMo. I did it unofficially last year and I did do 30 posts in 30 days, even if I didn't technically meet the goal of blogging every day. So that means you have at least 44 more scrumptious posts to look forward to this year. I'm also behind on posting my 25 books, although I've managed to catch up a bit on the actual reading of them.

I keep doing this even though blogging is so 2006 because, as was pointed out to me, it's a good historical record of my life and my interests - even if no one ever reads it but me. I know that readership of blogs in general is down and the tried and true method of knowing who's reading your blog via statistics programs has been stymied by the advent of RSS readers. Whenever I look at my stats, it's so hard to tell who is actually reading vs. arriving via an image search.

Another reason I do this is because I genuinely enjoy writing. Even when the writing's not so good or very short, it still keeps me in practice. The job I have does not lend itself very well to the creative writing so this was and continues to be a good outlet for that. The fact that anyone else chooses to take 5 minutes of their day to read what I write is a huge compliment to me. That I have made friends that have felt me worthy enough to include on a blogroll is amazing to me.

It may not always be interesting and it may not always be earth-shattering, but I am of the firm opinion that it doesn't always have to be. So I'll keep plugging away at this.

Happy 7th birthday blog. You're as much a part of me as I am a part of you.

Just let it take you there

This song shuffled up tonight on my iPod on my walk home from work tonight and I'll be damned but I forgot how much I love it. It is Sheryl Lee Ralph's "In The Evening" from 1984, but the version I have on my iPod has been remixed by Almighty for a turn of the century audience, which is also the version featured in the video below.



I had completely forgotten how I even came to know this song, but a little investigation after I got home and, as Celine Dion would say, it's all coming back to me now. It was April of 2006 and we were in Chicago for a writer's conference of Heidi's. In a web surf session, I had run across a store called Borderline Music in Lakeview, which for those that don't know is the heart of Boystown. Perusing their web site, I knew right then and there that I simply HAD to get there. So Anna and I got in the car (she was 4 at the time) and drove pre-GPS from Deerfield into Boystown on the hunt for Borderline Music. Surprisingly, we did not get lost.

Anyway, we did find it and it was, as expected, a treasure trove for someone with the musical taste I have. It's priced a little bit high which you'd expect for an independent store and there are a shit-ton of crappy quality bootlegs there which made me feel like I was shopping in Iowa City in the mid 90s, but what I love most about it are the remix compilation discs you can't get anywhere else. It was on the 2CD 30-track set Ultimate Gay Anthems that I first heard Sheryl Lee Ralph's "In The Evening." Although I had picked it up for the "Love Eviction" remix and the Abbacadabra tracks (Yes, I know. Don't mock.), it was "In The Evening" that really stood out amongst a bunch of high-NRG dance covers of 80s and 90s tracks - not that there's anything wrong with them either.

The other CD that I remember picking up on that inaugural trip to Borderline also has a good story to it. Back in the Audiogalaxy days, I had downloaded a song called "Let The Night Take The Blame" by 501s. With a cheesy early 80s guitar riff combined with an even cheesier drum machine and synth track, it won my heart immediately.



Sadly, the version I downloaded was only a partial. It probably served me right, but I vowed that if I ever found it for sale anywhere, I would purchase it, regardless of what was on the rest of the album. Well, I found it on Gay Classics Vol 11: Hangin' Out. And, just as I promised I would, I bought it. Whether or not the rest of the songs are truly "gay classics" is up for debate, but it contained "Let The Night Take The Blame" in full, so I was happy for at least 8:07. As an added bonus, Heidi thought the album cover was cute, although I'm not sure "cute" is what they were aiming for.

I've been back to Borderline Music many times since then. Pretty much every time we hit Chicago, it's a required stop. As I said, it's pricey, so I can't always buy much. The last time I was there (for the Sticky & Sweet Tour), I only bought Madonna's Confessions book, the purchase of which got me a free Hard Candy album flat. I keep waiting for it to not be there each time I go to Chicago, but it's always there without fail, selling the best in the artists the gay community embraces. And even though it's probably not the height of coolness for a 38 year-old straight married father to be listening to this stuff, well, it makes me happy and I really don't give a fuck.

Life is short. As long as you're not hurting yourself or anyone else, do what makes you happy. No apologies.

And pretend like you're having a good time!

In the tradition of XO's mixtape posts (often imitated, never duplicated)...

Heidi and Anna have made it a summer mission to collate all the photos we took from our westward vacation last summer and put them into some semblance of order. They've even been scrapbooking some of them - complete with text and cutesy little stickers and what not. Over the weekend they were working on the Grand Canyon page. It reminded me of how I heard more than one person say, right before they snapped a photo of someone, "now everyone pretend like you're having a good time!" It made me feel a bit bad, but honestly, it could have applied to us slightly that day as Anna was kind of crabtastic that day. Still, the canyon is amazing and one of many things that the pictures just don't adequately represent.

I made it through three 50+ hour work weeks relatively unscathed. I'm still trying to catch up on my sleep though, which is proving to be more difficult than I thought. To sleep through the night without waking up would be a blessing.

I am so stalled out on reading, it's pathetic. A 200 page novel should not take 4 weeks to complete! And it's not that it's not good, it's just that my priorities (and my focus) have been in other places. This week though, I'm going to finish at least two of the books in my to-be-read pile so that I can have some decent book blog posts next week. Or maybe even later this week. We'll see how it goes.

Everybody we know is getting married this fall. Well, maybe not everyone, but we have three weddings to attend between now and the end of the year. Our friends Jan & Sarah are getting married mid-September. A week later, Heidi's brother, Hans, is tying the knot with his long-time fiancee Alicia. And then on the last day of the year, my sister Wendy is getting married to her fiance Andrew at the Englert Theater in Iowa City (the place where I saw Evita not once but FOUR TIMES. It used to be a movie theater, but has been restored to its former glory.) We'll pray for no snowstorms for that one or, frankly, for any of them. Hurray for expanding families!

The blog roll got a its first new addition in a long time over the weekend - popsublime, written by my friend Jason. He doesn't blog often (about once a week), but when he does, it's a long and thoughtful entry that is amazingly well written - something that seems increasingly rare in the blogosphere these days. Plus, he and I are musically twinned. I'm always unduly excited by massive amounts of musical overlap!

We'll be hosting our friend Cate from Canada - a beta-reader for Heidi and LJ friend - for a couple weeks starting next Wednesday. Plans are being hatched to head to House on the Rock (a truly Midwestern experience) for one day of it, but other than that, no concrete plans exist that I know of, other than to just have a good time. We're eager for her to arrive.

It's haircut day for me today, and even though it's been eight weeks, I did not spend yesterday cursing my hair. It definitely needs it, but I think it's because she cut it SO SHORT the last time that eight weeks of growth just isn't what it used to be. I'm thinking of going a little longer this time as we're heading out of summer and I have an inkling to straighten it again the next time I go in. We'll see.

Speaking of summer, I'm over it. As I mentioned in my mowing rant from the other day, if it's not raining, it's humid and perfectly miserable outside. After the winter we had last year, I can only come to one conclusion: We're being forced to choose between, as Eddie Izzard would say, fantastically hot or fucking freezing.

But before summer ends, we have to make the annual pilgrimage to Adventureland in Des Moines. My work offers discount tickets which cuts the admission price nearly in half and, as Anna told me the other day "it's kind of a tradition that we go to Adventureland!" Adventureland, as I have said in a previous post, is like an old comfortable shirt that you pull out a couple times a year and know that it'll fit just right. Minor tweaks happen each year, but mostly, it's the same experience year after year which in this day and age, is very comforting. We'll see just how much I can ride this year or if I'd just be better off waiting in the car.

I don't get Robyn. I just don't. Revoke my pop chyldren membership card.

And with that, it's time to do bills and other fun life stuff. But here's us at the Grand Canyon last year, only kinda sorta pretending like we're having a good time. It was also my 37th birthday.

1st of June

Well, here we are folks. It's June 1st. Where in the world did the first 41.7% of the year go? It seems like just yesterday I was snow-blowing the driveway for the 400th time, and now I have a jungle growing up in my backyard that I can't seem to be home long enough to tame. Getting the yard to the point where I'm not embarrassed by it is the goal for Wednesday afternoon, but now it looks like it's supposed to rain, so who knows if that'll even happen now.

I'm getting ready to work another set of 5 overnight shifts starting the end of the week. I'm weary of working that shift, but in the final analysis it's not all that bad. It's actually harder on my family than it is on me. I'll work the last one on June 8th which means I'll be working for the first 8 hours of my birthday and will miss the season finale of Glee. Because I have awesome family and friends, a whole group of them are going to forgo watching on Tuesday night so that we can all watch together on the night of the 9th. Another unintended benefit of the night shift is that it works out that I have a four day weekend for Capital City Pride in Des Moines, where Heidi and I (along with other friends and family) will have a booth selling her books and promoting Dreamspinner. It'll be a busy weekend but it should be great fun. Anyone who is local (and hey, even those that aren't!) are more than welcome to stop by and say hi. Pride in Des Moines is pretty family friendly and there's a such an amazing mix of people there.

We hit the Furman Aquatic Center here in Ames yesterday for Memorial Day which was beyond fun. It was supposed to open mid-summer of last year, but it was behind schedule and didn't and frankly, I'm glad that they didn't rush it but instead took the time to get it right. It has a little something for everyone and it was just a blast - even though I did sunburn the tops of my feet (they feel better today.)

My goal for the remaining 58.3% of the year is, as trite as it sounds, to live now. I will admit to spending a lot of the first part of the year living in an alternate future with horrific imagined outcomes. That's under better control than it's been in a while, but still, I am me and that is just a part of me. I have learned to respect it and not talk badly to it, but I still fail daily so who knows.

That's it for my inaugural June post. It's not much, but it's what I have.

Chrissy

So can you tell I'm not on vacation any longer? Gone are the days of 2 posts a day and we're back to the once a week blogging that seems to be customary these days. Vacation was good - not stress free by any stretch of the imagination - but still good. In many ways, it was good to be back at work.

The biggest unintended excitement of last week was the demise of one of our water heaters. Mid week last week while I was washing the dishes, I noticed that while the faucet was only half way between hot and cold and the water was so hot that I couldn't put my hand under it. Now I don't know much about things like this, but I do know that wild fluctuations in water temperature are a sign that the water heater is about to go. It seemed to calm down over the course of the week, but by the weekend, there was no hot water on that side of the house. It came back eventually, but it was intermittent throughout the weekend. Also telling was the presence of a water around the base of the heater. It was leaking and yeah, it was dying.

So we put a call in to the plumber to have them come take a look at it. It didn't take long for us to get the diagnosis - new water heater needed. Before too long , we had a new water heater to replace the old dying one and all was back to normal. I really didn't know how old the other one was - I just knew that it was OLD - so I asked the plumber to look up and see how old it was. Turns out it was installed in 1972! That's right, the year I was born, making it 38 years old. The fact that a water heater lasted 38 years just tells me that they don't make 'em like they used to.

Of course, I have only one association with 38 years. For those in the dark, that's how long Dorothy and Stan Zbornak's marriage lasted before ending in a bitter divorce. Dorothy references the length of her marriage in many a Golden Girls episode, so it's only natural that it's the first thing I would think of. When Heidi e-mailed me to inform me of the new water heater, I e-mailed back with "38 years of memories and laughter and fighting!" Man, that show still holds up after all these years.

So in honor of that, I've named the new water heater "Chrissy" because that was the name of the woman for whom Stan left Dorothy after 38 years. Let's hope that our relationship with this Chrissy lasts longer than Stan & Chrissy's relationship on the show did.

Vacation

As the Howard Dean shirts said back in 2004, it starts here and it starts now.

Tonight starts an 8 day spring mini-break. It couldn't possibly come at a better time for me. So far, I haven't overplanned it and I hope to keep it that way. I have a few house projects planned. I'm meeting Matt & Bess for lunch on Wednesday at the incomparable Fong's Pizza. I'm going to try to get back on the exercise wagon. I want to try to finish both of the books I have going right now. I have an unspecified date with my daughter. And there will be blogging - oh will there ever be.

But most of all, what I want out of this vacation is to get my balance back. I am really out of whack and need to reset myself. If my computer were behaving like I am these days, I would have rebooted it a long time ago. Sadly, I don't have a power button so rebooting a person is not as simple a task as rebooting a computer, but I think this might be just the ticket.

Here's hoping.