No Soda!!!!

So today is the day. Day 1 of my journey to end my relationship with the Devil's Juice.

No more soda for me. No more caffeinated beverages. No more fizzy drinks. No mas. Nada. Nothing. Zip. Bupkiss. Cold turkey for the next three weeks. They say it takes three weeks to make something a habit, and that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to make not drinking soda a habit.

This is going to suck!

But the soda's going to kill me. It's going to give me the diabetes if I don't cut it out now. So here I go.

I'm keeping a log of my daily progress on my computer, but I figured I'd post the announcement here as well to cement my intentions.

I'm done with you, DR. Pepper. It's over. It's been nice, but I don't love you anymore. Coca Cola, you dark-hued beauty, you've made me happy in the past, but now you are ugly to me. So I say farewell. I'm done with this co-dependent relationship. I need to be free.

Goodbye.

I'm going to do this, because from now on any glass of soda I'll ever drink is nothing less than a Big Cup of Fail, mocking me and reminding me of how weak I am.

But I'm stronger than that. I just know it.

Let the Pain commence!

Amy and Bonnie at the Movies

Upon hearing about Bonnie's experience with Amy during Hellboy 2, I couldn't help but see vividly exactly what happened in the theater.

Amy, realizing that her imagination has only been cultivated on prosaic and languid programming like The Biggest Loser and American Idol and is thus unprepared for the mindblowing awesomeness she's seeing on the screen, decides she needs an expert imaginarian to translate the images she's seeing so she can finally get what's going on, and notices Bonnie down at the end of isle, staring at the screen in rapturous abandon, and decides to go get the skinny on this whole "Hellboy" thing.

She stands, stoops to stay out of the view of those behind her, and charges the irate crowd ahead of her.

"'Scuse me, pardon me, coming through. Oops, a thousand pardons. Sorry, you shouldn't leave that there. Lady, move it or I'm gonna smack you like an Isle-hog at Sam's Club! See if I won't. Pardon me, scuse me. Psst, hey Bon!

"Oh, gosh WHAT?!

"Hey, what's the deal with that guy?"

"Keep your voice down. People are looking! What guy?"

"The big red one. Wearing the overcoat. Why does he have a big stone hand?"

"He's a demon. That's his RIGHT HAND OF DOOM!

"Why is it called the Right Hand of Doom? And why did you pronounce it in all capital letters?"

"Because it's made of stone, and if he hits you with it, you're DOOMED. That's why. Now can I watch the movie already?"

"Wait a minute, Bon. So why does he have designs carved on his skin? That's weird."

"Cause he's a demon. I'm sure ritual scarring goes with the territory."

"Okay, but why is he wearing red goggles on his head?"

"Sheesh, those aren't goggles. They're the stubs of horns. He grinds them down with a sander."

"He has horns?! Why does he file them down?"

"'Cause, it's too hard to get in the car with two-foot horns sticking out of your head. And you can't put on t-shirts either. You have to wear button downs, and that's way too preppy when your name is Hellboy. You lose all your street cred. The other demons laugh at you."

"Oh. Well, what's the deal with him liking cats. I don't get it."

"Amy, cats were the guardians of the Underworld. That's why he likes them. They guard the dead."

"Wait. But Bonnie, he's a demon. Cats were the guardians of the Underworld in the ancient Egyptian Pantheonistic religion. There were no demons in the Old Kingdom mythologies. Demons are based on medieval Judeo-Christian literary mythology. How can both myths be represented here? It makes no sense!"

"Because Amy, when he created Hellboy, Mike Mignola sought to syncretistically reconcile as many of the ancient religious, historical, and mythological ideas as he could to create a single, coherent world within a pulp-horror war-action narrative."

"Uhhhh...What?"

"He wanted to make any myth possible in the action-packed supernatural world of Hellboy."

"No, I got that, but what does "syncretistically" mean?"

"I don't know, Amy. Ask Dan. He began explaining it to me once, but I started listening to some pretty Irish lads singing waily Celtic music while he was talking and I kind of stopped paying attention."

"Great. Now, look. Why is that Elizabeth woman on fire now, and why isn't she burning alive?"

" 'Cause she's got pyrokinesis."

"I think I had pyrokinesis once, but the doctor gave me an ointment to put on it, and it went away."

"No, you enormous tard! Pyrokinesis means she can start fires with her mind."

"Why would she want to do that?"

"She doesn't want to do that. That's the point. She can't always control the fire, and it sometimes kills people. That's why she's always depressed and annoyed."

"Oh, I thought she was like that cause she's PMSing."

"That too. Now can I please watch the movie. You're driving me crazy."

"Fine. Oh my heck, why is there a fish-guy now?!"

"Amy, for Heavens sakes, why didn't you watch the first movie ahead of time?!"

*Blink Blink* "There was a first movie? Why didn't you tell me?"

"I did tell you, you ninnyhammer. On the phone last week, remember?"

"Uhhh, I remember something about a Golden Army, and an immortal Russian sorcerer, but then Lily started doing something just adorable and I had to get a picture of it for her scrapbook. When I got back on the phone you were still talking, and I didn't want to seem rude, so I just said, 'okay,cool' and left it at that. Why didn't we watch the first movie this morning so I could know what's going on? Don't you have it?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"'Cause if mom saw a movie called Hellboy in my collection she'd have a heart attack and say it was the Devil."

"It is the Devil! Look, he's got a tail and everything."

"He's a demon, not the devil, and he's a good guy."

"How come he's a good guy demon?

"'Cause he was raised by the Army after WWII to fight evil, and then he ate the pancakes and was lost to Hell forever."

"Uhh, okay, but how com-"

"Dude. Seriously. Amy, you have got to stop talking. I'm watching a movie here. Ask Dan after the movie. He'll tell you what's up."

"Yeah, Dan's a nerd. He'll know all about this weird crap."

"Amy, go!!!"

"Fine!"

"Whatever!"

"Whatever!"

"Fine!"

"Scuse me, pardon me, coming through. Seriously, Isle-Hog, move those canoe-sized feet or I'm gonna stomp on 'em! Twice! 'Scuse me, ouch, forgive me. Uhhh, lo ciento, cabrona. Vaya pa la Mexico, ahora mismo! Jeez, freakin' illegals, sputter, mumble grumble. Comin' through, sorry, excuse me."

Amy looks around, noticing for the first time all the angry people she's alienated with her moving around and her incessant chatter. With a warm inner glow, she thinks about how much fun being rude actually is, and goes back to watching the movie.

The End. :P

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

From Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly, comes Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, 'cause the world is in desperately short supply of supervillian musicals.

Watch it now. Acts I, II, and III. It's awesome!

http://www.drhorrible.com/act_I.html

In The Dark and Rain

When I was a kid, Dad took great delight in sending me out of the house to get something or take out the trash, alone, at night. He’d always say, “Watch out for the Boogieman!” and then proceed to sneak up on me in the dark and scare the crap out of me. It happened enough that my childhood fear of the dark was pretty much gone by the time I was seven or eight, so my dad’s amateur immersion therapy seemed to have worked as intended.

By the time I was twelve, I began to take walks at night through our Phoenix neighborhood, something you could still do at the time. Our neighborhood had a series of alleyways where the dumpsters were kept, and I began walking them in the dark since I could walk forever without running into anyone or anything.

Thus began my tradition of night walking.

To this day I love the darkness. I hate walking during the day. The night is a safe place for me to walk hidden and secure, even though nearly all of the bad things and armed encounters that have ever happened to me happened while I was out for a walk. But still, I refuse to stop taking walks at night.

My walks are always therapeutic. It’s my own personal meditation. If something is bothering me or stressing me out, all I have to do is take a night walk for a few hours and by the end I’ve usually figured out what to do about whatever is bothering me, or at least figured out how to accept what is bothering me and stop dwelling on it. It’s a formula for peace and contentment. Well, that and swinging kettlebells. Nothing like a KB for wearing you out to the point you just don’t care anymore.

Tonight I wanted to hit the road after midnight thanks to my screwed up sleeping habits. I’ve been doing okay lately and getting enough sleep more or less, but I have a killer headache today, and I went to sleep at five o’clock in the afternoon. By the time eleven came around, I was just waking up, dang it all. Figuring I’d get to bed around sun up, I’d decided to head out and see if I could exhaust myself by doing five or six miles.

Well, I got dressed and opened the door, and what do you think greeted me? Yep, it was raining. A lot. I’m not the kind of guy that likes to walk around in the rain, but when the mood hits me, I’ll go ahead and do it, unless it’s too cold. I hate cold rain, like tiny knives slicing through my skin. But warm monsoon rain is all good by comparison.

Rain, rain…

So I went out and faced the monsoon. No lightning, but I was miserable at first. You ever notice how you can face any of the elements as long as it doesn’t get in your face? Wind, Rain, snow, dust storms- it doesn’t matter as long as it stays away from the eyes and mouth. Humanity has spent thousands of years perfecting the technology to keep nature away from the face, yet thus far I’ve been remiss in utilizing any of it.

The rain got on my face, in my eyes, the humidity fogged my glasses. The good point was it was so wet I didn’t feel uncomfortably sweaty or anything. Ahhh…

Hats

As I was saying, mankind has spent thousands of years working on head-covering technology, but our society that is so used to white and pink collar jobs, air conditioning, and staying indoors has basically atrophied in the department of hats.

Back in the day, women wore bonnets or those big, floppy things covered in flowers and fruit and small animals. Men wore tricorns and then beavers, planters, or cowboy hats, and later on porkpies and panamas and fedoras. Men always wore hats up until the ‘60’s. Now, all you can get at a reasonable price are useless baseball caps or boonie hats.

Where are the American versions of the coolie hats they wear in Southeast Asia? You know those big conical straw jobs with the chin strap to lock it down tight? Yeah, something like that without the chin strap. Maybe a modern sombrero is in order. I’m not talking about the garish multi-colored fiesta hats either, but a natural colored straw sombrero with a ten-inch brim and a lattice around the crown to let the heat out and shaped to let the water run off the right way. That would be sweet.

I love cowboy hats but dislike the boots and long jeans that they require you wear without looking like an idiot. So they’re out. They don’t make a panama with a wide enough brim, and regular panamas make you look like a grandpa. At least like my grandpa, who wore a panama all the time.

There are custom hats out there, but who wants to pay custom prices for a hat that’s gonna get trashed in short order?

Little Triumphs

So life has a way of kicking you when you're down. Things go wrong, people screw you, fate seems destined to bury you under a sea of crap; you know, the usual.

So I have a Wahl electric shaver I've owned for three years. It gets used alot, since I keep my beard at a four day stubble most of the time, and I've never maintained the thing. Well, today it stopped working. The blades just stopped dead but the motor kept running, so I figured it was a mechanical issue.

Now I'm pretty good at just giving in or giving up when things get difficult, and in times past I would have thrown it in the garbage and gone out to get a new one. But today I'd rather try and fix things and besides, I don't have the dough to replace it. So, since I couldn't break it more, I got out the screwdriver and did what they do down in Mexico; I tore it apart to see if I could fix it.

It was quite an education in mechanics. Two plates with teeth are sandwiched together and connected to a moving arm that slides the plates back and forth that forces the teeth to cut like three dozen tiny scissors. Well after taking it apart, there was hair jammed all over the inside, and the toothed plates had hair, rust, dust, and the original oil it came with all gummed up between them making a sticky mung, keeping the plates from sliding together smoothly. So I rinsed everything off, sprayed Liquid Klean all over to get rid of the mung and scrubbed with steel wool to clean it all up. Since the little tube of oil the shaver came with was lost long ago, I dug out the gun oil, applied some between the plates, and screwed everything back together.

Now it works like a champ. Better than it has for months.

Not a huge victory by any means. Not even a great accomplishment. But hey, sometimes you gotta give props to yourself for the little triumphs, high five the Universe who hates you, and yell out

COUNT IT!!!

A Brush with Greatness

So today we went and did a job for Randy Johnson of the AZ Diamondbacks fame at his house. That's right, The Big Unit himself. He answered the door when we rang the bell, and talked to us a bit about the job we were going to do. He seemed like a regular guy to me.

The guy is a giant. Apparently he's 6' 10", and up close, he looks it. I had a mad impulse when I saw him and had to look up, and up, and up, to ask, "How's the weather up there?" But I didn't.

The job went swell. Jeremy B. and I both got heat exhaustion; Jeremy worse than me, since I was in the pool half of the time. This was despite drinking water all day. The problem is, all that water was flushing out the salt in my body, and I knew it. I got a massive headache, the shakes, irregular heartbeat for a little bit, hard to breathe- the works.

After the job, we went by Wendy's and got cheeseburgers and fries, which I salted like crazy. Ten minutes later I was feeling back to normal. I need to carry salt tablets with me on days when I'm in the sun alot. You can't believe the difference it makes.

TV Links

I was in Queen Creek on a bid yesterday and since I was in the neighborhood, I decided to drop by and hang out with Jeremy and Jaxx for the rest of the day. It was fun. Jaxx slept most of the time, which is unusual, or so Jeremy tells me.

While I was there, Jeremy told me that TV Links is back in business. YAY on a flagpole! Now I can watch shows from the convenience of my computer, without having to download them first. Hoody Hoo!!

Naps

Okay, I don't know what the deal is, but my sleeping patterns have gotten all screwed up lately. For the past couple of weeks, I've been napping for a good for or five hours in the afternoon, and then staying up half the night. It. Is. Awesome!

I love naps.

In Which Our Hero Hurts His Ojo

So on Tuesday I was doing a pool in Tucson, when much to my dismay, I turned to look behind me in mid-blasting and a single grain of high velocity magnesium sulfate got past my sunglasses and went right into my eyeball. I couldn't get it out right away, and it had a chance to shoot around my eyescape under the lid for a few minutes and do some damage.

It didn't hurt too badly until yesterday morning, when I woke up and my eye was watering and still felt like that piece of abrasive was in there. I tried to flush my eye out some more, and I kept rubbing it, which I shouldn't have, but what can I say? It hurt!

It feels better today, but it's still a little annoying. I've been using Clear Eyes all day, and I took a long nap from 4:30 until 8:00 this evening to help my eye heal, which seems to have worked somewhat, although now I'll be up all night.

Moral of the story- Get some safety glasses.

The Devil's Juice

So I love soda; especially Coke and Dr. Pepper. Yesterday I realized that a 32 oz. bottle of Dr. Pepper has over 500 calories, which takes me like an hour at the gym to work off. Holy crap! I need to stop drinking soda. No wonder I'm a big load. I've been drinking that crap for fifteen years. This has got to come to an end.

I've got to the point working out where I can go to the gym every day without feeling pain the next day. I never thought that I'd get to that point. Woo Hoo!! The thing is, without any soreness, it doesn't feel like I'm really getting results. It's like I'm cheating. :)

All the little aches and pains I've had for the last several years are going away. The neck pain, the back pain, the tendinitis, the carpal tunnels, the knee pain, the foot pain, everything. I cannot believe it. Who'd a thunk it that all I needed was to develop some supporting muscles and my pain would cease. Heh heh!

Work out today people! There's no excuse not to.