My Grandma

Nate and I are staying at my Dad's for a couple of days helping out as he recuperates. We got a call around 4ish that my Grandma was being taken to the hospital again. Her legs weren't working and she had fallen so we met up with her at the emergency room. They did some X-Rays and discharged her. It was a really sad night. I watched my Grandma helpless doing everything she could to stand and walk, and she can't. She's lived on her own until now and she's at a point where she just can't live without help any more and she hates the idea of giving up her freedom and going into an assisted living home. I saw her sit and cry tonight as she talked to me about what it's like to get old and worn down. She wants so bad to do things on her own and her body just won't do it. She's lost her husband and both of her children, survived by my Dad, her 4 grandchildren and 11 great grand children. I don't know what I'd do in her situation. She feels alone and helpless. It broke my heart tonight to see this happen. She's still sharp as a tack and has her sense of humor, but it's tough to see this happen and think about myself at that point in life.

Happy Birthday Aunt Lois

Happy birthday to Aunt Lois! My Dad is the youngest of eight kids and she's pictured here with some of my Dad's other siblings - Gene and John. We get to see them this summer in at the Kurt Family Reunion in Iowa with a theme of Bib Overalls! I'm not sure what's going on in this second picture, but I'm pretty sure my Uncle Gene is getting ready to plant a big one on my Uncle John.

Fat Tesday in Austin

My brother Dan

No words needed.

Dad

Since I'm in Texas, my friends and family have been visiting my Dad and sending pictures. My Dad is smiling because he no longer has his cathader in. If you visit, he'll show you his scar if you ask.

Austin is odd

Golf in Austtn

We golfed today at a private club called Onion Creek. My boss used to work with the owner of the club and the place was amazing. It was a formal dress club, which I found out as I walked on the course and they announced 'Remember, the club has a no shirt-tale policy. Please tuck in your shirts.' I was the only one without my shirt tucked in. The weather was a perfect 75 degrees and my team came in 2nd.

Ausin Marti Gras

Austin Mardis Gras

Travel

I've got a lot of travel coming up. I leave tomorrow for Austin, TX through next Wednesday. The following week I'm in Tulsa, OK for a couple of days, the next week I'm in San Fran for meetings followed by a trip to LA the next week. My job goes through cycles where I can go a month without any travel followed by back-to-back weeks. My travel in this position is a lot less than it was previously, but any travel at all is a pain for my family, to a degree.

I have the great, most understanding wife in the world when it comes to my travel. She knows that it can change on a dime and it means she's left holding the bag in terms of transporting kids and taking care of everything around the house. I've been traveling in my job in different capacities over the past 10 years Cathie and the kids have gotten fairly used to it.

Slippers are not shoes

I got up this morning at 5:30 to go to the workout. I threw my slippers on to start my car and get it warmed up and headed back in to grab something to eat. Around 5:40am, I jumped in my car and headed to the gym. As I'm driving, my feet felt weird. Slippers don't work well at the gym.

The Saga Continues with my iPod

I took my iPod into Best Buy two weeks ago as part of the Product Service Plan I purchased when I bought it. Per the plan, on the fourth time you bring it in, they evaluate it and are supposed to replace it as a lemon. When I brought it in, I was told it would take a week. I'm over two weeks into this and getting annoyed. I've called them daily, each day being told to check back the following day. The guys in the Geek Squad are nice enough, but their service department sucks at Best Buy. Two things have come out of this:

1. My dependence on my iPod
2. A reminder that "The stuff you own can end up owning you." I've put way too much time into thinking about this whole issue and following up on it.
   

Tags: Best Buy, Product Service Plan

Ro Sham Bo

Eli and I got together at BW3's to grab a beer and Budweiser happened to be sponsoring a Rock Paper Scissors (Ro-Sham-Bo) competition with the potential to go to the finals in Vegas. I went head to head with a guy who was a retired pro and lost the best two out of three. Eli went up against a girl who had never played RPS before and he just barely beat her.

USA Rock Paper Scissors League Oath:

I know that RPS belongs to no man or woman and was created before recorded history. To that end, as I prepare to battle and engage my worthy and respected opponent. I honor the RPS players that came before me. I recognize that the rules and regulations of the USA Rock Paper Scissors Federation at the governing body of the sport and yield to the authority of it's referees and officials.

Jesus Camp

At Shinn's recommendation, I rented the movie Jesus Camp. It's a documentary on a segment of evangelical Christians and was horribly painful to watch. It focuses on a kids camp, comparing some of what's done at the camp with what's done in islamic indoctrination camps for kids in the Middle East. I know there are are pieces taken out of context and it's about a small segment, but ouch. The most painful part was seeing myself in parts of this.

Being Fed

Good article called On Using Your Own Fork on a pet peeve of mine around people who jump churches for the reason that "They're not being fed."

Most often, it seems that those who feel they are not “being fed” are the ones who have failed to feed anyone else. After all, Jesus wrapped a towel around His waist, washed His disciples feet and told them, “This is what it looks like to follow me.”

Snow Day

The kids had a snow day today and while I worked, they played and Cathie shoveled the driveway. I took the kids out sledding after work and it was freezing at about 5 below wind chill factor. Nate's buddy Austin came and brought this motorcycle sled that Emily couldn't get enough of. Even in the freezing cold, she trudged up the hill, rode down over and over again. Some guy had built this 3 foot high jump out of hay bales, which Nate quickly took, crashed hard and tried again. I was frozen before they were, but we sledded on for around an hour before heading home to thaw out.

Chiropractor

At the recommendation of my friend Kirk (voted the top trainer in Michigan by Men's Journal), I went to see a Chiropractor yesterday. I've got a spot on my back that keeps popping out of whack when I workout and it's happening more and more frequently. I've always been of the mind that Chiropractors are nuts. Lots of people I know that use them seem to be really defendant on them to solve all of their problems, most of them non-skeletal, and then move on to not vaccinating their kids and hating antibiotics.

I went their yesterday, the doctor X-rayed my back, showed me what was going on (right around the T-4 vertabrae) and did some "adjustments", which translates to him cranking on my neck and spine to put whatever was out of alignment back into alignment. I've got to go three more times over the next two weeks in addition to having Kirk give me some exercises to strengthen this area. Between those two things, the claim is that it should go back and go back for good. Could all of this been diagnosed and fixed by a regular MD? Probably. We'll see how it goes after a couple of weeks.

Triad

I'm back to working out at Triad this week. I'd taken about a month off starting in early January to change things up a little. When i first started coming to Triad, i had been lifting 3 to 5 days a week and even though my cardio endurance wasn't great, the strength from lifting helped keep me in the front of the pack (with this group, you don't want to be the guy bring up the rear). Over time, I changed to just doing the Plyometrics at our morning workouts three days a week and stopped lifting altogether. I noticed I was dragging, but wasn't sure why.

I took a month off and lifted five days a week, upper and lower body, to get my strength back to where it had been. This morning I saw the difference. Yesterday we did sets of jump squats and explosive plyo ball push-ups and today we did this crazy combination of 10 laps of bear crawls in all directions around a 12x12 square followed by a series of forward box jumps. Both days I was able to keep up and at times even take the lead. I'm alternating doing 3 days of lifting and 2 days at Triad one week and 3 days at Triad and 2 days lifting the following week. I've been eating like crap on the weekends, but doing a pretty good job getting 6 good meals in during the day (with the occasional ice cream at night). I haven't weighed myself in months, but I think I'm hanging around my 205 weight.

My brother Jon has a Special Purpose

"Everyone has a purpose in life. Perhaps yours is watching television."
-David Letterman

Brad

If you remember a while back, Will destroyed Brad's shoulder in a fit of all-to-common rage. Brad finally had surgery a few months ago and has been rehabbing his shoulder ever since. Brad's physical therapist was showing him a new exercise today that involved a softball sized medicine ball and a mini-trampoline. While a number of clients (women) looked on, Brad tried this new exercise, bouncing the ball into the trampoline and catching it. All was good until he caught a bad bounce on the trampoline and the very heavy ball hit him square in the junk and dropped him like a sack of potatoes in front of the onlookers. Awkward and painful.

I think Brad's a little sensitive. On a junior high youth group retreat once, I tagged him back, a little too hard evidently, and he ended up throwing up outside.