In 1984, I was 10 years old, and the Van Halen album 1984, yeah, the one with the baby smoking a cigarette on the front, was the coolest shit I ever heard ever. EVER!. Ok, so Van Halen is doing a reunion tour with David Lee Roth. Sure, Michael Anthony has been given the boot and Eddie's son Wolfgang is now playing bass, but is fucking Van Halen! I should probably go.

The tickets go on sale on a Saturday morning. Not exactly sure why they don't have a presale, which would be great, but they don't/ So i sit in front of my computer Saturday morning at 10am with all the other chumps, trying to score a pair. 10 seconds later, the fuckers are sold out. A cursory check of eBay and stubhub confirm my worries. The damn thing is sold out instantly, and it will cost me half a fucking grand to see it. Fuck that. Fuck Van Halen. Fuck it all! I sell tickets for more than they are worth, I don't buy them! Screw that. Eat shit!

A few weeks later, they decided to add another show. Another Dallas Show. Yay. Again, no presale. Bastards! So, I wake up early and get ready. The seconds 10am rolls by I start clicking. I am using two different computers, one from home, and remotely using one from work, to maximize my chances this time.

Click, click click... Boom! A pair of tickets way up at the top. Bing, Bang, done. I am going to see Van Halen, and it is going to be fucking awesome beyond belief. Yay.

Out of my own curiosity, I click a few more times to search for tickets. Jesus Christ Monkey Balls!!!!!!! Another set in the front row way up top. Wow, no one would be in front of me, so I can chill out the whole time, and not have to stand up. Perfect. I'll take them as well. I can probably sell the first ones easily on eBay, and if not, I can pass them off to a close friend, so they get the same enjoyment I get. Sure, its another $186.97, but sitting in front is the shit! So now I have two sets of Van Halen tickets. Could be worse, I could have none, so good times.

But wait, I click another time, just to see what happens. Jesus H. Tapdancin Christ! Platinum Section, Row A. This is the luxury type shits! Only a few people can sit in this section, and these are in the fucking front! What the shit?

Click, click... roughly $330 later, I now have primo fucking rock star Platinum front row seats to Van Halen. Great.

WAIT A SECOND! I just spent $734.39 on Van Halen tickets? Do I really even like Van Halen? What the fuck?

...

Yeah, yeah, I know... Ok, so now I have 3 pairs of VH tickets, and I only need 1 pair.

I put pair number 1, the first pair, that aren't that great, up on eBay. I used my super secret magic ticket selling recipe into play. The recipe I used to make LITERALLY thousands and thousands of dollars in profit the summer before last selling tickets on eBay.

Currently, at the time of this writing, there are exactly 0 bids for exactly 0 dollars. Yay.

I am sure that as the auction grows to a close, I will make the money back that I invested in the tickets. Hopefully, I will crank a profit, and be able to help pay for some of the costs associated with the set I am keeping. Ideally, I will sell the two spare sets for enough to completely cover the cost of the primo set I plan to use myself. It certainly would not be the first time that has happened.

...and if not, some lucky pair of friends will be going to the show free of charge, on my dime. Sometimes it pays to be my friend.

A splendid time is guaranteed for all.

This is going to be lengthy, but please stick around, it gets really important towards the end.

I hope everyone enjoyed their time off. Did I? Well, sorta. I really enjoyed my Vegas vacation. I saw Blue Man Group at the Venetian, which was awesome, Bill Maher at the Hard Rock which was killer, and Cirque Du Soleil's "O" which was not so great. Maybe it was ok, but the other Cirque shows I have seen made O look like a cheesy 80's porn film or something. Plus I fell asleep, so how good could it be?

I think I broke even in terms of gambling. I probably made more sports wagers than anything else, although I spent a fair share of time at slot machines, killing time waiting for other stuff. Breaking even might not sound all that great but it means a few things. 1 - I did not lose any money. In fact, I may have come out ahead... I did not really keep track too well. 2 - it means I basically generated free "points" towards comps and reduced rates on rooms and whatnot. 3- it means I was able to have free fun and kill time and drink free liquor.

I got drunk a lot, which was fantastical on every level. Getting all shit faced and wandering around in public to me is always good times, but doing it in an adult playground like Vegas just takes things to a new level. I got drunk and hopped on the roller coasters at New York New York and at the Sahara. I took pictures with my cell phone while on the New York New York coaster, but they turned out looking like this...







Anyway, so I said "sorta" enjoyed. What do I mean? I always have trouble merging back into reality after a vacation, as I am sure most people do. This time seems particularly hard though. I got back Sunday, then even had Monday and Tuesday off, and I still don't feel back to normal. Something seems different now, and I am not sure what it is. I am stuck in some sort of funk. I really hate Christmas time, and "the holidays" in general, so I am sure that is part of it.

When I think about why I hate the holidays, I may not really dislike them at all, but just enjoyed past holidays more than any recent ones. I don't particularly celebrate any holidays like I used to. I don't have a Christmas tree or any decorations, I seem to only buy presents for my parents, which usually ends up being gift cards to Sephora for my mom, and Home Depot for my dad. I enjoy buying them the cards, and I suppose I feel swell about giving. I don't exchange gifts with my best gal any more, because we usually opt to save the money and go on a vacation instead as a gift to each other.

On Christmas day I just kinda sat around the house wondering what to do. I went outside for a few minutes and it reminded me of about 50 different things that I have experienced on past Christmases?, Christmass?, Chrismii?, and that I missed doing them greatly, so much so that I was overcome with odd feelings, and did not know what to do.

When I am not on vacation during the holidays, and I spend time with my family, it is almost a downer because I have lost a lot of relatives, and have become quite disconnected from my family unit, so it just doesn't have the magic that it used to, and that upsets me greatly. I don't know exactly what I am trying to say, or what this means. I think I may begin a journey of self discovery of sorts and and see if I can figure some shit out.

I suppose things must change over time, and I have worked really hard this year on learning to accept change, and deal with it, and turn it into something groovy, but I can't seem to shake to the blues after this holiday. So, going to Vegas was absolutely wonderful, but now all I can think about is how much I need to go back, and when is the next time I can make that happen.

I have considered pulling chocks, and going off to somewhere else, in a different state, just for an extreme change of pace. I have very simple logistics... I don't have a whole lot tying me down here. I could literally pack up a bunch of shit and move to somewhere else tomorrow if I felt the urge was right. My gal is the same way, she can get a job anywhere, and we don't see our families a lot. It would almost be the opposite of now. Instead of going on vacation to somewhere else, we would just live somewhere else, then vacation back to here to visit family and friends.

I just don't know. I know that nothing is wrong with me. I just feel... weird, or something. Not necessarily stressed or worried or anything like that... just odd. I would hate to think that I am living in the past, but I spend a lot of time now thinking about how to have as much fun now, as I used to, or seem to used to have. I am not talking about trying to recreate anything from the past, its just that I have a lot of interesting memories, and it seems like these days, I spend less and less time doing things that will create fond memories for the future. I could write maybe 3 large novels from the good times I had from age 3 to 25, then from age 25 to 29, it seems like it would maybe be a single novel if I was lucky, then from age 29 to 33, it would only be a a short story or maybe even just a pamphlet. I suppose 3 to 25 is 22 years of time, which is nearly 3 times the other two portions added together.

Does this happen to everyone? Is this simply part of growing up or old? Will the next 15 years of my life be able to create as many memories as age 3 to 25? Does it have to be that way? Is there a better way to maximize our time?

What the fuck is going on?

A few random thoughts...

This will be my last post until after I get back from vacation. Also, the end of the year is growing near, which means my goal of blogging it up for one year will be completed. I Have yet to decided if I would like to continue or not afterwards. I know that there are only a handful of people who read this anyway, but it is for me more so than anything else.

My belt doesn't work anymore. I now have to set my belt into the last possible hole, and it is still too large. Also, I think my head is shrinking or something. I seem to have lost some of the fat from my head during this experiment.

I think it may be a challenge to eat healthy and exercise while on vacation. I ride the monorail when I am in Las Vegas, so that inherently includes a lot of walking. I probably average a few miles a day while I am there, at least. Eating may be more of a challenge. We tend to stay up really late each night, and grab a pizza slice or two from New York New York around 2am, before turning in. Also, the biggest issue will be the alcohol scene. I am going to drink shitloads of free alcohol while I am there. The upside to this experiment is that I start feeling a buzz after 2 drinks, and I can get rather drunk on less than a dozen, whereas before, I could chug Jack and Cokes all night long, having 25 or so, and still be able to maintain an even keel. Staying up late usually means no breakfast, so that is less calories going in, followed by a lot of walking all day. So I figure if I can grab something half way healthy for lunch, I will probably be just fine. I found a 24 hour Subway last time I was there, so I have the option of eating a turkey sandwich 24/7, and it is only half a block from the MGM Grand.

Also on the unhealthy trend will be the 5 packs of cigarettes I will smoke there. I guess technically, I will only smoke half of that amount, whereas my best gal and I will split them. I do not normally smoke. When I get together with friends that smoke, and have drinks and hang out, I will smoke some a few cigarettes, but normal day to day operations do not include any smoking. This is hard for a lot of people to achieve, but I seems to have mastered it. I look at it sort of like alcohol. I can smoke any time I like, but if I do it all the time, that's no good. Why not make it something special, that way you can enjoy it more. This being the case, I always smoke on every vacation no matter what. After all, a vacation is intended to take you away from the norm for a while, so you don't flip out and kill a bunch of people.

Last week I ran a little over 34 miles on the elliptical. 34 FUCKING MILES! That is a long way. It seems unrealistic that I ran that far, but I did.

Anyway, good times abound. If you don't hear from me for 6 months, I probably won a million bucks in Vegas, or my plane crashed, or both.

I need another vacation, so... I am taking one. Next week I will be heading back to Vegas for a little more R&R.

This time around I will be returning to the MGM Grand's West Wing, which I thoroughly enjoy. This time, I got an even better rate than ever before. Membership has its privileges 8-).

I got tickets to see Blue Man Group, which I have been wanting to see for a while, but never got around to seeing. I also got tickets for the Cirque Du Soleil show called "O" at the Bellagio. It is the water based Cirque Vegas show so it should be interesting. I certainly enjoyed the Ka and Love Cirque shows last time I was there. Very Impressive stuff.

Last but not least I got ticket to go see Bill Maher over at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, which I have never been to, because it is off the strip a little bit, and I am lazy. I am not a huge fan of Bill Maher I guess, but he does make me laugh. I think this is a stand up comedy type show, and not a political thing like his HBO show.

A lot of the shows like Penn & Teller, Amazing Jonathan, Carrot Top, etc.. are all dark I guess because it is so close to the holidays. That's OK though, I'll still have fun. They go on vacation away from Vegas, and I go to Vegas for vacation. Weird.

I also might head over to the old part of town on Fremont street, because I have never ventured over there, again, because I am lazy.

I suppose I will spend the rest of the time living like a rock star, enjoying shitloads of free cocktails, while I gamble my ass off, and stumbling around the strip drunk.

Anyway, a splendid time is guaranteed for all!

I suppose there just may not be a better way to do it. Numbers. That is the only solution.

When you are born, they weigh and measure you. Then your parents tell all your friends and family the numbers, and they are very proud. Low numbers, beyond the acceptable range on either side, indicate a problem. Did your mom smoke crack? Was your dad addicted to hamburgers? What is wrong with you? Why are you so small? Why are you so damn big? 2 days ago you were a fetus, now you got all this.

When you go to school, you are given grades. If you do well, the number assigned to your success is high, and low if you do not. You did not pass because you got a 69. Had you gotten a 70, you would be a winner, but you didn't so clearly, you are a loser. You were not in the acceptable range of numbers that indicate success. If you are lucky enough to go to college, again, numbers indicate your success, and seemingly nothing else. Your grade is the ONLY thing that really matters here. You might make 4000 new life long friends, and have the most amazing experiences of your life, but since you did not achieve a high enough number, you are just not good enough.

When you get a job and you go to work, you are given an annual performance evaluation. If your assigned number is not in the acceptable range, you eventually will lose your job. If you are in the low end of the acceptable margin, you get to keep your job. Lucky you. If you are on the high end of the number scale, they give you more money. You can show up every single day,work as hard as you possibly can, and if your number is not high enough, you do not get more money. It is as simple as that.

In today's world, the numbers you get assigned to you, by other people, represent your success. Is this the only way to be successful, to get a higher number assigned to you than other people? Yes, it would appear that way.

Good luck with all that.

OK, the 30 day experiment has officially ended as of midnight last night. In case you don't know what I am talking about, see HERE. The 30 days seemed to go by pretty fast. Maybe it was because I was busy, or not. I kept a sort of journal in the form of a spreadsheet during the 30 days. I would document what I ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner along with the amount of calories. Primarily my daily food intake consisted of vegetables, fish or shellfish, and chicken. Then on the weekends I would go wacky, but still try to eat something healthy with few calories. I also progressed my running during the time frame from 2 miles in 15 minutes on the elliptical, to 3.5 miles in 20 minutes. I did elliptical training Monday through Thursday, and I play hockey on Saturdays, so that leaves Fridays and Sundays. Sometimes I would exercise on those days as well, but as a general rule, Fridays were for beer drinking, which makes elliptical training dangerous, and Sundays are my day to eat a bunch, watch football, relax, and not think about anything. On day 1, I weighed in at a whopping 229.2. As of this morning, my weight was 211.2, which comes to a overall loss 18 pounds. That is not too bad.

Here are my observations I noticed along the way:

1. My poops became regular both in interval, and consistency, short of maybe 1 or 2 days.
2. I had only 1 headache during the 30 days. I am not sure if this means anything or not, whereas I do not know how often I had headaches before I began.
3. Only once or twice did I feel hungry during the experiment, and each time it was due to staying up later into the night than usual.
4. I did not dislike ANY food that I ate for the 30 days. In fact, I think I prefer the type of foods I ate.
5. As my weight drops and I exercise more, I generally seem to feel better throughout the day. Before, I would get sleepy at work. In general, I just have a better feeling of well being.
6. I can sleep a full 8 hours through the night, maybe only waking up once (if that) to rotate. Before, I would usually take some melatonin or some other sleep aid.
7. My pants do not fit any more. This is not a bad thing I suppose.
8. I have a lot more stamina for hockey. I hardly get tired at all throughout the game. This is probably due primarily to the elliptical training.
9. I am able to skip lunch or dinner, and in its place, drink beer.
10. On the one single day of the 30 that I was in a scenario where I had to eat food from a Mexican restaurant, I was able to order a chicken and rice meal, which, although had more calories than I was used to, was way better than a say, a plate of nachos.
11. On the weekends when I would eat my big Sunday night football watching meal, I would wake up the next day having gained back a pound or two. However, this weight, plus more, would easily be gone in a few days.

So, where does that leave me now? Well, I have decided to extend the experiment another 30 days. I kind of expected the experiment to be hard or challenging and it really sort of wasn't. What will I do differently? Nothing, I suppose. I feel fine, I eat good food, I exercise, which makes me a better hockey player, and I'm sure my overall health will continue to improve, not that there was anything wrong before. It win/win/win/win/etc.. So I will go another 30 days and see what happens. I also expect to kick my elliptical workout up to 30 minutes, which should put me between 5 and 5.5 miles a day.

If I lost another 18 pounds int he next 30 days, that would land me at 193.2. In high school I weighed around 190, so I would be close to that weight again. This is not a goal, its just interesting. Of course, the weight is distributed differently now. I have a nice beer gut, which I'm sure probably racks up 15 pounds, and my legs are very muscular from playing hockey so much, and muscle weighs more than fat. Also, I'm not 18 years old any more, so I shouldn't expect to have the same shape as I did that long ago.

Anyway, there you have it. Good times.

Every single time I make a poo, I get up, turn around, look down, and inspect it. I do the same with urine, and snot too I suppose. Everything that comes out of my body gets an inspection. I assume that every single person on the world does the exact same thing. Why wouldn't you? What if you didn't and your stool was blood red, covered in blood, and all bloody. Wouldn't it be better to know?

Sometimes I am quite impressed with my movement. Sometimes the color is weird, or the shape is weird, or the size is incredible. I have noticed that since I began my 30 days experiment, that my poo is less frequent, yet quite lengthy. It is amazing. Sometimes my urine is yellow, sometimes practically clear, and on occasion some other color. I find these things to be quite interesting.

I wonder why people don't talk about these things. Wouldn't it be safer for everyone to share their stories and thoughts on the subject, and even compare stories of amazing poos, or perhaps urinary colors?

I think these things should be spoken about openly and honestly. Because if you say that you don't inspect these things upon production, you are a filthy liar. You are lying to yourself, and to others. Come on everyone, let's talk about shit and stuff! Every single person on Earth has to crap and piss at some point. So if everyone on the planet is involved, isn't that truly the one thing that binds us as a human race. Why is there a single shred of shame involved? There should be a U.N. of poop, the United Poop, the U.P. What do we have to do to get that going? Maybe I'll start a movement. 8-).

I went to the Dallas Stars hockey game last night. I scored tickets in the UPS suite. Free freshly cooked food (each suite has its own chef), and all the alcohol you want is free and at your disposal. It was Mike Modano Appreciation night, so it was pretty cool. Turns out, Mike Modano's suite is right next door to the UPS suite, so Mike's mom and dad, his wife, and former NHL great Brett Hull were all right beside me. They were maybe 10 feet away at the most. I was texting back and forth with a friend from my hockey team, and his was response was "cool, go get an autograph". Should I get him to autograph something? He is a legend in hockey. He scored the game winning goal in game 7 of the Stanley Cup playoffs in 1999, the only year the Stars have ever won the cup, and now he is currently a Co-GM of the Dallas Stars.

Then a few minutes later some obviously drunk guy who was in the suite as well came over to get Brett to sign an jersey. The look on Brett's face was priceless. He looked so disgusted. Those suites cost thousands of dollars per event, he is there with Mike Modano's family, and now this drunk guy wants an autograph. He signed the jersey, and the guy said thanks, and walked away. Brett had this look of disgust for a couple of minutes atfer the guy walked away.

It made me start thinking, I am really not that guy at all. I am not "go get an autograph" guy. I would rather glance over at Brett Hull and give him a simple nod of acknowledgement and approval than to ask for an autograph. This way he knows that I see him and recognize him, and I don't bother him at all. I guess its probably due to the way I was raised. My grandparents would come over for Christmas, and literally stand by the door until someone asked them to come on in, make themselves at home, and have a seat. They were old school, and I guess some of that type of mentality rubbed off on me. Anyway, I guess I picked up from stuff like that to leave people alone. So, are you a "go get an autograph" kinda person?

Today is Thanksgiving, and as is tradition, I am going to the Dallas Cowboys game. I will cook out in the parking lot with 60,000 of my closest friends for my Thanksgiving dinner. Maybe Jerry Jones or Emmit Smith or John Madden or someone cool will be cooking in the parking slot right next time, and I won't get their autograph either.

I feel completely different in the morning than I do at night. I wonder if this happens to everyone? Sometimes I will go to bed at night with what seems to be the greatest idea ever, then when I wake up, I feel exactly the opposite. Sometimes I will have the greatest plan in the world right after I wake up, then that night, I no longer feel that way. I don't really have much more on the subject. When I woke up the other day it seemed like the perfect topic, but now, not.

I called in sick to work today. I do not have a cold or flu like symptoms, I just did not want to go today. Technically, I am not lying or cheating in any way though, because I am sick... I am sick of going to work. Does that count? I think it should.

So far I woke up at 10am and watched The Price is Right. I have been wanting to stay home from work and watch it for a while since Drew Carey took over for Bob Barker. When I was little, I sort of enjoyed being sick and staying home from school, just so I could watch The Price is Right. It is a spectacular show. Then, I ate some oatmeal and made some Jello. Next I ordered a new book from Amazon.com. It is Steve Martin's autobiography called Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life. I have been waiting for the book to come out for 3 or 4 months, and it finally comes out tomorrow. Also tomorrow, the new video game Rock Band comes out for the XBOX360. I have been waiting for it for a nearly a year. It is like the Guitar Hero series, except it has a guitar, drums, and a microphone, so it should be fun. If you have two guitars, then someone can additionally play the bass. so you can have four people 'jamming' at once. Best Buy will be open at midnight to sell it, but I think I will go to Fry's tomorrow morning around 8:30am and see if I can get it there instead.

So for the rest of the day my only plans are to go to the post office to get a shipping envelope for something I need to return, fill up my 5 gallon gas tank, because I like filling up my motorcycle at home in the garage, rather than at the gas station, and eat a late lunch. I will probably have some shrimp. I may go for a short afternoon motorcycle journey. Then I will prepare for the Monday Night Football game. I hit a 3 game football parlay yesterday, which returned 6 times the amount of money wagered. It was good times.

I think if I had just a few million bucks, I could easily live out the balance of my life and be perfectly happy. I really don't need much to occupy my time. I find myself rarely getting bored anymore.

I will apologize in advance for the length of this post, whereas it will be quite lengthy.

Ever since I was a small boy, I've always been fascinated by motorcycles. I would ride my bicycle around wishing it was motorized, and would sometimes pretend that it was. Sometimes, like most young boys, I would even go so far as to attach something to the forks and frame that would stick into the spokes, like playing cards, so that it would make a motorcycle sound while I was riding. At one point, my brother and I had a little mini-bike frame that we always wanted to build a mini-bike out of. This never happened, but it didn't stop us from pushing each other around on it.

When I was about 11, I moved to the other side of town and there was a neighborhood kid there that owned a small Honda 50CC motorcycle. This was my first real experience with motorcycle riding, and it was awesome! It was exactly like a bicycle except you did not have to pedal. You could do wheelies, jump, jam the back brake and slide the back wheel around, just like on a bike. A couple of other kids in the neighborhood also later obtained ATVs in the form of a 3-wheeler and 4-wheeler, but I was always drawn to the motorcycle. The kid who owned it was quite gracious in letting me ride it all the time. I loved it. I would even dream about motorcycle riding, sometimes on a nightly basis.

One time I discovered that another friend had a much larger motorcycle off in the corner of an old shed behind his house. It was always just sort of a pile of unused junk. It didn't work, so they just basically discarded it. One day I convinced him that we should bust it out and see what we could do with it. Worst case scenario, we could take turns coasting it down a nearby hill, just for fun. We took the bike out of the shed and give it a decent cleaning, as good as two 11 year old boys could. We then proceeded to pushing each other around on it as fast as humanly possible at 11 years of age. At one point, as I was being pushed around on it, I wondered what would happen if I popped it in gear. Now, I should say that when I rode the little 50cc bike, there was no clutch, you just switched gears by only moving the lever, and when you are 11, the hand-eye coordination for advanced motorcycle operation maybe be a little bit out of your league, if you have no past experience. So as I as being pushed as fast as my friend could push me, I kicked the thing into first gear and gave the throttle a twist. The damn thing started up and took off, with me hanging on for dear life. At that time, it was one of the scariest things I had ever experienced. Once I let off the throttle, I had the piece of mind to push on the foot brake pedal, so I was able to stop, but once I stopped the thing just kinda fell over. When you are 11, you cannot reach the ground on a early 1980s Honda CR80. Once we realized the motorcycle did work, we took a few turns riding it around a nearby pasture for a few days, then it stopped working again. In hindsight, we probably could have gotten the thing running again, but our attention spans were not good enough back then so we moved on to something else.

As I grew up and away, the desire to ride never really subsided. I got into cars, and girls, and other unmentionable things that teenagers do, but in the back of my mind, I still wished I had my own motorcycle. I saved up some money one time and purchased a bike. It was around 250 dollars. It was a 1982 Honda XR80. It purred like a kitten, and I rode it all over the place, since I had access to a dirt road 1/4 block from my house. Where I grew up, if you could get to any dirt road, you could pretty much get to anywhere else in the county without ever getting on a real street. Eventually I moved onward and upward, and the bike just didn't really fit into my lifestyle, and I didn't have a truck to transport the bike around with, so it was more or less useless. I gave the bike to my dad, who lived on a farm, and could use it and take good care of it. After many years of use and enjoyment, it went belly up, and I think he ended up giving it away since it was not working.

Then as a young adult, in my mid 20s in, I found myself in a position where I had quite a bit of expendable cash, and one day it just hit me that I should finally achieve my goal of once again owning my own motorcycle. I am not exactly sure what spurred the thought that day. I was living in a Dallas suburb and was just getting my career into full swing. Maybe I realized that I was losing touch with my childhood, having grown up in a rural area, away from the big cities. So that day, I began looking for a used dirt bike. I searched high and low for one, but never really found anything that was new enough to have modern technology, yet old enough or used enough to be cost effective. Like just about everything else I do, I let the concept grow in my mind, each day justifying buying a more expensive bike, until eventually caving and going nearly three times my allotted budget to get a good bike. It was a 1999 Yamaha Yz400F. At the time, it was the largest 4 stroke motocross bike that Yamaha made. It was 2001 at the time, so the bike was only a couple of years old. Perfect. I rode the bike quite a bit, and it was always a blast, but I soon realized that it was kind of a pain in the ass, because it was a rather lengthy process, to load the thing up into the truck, drive to a place to ride, etc... I had plenty of time, though, so no big deal.

Pretty soon after that, they closed down the government land where I always went to ride. I found another place, but it was an hour's drive away, one way, so it became an even larger pain in the ass. In 2003 I bought a house, and since then, my bike has just sat in the garage, taunting me. It was just too much trouble to try and get to the riding area after work, because it would be nearly dark by the time I got there, and on the weekends, I play hockey and do other stuff, so I just really didn't have time for it. Every time I would walk into the garage, I would feel pain because I really wanted to ride it every single day, and I just couldn't. It really hurt because I finally got what I always wanted and now it just sat there. How could I let this happen?

I decided one day that I would finally do something about it. I would part ways with my beloved dirt bike, and learn to ride a street bike instead. This way I get the thrill of riding, without the hassle of having to go somewhere far away to get it. I ordered a helmet and some gloves off the intertubes, and signed up for a motorcycle riders safety class. The class was fun, and I passed with flying colors. I was the only person in the class to get a perfect score on the final riding test. The next day, I went over to the DMV for the written part of the test. It was a snap. It took all of 15 minutes, I got a perfect score, and just like that, I was a licensed motorcycle operator.

Now all I had to do was obtain a new machine. I put my bike in an ad on cycle-trader.com with plenty of pictures and information. I only had one interested buyer and he ended up not buying the bike. I had not really planned a contingency for not being able to sell it. I guess the only option was to trade it in. I contacted my local Yamaha dealer to inquire about trading in for a new street bike. I got a quote and prepared to take my bike in for the trade. Yay.

Well, I went on vacation and got lazy and lost my motivation, so I just kinda dropped the ball for a few months. During this time, I decided that maybe I should not get a street bike, because almost every single person on the road is either on drugs, on the phone, or a complete fucking moron, and from what I gather, getting run over is really not all that cool, certainly not as cool as they make it look on TV. So there I was again with my precious dirt bike sitting right in front of the garage door, ready to go, looking all sad.

Then, out of the blue a few weeks back, a friend called saying he was buying a bike, and suddenly I was excited about it again. Only he was not getting a street bike, or a dirt bike, he was getting a dual-purpose machine. I had not really spent much time considering this option, but it seems like it might be a perfect fit. You can ride on the streets, then if you see something cool off the beaten path, you can just turn and go there. Turns out Yamaha makes a specific bike that has oversized tires that is reminiscent of the old school Yamaha Big Wheel or the Honda Fat Cat. The bike is the TW200. It sounds perfect.

So I email my guy at the Yamaha shop, and he says he can hook it up, no problem. My credit app was approved instantly, and they could take my trade in. I took my bike in the next day for trade in assessment, and they provided me with an even better option. I leave my bike there and they sell it on consignment. This way, they can sell it for a hell of a lot more than I could, and they take 10% of the proceeds, which is a great deal, assuming that they sell it. If not, I could just tell them I want the blue book value of it, and apply it toward paying off the new bike.

I picked up the new bike the next day.

Here are a couple of pictures of what the motorcycle looks like. Mine is brand new, so the stock photos are exactly how mines looks, so no need for me to take pictures of mine.


The TW200 is an amazing machine. Yamaha got this build exactly right, so they have not changed the design for over two decades. I have ridden around 150 miles on it so far, and its fantastic. I have gotten it up to 70 MPH with the wind at my back, which is about its top speed, but I have also taken it across a freshly plowed Texas pasture, which is quite a feat. It is the best of both worlds. It is a perfect mix of mean dirt bike, and decent road performance. I can ride the bike to work, or go jump hills. I think I have finally found a keeper.

There are a few upgrades I have made, or plan to make. I installed new footpegs, whereas the stock ones were pretty small. I also installed a tail light modulator so the brake light flashes when I use the brakes, to help make me more visible to other drivers. I added a tank bag to carry my junk. Tomorrow I will be adding handguards to protect my hands from rocks, or other misadventures. I have a magnetic drain plug being shipped, and I will also be adding a 12v DC power outlet so I can use a GPS, a portable air pump, or whatever. Additionally, I will be installing a rear rack so that I can carry more stuff when I go on a journey, and I may add a smaller rear sprocket, so that I can achieve higher cruising speeds at lower RPMs. I will probably have a few posts in the future pertaining to some of these upgrades. I think we are going to put up a TW200 web page for customization articles, so I may just put them there instead, but I will put a link to them here. I will post a picture of my bike after I add all these mods.

Anyway, onward and upward!

I had another weird/classic dream. You may or may not remember the last one I had. You can read all about it here.

In my most recent odd dream, I invented the perfect story. In the dream, the story was so perfect that I knew it could easily be made into an award winning movie. It was one of those stories with a lot of twists and turns, and a huge surprise ending. Everyone I told the story to absolutely freaked out and said it was the most amazing story ever. Someone in the dream recommended that make sure that I do not forget the story when I woke up, since I had invented it while I was asleep. So in the dream, I spent the next few days trying absolutely as hard as I could to memorize the story. I wrote the story down on paper a few times a day, with notes in the margins not to forget the story when I woke up. I told more and more people the story, each one more impressed than the last, and I told each listener to remember the story because I might need them to help me with the details later if I forgot for some reason.

I might need to mention here, in case it is not clear, that the story in the dream was real. I actually dreamed a really good story, and not just like the idea or concept of a story in general. Anyway, this is starting to confuse me so I will skip to the chase... I woke up and forgot 99% of the dream, so I lost the story I had invented. In fact, the only thing I can remember was how awesome the story would have been had I not forgotten what it was.



On the 30 day experiment... I am up to running 3.5 miles now, in 20 minutes. I will do a complete post about my progress at a later date, or maybe at the end of the 30 days.

Its odd that the world has changed so much in terms of trust. 50 years ago people trusted each other. The general rule of thumb seemed to be trust a person until they give you a reason not to. Now the exact opposite appears to be true. You should not trust anyone on the planet, until they give you reason to do so. I find this quite interesting. I was born in 1974, and when I was growing up, you really didn't have to lock your car doors or your house doors. Perhaps if you were going to be gone all day or something like that, but certainly not if you were home!

Back then, kids just roamed around without much parental supervision. When I was little, I would go outside, and go play, and not come back until it was dark. My parents had no idea where I was or what I was doing (Thank God.) It is not that they didn't care, there was just a level of societal trust that simply no longer exists. Nowadays, kids hardly ever even go outside the house without some level of supervision, and they sure as hell don't get on their bikes, and ride 10 miles away from there house to go do stuff. I guess as kids get older they might, but I was doing these types of things when I was 6 or 7.

When I was that age you really only had to know one thing. Don't get in the van with the creepy old dude no matter what he says he has in there. That was pretty much the only thing I had to worry about, and it was GREAT!.

It is a damn shame that kids today don't get to experience that type of freedom. These days you have to put a helmet and pads on your kid, then follow them as they ride their bikes so that they don't get ass raped by the multitude of freaks walking around. These days you have to lock your door when you are inside the house so an undesirable doesn't just waltz in, club you in the head with a bat, then jack all your shit. that's pathetic.

If I ever figure out how to build a time machine, I think I may just go back to yesterday, collect the lottery numbers, then jump ahead, win, then port myself back to either the 50s, or perhaps the late 70s, and just live there permanently, because those were fucking good times! Fucking eh!

Something happened Saturday night that happens to every single person on the planet at some time or another. I was sitting on the bench at my hockey game just before the game was about to start. The scorekeeper was walking around the outside of the rink to his booth. As he walked by, he smiled a bit and said something, then laughed. I have absolutely no idea what he said, yet after he said it, I presented a phony laugh as he laughed. I was falsely conveying the belief that I understood what he said, and found it to be humorous. Why did I do that?

A fellow teammate was sitting beside me, and he gave the guy a small laugh as well. I asked him why he laughed, and he said he did not know, because he did not hear what the scorekeeper said either. Why did he do that?

We briefly discussed this phenomenon, but it spurred my imagination greatly. What were we doing? We were basically lying to this man. Is this fair? What if the scorekeeper had something important to say, such as providing us with key information that we may need to survive a holocaust? what if he had travelled from the future and was giving us the outcome of the game, or better yet, that evening's lottery numbers? We deprived this man of truly sharing his well crafted thought, and why? ...to be friendly? Is it friendly to make someone believe that you heard them if you didn't? Perhaps we simply did not want to waste our time with the process of declaring a mis-hear, and having him repeat the verbiage. What if he had repeated what he said, and it turns out that he said his mom was raped and killed by neo-nazis that morning. Then we would have to deal with all that. What if what he said was supposed to be some sort of joke, but it really was not funny whatsoever. Then we would be stuck in a similar scenario where we may feel obligated to laugh anyway, so the dude doesn't fell bad, and jump off a bridge or some shit.

I am really not sure how that article would turn out, I kind of thought I would figure it all out in the process of describing it. Turns out I didn't. It it quite interesting though. What do you do in those scenarios? What should you do? how many licks does it take to get the center of a tootsie roll pop?


...on a side note. I am eating strange food and exercising as planned. I am only on day 2. On day 1 I lost 1.2 pounds. I also discovered that an elliptical device is dramastically different than a treadmill. The last time I got into treadmilling, which was maybe 2 years ago, I could walk for an hour and hardly break a sweat. On the elliptical, I went 15 minutes, and was practically dead. I checked the on-board electronics of the trusty HR1100/A and realized the difference. On the elliptical, I average nearly 10 miles an hour, which on the treadmill, would be practically running full speed. On the elliptical, this is right around 2.5 miles in 15 minutes, which is pretty damn fast, and a LOT of exercise. I challenge anyone who is not used to that kind of crap to try it out. More updates on my progress later.

Ok, one of my goals for the year was do do some sort of experiment over a month's time, so I am going to perform an experiment (sorta) for 30 days starting Monday.

Starting Monday, November 5th. I am going to change my diet and exercise completely and see what happens. I am going to eat a sensible healthy breakfast lunch, and dinner, and I am going to perform daily aerobic exercise on an Eclipse 1100HR/A Elliptical Trainer. I am not exactly sure how long the aerobic exercise will last each day. I think I am going to shoot for 30 minutes per day at a fast pace for starters, then increase the time each week of the month if possible, maybe by 10 minute increments. I also own a treadmill, but I think the elliptical will be better for my bad knee, and my research indicates that the elliptical may burn more calories than a treadmill.

It will be interesting to see how much weight I lose in 30 days, and what physical changes I see in terms or my daily sleep schedule, my hockey stamina, etc.. This is not an attempt to change my lifestyle for overall better well being, in fact, after the 30 days I full well expect to go back to not exercising except for my 1-2 games of hockey per week, and eating what I normally eat. I would like to lose weight and keep it off, but I am a realist, and I know that has very little chance of happening. VERY few people are able to change their lifestyle to become healthy. I know that I am a large person, and I am perfectly ok with that. Are there days I wash I was not overweight? of course. Do I dwell on it a lot? nope.

I will do an official weigh-in Monday morning and begin the process. I plan to eat a lot of fish and chicken, and red meat in smaller portions that normal, and instead of a bunch of crap, eat a bunch of vegetables, and add some fruits to the party. It should be good times because I like those things anyway. As far as eating fast food, which I seem almost required to do a few times a week, I will stick to Subway sandwiches with no cheese, and salads from various places, or perhaps something like a grilled chicken sandwich.

Anyhoo, I am stoked to embark on the experiment. I know it doesn't seem like much, but it will be interesting to see the overall affects. I will post updates as the month progresses.

Are the people that you work with your friends? More than likely there are plenty of people at work that you hate, that's easy, but are there people that you work with that are really your friends? I am not talking about a scenario where you and your friend got a job at the same place or something like that, I am talking about people that prior to working at your job you did not know, that are now your friends. Also, what level of friendship have you attained with such people?

I know I posted once about people coming and going in life, but today I am focusing only on people at work. How do you refer to people from work when you are talking to someone else? I think I use a combination of terms. Sometimes I'll say, "this guy at work", sometimes its "a friend of mine at work", and sometimes its just "I have a friend who...". I guess I change it to fit the current narrative. I guess for me it sort of comes down to who I trust and why. One of my co-workers was going to Vegas this past weekend, so he told me that if I had any sports wagers I'd like to make, that he would do it for me. I busted out 150 bucks and handed it right to him without a care in the world. If this same character came up and asked me to give him say 750 bucks and he would pay me back later, I would probably do it without even asking why. I guess I trust him with money. If I was explaining this to someone else and I said I gave 150 dollars to a guy at work, they might think its odd, whereas if I said a friend, they would not. So that is one type of co-worker.

Then there are people that I can trust with personal data, but not necessarily with work related data. This category seems self explanatory. Some people may use work related data to try and discover further data, or use the data for their own well being, and in the process may or may not divulge the source of their information, yet would keep any personal info regarding non work related completely safe. Some of these people could also easily fit into the monetary trust category.

Next I guess would be people that you would hang out with outside of work. I think that to truly crossover from a "friend from work" to a friend would require a few external events. This way you can see how people are different at work than when they are on their own time. This is not an absolute requirement by any means. You can have good friend that you know or knew from work that you have never had an opportunity to spend time with outside of work for whatever reason. I know this may seem contradictory, but they are my thoughts, so take a hike sucker.

I guess this jumbled mess of thoughts really produces no outcome, but I have been thinking about it a little bit so I figured I would lay it down before I forgot. There are people that I have worked with in my life, that I would drop everything I am doing, and go straight to help them if they asked, yet I would probably not help them bury a body, and let's face it, that what true friendship is all about.

When I was growing up, there was a certain delicacy that one could only obtain at the cafeteria at whatever school you happen to be attending at the time. This delicacy, was known as "wacky cake". Wacky cake day was always a good time. Back then, wacky cake was the most delicious food product ever invented, at least that's how my fond memories of it are stored. Out of the blue one day I decided that I should reproduce this stupendous feat of culinary mastery. After all, I am the cook in my house. I am always cooking something. I cook some sort of food almost every single day. I am quite good at it, so I decided that I could decode the hidden secrets of this marvelous gem.

I sent an email to my friend, who was able to obtain what could very well turn out to be the exact recipe that the school used for the delicious treat. Could it be this easy? No way, wacky cake is special, and indigenous to only my region of my county of my state. No way someone would easily part with such an item, it would surely be locked away at Fort Knox, under tight government control.

After obtaining the recipe I discovered that it did not contain what type or size of pan would be required for said cake. Oh my, what shall I do? Being an avid chef, I certainly realized that these two key pieces of data could prevent my dream of once again being reunited with my long lost chocolatey friend. I decided to forge ahead, and do whatever it takes to make wacky cake, even if it meant making 1000 crappy substandard wacky cakes along the way.

To minimize the amount of brown chunks I produced before hitting the jackpot, I decided to hit up a few pages I frequent that would have some standard cake recipes, so that I could compare how much raw material went into other cakes in relation to what size pan they used. On a whim, I poked in "wacky cake", and whatta ya know.... there were already wacky cake recipes floating around. After a cursory perusal of them I soon realized that they were basically the same recipe, with a few minor changes here and there for pan size and whatnot. A quick hit of Wikipedia even produced a short writeup on the damn thing.

Apparently, the current accepted theory as to its origin is that it was invented during the rationing days of World War II, when milk and eggs, the most common of all cake ingredients, were extremely scarce. To make up for this, the cake is made to rise through the use of baking powder and vinegar, of all things! Yes my friends, that stupid volcano you made when you were little, could have very well been made into wacky cake instead.

The recipe I obtained did mention the use of a tiny amount of milk, but I am 100% certain that it is not needed, and water could be substituted in its stead. I did include the milk in mine, because I wanted to be as true as I could to the recipe I was given. Maybe this tiny portion of milk made the wacky cake in my school something special.

The recipe is VERY simple. You throw everything that goes into the cake into a bowl, and stir it a few times. Nothing more, nothing less. Here is what that looks like.

This is:
3 cups flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup cocoa
1 tsp. soda
2 cups water
1 cup oil
4 tsp. vinegar
1 tsp. vanilla



and here it is in the pan...



Now I should mention that I was low on cocoa, so I cut everything to exactly 75% of the total amounts, but I was making this in the smaller of my two Pyrex baking dishes, so it should be fine.

The recipe was vague on how long to cook the cake, it simply says " Bake at 375 degrees until just done (springs to light touch.)" Just done? Are you kidding me? I looked back at the online infos I found and they baked their at 350 for 30 minutes, but they were using metal cake pans, so I would have to go longer. Well, I ended up having to go a lot longer. After about 35 minutes I pulled the beast out of the oven and prodded around with a fork. Yuck! in the middle it was still just a lump of fecal colored goo, so I popped it back in and left it, and left it, and left it, and left it. I ended up having to cook the sucker for about an hour and fifteen minutes!



I may have overcooked it just a tiny bit because it was a little bit dry around the edges, but that was the only way to get it done in the middle. I think next time, a lower temperature may be the key. Anyway, so the recipe then says to "punch holes in the cake with a meat fork". MEAT FORK? WTF? Oh well, I lost my meat fork back in the 80s, so I opted to use a normal fork. I poked several holes in the cake, as can be seen here.



Ok, so they aren't exactly holes, they are huge gashes. Who really gives a damn, I am about to eat wacky cake up in here. Only one thing left to do... recreate the magical frosting. the frosting on wacky cake is bizarre to say the least. It is hard, yet soft at the same time. If you were to hold it in your hand for a little while, it would melt. Also, it has a very strange texture when you eat it, almost like a cross between sand and chocolate. I guess it is sort of like melty chocolate sand! Here are a few frosting preparation pictures.





This is:
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup cocoa
1/2 cup milk
1 stick Oleo

This is where the milk comes into play. Next time, I will just try water. The instructions here are again VERY simple. Chuck all this shit in a pan and boil for 3 minutes, then cool for 5 minutes. Then dump it on your cake. Tada!



When the frosting goes on, it is really shines, you can even see the reflection of my Zojirushi in the background!

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... The Wacky Cake.


The cake is delicious. Is it as good as it was back in my childhood? I have no clue! It is a real shitter, but since I have not had wacky cake for a minimum of 15 years, I cannot recall if it is supposed to taste like my cake tastes or not. The cake is really good, and it seems... "institutional", for lack of a better term. I do not think it is outside the realm of something that might be served in a cafeteria. The only true way to tell would be if the schools where I grew up still feature wacky cake, then either obtain a true specimen and compare, or have a school-aged child try mine and and provide feedback. Chances are, neither is going to happen, so I will just assume that this is a 100% authentic recreation of my prized delight.

Do you have an advanced directive or a medical power of attorney filled out and stored somewhere safe? I bet you don't. An advanced directive is simply a form that expresses your wishes ahead of time for what type of medical care you want in case you are unable to make decisions for yourself. Basically what it boils down to is do you want to be kept on life support if you are stuck in a persistent vegetative state from which you will never recover? Here is the form, at least for Texans, for this advanced directive:

http://www.dads.state.tx.us/news_info/publications/handbooks/LivingWill-English.pdf

A Medical Power of Attorney is a firm that appoints someone to act on your behalf should a doctor declare you incompetent to make medical decisions on your own. Here is the form for that:

http://www.dads.state.tx.us/news_info/publications/handbooks/MEDPOA-English.pdf

If you are not in Texas, you can just Google the terms and you will find thousands of them. If you do not have a set of these, you should probably hook it up. If your parents are dead, and you and your better half both have an issue where you both are turned into vegetables, you are going to want someone you trust to be making decisions in regards to your medical care, and you also are going to want the doctor to work off of your own wishes as expressed in the advanced directive. There have been tons of lawsuits and such based on various state to state laws in regards to these matters which could have been avoided had victims just been smart enough to plan ahead. Also, you don't want to put anyone in the bizarre scenario to have make medical decisions for you, if they have no idea what your wishes are.

Anyway, so those are the forms. Fill them out. In the forms, make sure to mark that you do NOT want to be put on permanent life support. You want to die. You do not want to be a carrot. Don't make your family suffer, or sink into unimaginable debt because you are too stupid to understand what being a potato really means. Technology will not come along in 25 years that will allow you to return to normal life. A divine miracle will not occur that will make every thing OK again. The two forms are setup for scenarios where you CAN NO LONGER FUNCTION. Under such circumstances, you won't have very much fun for the duration of your tenure on planet Earth, so just make things easier on everyone and die. Don't be so selfish that you make your family feel guilty forever for abandoning you while you spend your remaining years as a broccoli.

Do it.. NOW!

Back in July, I posted about reorganizing my 401k distribution and setting up a Roth IRA. In case you missed it, you can find it HERE. Since then, I have been funding my Roth and trying to locate a decent mutual fund to put my money into. A lot of people will tell you to diversify your portfolio, personally, I think those people are off. My investment strategy is TO MAKE MONEY. Lots of it, in a short period of time. I have found that the best way to do this is NOT to diversify your portfolio.

My research shows that mutual funds in international stocks is where the money is at. Countries around the world are joining modernized society, and as they do, investors appear to be on board. It seems to me that a good portion of the world is now catching up to the US technologically and otherwise, so they are sort of where we were at a while back when the market here was so awesome. This data, combined with fact that we are still at war, which makes investors here scared, makes international stocks an incredible value right now.

So I put all my money, every single penny of investment money I own, into an international mutual fund. The fund is the Thornburg International Value Fund (TGVAX). I have made so much money off of this fund that it is just ridiculous. The only catch when I converted to the Roth, is that the Thornburg requires a $2000 initial investment inside an IRA. Since I do not have that much in the Roth yet, I was forced to find another fund that was just as good, with a low buy-in.

After many long nights of searching, I came across the Pax World Growth Fund (PXWGX). The fund is very similar to the Thornburg in that it is an international fund, but the buy-in for an IRA is $0, and the minimum subsequent investment is also $0. Even outside of an IRA, the minimum is only $250, with a $50 subsequent. That is pretty damn good.

So there you have it. My two investments, both of which are in the same sector, and some of the exact same stocks. Once I hit the 2K with the PXWGX, I will transfer the balance into the TGVAX, just like all my 401k investment.

So, you may be asking, why is it so great to put all your eggs in one basket like that? Most people, seemingly on the advice of financial advisers, or otherwise, have always been told to just put the money in and basically ignore it, let it build, then you will be rich when you are old. This is fucking ridiculous. That would be like just paying your credit cards bills each month, without even looking at them (which I used to do!). If you invested a large some of money into a stock, you would check the stock price each and every day, so you could get out if you needed to, and minimize loss. Well, your 401k is basically the same thing.

So, I not only check the price of the funds each and every day, I also compare the daily results to other mutual funds, stocks, indexes, and whatnot. This keeps me one step ahead of the game at all times, and determine cutoff prices where I may need to move things around a bit. So far this has worked out marvelously. For example, during the most recent issues with housing mortgage problems, everyone suffered, but the international stocks bounced right back, and actually busted out quite a bit afterwards and went on a huge price spike, whereas some of the large US based stocks did not. Here is a perfect example of what I am talking about:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=TGVAX&t=6m&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=msft

If you look at this chart, you can see that after the housing trouble that plagued the market, Microsoft stock recovered from its -2.5%, and bounced back up to a little over 5%, which is fantastic, but in that same time period, TGVAX bounced from its low of around 5% (pretty good for a crisis time in our markets), up to around 22.5%!!!. Now, someone with a well diversified portfolio would not have benefited much in this scenario, but I did. If you dump all your money into anything, diversified or not, and don't pay attention, you pretty much deserve to lose all your money.

Ok, this is too long already, I could go on for hours and hours. Just do yourself a favor or two. Put your money into international stocks for now, and for shit's sake, UN-DIVERSIFY YOUR PORTFOLIO!

I lost about 200 bucks yesterday on the Packers game. Well, Technically, I did not lose anything, because I was playing with profit from prior weeks. I am still up well over 10X my initial investment. I suppose I could have taken the money out, so I guess I can only say I sorta lost 200 dollars. Hopefully I will win some of it back tonight. The bigger issue, is trying NOT to tilt, which is a gambling term used when someone tries to recover losses by playing irrationally. A few weeks ago I was on full tilt and was betting 450+ bucks on a single play during the game. My goal today is to bet small, but consistently to work my way back up slowly. I should do an article on the mentality of a gambler in tilt mode.

Anyway, so I went to the dentist the other day. Some people hate the dentist. I kind of like it. My dentist is always really proud of my healthy strong teeth, but like most people, I need to floss more. They have done this in the past, but this time again they took my blood pressure, and said it was high. I had my blood pressure taken back when I went to the ER with a busted chin from hockey, and they said it was fine. So is it possible that my blood pressure has spiked since then? I suppose. I asked her to take it again so she did and it was still pretty damn high. 160/94, which is really up there. I suppose it is possible that I could have had the condition known as "white coat hypertension", which is essentially artificially elevated blood pressure due to anxiety from being in a doctors office, or somewhere that may cause any sort of stress. She also stated that it could simply be that the cuff was to small for my large arm, or that her machine was not calibrated properly. I think I can rule out "white coat" because like I said, I actually enjoy going to the dentist.

I took it again at one of those free checks at the grocery store pharmacy, and although it was not nearly as high as it was at the dentist, it was still higher than it should be 141/86 or something real close to that. Could I have high blood pressure? I SERIOUSLY doubt it. I suppose if I do, it might be handy to know that, so I am in the market for a decent blood pressure monitoring device that has a USB connector, so that I can attach it to my computer and chart out the results. I will update on that later.

Back on track here, I cannot comprehend why people do not like the dentist. I suppose they are afraid of pain. "Anticipation of pain is usually worse than pain" is a general rule I try to live by. If you sit and dwell on something then you are suffering for no real reason, just get it over with, and most of the time, you will come out the other end thinking it was not nearly as bad as you thought it would be. Some people have a bad gag reflex, but 99% of the time, the dentists hands are not very far in your mouth, certainly not far enough to gag a person. The technology of dentistry has come a long way as well. A lot of the tools no longer look like scary death implements. Plus, most of the time, I actually do not see the tools at all. Some people don't want to go because they know they have bad teeth or some sort of particular problem. If you went in the first place, you probably would not be in this predicament.

All this leads me to believe that people who are afraid or even the smallest bit apprehensive about going to the dentist probably HAVE A BAD DENTIST!

As a side note here, I started chewing gum pretty much all the time a couple of years ago. I chew gum 4-6 hours a day. Sugarless, of course. Anyway, I noticed that after I started chewing gum a lot, that every time I went to the dentist, there was less buildup for them to scrape off, and they noticed that my teeth were a lot cleaner, and healthier. My theory here is that the gum pull all the nasty shit off of and out from between your teeth. I do not brush any more than I used to, so this appears to be the only explanation. So, forget about pain, chew gum, and GO TO THE DENTIST!!

Wow, I put off posting for a whole week. I sucks. I will get remotivated hopefully, because I vowed to blog for an entire year, and the year is still 3 months away from being completed.

We did win the hockey championship. Yaaay!

Anyway, I think things will be more or less back to normal after this weekend, so I should be back with some regularity. I have a few topics to cover, so I will make a note of them, so I will have plenty of blog ammo.

I can't really think of anything else interesting to put here, so you will just have to wait.

Well, we won game 1, then lost game 2. Which means the all important game 3 is Tuesday at 10:30PM. It is do or die time. I am not exactly sure how they beat us. We let them score first, which seemed to whip us up into a frenzy. This caused players to freak out a little bit, and the whole game just went south from there.

I am still feeling no pressure what so ever. I want to win very badly, but I am doing a marvelous job of not having strong emotions about it. I am staying level headed. So far, I am treating the playoffs as any other game. I do not believe in bringing more than normal effort. To me, there is nothing more than normal. If you have the capacity to play better under certain circumstances, you are not playing your best until then. I see this in football almost every week. These teams get in a jam, then at the end of the game, they play this magical "2 minute offense", where magically they can play really well, and get the ball way down field, really fast, and get the game tied up. IF YOU CAN FUCKING DO THIS, DO IT FOR THE ENTIRE GAME, AND YOU WOULD NEVER FUCKING BE IN THAT POSITION IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!! It drives me nuts to think that these athletes who make millions of dollars, have secret abilities that they only use in an emergency. Fuck you. Play the whole game as if it were the Superbowl.

Another thing I hate is when a teammate is not honest with themselves and points the finger at other players, when they themselves are part of the problem. Perhaps it is a natural defense mechanism. I VERY RARELY ever criticize anyone else's game, because I know that I can always do better.

I firmly believe that I can improve my game over the next few days by studying and changing some of my pregame attitude. I will study training videos between now and the game, to remind me of some of the bad habits I need to stay away from while skating. I also have a instructional book on how to improve your attitude during the game, by helping you manage your time, and breathing methodologies to help you be ready for your shifts. Additionally, I will meditate prior to leaving for the game, and visualize the math in my mind. Just before game time, I will find a nice quiet place, and spend a few minutes alone to relax.

I think the threat of another loss is quite real, so I am going into the game with expectations that it will be incredibly difficult, and require the best performance possible.

Ok, enough rambling.

Today is what I consider to be perhaps the most important hockey game of my entire career, or close to it. Today is the first game of a 3 game series for the championship. This series is important because it comes on the heels of a fantastic season where we ended up in 1st place. It seems like when I am on a 1st place team it the regular season, the playoffs are usually a bust, or the times in the past when my teams have won the championship, we were not first place during the regular season. This happens a lot even at the NHL level.

After last season, we lost several key players, who formed another team in a higher league, and so it was hard, partly because they became friends, and partly because we had to take on a batch of new players. Anyway, so we have worked really hard to get to where we are, and now we just need the hardware to prove it. Last season, we ended up in 2nd place, and although getting a 2nd place trophy was nice, it sits on the TV and taunts me daily.

So how do I deal with the pressure of a huge game? Simple. I don't. I treat this day like any other day, and I treat this game like any other game. Our consistency is the key to our success this season, and because of it, we have enjoyed an 17-2-1 record, that's 85% wins. Our goal, is to win the best 2 out of 3 series in 2 games. I am confident that this will happen for us this season.

Go Scarecrows!

So I went to Oktoberfest on Saturday night. It was fun, but we didn't stay very long. Just long enough to get full on German food and drink quite a few German beers. We didn't visit any exhibits or anything though.

Originally I had made a note I had made a note to blog about honesty, and whether or not is really is the best policy. The problem is that I cannot recall why I made the note, so I'll just shoot from the hip. There are no lessons to be learned here and there is nothing to prove, its just a quick, simple analysis.

Should you ALWAYS tell the truth?

I'm sure that if asked, most people would probably answer yes, but secretly inside they know that is not the real answer, which in and of itself, contradictory. If your wife or girlfriend asks if her clothes make her look fat, men will probably lie. If a parent asks a child, if they broke a vase or whatnot, they will probably lie. If a criminal is on trial and they want to avoid jail, they will probably lie. I would wager that in most scenarios where the end result will be some sort repercussion when the truth is told, but only minimal risk involved when lying, that human beings would simply lie, and then justify the lie to themselves later, or never put much thought into it after the fact. It seems to me that lying is the norm, and that truly honest people are the exception.

I may one of these exceptions. I lead a fairly simple life. I go to work, do my thing, play hockey, hang out, etc... I appear to be able to go through my day to day activities not getting into scenarios where lying is even remotely necessary. The people I know consider me to be brutally honest. I see no point in beating around the bush. I am a cut to the chase kind of guy. Why waste time with this or that, when I can pretty much process everything into some sort of end game on the fly?

I would wonder what would happen if I were put into a scenario where there was minimal risk associated with lying, but heavy consequence with the truth. I wonder if I would lie. I suppose it depends on how severe the consequence. I have not needed to lie in any way shape or form about anything I suppose in well over a decade, so I may be so out of practice, that I couldn't even if I wanted to.

What if the tables were turned, and instead of negative consequence for lying, there was a gain, whether it be financial or otherwise? What if you went to a restaurant and when paying the bill, the cashier was about to give you your change, and then she asked, "oh, you paid me with a hundred didn't you?", when in reality you had only paid with a $20? You stand to gain a handsome profit if you lie and say yes. Would you lie and take the money? Would I? Would it be considered stealing? Maybe there is a law concerning capitalizing on someone else mistakes, I am not sure.

I am not a religious person, so any Judeo-Christian ethics type stuff is right out the door, but we do live in a society where people are expected to behave in a particular manner, and if everyone abandoned these unwritten rules, chaos would ensue, which would probably get old after a week or two. I don't know.

It is football season! To me, this marks the beginning of fall, even though in Texas it stays hot until late October. Football season is fucking AWESOME! It is the perfect time to grill and smoke food outside, drink lots of beer, brew lots of beer, etc.. But perhaps the most important thing about football season is that it is time to make $MONEY$!.

Betting on sports, particularly on football, is not rocket science, yet it never ceases to amaze me how people seem totally confused by it, so I figured I would break it down real easy like for anyone interested. there are a few types of bets. the main two are money line bets (ML), or against the spread (ATS) bets. ML bets are straight up bets on a winner for the game.

This sounds easy, but the problem is that the odds are adjusted so that if you pick the likely winner, you don't make as much profit as you would against the spread, or if you picked the underdog. For example, if Indy was playing Oakland, Indy would clearly be the favorite by quite a bit. So the odds on Indy to win straight up might be -500. What does this number mean? All wagering is based on the amount of money you have to wager to win $100. So in the example, to win $100 you would have to wager $500. Pretty shitty payoff. If you want to wager less, and know how much you would win, you simply divide 100 by the odds. In the example, if you were to wager $20, you would divide 100 by 500 which gives you .2 and multiply it by you wager. In other words, 20x.2=4, so you profit would be $4. You of course, get your original wager back, so if you bet $20 and won, you would have a total of $24. In this same example, if you bet on Oakland instead (because you were mentally retarded), your odds would be +500. So its basically just the opposite. If you wagered $100, you would win $500 profit, for a total return, including you wager, of $600.

Next we have against the spread bets. For these, a certain amount of points is given to, or taken away, from teams. If Indy was playing Oakland, the spread may be Indy -6, which would result in Oakland being a +6. For these types of bets, you pick a team (and their points), and then apply whatever the point spread is to the total score after the game. For example, if you picked Indy -6 and the score ended up being Oakland 17, Indy 31, you would then subtract 6 from the Indy score, making the score Oakland 17, Indy 25, so you would win. In other words, Indy has to win by more than 6 for your bet to still be a winner. Adversely, if you picked Oakland +6, you then get to add 6 to their score at the end of the game, and if they win after this application, then you win.

So as you can see, betting is not hard. Perhaps it just looks intimidating. I may do another small primer on more exotic bets in the future, but for now, use your newly acquired knowledge to stick it to the man, and take all his money.

Have I gotten lazy? No. I overblogged 2 weeks ago becasue I knew my schedule would be odd for a bit. I skipped work last Monday to recover from "vacation hangover". Wednesday, I worked all day, then went back in at 11p for a migration, and ended up staying until 11a Thursday. So when I went back on Friday, my whole self was out of sorts. Then I had hockey Saturday night, and Sunday is football.

It is interesting how a few changes to a normal routine can throw everything into disarray. Perhaps its possible that the effects are more profound as I get older, but I noticed the same type of phenomena when I was younger. Going to sleep at the completely wrong time seems to cause the biggest disrpuption. You ever go to bed super early one day, like in the afternoon, then wake up the night, but after its dark, and you are so disoriented you can't even figure out where you are or what day it is? It is really shitty, but at the same time it is kinda fun. It seems like eating on an altered schedule a few times in a row makes things go odd as well. Anyway, I really have nothing to offer, just offering depiction of why the blog has been sparse for a fortnight.

I am still suffering from all the wackyness, I suppose. Hopefully, I can get back to normal soon. I know next week I have one late work night, so I am not out of the woods just yet.

Perhaps I need another vacation 8->

and.... we're back!

So we had a blast in Las Vegas. We didn't do much gambling necessarily, except to kill time between shows and eating. I made a 100$ sports bet on a baseball game and lost, then bet 100$ on a football game and won, so I broke even on sports betting. I may do a post just regarding sports betting later, sop not too much on that for now.

I played an electronic version of roulette that was awesome. I started with 100$ and worked my way up to 336$, for a handsome profit of 236$, all the while drinking tons of free beer and alcohol. The next day, I blew a little over 100$ of it messing around on slots waiting for a show to start.

Speaking of shows, we crammed in a bunch this time. here is a quick run down of them in case anyone is planning a trip out there:

Monday - Wayne Brady (The Venetian) : This was a good show, except for volume was about 150% too loud. Almost to the point of pain. I am old, but I am not that old, and I listen to heavy metal, so I am used to loud, but this was ridiculous. Wayne Brady was hilarious. It was not just comedy, it was a variety kind of show, so there was dancing and music as well. If you are just in it for the comedy, it is still good, but if you absolutely hate singing and dancing, don't go.

Tuesday - Amazing Jonathan (Sahara): As usual, this show was awesome. A lot of the same material as last year, but a few new things worked in as he prepares for his upcoming Comedy Central special. Good stuff, you can never go wrong with comedy and magic mixed together. The show is relatively cheap to attend, and every seat in the house is good.

Wednesday - Ka (MGM Grand): I had never been to a Cirque du Soleil show before, now I will see every single one of them. It was INCREDIBLE. The tickets were a little on the high side, but worth every penny. Do yourself a favor and see this show!

Friday - Love (The Mirage): This also is a Cirque show. It may have been better than Ka! It is based on the music of The Beatles, so that may be why I enjoyed it more, but again, it was truly AMAZING. I cannot really describe it in words, I could never do it justice. If you are a Beatles fan, see this instead of Ka if you have to pick one.

Friday - Hans Klok (Planet Hollywood): This show is at the Planet Hollywood, formerly The Aladdin. This show is called "The Beauty of Magic", so I expected it to be cheesy, but hey, Pamela Anderson is in the show so how bad can it be? Well, the cheesy factor was an 8 on a 1-10 scale. Hans Klok is a dutch magician, who sort of tells his life story through the show. He is "the world's fastest magician". I assume he gave himself this title, but it seems fitting because he is damn fast. His illusions are very quick. For example, he would do a switch, where he would lift up a sheet, and someone else would be there instead of him, and the sheet would only be up for maybe 1 second. Pamela Anderson does not do too much during the show, but she does jump around in skimpy clothing with her mega huge pieces all poppin out at the seams. I would say 35% of the show was dancing, not related to magic, but the tickets were really cheap, so if you want only magic, skip this one, but if you are into dancing and stuff, then by all means, check it out.

Additionally, we checked out "The Bodies" exhibit at the Tropicana, which is amazing. Some dude figured out how to put special polymers into human bodies in a vacuum, thus preserving them. http://www.bodiestheexhibition.com/bodies.html It is self explanatory I guess, bunch perfectly preserved dead bodies and parts. Highly recommended, and its cheap, and you walk through at your own pace.

Also, we went to the Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay. This too is a go at your own pace tour, with a little audio tour device where you enter in a number on the keypad that is associated to the number on the tanks, and you listen to the tour guide that way. It was awesome as well: http://www.mandalaybay.com/entertainment/sharkreef.aspx. It too, is pretty cheap, so check it out as well.

I could go on and on about other stuff but I won't, because this is already too long. Vegas is a great place, and can be really cheap, or really expensive depending on what you do there. You can eat fast food and play penny electronic poker all week and get drunk for free, and just wander around the streets, or you can party like a rock star and spend thousands, the choice is yours.

Anyway, now I have to get back into the daily grind, which sucks balls. I prefer happy drunken Vegas fantasy land.