Chronicles: Alan B. Rowley II - Success Warrior - ECoach - P90X

Who Throws a Shoe? Honestly?

  Was that a line from one of the Austin Powers movies?

Someone threw a shoe at W while he was out still trying to convince the world that what he did was for everyone's well being.  I'm thinking that the guy that threw a shoe doesn't believe the president.

We've got about a month to go before the worst president in history is done . . . finally.  Is it dragging on or what? 

Too bad Congress was too spineless or bought off to impeach W for all his crimes. 

The latest scandal about the new president is a debate about whether he's black or not.  Great!  I'm looking forward to 4 years of talking about anything but the issues.  We don't want to burden the American people with the issues and we certainly don't want them gathering around the water coolers to discuss the truth about things that matter.  It's better if they just watch Survivor and debate during the commercials about what color the president is.

Judas!

I found a clip with the quote:

My New Foot Fetish

  That's not where I would hang the mistletoe.

Trey and I were getting our hair cut yesterday when the haircutter noticed my dry cough.  Noticed is nice.  Lucky I didn't get my ear cut off would be closer to the truth.

"Does it get worse when you lay down?" she asked.

"Why yes it does," I answered.

"Have you heard of putting Vicks on your feet?" she asked.

"Not for medical reasons," I answered.

So I went home and checked the Internets for this new strangeness and it turns out that people do indeed put Vicks on their feet.

I hadn't slept for a couple of days so I thought I would try it out for a nap.  It worked great - for Trey.  He never naps anymore.  He is usually pinging off the ceiling during "quiet time".  I put Vicks on my feet and he had a 3 hour nap.  Probably just what he needed to help him get feeling better.

Me?  I couldn't sleep because I was coughing too much.

I remember reading about straight shooting honey to soothe a scratchy throat.  I decided to give that a try.  Still hacking too much to sleep.  Then I had an asymphony (you know, when the light bulb comes on over your head - must have happened a lot to great composers).

I took my socks back off and slathered my feet with honey.  If it works for Vicks, it might just work for honey.  I put my socks back on, which is as hard as you would imagine.  I laid down for one more try at sleep.

Guess what?  It worked.

But I had the weirdest dream.  I dreamed that I was a bee and that I was going from flower to flower collecting pollen with my feet.  I carried it back to the hive where it was used to make honey.  Unfortunately, all the honey from that batch tasted like Vicks and sweaty feet.

I woke up coughing again.

Sicker Than a Dog

  I'm not sure where that saying comes from.  Just like I'm not too sure about this young lady's North Pole fashion sense.  I mean really, those gloves don't look warm at all.

I'm not going to bore you with the details of my illness.  Just a bad cold, I suppose.

Yesterday, aside from Trey and I going to the doctor to make sure we don't have strep throat, Tia and I went in for our quarterly health insurance check up.

For those of you new here or who don't remember because you don't pay attention because this blog is nothing more than a rambling on of sorts, Tia's insurance offers a discount on the premium price for healthy people.

I didn't pass this time.  I still get the discount as long as I work with their health coach to fix the problems.

My good cholesterol/bad cholesterol ratio is .2 too high and I'm too heavy.  Of course I'm too heavy.  I'm always too heavy.

I'm curious to see what the health coach is going to do.  I had already decided to add in a second round of exercise each day before this check up.  That has been put on hold until I can get rid of this cold.  I was doing extra cardio was I was doing P90X and figured that would help burn off an extra bit of fat.

My diet is pretty good.  Well, it's almost nothing right now except chicken noodle soup but it was pretty good before I got sick.

Tia was funny.  I was sitting there waiting for the cholesterol results and she walked in.

"How's it going?" she asked.

"I'm too fat," I said.

"Whatever," she replied.

They use my weight and some sort of device that you hold in your hands to measure bodyfat.  I'm not sure how accurate it is.  Tia obviously has her doubts.

The first opening to talk to my coach was December 24th at 5pm. 

Seriously?

Christmas Eve at 5pm.  That's a bad sign for me.  My coach (Ann) has got to be a heartless bitch if she works on Christmas Eve at 5pm.  Go home Ann.  Go home and put treats in the stockings for your cats.

"What's the next availalbe appointment?" I asked.  Like I'm in such a rush to lose 10 pounds that I need the first available appointment to talk to the cat lady.  A week later.  I took that one and I'm just going to go on a wing and a prayer that I don't die during that week.

When Peter Schiff Talks, People . . .

  Laugh.

Not behind his back either.  Right to his face.

Peter Schiff is the president of Euro Pacific Capital and was Ron Paul's economic advisor during the election.

I have a clip below that shows other experts responding to Schiff's predictions.  Their arrogance and rudeness is really off the chart.

Even more so when you consider, not that Schiff was right (hell, even I predicted the recession), but just how far off in la-la land the other experts were.  They have absolutely no clue how the national economy works or why businesses succeed or fail.  One guy predicts that house prices are going to go up by 10% in 2007 and one predicts that the stock market will hit 16,000 in 2008.

Not just wrong but hellawrong.

As for me, I'll take Peter Schiff over Ben Stein any day after watching this.  Not that I would ever rudely laugh in Ben's face when he made his predictions.  That's rude.  I might ask Ben if Peter Schiff agrees with him though.

A Symptom of our Sickcare System

  ". . . two turtle doves and a . . ."

Schwing!

Tia has a pain in her neck.  Two pains in the neck, if you count me.  She has a fairly new pain in the neck.

So, we went to the doctor because that's what you do when you have a pain in the neck.

Apparently, she has what is called a "reactive lymph node."  I'll try to explain what that is in layman's terms.  One of her lymph nodes is reacting to something. 

Okay, so what do we do about it?

First, try an antibiotic just to see if a shot in the dark will solve the problem.

This should be the first clue that there is a problem.

The antibiotic didn't work.  What's next?

Surgery.  Cut the node out.

What?

We don't know what's causing the reaction so let's cut the node out.

Let me tell you what that sounds like to me.

Let's say that you have smoke in your house, probably caused by a fire.  Who knows?  The smoke detector starts going off.  You can't seem to find the fire so you take a hammer to the smoke detector so the damn thing quits its annoying sound.

That describes the first two visits to the doctor.  Today, we got a second opinion from a surgeon.  After prodding around a bit and looking at the CT results, he figures it's a reactive lymph node.  Try an antibiotic.  We did and it didn't work.  Shrug.

Really?  That's it?

He did advise against cutting it out if she could live with the discomfort.  Beyond that, no clue.

We're going to try some things outside of the "conventional" medical practice since it's all about guesswork anyway. 

I picked up a couple of chickens to sacrifice during the next blue moon and purchased some powdered 4-leaf clover that we'll make a healing tea out of.  It's got more of a chance of working than "shrug".

Getting an Edge

  Some poor scientist is taking flak for saying that it would be perfectly okay to take drus like Ritalin to get a little mental edge, just like using caffeine.

Would they have to start drug testing chess players like they drug test baseball players.

"Dude, how did he play like that?  He's juicin' ain't he?"

There is a bit of outrage over the report because it seems like a not so subtle advertisement for healthy people to use drugs.

You know what, if some guy wants to use Ritalin to pass his BAR exam, let him.  I don't see any point to feigned outrage.  Just about everyone in the country is doing drugs.  Really, is taking Ritalin more damaging to a person than ODing on sugar every day?

What do you think?  Prescriptions of Ritalin for hard driving multi-taskers and people studying for exams?  Or keep prosecuting these people with felonies?

Hoping that Obama Gets It

 Another common theme running ahead of Obama taking office is the "I hope Obama gets it" theme from people who do get it.  There are people out here in the world that understand what's going on and have possible solutions to the problems and they are fervently praying that Obama also understands the problems and will come up with a solution.

Does this seem as delusional to you as it does to me?

While Bush may be an idiot of a butt-puppet, Obama is not.  It's my firm belief that Obama is a butt-puppet but he's not an idiot.

On top of that, he has surrounded himself with some of the most connected people in the country.  These are people that know what is going on and who know what the answers are.  Surely, these people have told Obama what needs to be done.

Our corporate media*, of course, tries to help Obama out**.  That's what they are paid to do and as good propagandists, they do what they are paid to do.  We, the mere mortals of the country, are told that the problems of this country are too complex for our little minds.  These problems need to be left to our politicians who somehow are smarter than we are.  All we can do is hope that the problem isn't too hard for them to figure out.  Let's pray for them.

Some of these "hope" comments come from intelligent people who, without any special training other than the ability to read and think, know that the government's answers (of which Obama has and will take part in) have been the exact opposite of what we need.

To hope that Obama gets it is nothing more than denial.  Obama gets it.  His advisers get it.  They know what *should* be done.  He just isn't doing it.  It's not a lack of intelligence or knowledge.  It's a lack of patriotism and integrity.  He's selling the American people down the road for his own personal profit.

What these people are really hoping for, I think, is that they didn't vote for another criminal.  They hope they didn't fall for fake rah-rah superpowers.  They hope they weren't duped by a guy who built up their hope for change to a record level.  They had given up on the government ever doing what's right and then Obama came along with his "Yes we can" and renewed their hope in a government For The People.  Now their hope is that their hope doesn't die a cruel death.

* I have previously called the major media sources Main Stream Media (MSM).  I read an article recently that was making fun of bloggers like me for being harsh of the MSM because in his view bloggers were now the MSM.  He thought it was funny that we were being hard on ourselves.  I disagree with his view because I think that people still get most of their news from the TV and sites like CNN and MSNBC.  I do believe that we are headed that way though so I'm changing the name I'll be using for the propaganda machine to "corporate media". 

** As a continuation of my last post and an example of how the media plays along, here's an opening paragraph from an article yesterday:

"Faced with hiring a new administration, President-elect Barack Obama is learning how hard it is to keep his promise to avoid aides who have been entangled with the capital's lobbying scene."

Really?  Is it really that hard? 

He has hired at least 34 lobbyists into positions where they won't have to lobby anymore.  They can just make the changes directly.  How convenient and money saving is that for the companies who previously had to shell out lobby money and bribes?

In a country of 300 million people with skyrocketing unemployment, Mr. Hope and Change can't find 34 people who aren't lobbyists to hire?

You have to know that he can obviously hire honest people if he wanted to and that the media could report honestly on that fact if they wanted to.  Obama isn't paid to be honest or bring about change and our media is paid to try and keep the illusion going that it's just too hard to make good decisions when you're the president.

Let's hope that the guy who sarcastically thinks blogs are the Main Stream Media turns out to be right and that more people start to question the reporting abilities of our Corporate Media.  The more mere mortals that we have that can read and think, the better our odds of turning this country around.

A Couple of Corrections

<--- This picture looks so wrong to me. 

Anyway, I need to correct some misinformation and admit a change in stance.

First, the rumor about the government taking everyone's 401k is an exaggeration.  The thought that was thrown around was to take the government's tax incentive part of the 401k plan and use that to build a new retirement system.  I would think that it's not likely to happen because we already have a retirement system that has failed.  Why start over?

I was accused of drinking Kool-aid for falling for the rumor.  To me, drinking the Kool-aid means ignoring telling signs in order to see what you want.  While I admit that since Obama is a lying sack, it's easy for me to believe bad news about him, I did check with my 401k guy to see if it was just a rumor.  He gets paid to know the truth of these things so if I took any Kool-aid, it was a sip.

Speaking of Mr. Hope and Change, there's a whole group of people who are now realizing that they have been quaffing the Kool-aid - His supporters.  Every week another campaign promise gets dumped on the side of the road on his way to Washington.  I'm not going to list them all out here.  You're probably well aware of them.  I'll just point out the one that seems to have His supporters up in arms the most.

Mr. Change is appointing the same ole, same ole Washington insiders to posts.  The people know the government is wrong, wrong, wrong, and from the blogs and articles that I've read, it appears that what His supporters wanted most was Change.  That's what they were Hoping for and now it is apparent they aren't going to get it.  Some are pissed and some are just disappointed.

Obama is trying to use his rah-rah superpowers to sell it to the country in this way: these experienced people have a "new vision."

The day that Hillary Clinton has a new vision is the day my blog wins a Pulitzer Prize.

My change of stance concerns the equation for weight management.  I've long put forward that calories in minus calories out equals weight.  I later threw sleep into the equation and now I would like to add in "beliefs".

Calories in minus calories out plus sleep minus beliefs equals weight.

From teaching my early morning class and visiting with people, I believe that you can do everything right and still not achieve the results that you want.  Your beliefs and emotions are strong enough to over-ride the basic equation.

Luckily, it is possible to change your beliefs and emotions so you are still in control of the outcome.  It just may take some looking around to find the answer.