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

Someone I Need to Study More

"All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move."

- Benjamin Franklin

Hang on!  We're going to tack hard to the starboard.

I copied that quote in this morning before Tia and I left for the city for dual doctor appointments.  Now that I'm back, whatever I was thinking this morning is completely gone and the doctor appointment went as expected.

My doctor was professional, tried to be a bit chatty, spoke English as his first language, had all the equipment he needed for the procedure, and everything went without a hitch (or a stitch, just a Bugs Bunny band-aid, which I'm totally cool with).

Tia went to a specialist where they prodded and poked and hmm'ed and umm'ed and said they were going to order up some tests because the PA and MD had absolutely no clue what was wrong with her.

After that, we did a short bit of shopping.  Some essentials from Wal-Mart (I'm slightly ashamed but when time is short, it can't be helped), some blinds for Trey's bedroom, a pair of capris for Tia, and a pair of shorts for me.

It seems that last year I completely wore out every single pair of shorts except one, all in the crotch.  This, I could claim as a bragging right but I won't.  It was to the point on my favorite pair that should I have chosen to go commando, stuff would have been, uh, turned loose.

Don't ask me how I start a blog post with an inspirational post from Ben Franklin and end up talking about setting my junk free.

I'm going to claim that it's the drugs from my doctor's appointment.

What I'm not going to tell you is that what they used was a minute dose of lidocaine injected in my left calf.  Potent stuff, that lidocaine.

Also don't tell the blogger that invited me today to write a guest post for his blog on how to defeat "worry".  I don't want him to know that I'm looped on lidocaine and that my new personal betterment blog has turned into a drug-addled meandering starting with Ben Franklin and ending in the crotch of my shorts.

Speaking of which, just this morning while Tia was getting ready for our trip, she (out of the blue) said that I'm crazy.

"Would you like to elaborate or throw out a couple of examples?" I asked.

"No."

She is studying to be a psychologist so I'm half inclined to believe her but I would really like to know what made the thought pop into her head while she was putting on mascara.  Just exactly how are the two connected? 

By the way, here's a bit of advice for you should you ever find yourself driving from Salt Lake City, Utah across the Bonneville Salt Flats to West Wendover, Nevada.  Do NOT slam two 20 ounce bottles of water and then a 20 ounce bottle of Diet Pepsi just prior to the trip.  There isn't a tree for 120 miles to hide behind. 

Of course, if you're wearing my old shorts, you might be able to pull a sneaky.  Point off over the salt so that people look where you are pointing instead of the stream.  Remember, don't eat the yellow salt.

Damn lidocaine.

Anyway, as you can tell, another boring day in the life of Success Warrior.  I'm home now, quickly did a poor job on my homework that was due tonight, sent an email to my instructor letting her know that the lidocaine is to blame if I did poorly but I'm a genius if I captured the essence of the assignment is so few words, and now I'm going to just relax for a minute and let the drugs wear off before going to bed.

Oh yeah, as Ben said, remember to move.  (See how I tied it all in.)

QotD: Human Nature

"Nature itself is not ugly or evil; these qualities only enter the universe through humanity when individuals fall short of their intrinsic nature -- when we forget what it truly means to be human."

- David Fideler from Jesus Christ, Sun of God: Ancient Cosmology and Early Christian Symbolism

I am reading things besides text books.  It's just slow going on the outside reading when the college semester is in swing.

It's time to change the course of this blog.  It's something that I have felt for a while now and made a slight correction some time ago but not to the extent that I felt that I needed to go.

It's time to focus more on health: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. 

When I started this blog 2 years ago, it was done with the sole purpose of being a journal.  I had my other blog where I discussed everything financial and this one was meant to act as a collector of my wandering thoughts.  It has done so and done it well and now it's time for me to guide that wandering a bit.  Not too much because that's not me but enough that hopefully there is a bit of theme.

I'll be keeping my eye on our government but won't be reporting much of what I find except on Sundays.  The government is so big and so negative that I find myself wanting to limit its influence on my blog.  I'll watch and I'll continue to write my Congressman, Senators, and President but I have little hope of making a change.  I feel that I have to try or there will be no hope. 

Oddly, I've had a couple of people this week tell me that I should run for office.  An interesting idea but I don't know if I'm for that kind of turmoil in my life.  It seems like it would be hard to fight the corruption and win without similar financial backing for myself.  How do you win without getting the taint on yourself?

It's not that I'm giving up the fight but I'm settling in for more of resigned long-term effort as part of my focus on my all around well being and the well being of my family. 

I feel like I'm rambling at this point so I think I'll end it here with a warning that there may be much more rambling in the future. 

QotD: MySpace Mining

"A high-tech variation of impersonal referrals may soon be taking place on MySpace, which was purchased for $630 million by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp in 2005. MySpace ad salespeople plan to use software to sift through MySpace members' profile pages and sort the pages based on the often highly personal information posted on them.  These salespeople will then create 'buckets' of similar MySpace members, access to whom they will offer to interested advertisers."

- Small Business Management: Launching & Growing Entrepreneurial Venturesby Longenecker, Moore, Petty, and Palich.

I don't have much on MySpace but I wonder what kind of advertising would be attracting to what I post on this blog.  I'll bet it would be a very interesting mix.

My political science class is over so you were graced with a quote from my business class.  There are only about 6 weeks of classes left for this semester.  I'll be taking another break from college after this semester and be working exclusively on personal trainer certifications, one of which I have already started.

By "started" I mean that I have looked at the information and accidentally opened one of the books when it dropped on the couch and fell open.  I'm almost finished with my garage and we are doing a bit of spring cleaning then I'll actually get started in earnest.

QotD: Letting Go

Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.
-- Raymond Lindquist

Sunday, the power was out for several hours so Trey decided to play with plain ole regular non-electric toys.  He couldn't find one of the pieces to one of his transformers so he and I decided to clean out his toy closet.  We would find his toy and have everything organized when we got done.

In the process, we made decisions on what to keep and what we should give to charity.  I let him decide.  To my surprise, he decided that he was done with his Thomas the train and the miles of tracks.  We bagged it all up and put it by the door.

We never did find the piece he was looking for so he ended up playing with his cars instead.  We did get his toy closet much more organized. 

I was happy to see that he didn't hold on just for the sake of holding on.

QofD - Framer's Protection

I'm going to try a new category for Wednesdays and add in a quote that caught my attention in the previous week.  During the college semester, that might mean that several quotes may come from my college books because they are a primary source of reading for me at this time.  I'm going to be making a change to Thursday's posts as well that I will explain tomorrow.

Today's quote:

"For the framers of the Constitution, the greatest danger to citizens lay in the abuse of government power  For this reason, the most important civil liberties are those that protect citizens from their government." - Gary Wasserman.

Our government is constantly trying to redirect our concern to things other than the government like terrorism or economic disaster and tries to set itself up as the only entity that can protect us.  When the economy turns around, what will be the next big scare?  You know there's going to be one.  Will people become desensitized to these scare tactics?  Will we have to revisit "nuclear war" fear again after this huge economic mess to get a reaction from the people?