A great day

Ladies and gentlemen.

Today is a monumental day.

This morning I was able to fit into my skinny jeans. Not only did they fit, I was also able to button them without looking like a sausage. I have not been able to wear these for a year so you can imagine how ecstatic I was when I realized they once again fit.

Full credit must be giving to abstaining from alcohol. If I ever needed motivation to continue my abstention this is it. I will willingly never drink again as long as these pants will fit me forever. Of course, I must also note other good things happen when you don't drink. Today though, the pants are key.

Now if I would only start exercising instead of watching three hours of reality TV every night.

A new start

Well how can I expect to maintain a readership when I never update? Seriously I have no excuse aside from pure laziness. But new year, new motivation. I hope everyone had a good Christmas. We drove home to Colorado to see our families. On the way there we did the trip in one day and drove for 14 hours. The last three hours from Pueblo to Lakewood were painfully long. I was sick with bronchitis, Kent's back was killing him from driving and we were hungry. The actual holiday itself was full of drama and fighting. I don't really want to get into it but I think next time we'd be better off to stay in a hotel.

We decided to do the drive home in two days and stayed in Lubbock on New Year's Eve. It wasn't too bad, we had a bottle of champagne and watched the ball drop in Times Square. We both made our resolutions and talked about how we wanted to accomplish them. I didn't make any resolutions last year and I sort of regretted it. Even though they're kind of silly the new year does provide a clean slate and a starting point for making improvements.

I only had one resolution this year and that was to take better care of myself emotionally and physically. I am almost incapable of really relaxing so that's the biggie for me. Just learning how to take deep breaths and not stress so much. I think I'm doing pretty well so far. The other resolution I made was to quit drinking for at least 30 (consecutive) days. I'm at a week so far and really proud of myself. I've already lost some weight, I'm sleeping better and overall I just feel happier. I'm not an alcoholic but, like everyone in my family, I drink too much. I don't want my life to be all about needing alcohol to socialize so I stopped. This weekend was hard because we were with friends and everyone was drinking but me but I resisted. That was definitely something to feel accomplished over.

I hope all you had a happy, healthy Christmas and New Year's. I promise my postings will be more frequent (especially since I finally got our home computer set up and no longer have to rely on my work laptop!).

I love cable

I love cable. I love cable too much and I think we need to get rid of it. I reached this conclusion last night while watching the "Keeping up with the Kardashians." For those of you that have lives and don't know anything about this family, Kim Kardashian is famous for being friends with Paris Hilton and having an extremely, um, shapely derriere. Naturally someone decided those were good reasons to give she and her family a reality show. Prior to the Kardashian family saga I was engaged in another gripping reality show called "Doctor 90210" which details the plastic surgery adventures of people that live in Beverly Hills and probably have emotional issues. All in all I spent two and half hours last night watching reality tv. I am so embarrassed by this I felt I should share it with all of you. Seriously, no wonder I don't have time to exercise.

Next, because it's not possible to write a whole post about reality television (unless you are way, way more pathetic than I am), I'll tell you a funny story about what happened on my flight from Las Vegas to Denver. I flew home on United so of course the flight was delayed. We had to wait for a plane to land and everyone to deplane before we'd start boarding. So waiting, waiting and I notice about five police officers mulling around. I was sort of hoping for some drama so I would have a good story. Naturally my thought was that someone on the flight about the land was intoxicated and belligerent. Eventually the plane landed and everyone started to deplane. At this point I didn't see the officers and was waiting for someone to be escorted off, I don't know, screaming and making scene in handcuffs maybe.


After many, many long minutes it was clear that the plane was empty and the officers were gone. Oh well, no drama or funny story to share. That was ok.

My friend and I got in line to board and then walked down the hall to the cabin. Standing right outside the cabin door were four police officers. Under ideal circumstances I am nervous flier. Having four uniformed police officers greet me as I got on the plane did not help matters.

I said exactly that to one of them and he laughed and told me he was making sure that no one was leaving Las Vegas with any money. I looked at him quizzically and wondered if he really thought I was stupid enough to believe him. The line was moving slowly but eventually I got onto the plane, looked over and lo and behold if OJ Simpson wasn't sitting there. Since my power of observation is very keen I said loudly "Hey! It's OJ Simpson!" He sort of smiled at me. Then, in case there were people in the back that didn't hear me I said it again. Seriously, I was just really surprised.

He was friendly to all the people that approached him (I don't really think I blew his cover). He didn't murder, assault or rob anyone on the flight. He seemed well-behaved. I did wonder why the hell he was flying coach but reached the conclusion that he probably has no money left for first class. I found out later that he was arraigned that day in Las Vegas and that our flight continued on to Miami where he lives.

I was musing over the presence of the officers with my dad and mom and my mom suggested there were there to stop people from mobbing him for his autograph. My dad thought that he wouldn't mind that and that the officers were there to protect him from angry mobs. Who knows?

So in the end I didn't have a belligerent drunk person story but I think the story I got is, in a way, even better.

Holy crap

Has it really two and a half weeks since I last wrote? I guess time really does fly when you're having fun. I've been so busy I'm not even sure where to begin. Also I left my camera at home so I can't post any of the dozens of pictures I took.

I guess I'll first say that I had a great, great time with my friend Susy. I was a little nervous that we wouldn't get along since it's been almost five years since we last saw each other. As it turns out it was like we hadn't spent a day apart. I don't know how many other people have a friend like that but I certainly feel blessed that I do. She and Kent also hit it off and we had a great time together while he was in town. Since we had a guest we did stuff that we normally don't take the time to do. We went up to Fort Collins and did two brewery tours, one at O'Dells and one at New Belgium. I preferred the O'Dells tour, mainly because we didn't have to wait. At New Belgium we cooled our heels for 45 minutes before we got our beer. (Hey, I have priorities.)

Thanksgiving was also nice, we had 15 people at dinner. The cooking for 15 isn't that much more than for 7 but the clean-up is sure a pain. Plus, we had some of my mom's family in town and their contribution is to sit and eat the food and watch everyone else clean up. As you can imagine, it's extremely helpful. Susy had never been to Thanksgiving before and I thought it was great she got to enjoy my favorite holiday with us.

Susy and I went to Las Vegas on the Monday after Thanksgiving and stayed at the Paris. It was pretty nice but after this trip I'm not eager to go to Las Vegas again. Once you've seen one casino on the strip, you've pretty much seen them all. Our first night we met up with my friend Hanna and had dinner (thanks again Hanna, it was awesome!). The second night we went down to Fremont Street for the light show. My dad also instructed us to see the newly renovated pool at the Golden Nugget. It's definitely cool, with a huge aquarium in the middle. However I felt the experience was somewhat marred by the vast number of scary drunk people walking around and at times following us. At one point I dragged Susy into Binyon's Horseshoe because I thought someone was following us. I asked a police officer for assistance but by then the smelly old drunk was gone. We didn't stay much longer after that since we didn't feel like gambling anymore.

Those are the main highlights of the last few weeks, plus a lot of good time with my family. On a side note, my brother is in trouble yet again. He relapsed about six months ago and as a result back serving time that he'd been on probation for. I hope that he'll be able to get and stay clean but my faith is somewhat broken.

I hope to have some pictures up this week of my trip.

Weee!

Or rather Wii. We decided to join the 21st century and buy and up-to-date gaming system. The last video game I played was the classic Nintendo and the last one Kent played was Sega. To say we're a little behind the times is an understatement. A Wii, for those of you that don't know, has a wireless controller that interacts with a sensor you put on the top of your TV. Wii is really cool for sports games because instead of just pushing buttons you actually use the remote as, say a tennis racket or a javelin.

The Wii also connects to the internet and you can download the classic Nintendo games. This is my favorite, FAVORITE thing. I used to love all the old Mario games but when my Nintendo died there was no way to play them. Now, I just connect Wii to my internet connection and voila for $5 I can download my favorite classic games.

I will have to say goodbye to Wii (and Kent) tomorrow though because I leave for my visit home. I'm really excited to get back and see everyone but I hate to be away from Kent and the animals for so long. Of course, Kent will be home for the actual holiday but then he has to leave again. And naturally I'm really excited to see my friend Susy. We're going to take a quick trip out to Las Vegas. Susy's been to America a number of times but hasn't seen much besides Colorado and Las Vegas is a really easy trip to make. I just had to promise not to gamble away our life savings. I think I can handle that.

Oops

I can't believe I haven't posted in a week. I'm not sure why since it hasn't been very busy. Maybe it's because I haven't had anything to write about. Lucky for you though something funny happened the other day that illustrated, once again, that San Antonio and Denver are not the same city. *Haha*

I left for work the other morning and according to my car the outside temperature was 64 degrees. For 7:30 AM in November this seemed pretty pleasant. When I arrived at work, what was the security guard wearing?

Why, a parka and ski cap! Of course! I shouldn't laugh those because most Coloradans would be completely useless here in July. But still, I laughed about it all day.

Am I getting old?

The past few weekends we've been getting together with guys that Kent has class with. We've had them over to our house and made them play Cranium with us. We love Cranium but you can't play without at least three people and then one person has to float between teams. Anyway, onto the point of my story. One of the guys is 18 and one is 21. They had to answer a question about the band Nirvana. They'd never heard of them. I normally wouldn't say "the band Nirvana" because until two weeks ago I'd never encountered anyone who didn't know about them. I almost made them sleep on the porch.


Am I really getting so old that people only seven years younger than me don't know about Nirvana? I am finding it harder to remember peoples' names and I've noticed that I no longer remember multiples of seven unless I use my fingers. Am I so old that one of the most important bands of the 1990s is no longer relevent? This is how I feel about that: