Day After Yesterday

So independent of each other, Rebecca and I each fell down the stairs this weekend. I hurt my heel, rebecca has a bruise on her backside. My foot still hurts, although only when I put weight on my heel, thus I have been putting weight on the ball of my foot, so now my calf muscles hurt. Great. Rebecca has recovered much better.

Aside from that… On saturday morning I went and picked up a stroller frame and a car seat base from a someone via craigslist. Those were both over 1/2 off retail and that means I can have a base in my car too and we have a smaller stroller that the infant carrier will go into. That was a good deal.

We went out to walker brothers pancake house on saturday for dinner then hung out at my parents. Sunday we went to costco in the AM and amongst other things, we bought frozen strawberries! score. But we also bought a a 9 DVD set of baby einstein movies. We bought then not sure of the price… it was $90. That is a deal considering they are $15 each, but I wasn’t sold. When we got home I got on ebay and ended up scoring a 19 DVD set for $78 shipped. So no one should ever buy us a baby einstein DVD.

Anyway… then we met my parents for lunch in Greektown, which was nice. We decided we should then run up to the garage in skokie to get the roof rack basket that we are lending to caroline for the road trip to california that they are going on. Up to the garage and back in to the city.

When we got home, I had got an email back from some dude I emailed off craigslist about some lexus rims he was selling. So I called him back and locked the deal down. So then we drove up to wildwood, got the rims, then drove back to chicago. They are the 16 inch rims off the non sport IS300 rims.

$175 for them with tires, although 1/2 the tires are crap. but that is ok, we have the tires that were on the car that have 1 more season left on them. So I will mount those up and then I don’t have to pull the snow tires off the steelies. Nice.

Then we grabbed Mr. Salsa and went over to Bob and Lisa’s to watch the sopranos and hang out.

Overall it was a nice weekend, and I got a number of things for a cheap price. I love buying things used…

So we drove to and back from detroit this weekend… it makes for a long weekend… We left saturday AM, picked up kevin, and headed out…

Traffic was fine aside from a crazy white trash mustache wearing guy in a nascar sticker adorned red lumina who decided that he didn’t want me to go faster than he. So as I merge on to the express way, he speeds up to match my speed…. then when I floor it and get in front of him, he gets all mad. At the next opportunity he floors it, passes me on right, and, puts his POS chevy into a gap about 4 feet wide, cause me to brake. So I back off since this guys is clearly nuts. We pass all the traffic, and he sets his cruise at 71 in a 70 and goes back to the right lane. WTF? ALL of that drama, all that speeding, just so he can go 71 mph again? I don’t get it. Why would you get all mad that someone would pass you when their cruising speed is CLEARLY more than you are planning on driving ANYWAY? I see it all the time-people drive all dumb and pass on the right or the shoulder but have no intent of going fast. They always pass on in the crazy way, then when the traffic is open and clear, they drive the speed limit, which is less than you were driving when they initiated their crazy maneuvers. WHY? It makes no sense? All I can assume is people are just giant dickheads? Fools? I have no idea… The other nice thing would have been had we been in the audi, I could have walked away from him in the first place, and I would have never had to deal with any of that BS. Faster cars can be nicer. But we got like 28mpg in the Camry, and me in the Audi would have never pulled that off. And it would have been much more cramped for those in the back seat.

So we got to detroit and went to the xmas party. It was fine. The pics are here. Nothing amazing. Mason was pretty well behaved and most people were excited to see him and hold him. He is a good baby. It is odd to think next year he is going to be moving around and what not. It is gonna rule.

This is the first time I have seen uncle kenny since he got in a bad car accident and had had a seizure (I think he had a seizure). (He had the accident in my old subaru). As a result of the ordeal, he had to relearn a bunch of things, walking, talking, writing, etc. Motor skill stuff IIRC. The other negative thing is that he has trouble linking words in his head, basically vocab lookup internally. Like he will be like “hey, I need a couch”. He really needs a pen. But when he does the mental lookup for pen, it returns couch. And he doesn’t necessarily realize it is wrong until you go to get him the wrong item, or you are like “what are you talking about?”. It must be SO frustrating. But I talked to him a bit, or rather hung out with him. He has been living in an assisted living/rehab kinda house that I guess has been really good for him. He has lost a LOT of weight. I am not sure I have before and after pics, but I will check. He is diabetic and he has been keeping better track of that too, which is good. But he was laughing and seemed to be having a good time. I hope so, since he has had it rough.

Aunt Bev brought all these old pictures she had laying around, which is funny cause half of them were from weddings or of people that have since gotten divorced and remarried and were there with their new spouses. Awesome.

We hit the hotel, kevin took the car and got some coney islands from national, and we set up all the babies stuff, watched some TV, and went to sleep. I was damn tired. We got up the next AM, drove a bit, grabbed einstein’s bagels, and hit the highway. We eventually caught up with my parents, had lunch with them, and drove into chicago. We dropped kevin off at his house, and we drove to winfield for rebecca’s grandfather’s 94th birthday. It was chill and nice. I fell asleep on the couch. TIRED. They decorated the tree a bit. Getting old is tough though.

Rebecca drove home, which was nice, since I wasn’t driving.

I must be getting old, as I was totally tired, but I used to drive way more. I mean this was a 315 mile trip each way. And we made good time, but I was tired. I have done 1,000 mile days in the past and sure I was tired, but still. I dunno. Maybe I am out of practice at the distance driving. Maybe it was the baby adding stress, or the party, or the fact that I slept poorly in the hotel, who knows.

Back at work, busy busy busy. I am looking forward to a nice 4 day weekend.

So Tom Cruise, the scientologist, has gone on the public TV as saying that psychiatry is a’pseudo science’ (copy of article below)… and this is coming from a scientologist, claiming he knows the history of psychiatry… As a person who holds a degree in psychology and has spend a decent amount of time in health science libraries, it annoys me. It doesn’t help that people seem to think celebrities are worth something more than the average person. They are no smarter, no better, and often times, are really fucked up. REALLY fucked up.

So I hope this will create an air where people write the loser off. I am not quite sure why everyone thinks he is that great of an actor. He really can only play 1 role. He uses the same expressions for all of those rolls, and he plays them all like the same person. I don’t think he is particularly talented. All of his movies are the John Grisham books of the film industry, both figuratively and sometimes literally.

I really am not a big fan of people spreading their own religious views to the public in such a way. You can have your beliefs, that is good. But presentation is a big deal… Had he said something like “I am of the belief that…” but to say to the host that ‘you don’t know’ blah blah blah. But tv interviewers are often tools, and he wasn’t confronted on that, because that could ruin the guys career. oh well.

Tom Cruise is a no talent assclown.
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but I finally went to the gym again… like 6 or 7 months since I last went. Oh how time flies… I noticed that I was putting on a bit of weight and decided it would be a good move… being healthy is kinda nice. So Bob and I went… and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be… the goal is to be back down to the weight I was before the baby is born… so I have plenty of time… we are also shooting to go at least 2 if not 3 times a week. Word. It feels nice to work out. I don’t feel as lazy.

I keep thinking about how americans today rarely DO anything. From a evolution point of view, we used to have to run and hunt/gather our food, or escape danger, or at least to travel around from place to place. Today, we take a car to the store to get food, we have few dangers that require running, and we have other ways to travel. Thus I would wager that the average person, presuming they can get a good parking spot, never runs and walks likely under 1/2 mile per day. Not to mention does no physical labor.

when you think about it, the fact that I pay money monthly for a membership to a gym that assists in allowing me to do the EXACT same things I could do by living is kinda stupid in theory. But alas, I don’t have the time to necessarily do it the old fashion way, so I go to the gym. The price isn’t that bad.

When I sit in my car in traffic downtown watching the people walk by, I can’t help but notice how FAT we are as a nation. It is sad really. Our health care costs are high, but that shouldn’t be that surprising based on how people take care of themselves. We love to eat. We hate to exercise. We want to all look good. But for some reason no one cares about overall health. It is weird.

So as I sit here and drink my home made fruit smoothy (Peaches, strawberries, orange juice, a splash of gatorade, and green drink) thinking about how I went to the gym yesterday, I am feeling good about it all…

funny link. go organic. store wars. hit it. have speakers. safe for work. well, as safe as surfing the net for non work related stuff can be I guess.