Ouch

I am trying to get back into shape, but man I'm getting old. There was a day that I could play basketball all day, go to bed and play again the next. Now, I played on Thursday and today (Monday) is the first time that I can walk comfortably.

A friend a work told me that basketball is a jealous sport it won't allow you to play other sports. I laughed because he's an idiot, but in this particular case he was right. I have been trying to play basketball and jog. I got up to jogging 20 miles/week. Last week I could only go 4.5 miles because basketball knew I was cheating on it. This week, I've gone 5 miles, but I play on Thursday again. That might ruin me for the rest of the week.

I was really pleased with my performance on the court. I was able to score 27 pts. in a losing effort. (our team scored 39)

Rants:
How is it in this economy any business can afford to make their customers mad? I can think of one industry that has no concerns for their customers. Doctors! The last time I went to the doctor for me, I had to wait 1.5 hours to see the guy. Then, when he walked in, I unloaded on him at how unprofessional he was for not keeping a schedule. All doctors have the same excuse, "there was an emergency with another patient." This is genius because you can't argue. If there was truly an emergency, wouldn't they tell you when you checked in that the doctor is running behind due to an emergency. They won't because they don't care about you!

This brings me to the baby doctor this week. Carrie and I were supposed to find out the sex of the baby on Thursday. We set the appointment six weeks ago. The doctors office called yesterday to tell us that the lady that does the sonograms doesn't work on Thursdays. Do you think that this is something that they could have figured out in five weeks. Better yet, maybe they could keep a collection days and dates separated out into little boxes. I have a couple of these, I call them a calendar. They are good for tracking off days and dates. Now I'm fairly smart, but not doctor smart, and I already figured this out. Wonder if they will figure this out. Nobody tell them to see how long it takes.

Fact is, we are powerless versus the doctors. There are only a few that accept our insurance and are close and are seeing patients this week. They don't need you and they don't need me, and they act like it! I wish we shopped for doctor's like we shop for cars or houses, but we don't. Work gives us a list of approved doctors and we find the closest one to the house and never change. They know we will just take it where they shove it...now I got to check my list for a proctologist.

Brad'sa Buildin'

This week I thought I would take on a nice 'easy' project. As you walk into the house, there is some useless space. I thought I would add a wall unit. I copied this guy's idea. I copied it as much as I could, but I allowed Carrie to get creative with the bench seat. Sorry for the bad angle, there isn't enough room to get a good angle. Maybe you'll just need to come by and see it in person.

I learned a few things:

1. Small finish nails are easily bent - which means thumbs are in danger.

2. Don't use building materials as straight edges.

3. Quarter round is a life saver.

4. The only measurements that are critical are the trim pieces.

5. This house isn't square.

Check out Carrie's blog to get updates on the baby. She does a good job of tracking the kid. Don't get fooled by her use of pronouns. The website that sends us the baby info switches genders each week. We will let you know in two weeks. (did you notice, I posted a picture and two links, I'm getting good at this stuff.)

I told you this blog thing would slow down. I'm getting to that once-per-month level. If anyone wants more baby updates, then Carrie is really good about posting information especially on Monday evening/Tuesday morning. I do know that we are approaching the half way point pretty soon and I can tell you that we will indeed find out the gender of the baby on April 2. I don't know why that is the first question everyone asks. Here is how the conversations go (this is typical of 99% of all conversations):

Stranger: "Do you have any kids?"
us: "no, but one is on the way"
Stranger: "When are you due"
us: "2nd week in August"
Stranger: "is it a boy or girl?" - (There also might be an uninteresting story about who's birthday in their life falls in August. Generally people we do not know. Come to find out about 1/12th of the population was born in August?? Who would have guessed.)
us: "We don't know yet"
Stranger: "Are you going to find out"
us: "yes we go in April 2nd"
Stranger: (story about someone we do not know that did/did not find out gender.)

I think conversation is like TV programming. There really isn't much original out there, so just recycle the same ol' thing. Right now, this conversation is reality TV.