What does his sphincter have to do with it?

"McCain all but Clinches; Romney Departs"

Is the first half of this headline funny to anyone else? And not for political reasons either...

Bathing Suit Contest, 1922

This is supposedly a vintage photograph of a bathing suit contest in 1922. My how times have changed!

Let's hear it for the boys

There are a lot... a LOT... of sweet songs out there about little girls: "Butterfly Kisses," "I Loved Her First," and several Cinderella-themed songs of late, to name a few. It's not too often you hear a cute song about little boys, so today when I listened to this one, I decided I would put it up for everybody to enjoy. It's been a favorite for a little while now, and it still puts such a smile on my face and brings a tear to my eye.

Need a laugh?

Got this from last month's Reader's Digest:

Three dolts were out taking a walk when they came across some tracks. The first dolt said, "Hey, look, rabbit tracks!"
The second dolt said, "No, they're horse tracks!"
The thrid dolt said, "You're both wrong; those are cow tracks!"

They were still arguing when the train hit them.

Not a little girl anymore

It's been a few years since I last jumped rope. Quite a few. I remember it fondly, though, so at Target today I decided to pick up a grown-up jumprope and give it a shot.

Wow.

It's HARD!

I don't pretend to be in good shape, but I can't even do it for more than a couple minutes at a time. My arms get tired, my knees get achy, and my flab gets pretty floppy. But it's still fun, so I'm going to work up to 5 minutes straight. Then I'll set my sights on 8 or 10 minutes, and then maybe even 15 minutes. If I ever get to 30 minutes straight, I'll be ready for the playground again.

If you’re like me, you find it hard to navigate through all the fliers, commercials, debates, and TV spots to find out what the candidates really stand for. Here’s a great web site that shows where all the candidates stand on different issues. For the ones who’ve held office, it gives their voting records as well. There’s also a cool “quizzes” tab where you can take a quiz and see which candidates most closely match your views.

http://www.ontheissues.org/


From their mission statement:

Our mission is to provide non-partisan information for voters in the Presidential election, so that votes can be based on issues rather than on personalities and popularity. We get our information daily from newspapers, speeches, press releases, and the Internet -- it is a labor-intensive process that requires countless volunteer hours

A breakthrough

The past couple weeks at Weight Watchers have been slow. Last week I lost 0.9lbs and this week only 0.3lbs. Those are pretty low numbers, especially compared to Biggest Loser weigh-ins..haha

But I actually had a breakthrough today. It didn't bother me excessively that I didn't lose much. I have been concentrating lately on the *lifestyle* of being healthy, not just losing weight. I'm trying to get rid of the diet mentality where once I lose the weight, I'll be "done." Truth is, I won't ever be done. What would I be "done" with? Eating healthy foods? Controlling my portions? Using moderation in treats and snacks? Feeling good about myself?

None of those things are worth being done with. They will continue to be part of my life. Whether I lose weight quickly or slowly, or not at all, I'm more concerned with being healthy and living a healthy lifestyle.

This is a long journey, and I don't claim to have arrived. In fact, I still have to come to a place where exercise is a part of my healthy lifestyle. But I'm going along for the ride, and it'll all come together sooner or later. If I end up at my goal weight sometime soon, that will be the icing on the cake. Or maybe that should be "the low fat vinagrette on the salad"? ;)

You'd think they could have washed it

Yesterday we had the truck in for service. It was due for an oil change, and since we're almost at the 60k mile mark, we ended up needing to have that service done. That's a big one. Not only that, but it's recommended to have the fuel injection system serviced at that time. Plus, I'd been having issues with the brake light and gas gauge, so I wanted them to look at that too.

Before I left the dealership, they said it would be somewhere around $650. Of course, once they took a look inside, they discovered that the reason the brake light kept coming on was because the front brakes were at only 20%. Those need to be replaced. Add on another $300 for that. Oh, and the gas gauge? Another $300-$400 to fix something that's sticking in the gas tank.

We figured the brakes were pretty important, so we gave them the OK to replace those. However, we passed on the gas tank/gauge fix. We decided that if the gauge quits working altogether, we can still use the other display screen that tells how many more miles you can drive before filling up. Worst case scenario, we can just watch the odometer! Bottom line, we're not going to drop $400 right now to fix it.

So the grand total when I picked up the truck last night- $950 and change. Ouch! But that wasn't even the worst part. When they pulled it around for me, I saw that they didn't even wash it! I mean, it was there allllll day and we paid them an arm and TWO legs. You'd think they could have washed it.

Legos still know how to groove

This video made me laugh. The song is actually old, but still funny. Somebody decided to put their Legos to work.

Just a little story

The other day a friend of mine, Kelly Rogers (not her real first name... you know, to protect the innocent and all that), had a baby. In trying to call her, I got my first preview of the new automated phone system at the hospital. First, you press 1 to get to the machine who tries to figure out who you want to talk to. It's one of those voice-recognition programs. It asks me who I would like to reach, and unfortunately I had to clear my throat at exactly the wrong time. In it's most robotic voice, the machine asked me, "Did you say Achmed Ahmad?"

So I tried again, and somehow my throat managed to clear itself at several more inopportune times. Finally I was able to say "KELLY ROGERS." Machine: "Did you say Kelly Waters?" No... "KELLY ROGERS." "Did you say Kelly Waters?" No... "We don't have this patient. Please wait for an operator." So I waited a full 5 minutes on hold with no receptionist in sight before I hung up. Calling back, the scenario was repeated, sans the throat clearing. This time the dogs barked. Then on the second try, we went through the KELLY ROGERS, "Kelly Waters?" routine again. Finally I just said, "Yes it's Kelly Waters I guess!!!!" and lo and behold, I got to the right place. Mind you, this was a 20 minute process broken up into several increments. But hey, I got to congratulate my friend.

Fast forward to today when Tyler and I decided to have a little cuddle time while watching Sesame Street, a real treat for him. You all know what comes on before Sesame Street, right? Mister Rogers, of course! I asked Tyler if he wanted to watch it, and he said, "Oh, KELLY ROGERS?"