Sicky McSickster

Well, no good turn ever goes unpunished….

I was out-of-town helping with a project for my company and as we like to do, we exceeded our goals and delivered results early.  That didn’t come without a price.  Between Monday and Friday I clocked 74 hours and an additional 4 hours today (Saturday).  Of those 74 hours, I spent 10 hours traveling between Houston and OKC.

By the time I woke up Thursday morning (after clocking 51 hours), I woke up with the beginnings of a soar throat and cough.  So, I did what I normally do when this happens.  I start drinking water like it’s going out of style.  Well, for the first time, this didn’t help.  My throat just kept getting more sore by the hour.  By the time we went out to dinner that night, my voice was starting to get hoarse.

Well, despite being exhausted, I didn’t get much sleep.  After being out cold for about 2 hours, I awoke in pain.  First I threw up and threw up.  This must’ve been from the drainage.  Then the pain in my throat hit me.  I couldn’t have been in more pain if I swallowed a pine cone whole.  I tried to suffer through it, but by 2AM I needed to say something to someone because I was just miserable.

So I called Nancy.  She was the good nurse that she is and told me the proper things.  I needed to drink more water.  Well, anyone who has been on a high water diet knows that drinking lots of water and sleep don’t go hand-in-hand.  You either sleep in wet shorts or you are running back and forth to the restroom.  I think the only way one could afford to do this and sleep is if they are capable of putting in their own Foley catheter.  Then you can pee and sleep at the same time.

Well, I whined to her on the phone for a bit but I could barely speak so I cut the conversation short.  It was at this time that I remembered that when I have a problem with coughing due to drainage, I would prop myself up with pillows.  So, I scrounged up all the pillows I could find and build a wedge out of them.  This seemed to help alot.  At least enough that I got a few more hours of sleep.

Morning came and we swung buy CVS pharmacy to pick up some throat remedies.  So I picked up some CVS-branded Chloraseptic® and some cough drops.  Both of these seemed to help, but the Muscinex I took earlier seemed to start to make me foggy headed and I had to struggle to continue to be productive at work.  Plus, I needed to catch a 5:45PM flight back to OKC.

I caught my shuttle to the airport after it being almost 45 minutes late and made it through security without issue.  I was worried because on this trip, I was bringing back all the stuff I was leaving in Houston while i was traveling back and forth since late November.  Well, I didn’t want to check my back for one 4 fl. oz. bottle of contact lens solution.  I know the regulations are 3 fl. oz. or smaller, but I looked and couldn’t find a 3 fl. oz. bottle of contact solution in my brand.  Well, security didn’t say anything.

Then, as luck would have it, my flight was late.  Then it was overbooked.  Then it was hot, hot, hot.  I was sweating the whole way home.  I tried to sleep, but it was just too hot.

It wasn’t until I stepped out of the OKC airport into the 48 degree air that I realized that the plane wasn’t hot, I was.  I was still burning up in the cold air. 

Well, Nancy had asked me to go get some milk on my way back from the airport.  At this time, it was around 8PM and I felt like death warmed over.  So, I decide to go to Wal-Mart.  I prefer Albertsons for groceries, but I wanted to see if I could get some more knock-off Chloraseptic® and I didn’t know what Albertson’s selection would be.  Wal-Mart is also a tad out of the way, but I didn’t want to stop twice.

I get to wal-mart and pick out some drugs to try and help me sleep grabbed the milk and came home.

Naturally, Belle and Coco were ecstatics to see me.  I let them out of the confines of their entrapment (the kitchen) and they emptied their little bladders in the appropriate location.  Then I fed them.  I hit the couch to watch a little TV and maybe play a little XBox 360, but I never really made it far.  I was out cold on the couch.  I woke up at 10 and dragged myself to the bed where I remained until 15 hours later.

I hate being sick, but soar throats, to me, are a torture worse than death.

Sage Advice…..

Just because it’s in your size, doesn’t mean you need to wear it

Model of my Entertainment Center

Well, it’s been a desire of mine to get into woodworking. I was looking around the internet for free CAD programs and ran into Google SketchUp. Granted, it’s not a CAD program but it was FREE and looked cool.

So, I needed a project to get my feet wet with. So, I decided that I would attempt to me a 3D model of the entertainment stand my wife and I built a couple years ago when we got our DLP HDTV.

Here is what I came up with.

Happiness Is…..

Finding that sweet spot on your wadded up jacket being used as a pillow and falling fast asleep on the plane.

Ladies and gentlemen… Donny Osmond!

And that is how Weird Al introduce a new video on his MySpace page.

I have to admit that the most entertaining part of the White and Nerdy video that I highlighted here.

I was just tickled pink when a co-worker pointed out to me that Weird Al posted a video of the entire song being performed with Donny Osmond doing his dancing.  So, if you like the self-deprecating humor of Donny Osmond in things like the White and Nerdy video, I present to you Donny Osmond…definitely white and nerdy:

Pork – The Other White Meat

We have decided to give the grill another go for 2007.  On Friday, we cooked some chicken.  I’ve pretty much got that down now.  I just have to grill 8 minutes on each side and perfection.  Well, I haven’t done pork yet and we has some pretty thick chops sitting in the freezer. 

Nancy threw them in the fridge to thaw out on Friday night.  Well it didn’t quite work for us to grill them up on Saturday since we had plans during the day and Nancy had to be at work at 3PM.  So, we decided to grill them up today.

Unfortunately, I’m not skilled in cooking pork.  So, I called my brother, Impwerx, up and asked for some advice.  He simply told me to treat the pork like a steak except that I need to tenderize the chops.  He told me to give it an extra kick, to switch the Worcestershire with apple sauce and to add a smidge of cinnamon. 

Well, I don’t own one of the meat tenderizing mallets.  Nancy came up with the idea of using the rolling pin.  Since the meat was still vacuum packed we could pound the porkchops as much as we wanted without worrying about making a mess.

We didn’t have any canned or bottled applesauce, but we did have those little snack pack applesauces that are meant to go in lunch boxes.  Those applesauces also had cinnamon already in them.

So we got out or handy vacuum marinader that we use with our Foodsaver.  Nancy opened up one of the snack packs of applesauce and laid it down on the bottom of the container.  I rubbed in the Montreal Steak Seasoning an both sides of the chops and laid the meat down on the bed of applesauce.  Then we put the rest of the applesauce on top of the chops.  We vacuum packed the container and let it sit in the fridge for an hour.

With the exception of my running out of propane half-way through the cooking process, it was pretty painless.  Those suckers were juicy and the applesauce combined with the seasoning came out rather nice.

We will be definitely adding this to our list of grilling recipes.

Eviction

Who are you to ask me to leave?
I made you who you are today.
I gave you all the riches you hold so dear.
You can’t get rid of me that easy.
I am not a tumor that can just be excised.
I am your excuse, your alibi.
I’m who you fall back on when things go wrong, when life is unsure or you don’t know which way is up.
I’m not going to go quietly
I will raise hell
You begged me to be here
You begged me to never leave.
I make you feel right, I make you feel strong,
I make you feel loved when you were alone in this world.
I’m that family member that came to a visit and never left
I am the stray dog that you decided to feed.
Your fear feeds me
Your anxiety justifies me
Your lack of hope ensures my tenure
So you say that you are done with me
That I’m unhealthy for you
I’m not that easy to get rid of
Cause I’m that monster under your bed
Get rid of me if you can
I’m your second skin
Get rid of me if you want
But you’ll end up asking me back
So you say that won’t be happen
I hope you are right
Cause if you don’t your life will be naught

White & Nerdy

I actually stumbled across this awhile back, but a coworker has brought it to my attention in a whole new manner.

This is an awesome parody by “Weird Al” Yankovic, but I think Donny Osmond in the role of Krayzie Bone from the Chamillionaire video. He is hilarious.

I snatched this video off of YouTube, but there is a much better version on Weird Al’s Myspace Page (direct link to video)

The Mighty Battler of Accumulated Sleet

The mighty battler of accumulated sleet

Well, as some of you may know, I live in Oklahoma City now and if you’ve been watching the news you’d know that we just got hit by some severe winter weather.

Nancy and I have been pretty much cooped up since Friday because we’ve had a constant barrage of sleet falling on our fair land.

Nancy wanted me to dig out the front stairs as it fell, but I felt we should wait until most of it had fallen. Well, that day happened to be today (Sunday).

So, I dug out my thermal shirt and my old snowboarding gloves and face gator and went outside to tackle the sleet.

Nancy had the intelligence and foresight to purchase a snow shovel before the frozen stuff started to fall. Unfortunately, after sitting on the stairs for a couple days, the weight of the sleet must’ve melted the stuff on the bottom because we had a good half inch of ice on the stairs with about 4-6 inches of sleet on top of it.

So, the snow shovel was kinda useless. Fortunately, I still had my landscaping shovel that we purchases when we built our flowerbeds at the Houston house. It has a flat blade instead of a curved one. It proved to be quite useful.

Nancy came out and took a few pictures because she needed some winter weather pictures to go with some scrapbooking embellishments that she had in her collection.

After getting the stairs scrapped, I had to salt them. So I went to the garage and grabbed one of the 2 fifty pound bags or salt Nancy had purchased with the snow shovel.

Well, it became heavy quickly. I had to walk around the entire complex to get from my garage to the front stoop. So when I got to the stairs, I couldn’t hold onto the bag anymore and it fell out of my hands and hit the ground. Well, the bag blew it’s sides out and there was salt everywhere.

Fortunately, Nancy brought me a large Ziploc plastic container that I used to scoop up the salt and get it onto the stairs.

Well, now the stairs are clear and I have a sore back, but it was a good outlet to blow off some steam.

Happiness Is…..

Waking up in the middle of the night, expecting it to be almost time to get up and finding you still have 4 hours of sleep left.