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September 28 Good news -- the baby is healthyWe just had another ultrasound this week and the news was all good. The baby is growing nicely, and mom is feeling pretty good too (or at least as good as a pregnant woman can feel). Check out the attached picture -- the nurse who did the scan the last two times calls these types of photos the "alien baby" pictures since she looks more like something you would have seen on "Roswell" than one of us. But that will change over the next few months.
Our next ultrasound is the big one -- that's the one where we'll find out the baby's sex for sure. The nurse who did our last two scans tried to see if she could tell, and she says -- unofficially, mind you -- that she thinks she sees a girl. And for the regular readers of this blog, you know I've been predicting girl since the start. So I'm feeling pretty confident that we're having a she.
Also, Jenny and I have decided to share more about the pregnancy through a weekly column I'll be writing for the Missourian. I'll be sure to include a link when it publishes on ColumbiaMissourian.com. The first one was supposed to run in tomorrow's Weekend Missourian, but the boss opted to bump me back a week. It will only run every three weeks, which is somewhat disapointing. I was hoping for it to run every other week, but I'm rotating with two other columnists instead of just one, which was a new development. But that's OK. Class starts for me in about another week, and I'll be pretty busy then. Judging by my infrequent fitness updates, every three weeks may be all I can handle!  September 12 Morning gloryJust a quick update this morning -- the early morning workouts are still going well for me. I'm up at 5:30 every weekday for the last two weeks (with the exception of the last two Mondays, when I've been allowed to sleep in because I didn't work on those days) to put in 30 minutes of cardio. Twice each week I also work out with Rob the trainer. So the exercise end is going quite well.
This week I started doing some meal planning too. Jenny has been wanting to eat more healthy lately because she's a good mom like that -- she still has her soft serve cravings, but only after getting her greens and vitamins. Our menu so far this week:
Monday: Shrimp and pasta from a recipe I got off the side of a box. It wasn't the most low-calorie dish (it called for a lot of butter), but it did get us some veggies (onions, carrots and tomatoes) in addition to protein and carbs. And it made for a nice lunch on Tuesday.
Tuesday: Last night I grilled fish fillets seasoned with onion salt and basil. Those were delicious, and the weather was perfect for grilling (the Missouri heat finally broke this week -- now we're into Indian summer). We had Texas cheese toast on the side, which wasn't the best side dish but still delicous. Tonight I'm going for tacos with low-fat burger and lots of peppers, tomatoes and lettuce.
September 07 Good news for me -- and for my Uncle BruceI'm quite pleased to report that my new early morning workout routine is going swimmingly. But before we get to me, I want to tell you about my Uncle Bruce. Bruce needed a valve replaced in his heart, which occurred earlier this week. In order to be eligible for the surgery (it's a less-invasive surgery where doctors only do a four-inch incision), he had to lose 100 pounds this summer. My uncle, being the total ass-kicker that he is, lost the 100 pounds. I'm very proud of him, not to mention very inspired. And relieved. Don't forget relieved, because heart surgery is no small thing on any level. Me? Well, my accomplishments aren't nearly as impressive. For the last two weeks, I've been able to drag my sorry action out of bed at 5:30 a.m. every weekday for a trip to the gym (except for Labor Day, when I rolled in at 10 a.m.). Some days, this means I'm working out twice. This week, it was Wednesday and Thursday. I did my 30 minutes of cardio in the early morning, then came back in the afternoon for my sessions with Rob the trainer. I'm down to 255 as of this morning. But more importantly, I'm feeling better during the day; I'm more alert in the early afternoon where before I would get those midday sleepies; and I just may start seeing my weight loss start to go down. Eating has been better too. I'm totally off of soda again and I'm drinking more water than ever before. I only drink beer on the weekend. And I haven't had a good vodka drink in a long time. Overall, I'm pretty darn proud of myself. By biggest worry now is keeping it up. I'm good about doing these kinds of things in spurts, but then I always fall off the fitness wagon. I have to keep my momentum up and not allow myself to take a day off. That's how the downhill slide starts.  Technorati Tags: Fitness, workout, cardio, Bruce, Powered by ScribeFire. September 05 Hypocrisy, thy name is GOP -- a look at Hannity, Craig and McConnellI caught a little of Sean Hannity's radio program today, and I just loved this little bit of hypocrisy:
It seems Sean recently watched a television program that explored just how devastating dropping two atomic bombs on Japan was to the Japanese people who survived. Sean's complaint: The program made the Japanese look sympathetic and the U.S. look like the bad guy for doing what it had to do. Sean whined about the lack of context that led to the bombings -- no mention of Pearl Harbor, no mention of kamikaze pilots, etc. etc.
Having not seen the show (and I didn't catch the name or the network it aired on), I wasn't in a position to disagree. At this point of his rant, I think he's still fairly sane (for Hannity). After all, Japan did attack us, and dropping the bombs was a horrendous but necessary evil to end World War II.
Then Sean moves into his rant about how the "Blame America" crowd of today -- that's all you hippie, tree-huggin' liberals who don't have the stomach to leave our troops in Iraq to continue playing referee in a civil war we have no business being in -- would have never gotten America involved in WWII had they been in charge today. And then he goes to commercial.
The necessary piece of context Mr. Hypocrit, oops, Mr. Hannity left out is this: America didn't want to fight another World War. We kept ourselves out of it as long as we could. It was only after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor that we entered the war.
So, the makers of this program are liberal jerks for not giving you the entire context. But Sean is a great America for also not giving you the entire context. Why do I continue to torture myself with the sound of that guy's voice?
Then there's Larry Craig, who not only apparently has a wide stance in the bathroom, but left himself with a wide stance last Saturday when he said it was his INTENT to resign by Sept. 30. Come to find out Craig's true intent is to finish out his term if he can get his court case reversed by the end of the month and clear his name. See, it's all in the semantics. And, to be fair, if Bill Clinton can dispute the word "is" to get away from testifying about his "inappropriate" relationship with Monica Lewinsky, then Craig may as well too.
Last but not least, there's Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader. He has the unfortunate job defending guys like Craig and other Republicans broiled in controversy. When asked about the GOP's contribution to the low-popularity ratings of the U.S. Congress, he blamed it all on the partisan politics played by the Democrats.
That's so rich it almost gives me a cavity. Was McConnell not around when Tom DeLay was running the GOP side of the House? Of all the partisan hacks ever seen in Congress, DeLay was the King of Kings. This guy disected Texas' congressional district map so severly and so precisely that it's almost impossible to follow. Rather than draw the district lines based on something fair -- for instance, I dunno, POPULATION -- he disected it to ensure a heavier bloc of GOP voters than Democrat voters in every district.
The GOP Congress that ruled under Bush from 2000-06 did nothing but play partisan games, with one notable exception -- the creation of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission. When Hillary Clinton tried to create a similar commission to look into what went wrong in New Orleans during the Katrina debacle, the GOP shut her down fast. Because we certainly wouldn't want to take a fair, non-political look at the one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history. Shameful. Just shameful.
Hypocrisy runs deep on Capitol Hill these days. Does anyone in this Congress actually live the moral values they all claim to have?
The end of the first trimesterWe're officially 12 weeks into the pregnancy, which is the end of the first trimester. So far, things with the baby look good.
We had an ultrasound on Wednesday, Aug. 29. The photos are attached; this time we got six of them, although I think the photo quality was a little better on the last ultrasound. We have another one coming up on Sept. 26. We probably won't be able to tell the sex for several weeks still, but I'm still going with my gut feeling that it's a girl.
A few more tidbits from the ultrasound:
Larry Craig, gay marriage and America today, or How We Continue to Oppress Gays in this CountrySo Larry Craig took advantage of the three-day holiday and the fact that much of the nation isn't paying attention to the news (presumably because we're paying attention to the road) and resigned Saturday. Surprised? Me neither.
Also not a surprise was the response from the conservative camp. The main talking points:
1) Why did he plead guilty if he's not? He should have gotten a lawyer if he wasn't guilty. (A pretty good argument)
2) The story was leaked by Hillary Clinton, to take attention away from her ties with Norman Hsu (Actually, Roll Call broke the story first, and the Idaho Statesman had been investigating Craig for several months on the question of his sexual orientation. But I'm sure Hillary gave a call to the editors at both papers and told them to run it if they want to keep their memberships in the Liberal Media Club).
3) Good conservatives love families (and presumably puppies and ice cream too) and family values, thus implying that you can't have good family values and be gay.
So once again, the conservative camp paints homosexaulity as it always does -- as a deviant lifestyle.
Certainly, trying to hook up some sex in a public restroom could be classified as deviant. And in the interest of full disclosure, I'll admit that once, back in college, I got a little fresh with a woman in the ladies room at my favorite pub (she was bragging about a new piercing, I said I wanted to see it, and the ladies room was the only semi-private place around she could show me). I once walked in on a guy receiving oral sex from a girl in the men's room of the same pub. Yes, the Library was a special place.
But back to Craig. One thing I didn't hear in the talk radio discussion on this issue was the possibility that maybe he's not gay but bisexual. That could explain the years of marriage with the occassional homosexual trist (which, to be fair, has not been proven).
The other thing you didn't hear on talk radio -- and won't hear on talk radio, unless it's Air America -- is my theory: That our oppression of gays forces guys like Craig to take these deviant paths.
When we do things like pass laws that outlaw gay marriage or try to re-create segregation by allowing civil unions, we tell the gay community they are a subordinate class to us straights. It's all born out of homophobia, and someday I hope to God we can get past this. If Larry Craig had been raised to believe that homosexuality is OK, he wouldn't be looking for gay sex in an airport bathroom. He'd be looking for it at Match.com.
I'm sure the conservatives out there are seething at my heathen notions that being gay is OK. Here's why I believe it's anti-Christian to deny gays the right to marry:
1) The Bible does say to lie with a man as one lies with a woman is an abomination. The bible also says that wearing clothing woven of two kind of cloth is a sin punishable by death. How many cotton-poly blends do you have in your closet?
The fact is, God didn't write the Bible. Man did. And the men who wrote it did so many years after the events in the Bible took place. Those original texts were later translated, re-written and, in some cases, misinterpreted. You don't think somewhere along the line a homophobe couldn't have slipped that into the Bible?
2) We are created in God's image. Couldn't it stand to reason that maybe God is both homosexual and heterosexual? Otherwise, why is it that some of us like members of the opposite sex and other like the same sex?
But how can God be both? Aren't those mutually exclusive orientations? Well, no they are not. There are people who are bisexual. Isn't that the same thing? And besides, who says God can't be both? It's God. God is all powerful, all knowing and walks with all of us all the time. How does God do it? Because he's God, and our limited imaginations can't really comprehend how powerful and unique God is.
Bill Maher once put it this way: "We understand God about as well as our dogs understand us." I love that line, because it's very true.
3) We are taught to love our fellow humans and to follow the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Well, I love being married to my wife. So why would I want to deny the opportunity for someone else to experience the joy I feel from my marriage just because he or she is attracted to the same sex? Doesn't sound very Christian to me.
One more conservative argument to poke a hole in: We can't allow gays to marry because we're defending the institution of marriage. As if we're all so protective of marriage as an institution. If this were the case, there would be no divorce, infidelity or spousal abuse. There would be no quickie weddings in Vegas, no need for pre-nuptial agreements and Britney Spears would be banned from ever saying "I Do" again (though she does have a ways to go if she wants to catch up with Elizabeth Taylor).
As a collective institution, marriage is a huge failure. As an individual institution, it thrives. My wife and I are a great example. So are her parents. So are many of our friends and family. So really, marriage is what you make of it. And if you are the type of person who has to compare your marriage to someone else's to feel good about yourself, you need therapy (I'm talking to you, Sean Hannity).
Marriage should be respected. Marriage should be about love and committment for life. And there is not a reason in the world why a homosexual couple shouldn't have the same rights we straights have had for thousands of years. Can't we just make it OK to fall in love with someone? Isn't that what God really wants? |
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