Rather than blogging in the future I'm going to use Jaiku. Jaiku is a format that lends itself to sort more frequent updates.
http://mc4pdx.jaiku.com/

Good Autism Article

Good Autism Article

"Driving through central Wisconsin recently, I battled the melancholy that crawls into my heart each year at this time, around the birth date of my first-born -- my son, whose needs have driven me to near
exhaustion and stretched my limits of patience; my son who is clever and sweet and has expanded my level of compassion; my son, who should be taking his driver's license test but is not and may never do so. My son, who has autism."

Full Article here:
http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/
column/index.php?ntid=201129&ntpid=2

Nice Weekend

Nice Weekend

It's nice that I'm finally getting caught up on work. I feel like it might be short lived though. One of my peers called me yesterday and was in full burnout mode. I'm not sure how long he's going to be in this position before he decides it's too hard for him.

This weekend was nice. On Saturday we went to the zoo. On Sunday the wife and I went out for Lebanese food (yum) and see a movie. My in-laws watched the kids while we went out.

The movie was fantastic Irish film "Once". The movie is about a Dublin based singer songwriter that spends his day working in on on vacuum shop and his nights playing on the streets of Dublin. His songs are about being broken hearted and still so much in love. One night a young cheque girl asks him who his songs are about. This begins a relationship that will change both of their lives.

I wont spoil the details, but "Once" moves deliberately revealing bits of the characters lives and their potential. The movie might be best described as a modern day musical without the jarring breaks in reality. Think more The Commitments and less Chicago.

Other than a few minor quibbles (i.e., a few too many music video moments), the film stands as one of the best music films produced in the last two decades and will easily rank well in my top ten films for this year.

Perfect Weekend

I don't think the weekend could have gone much better.  The weather was perfect.  I woke up on Saturday, got blood drawn (as a follow up to my physical), got a haircut, bought a new weed-eater (the last one died a fiery death a couple weeks back) and worked on the lawn.  I managed to get a slight sunburn, which I kind of enjoyed.  So sick of the rain...

The odd thing is that two separate people have come up to my house asking to buy my old Cadillac.  I was quite shocked.   I'm looking to unload it.  Granted this required me to actually start the thing that had been sitting idle for a few weeks.  I'll take it into the shop to get serviced, wash it and sell it.

I also got a nice karma boost in the form of a letter, but I'll leave that story for another time.

The plot thickens

So apparently my brother and his...uh wife are going guns a blazing into this whole divorce thing.  She said to him that she never really loved him a few months back and he didn't do too well with that.  Things have been devolving since then. 

Over the past two weeks many events have occurred. She had a deputy serve him with papers.  To tie up loose ends, they agreed to stay in their house to finish renovation. They purchased this house last year and it was in need of a lot of work.  Now they get to fix it up and sell right away because of the divorce.  In what occurs to me as being a War of The Roses reenactment, they decided to live on different stories of the house while they finished the renovations.  That apparently worked for about a day or two until they were at each other's throats.  My guess is my brother is going to have to finish the work himself now.

Last year they had a house blessing / exorcism at the house.  They last owners were Muslims, so everyone was very concerned about the goat sacrifices that occurred in the back yard (no, I'm serious).  I told my mom they need to see about getting a refund on the blessing. 

My brother has also seeing his lover regularly.  She's quite the catch.  They went to a country western bar this past week and she was acting inappropriate because she was extremely drunk. When a police office asked her to stop, she hit him.  She got to spend the night in the drunk tank with a charge of drunk and disorderly. My brother picked her up at the jail the following morning.  Apparently she good with laundry though, so that's a plus.

She was over at the house "doing laundry" the other day when my brothers estranged wife came over to get some things.  The wife, seeing that my brother's lover was there, blocked their cars in the driveway and went inside with the intent of getting into a huge argument.  Now she has to call before she comes over.

Easily the most bizarre event this week happened when my brother called his "wife" and told him how lonely he felt.  This promoted her to drive over to the house and pick him up.   I don't understand how she got him in the car but...well...she drove him to a mental hospital and attempted to have him committed.  I'm not sure why he got out of the car and decided to go in, but he did.  They said, while he might be manic depressive, they couldn't commit him. I'm not sure what the motive was for taking him to the mental hospital, but if it was an attempt to make the divorce go her way, I have to hand it to her.  When my mom told me about this I began to laugh hysterically.  She told me it wasn't funny.  I assured her in a few years see would find all of this funny too.

On the good news front my grandmother is due with all of her cancer surgeries.  She appears to be recovering quite well.  :)

The Day The Music Died

While at the gym this morning, I was retrieving my iPod from a locker I dropped it.  I managed to fumble with it almost catching it only to bumble it back out of my hands and right on to the ground.  It appeared to be working and then a few minutes later it I got the sad iPod face icon.  This basically means "We're giving you a cute little icon because you're screwed.  Don't drop your shit, idiot."  I opened it up to see if a cable was loose, but I couldn't detect any such thing.  After a while I was unable to even get the sad icon face.  The display faded and it's pretty much a black brick now.

It is the most expensive model, the black 80GB video model, that is out of warranty by about 6 months.  I think I'm going to go with a shuffle for a while.  it probably makes more sense at the gym.  D'oh!

The Wind of Change

This weekend was a nice rest after a long last few weeks.  Work has been very insane and I was on the last two weeks of my cut (diet) to try and lose some body fat.  I appear to have reached my weight goal.  My body fat is somewhere around 10-12%.  I really cannot get any lower right now as I need to bulk up.  I've extremely thin.  Anyway, I can see the beginning of abs.  I'll have to wait until later this year to see the rest of them. 

My allergies have been killing me.  Tree Pollen has been very high this last week in Portland.  By the end of the night I can't breath without using other-the-counter nose spray to open up my nose.  I didn't really have a problem my first year here, but they say that's typical when you move to a new place.  Now, it sucks.

This weekend I joined a gym.  It's download in Portland.  I'm going to probably change my schedule to get there super early.  Workout, shower and then walk the rest of the way to work.  I plan on doing 3 days of weights and 2 days of cardio (I'll probably do another thing of cardio on Saturday, but I'm not going into the city for that).  My goal is to gain around 15-20 pounds of muscle and then go back to cutting to get that last bit of body fat off.  I met with a trainer this morning to discuss things.  This is basically an opportunity for them to get a health assessment on me and try to sell me training.  I had no intent on having a trainer going it and he pretty much cemented that by measuring me completely wrong (upping my body fat by 3-4%), and giving me apocryphal diet advice.  

It did give me a chance to look around the gym though.  I was planning on taking the week off to give my body a rest, but I feel pretty good.  I think I'll start with some cardio tomorrow and then go into weights on Wednesday.  I've pretty much worked out my routine.

I also got glasses on Saturday.  I'd not had a pair of decent glasses for about 15 years. The ones I had would have made Larry King's look downright stylish.  I ended up with a nice pair of Armani frames (seen at: http://www.framesdirect.com/cdimages_lg/19n_07s9.jpg).  They make me look older, but hopefully in a good way.