Resolve

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I was in a strange goal-setting mood a couple of weeks ago. I don’t know what causes that. Here’s what I came up with:

  • Do five chin-ups by my birthday. I originally said one. Then three. Then five. Then DA did five at my house last weekend and that cemented it at five. I don’t have a plan worked out for this yet (or any of these goals really), but it will be combination of reducing mass, increasing upper body strength, and increasing abdominal strength.
  • Read thirteen books by Christmas 2012. I set a reading goal every year and I never meet it – not even close. So far this year, I’ve read two books (bought four from Amazon and have only finished two). That’s pathetic.
  • Reduce my handicap to 5.0 or lower. The only part of this plan I have worked out is eliminating some golf leagues and using that time to practice. I spent too much time playing and not enough practicing last year.
  • Increase my income in 2012 to 50% more than 2011. This might be what they call a stretch goal.
  • Learn to play five songs on the piano. I haven’t picked the songs yet, but it will be heavily weighted toward songs for which I already have the sheet music. That just sounds stupid as I read it. Maybe I better rethink that.

I plan on accomplishing these goals, in part, by eating a lot of fried chicken, drinking a lot of alcohol, and watching a lot of TV. Wish me luck.

Things I Never Say

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  • Don’t fast forward. I’d like to watch that commercial.
  • I’m glad Southwest Airlines is affordable enough that young couples and their young children can fly.
  • I appreciate when my facebook friends post fifty YouTube videos.
  • Based on my thirty seconds of exposure, I have no opinion on that person’s parenting ability other than I’m sure they’re doing the best they can.
  • Honey, where’s my Affliction t-shirt?
  • It doesn’t bother me when my family uses poor grammar because it’s just not that important.
  • What time does UFC start?

Songs Everyone Knows

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What are five songs that everyone knows? By “everyone”, I mean most people you know. By “knows” I mean knows the tune and at least the words to the refrain. And by “songs” I mean non-Christmas carols. The only one I could think of is Sweet Caroline.

Next year I want to learn five songs on the piano that everyone knows and can sing along to. I want to know them so well I can play them drunk. I get asked to play the piano about twice a year and I’ve never been asked sober. It’s time I had a stable of songs that I can play half in the bag. What should those songs be?

Prediction

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The BCS National Champion will be … the Oklahoma Sooners. Ever since Oklahoma got beat by Texas Tech, they have been out of the national championship conversation. That’s a mistake. They are still an elite team, every bit as good as LSU and Alabama, they just got caught sleeping. They will put the hurt on Okie State (2-3 touchdown victory), which will be enough to get them to the #2 spot, jumping both Alabama and Boise State. They still need Stanford to lose. Stanford will likely lose this weekend to Oregon, but if not they’ll lose to Cal or the Irish.

And so it will be that Oklahoma will defeat LSU in the BCS National Championship game 31-10. You heard it here first.

Notre Dame

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I recently went on my annual football trip. This year was USC @ Notre Dame. I’ve been to Oregon, South Carolina, Clemson, Nebraska, Alabama, and Texas. Prior to me joining the group, they went to Georgia, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Penn State.

Lunch at Gino's

Chicago has tall buildings

Crazy person singing the Notre Dame fight song at Linebackers

O'Rourkes double brat burger with chili and cheese

Tailgate Like a Champion Today

Tailgaiting on a golf course

Statue of Lou Holtz

Pre-game warmups

Scoreboard from 1960 - no replay screen

Remember When

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I was watching TV the other night and there was this part were a gal opened the door to her hotel room.  She was using a brass key!

Holy cow, I almost but forgot that was how hotel room doors were opened.

I tried to find some information on when key cards became the hotel industry standard, unfortunately I had no luck.  All I found was:

A Day Older

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Yesterday was my birthday and I must say I had one heck of a day.  It started with opening presents. I love presents.

I got exactly what I wanted and more.  I received birthday wishes from friends and family. DK bought me a sewing machine and a Kindle. I had been asking for a sewing machine for at least a year now.  Why? I see things I like in the store, but the colors are wrong or it just isn’t right. I figured what better way to fix that problem than to make exactly what I want. Right?

This morning I made these.  Shown are the front and the back. I am happy with them.

In the afternoon I went for a walk with Andrew, down loaded some books on my Kindle and read for a couple of hours.

In the evening Rich and Debbie took us out for dinner at 7M. It was super yummy!

Finally finished off my day with a few cocktails.  It was an awesome day!

Muddy Places

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I was doing a word search the other day titled “Muddy Places” and there were plenty of words/places I had never heard of.  I couldn’t solve the puzzle, I couldn’t focus, there were to many words I didn’t know. Here is the list with a brief definition.

  • Cranberry bog – where cranberry’s are cultivated
  • Fen – low land covered wholly or partially with water in Eastern England
  • Loblolly – mudhole
  • Marish – another name for marsh
  • Mire – slimy soil of some depth or deep mud
  • Moor – peaty, wasteland, often overgrown with evergreen shrubs common in high latitudes and altitudes where drainage is poor
  • Morass – (what’s growing on my south side?) low soft wet ground
  • Muskeg – a bog of northern North America, commonly having sphagnum mosses, sedge, and sometimes stunted black spruce and tamarack trees
  • Peat bog – a swamp in which peat has accumulated
  • Plash – a gentle splash or puddle
  • Pocosin – a swamp or marsh in an upland coastal region
  • Quagmire – an are of mire or a bog where the surface yields under the tread or a situation from which extrication is very difficult
  • Salina – a saline marsh
  • Swale – a valley like intersection of two slopes in a piece of land where the lower land is moister than the adjacent higher land

Who knew I could learn from a word search?

The Periodic Table of Elements

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Memorize these “facts” to impress non-scientists with your knowledge of the Periodic Table. By facts, I mean incomplete half-truths, but they’ll never know.


image source

  • There were 63 elements on the first table and 118 now. All the abundant elements have already been found.
  • Elements are atoms (Oxygen is an atom). Combinations of elements are molecules (Water is two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom).
  • The top number is the atomic number and is equal to the number of protons in the nucleus.
  • The bottom number is the atomic weight.
  • Elements in the same rows are in the same period. That means they have the same number of levels that electrons can be in, equal to their row number. Carbon, being in the second row, has two electron orbitals. So does Neon because it’s in the same row.
  • Elements in the same column are in the same group. That means they have the same number of electrons in their outer-most orbital, equal to their group number. Potassium (K) has four orbitals (four levels at which electrons can orbit) and one electron in the fourth orbital. The last column (the 18th group) is called the noble gasses and they have all of their electrons in the outer orbital.
  • Those guys at the bottom are called lanthanides and actinides. You don’t need to know what they are because simply saying their names will make everyone’s eyes gloss over and they’ll walk away.