And I quote

Truly potty trained isn't me taking you to the potty, or Dad taking you to the potty. It is you taking yourself to the potty.

--My wife to my son

When does this sort of true potty training take place?

Yesterday's commute home

I am happy to be alive this morning.

Really.

On the night of the 17th going into the 18th I didn't sleep. I was at school until about 8 pm and after class I called some of my classmates about going to dinner. We went to a sit down restaurant that took a bit of time. It was my plan to stay on campus and do some work that I needed to get caught up on. That is why I didn't come home to eat dinner. Anyway, the work took a lot longer than I planned (that and the internet interruptions - in the middle of the night I got a call on Skype from an old friend of mine). The reason that I was going to stay there and work was because I was already planning on everything taking several hours. I didn't start until around 10:30 or 11:00 pm and I got it all done around 4 am. I was going to just try to get a nap in in the office and then go teach later. I teach in the morning and on Wednesday that is really the only thing that I do, so I figured that I could get in some sleep somewhere yesterday.
Well, at 4 am the heating system was still working fine in the building I work in but overnight the outside temperature had actually risen from the high thirties or the low forties to the low sixties. There was a rainstorm in the night that brought in a REALLY warm front. Anyway, with the decent temp outside and the heat running inside it was becoming unbearable in the office. I couldn't rest in there at all. I played around with my grade book on Excel making graphs out of the students' most recent grades. I just wasted time.
About 5 am I started to feel hungry but more than that I started to feel really oily. Have you ever noticed that? When you don't sleep at night you feel dirtier than if you do sleep? I don't mean people who are always up at night, I mean if you miss a night's sleep. I needed a shower.
Anyway, I got in my car and drove home. It was weird driving on the streets at about 5:30 am. That is late enough where I expected a lot of traffic, or at least some because at 7 - 8 am when I am normally on my way to work the rush hour is terrible. But at 5:30 am I was almost totally alone out there. I got home, showered, ate, said hi to my wife, and got in the car and made the same drive back to work - this time in a lot of traffic.
I am usually in my office at 8 am. I do a lot of prep work in the mornings. I have to teach from about 9 am to about 11:30 am and then I have office hours for the students until 1 pm. I went to the gym yesterday in spite of my need to get some sleep and I was done at the gym by 4 pm but the two people who I work out with wanted to go grocery shopping and I figured that I would go with them to get some peanut butter and honey (two things that don't need refrigeration) so that I could start making some of my lunches at school. I spend way too much eating out because I work so far from home and there is no fridge in my office. Anyway, it was about 5:30 pm when I left my friend's apartment to come home. Immediately, I was stopped by a train for about ten minutes. That is a normal delay when the train is going by campus because it literally crawls past. Normally this won't affect me because I always park north of the tracks but my friend's apartment complex is just to the south of all that.
While I was sitting there in my vehicle with the lulling hum of the engine and the rumbling bass of the train and the gorgeous weather outside I eventually fell asleep. No big deal, no cars were moving and I woke up when the train finally went by without getting honked at or anything. But that was only the beginning.
I was fighting a losing battle with sleep all the way home. I have about a 45 min commute. I was trying really hard to stay awake but crossing the mile long bridge over the Mississippi river I dozed. My brain just shut off. Luckily, I drifted towards the dividing wall in the middle of the bridge and not toward the cars on the other side of me. When I hit the gravelly garbage next to the wall I was jerked back to consciousness. A quick, hot feeling of sweat caused by panic and adrenaline rushed over me as I grabbed tight on the wheel and got back into the center of my lane. Thank God I didn't hit the wall; it was really close. Wrecking anywhere is bad but a wreck on the I-40 bridge at 70 mph would have ruined a lot of people's day.
Unfortunately, I was only half way home when I came off the bridge and I was still fighting a losing battle with sleep. There has to be something about being in a car, with the hum of the engine, that makes it easy to fall asleep. I don't know, but it seems to work for my toddler as well. I was really tired.
Fortunately, somehow I ended up in one of those situations where I was pretty much alone on my stretch of freeway even though there was a lot of traffic. You have probably been there before - traffic is terrible but suddenly no other cars are around you. You can see them all way ahead and way behind but you might as well be driving on the road at 5:30 am. Well, that was the situation that I was in when I fell asleep again. The freeway splits and one part goes West while the other part goes Northwest. I was surrounded by cars going into the bifurcation but I was the only vehicle in my group that took I-40, everybody else went to I-55. I was suddenly alone on the road.
I was alone on the road but I still had a huge sleep demon fighting me inside my vehicle. There is a big slow curve after the freeways split and then I get off at the next exit about 3/4 of a mile up on the right so I was driving in the right lane. There was no head bobbing, no quick jerk asleep and awake, nothing like that. I was just asleep and I didn't know I fell asleep. I don't remember driving through the curve. I was on the right but I woke up when I was drifting onto the left shoulder of the road just before my exit. My head hurt a lot. I had to be asleep for about 30 seconds (~1/2 a mile or more at 65 mph). I crossed two lanes on the freeway without even knowing it. I got off the freeway and and drove the remaining couple of miles to my house without incident.
My wife got mad at me for getting home later than I said I would because she needed to be somewhere so without much talk she left and I was with Gabe. I put a Dora the Explorer DVD on the computer in my room for him and I went to bed. He loves Dora and yells and dances a lot when it is on so I didn't get good sleep for about 90 min but finally I decided that it was late enough where he could be in bed and I turned the noise off and we both went to sleep.

Monday's Music

This is Alejandro Sanz and the first song is "A la primera persona" (in Spanish only the first word of a title is supposed to be capitalized). I really enjoy Alejandro Sanz's music and if I am not lucky enough to come back as a cow in India in the next life I will seek him out and try to marry him if he'll have me. Okay, not really. Still, he has a wonderful voice that is full of feeling; it is both rough and soft at the same time. Great music.



Another great song by Sanz is "Amiga mia."




Hope you enjoyed,
me

Thank you, Midget

listen to this, People!! (Just click the words!)

This is an hour long podcast about the effects of Testosterone on people.
It doesn't solve any riddles or resolve any sex or gender differences, but it is very insightful. And it is worth your time.

me

Running Journal

This is for this Tuesday. I know that this is a late entry….

I went to the Dr. Tuesday morning. I was feeling some pain in my lungs and I had been coughing up some phlegm that morning. Well, the Dr. gave me a Z-pack for a sinus/ear infection. He didn't hear anything in my lungs. I still felt the pain there, but I went to my running class anyway.

More than anything else, I felt tired while running. It was difficult. We ran indoors because of rain. Same as before, a lap, stairs, two laps, stairs, three…. You get the idea.

Afterwards we did stretching and pushups and that sort of stuff. I still felt sick, but the worst was yet to come. Tuesday night, that pain and congestion that I felt in my lungs turned into major pain – just like the movie. I was really coughing a lot. Still it was a shallow cough (just like the one that pneumonia causes?) and it wasn't moving much phlegm.

Wednesday rolls around and I still don't feel great, still mostly tired and really cranky at this point. I went to work, that was fine. After work I went to the gym, minus one of the people I work out with – he was home sick. Hmm, what a novel idea – take a break when you are sick…. Where was I when that idea got passed around? Still, I was careful in the gym. There are hand sanitizer-things galore there and even though I normally don't have any faith in those things ('cause I think that they actually make the bugs worse in the long run – just like over-using antibiotics does), well, I used plenty of it anyway. And I sprayed off all the equipment that I used with disinfectant spray. So, at least I am trying to take care of other people who work out there.

I was weak in the gym. I worked out for an hour. It was a good workout because we were missing one person from the rotation. Actually, working out with three people generally means that the resting periods between sets are too long anyway, so that was a good thing… for the healthy person that was there with me.

I came straight home from the gym and on the way home I started to feel really sick. I mean dizzy, stupid; by the time I got home I was burning with a fever. BURNING. A couple of ibuprophen helped a LOT.

I didn't go to school today. Okay, actually I did go to school today. I didn't have to teach today but I had a running class and Portuguese. I didn't go to my classes today but I had to go to campus because I forgot my meds in my desk at work. So, I went in to get today's dose. Then I returned home.

I feel somewhat better – I am back to where I was when I thought that going to the doctor's office was a good idea in the first place. Somehow, I still thought that working out was good idea when I came out of the doctor's office – so tomorrow, I am back at it. (I just really hope that I miraculously heal all the way tonight).

love,

me

My Blog

Okay, I know that it is generic to blog about blogging, but here I go.

The small handful of you that read my blog on a regular basis may have noticed some recent changes. I made some small layout changes that you might not notice but mostly I edited my list of blogs. I removed several of the links, and I am now in the process of putting some back. Notably, I also changed my "Following" status to anonymous on all of the blogs that I follow. This second change was made because I don't want all that stuff on my profile and blogger doesn't give you the option (as far as I know) of NOT displaying the blogs you follow publicly on your profile. If I am wrong about this, please tell me in the comments. As far as the first change is concerned, I did that to make my blog more anonymous. The majority of my few readers are people that I know very well; most likely we are related if you are a reader of mine. Because you know me, you might not notice the fact that there is no mention of my name, first or last, anywhere on my blog. Aside from photos of me, I have tried to limit all of the personal information that I put up here. I do mention my wife and son by name in many posts, but that is a practice that I have been slowly ending as well.

Curiously, in a recent conversation, a friend commented that "I am so public" on my blog, that I 'really put everything out there'. Because we are friends, this person completely overlooked the fact that I am not really as public as one may think. In another conversation not long ago a different friend asked me if my blog "is anonymous… you know, do any of your family members read it?" In this sense of the word anonymous, my blog is definitely not anonymous. I don't mind my family reading my blog; in many ways that is why I blog – I am really bad about staying in touch with them and this is an easy way for me to update people without actually emailing or calling; this allows me to stay in touch without actually staying in touch. Nevertheless, this awareness of my family as my reading audience has affected the way that I blog at times. I definitely write with that audience in mind and consequently there are things that I don't share here, at least not as openly as I might otherwise (I know that that will shock my father – he sometimes calls me to lecture me about being too open on my blog). (Don't worry, Dad, strangers don't know it's me).

To those of you who notice that the links that used to connect your blog to mine are now missing, I just want to say that nothing is final and things can be put back. On my blog's dashboard, I still follow all the links that I removed. The reason that I took those links away is because I don't want information on my blog that can lead readers I don't know personally back to me. If you use my last name on your blog I removed the link. If you have me listed under my name on your blog, rather than my blog's name or any of the pseudonyms that I have used in the past, I removed the link. If you take my name off your blog I put your blog back onto mine. Also, I just want to repeat that I still read all the blogs that I linked to in the past, but they are just not all on my blog anymore.

Many of these changes are consistent with the types of changes that I have made in the past. Long time followers of my blog know that I shut it down a few times in the past six months. The last time that I re-opened it, I did so minus about 200 old posts. I have tried to remove most of the political-commentary-type posts that were here, and I don't plan on blogging much about politics in the future. The reason for this is that I think that some of my political opinions that differ from some of the people (SZ) who occasionally read this created more ill-will than anything that I actually blog for. There are three main reasons for the removal of that sort of stuff: One, I really don't care that much about it; two, I am not really that well-informed or that smart on the issues that seem to divide people; and, three, I really don't care that much about it. Much of the same goes for a lot of the posts that had any really religious tone to them. I don't blog to feel further divided from people, especially the people I am related to.

Anyway, if you read this whole post, THANK YOU for reading. If you think that your links should be restored – that is what the comments are for.

Sincerely,

me

Monday's Music

An eclectic combination today:

This first is a song by the Spanish singer Coti accompanied in this version by two other great singers, also from Spain, also with hits of their own - Paulina Rubio and Julieta Venegas.

Nada de esto fue un error



This second one is one that you all should know already by a singer who is in a category all her own:


me

It's a present....

The boy asked Mom for some crackers this morning. No big deal, right? Wrong.
She went and got them and as she was opening the package he says, "It's a present." He had been eating apples but when she handed him the crackers he said, "Beautiful crackers," walked over to his little table where the last pieces of apple were and said, "No more apples, hellooooo crackers!"
The "hello" there couldn't have been more romantic if you heard it in a nightclub, bar, anywhere.

Running Journal

Well, today my zune died so I didn't have any music to listen to. I am a little bit upset by that. It was expensive. I don't want to have to replace it. I don't know what I will do. But, anyway, as a result of not having the zune I was a little less self absorbed during the run – which is to say that I was able to hear and speak to other people. I ran with this guy, J. We went out at a pretty decent pace. It felt like a 6 min mile pace but it might have been slower than that, but not by much. We went 2 miles in about 13 min. It is hard to judge, it could have been 14 min, the clock that we use to time ourselves is the clock tower on campus and it just isn't that accurate (as in no second hand, no individual minutes). It was definitely a faster pace today though and I am inclined to think that 13 minutes is pretty accurate because it felt a lot faster than the 2 miles I was running in 15 or 16 minutes a week or so ago.

After 2 miles we walked one lap. That was a very slow lap. Then we jogged the last lap for a total of 10 laps in just under 20 minutes.

I felt good. Going into lap six I was feeling some muscle pain in my legs. J said something similar and I said that we should go 8 laps at the pace we were at and then slow down. J is faster than I am (and he is about 10 yrs younger than I am) but I don't think he has run long distances before. He said that his lungs were really burning him but my lungs felt fine today. My ankles (or just above them) really hurt. During the run my knees felt fine but yesterday and today I have felt some discomfort in my left knee. I am going to keep an eye on that; I don't feel good about it.
After the running, we did some stretching and some yoga. We ended the work out with 5 minutes in the corpse pose. The teacher said that the point of that was to quiet our minds and relax. About two minutes into it this guy right behind me says, "I have a question." So much for quiet. Then he started asking the teacher if we were doing Yoga and what research is there that Yoga really does anything and stuff like that. It was a little annoying, but whatever. Some schools in Colorado banned the teaching of Yoga last year because an Evangelical church in the area complained that it amounted to the teaching of religion in schools. There is a lot of that sort of thinking in this area as well. I don't know if that was the guy's slant or not, but, again, whatever.

Anyway, we have homework for this weekend – to go running. And the teacher said that I don't have to buy the book (I asked her).

me

Numbness

Does numbness really have a feeling?
I was working out today and the girl that works out with us said "my arms are all numb they hurt so much." And so I poked her shoulder (the numb one) just to see if it really didn't hurt. She jumped back in pain. I guess numbness can hurt a lot. What do you think?
Geesh, if numbness hurts that much, how bad is real life with its feelings? It REALLY hurts!
Sinking feelings!!

Hair

Here are three photos of the most recent haircut.

Yeah, I know I need to shave.
(and, yes, that is a zit)
me

Running Journal

Okay, it is not right after class this time. It has been several hours. Today, we started with the same slow lap, stretching, and then a 20 minute run. I lost count of the laps – 10 or 11. I don't think I got to 12. I wasn't running that fast. I felt good. My lungs and stomach (abs) were with me the whole way and I was able to go faster overall I think. Still, I don't think that I did 12 laps. No.

My right leg felt heavy at the end and I felt a slight twinge behind my left knee afterwards – in the ligament – but it is a normal feeling, nothing to worry about. I have had classes all day. I am actually in a class right now. My stomach is killing me. I didn't eat lunch and now the work out is really taking its toll on me. This is due to the lack of food. I can't work out and then not eat. I feel a real need to eat something. I am shaking a little. I really feel sick. It goes far beyond hunger at this point. What I am feeling has to do with the consumption of available carbs and proteins that just fasting doesn't really achieve. I feel weak, not just hungry. I need to raise my blood sugar and consume something with protein.

But the run was good. The wind was really cold today but the additional five minutes didn't affect me at all.

me

About me:

I always cut my own hair. Usually at night. Sometimes it is really hard to get right. This time, I think I can live with it.
It is really hard to get totally right right now because I am actually trying to let it grow out on top but at the same time I get really uncomfortable if it isn't "clean cut." The last time that I cut it I felt like I faded the back too high. I did a better job this time but the sides are a lot longer so it makes it really hard to blend with just one hand. The top is about five inches in length and I faded it from a #2 extension (<1/4 inch) on the clippers. It is a low fade - which I think is harder, but it looks better. Note that low and high refer to the point on the head where the haircut is blended and not the length of the hair.
I know that a post like this really needs a picture... maybe I will put one up soon.

me

PS. This really needs a short addendum - When I say "totally right" I really mean TOTALLY. The number one reason that I do my own haircuts is because I think that I do a better job than what I pay for at the barber. I think that everybody has a little obsession (as in OCD) and this is definitely mine. If I say "I think that I can live with it" it means that it is a good haircut. I CAN'T live with jankety haircuts

Monday's Music

I am in a Stadium Arcadium mood right now.

Red Hot Chili Peppers, Hard to Concentrate




RHCP, Hey

Red Hot Chili Peppers- Hey


me

Prioritizing

I need to prepare lessons for tomorrow. I need to read. I need to study Portuguese. I watched the Super Bowl. I am not a sports fan and I am not a sports commentator. I am a good procrastinator and I am a big play-offs fan. Tonight, I think that I made the right choice. I am really, REALLY unhappy with the outcome of the game, but I think that the Cardinals proved a lot to a lot of people. Santonio Holmes had a great game winning drive, but I think that the real story of this Super Bowl was the defense on both sides of the ball. The interception by the Steelers is what made this a game. Other than that, it was the Cardinals the whole time. The Cardinals stopped the Steelers during the whole game. The only touch down pass that the Steelers had was in the fourth quarter. I really think that the story of the game was the defense.
That is all that I have to say about that. I know that this is going to be in the papers/on the Internet/on the television tomorrow. If you want to get more about this, well, you know where to look.
Bye.
me