Plan for the day

Since I'm carless, I guess I'll stick with the cleaning plan for today. I'll finish up the kitchen/dining area (which turned into kind of an impromptu home improvement project. I now have a nicer workspace for my computer. More on that later). Of course, I woke up this morning to find SOMEONE had tracked muddy pawprints from the back door all the way into the living room. Wonder who that could be, Buster?

I decided not to move my dining table back into the dining area. It's just not that big a space and the table was just becoming a collection site for junk anyway. Having a work space is more important to me, really. So now Buster has plenty of room to get his food and water dishes without having to maneuver around my chair if I'm working on the computer. And I moved my little beverage fridge in there from the utility room, where it will be handier to get to.

So I'l finish up cleaning in here, maybe get the countertops all nice and clean, too, and then start on the utility room. Mainly that's just going to be getting the junk off the top of the dryer to wherever it should go, but I should probably give the dryer a good cleaning too, get all the lint out of it.

Once that's done, I'll get started on the other bedroom, so my brother will have a nice, clean room to stay in while he's here next week. Maybe a little weeding in the yard if it's not too hot, and that should about cover my day.

Good thing I didn't plan anything

I'm finally taking some vacation time from the paper. You know it's been a long time since you've taken vacation when your co-workers' response is "I never thought I'd see the day." Jeez.

Anyway, can't afford to go anywhere, so I just planned to make it a spring-cleaning and fix-up time around the house, and also see if I couldn't get the car in for what I was sure would be a much-needed tune-up. I was right about that.

I'm still working at the mall while on my vacation, and just as I was pulling out of the garage to go to work last night, boom, everything shut down -- engine, electrical, everything. The ignition would crank, but it wouldn't turn over. So mom let me borrow her truck to get to work, and then today a friend came over to take a look at mine. We replaced the spark plugs and the cords, but no luck. And turns out the mechanic I've been to here couldn't do much more. There's another mechanic in town, but we haven't had the best experience with them. So I had to call a tow service and to have it taken to a mechanic in the city that I've worked with before. So I could be carless until after the holiday, if it's something big. (Thanks for the help, Max!)

Other than that, vacation's going OK. I just gave the kitchen floors a good cleaning and am sitting on the porch in the cool night air while they dry. Buster is snoozing on the sidewalk. Hope no one's going for late-night walk. And the bugs are really being drawn to my laptop screen, so it might be about time to go in.

I guess tomorrow, I'll tackle more of the cleaning. I was going to try to shampoo my carpets before the weekend, but I had hoped to spend today vacuuming. So maybe I'll do that tomorrow and see if I can get a shampooer on Sunday, since I work at the mall again Saturday. Otherwise, I guess it'll wait until Tuesday. I'm off from the mall Sunday through Wednesday, so that gives me time. And then my brother will be here for the rest of the week, so even with the car problems, it should be a decent time off.

I did pick up a few books at the library too. Current read is Zen and Now: On the Trail of Robert Pirsig and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" years ago, and can't say I remember much about it. But reading this one is bringing some of it back, and it's interesting to see through Richardson's book how much has changed since Pirsig's trip, and how much hasn't really. I may have to go find a copy of the original, too, for a re-read.

Flocking myself

Trying out the new social media browser Flock.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

I have nothing to do

Wow. I really don't. I don't need to do laundry, I ran the dishwasher earlier tonight and got the dishes in the sink washed.

OK, I could be organizing some files, or sorting through the piles on my table/work area, or cleaning the bathroom, but if I don't get those done tonight, it's not like it'll be the end of the world.

I actually have (including tonight) three whole nights in row off. So I can kind of take it easy tonight. Maybe tomorrow I'll get some other things done, like make a dish or two for some dinners/lunches I can take to work later on. And maybe Thursday I'll get some housecleaning done.

But for now, it's just nice to sit back and relax.

Done

Morning:
√Breakfast
√ Clothesline put out
√ 1 load of laundry washed & hung out to dry.
√ Home Depot shopping done (new hedge trimmer!)
Afternoon:
√ Lunch
√ Trash taken out.
√ Dog walked.
√ 2nd load of laundry washed & hung out to dry
√ Pampas grass cut down & taken down to creek compost pile
√ Lawnmower drained of old gas & oil, carb cleaned.
√ Lawnmower STARTS (I rock!)
√ Recycling sorted & taken to drop-off site
√ 3rd load of laundry washed & hung out to dry
√ put up the garden edging I bought for the flowerbed by garage
Evening:
√ dinner (brought by mom)
√ plant the lantanas mom bought for the front yard
√ plant the flowers I bought for the front yard (spent a lot at Home Depot today!)
√ yoga
√ hot shower
√ 3 loads of laundry put away
√ snack

√ lunch for tomorrow
Man, I'm tired. But it was a good day.

Well, hello there

Yes, it's been awhile.

Today's has been kind of a crappy day. I woke up around 7 a.m. with a headache. Took some painkiller and put some food in Buster's dish, went back to bed and finally got up around 10 a.m. Poor Buster is so patient. I think maybe he's learning to tell when I don't feel good and wasn't too pushy about trying to get me to get out of bed.

My headache hadn't gone away though, so I just kind of moped around for the day, read the paper, watched some TV, took a nap. Finally around 1:30 I got up to take Buster for a walk. It's kind of sunny and warm, but windy again (probably what brought on the headache), but getting out did make me feel somewhat better.

When we got back I took a look at my lawnmower. I couldn't remember if I'd winterized it last fall, and guess what. I didn't. So it needs a little work. I'm off all day tomorrow, so I might see what I can do with it, and if I can't, give the service guys a call.

I did put a couple new plants in the ground. I got them about a week ago on a trip to Home Depot. Yes, it was all impulse. I got a mexican fern and an azalea. I was thinking of putting the azalea out front, but I think it might get too much sun there, so I put both of them under the tree out back. I think the fern will look good with the hosta (which look like they're going to BIG this year). It's supposed to be a perennial, so that'd be nice. The azalea will have red flowers and is supposed to bloom around mid-May. It's also kind of an evergreen.

I should be cleaning up the kitchen, but I do have to get ready before too long to go in to work at the mall. I wasn't scheduled for today, but when they made up the schedule, they forgot about the local public TV station's art auction fundraiser that they televise from one of the empty storefronts after displaying some of the stuff for auction for a couple weeks. It goes on until 10, and there's usually only one person working Sundays, and that would be an awful long day, so I said I'd go in at 6 and stick around until they're done, which should be about 10:30 or so. The mall will be closed, so I don't really have to do anything. Maybe I'll go finish my grocery shopping. Plus, I got to trade tonight for Tuesday night, so now I don't go in again until Thursday.

Women's History Month

Today marks the beginning of Women's History Month. As my "Getting in Touch with Your Inner Bitch" desk calendar says:

Don't you wonder what all those notable bitches were doing the rest of the year?

But still, at least we have something. For this month, my favorite quote of the day, on the right sidebar, will feature a great quote from a great woman. They are women I've admired for various reasons. I don't necessarily agree 100 percent with their ideologies, but I admire them for what they've accomplished. And not just as women, but as people. If you can't understand that, open your mind a little.

The quote for the first of the month

Well-behaved women seldom make history.

is one I've heard only recently, but was coined some 30 years ago by historian and author Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, according to this article. The original quote comes from a paper she wrote in the beginning of her career:

"Cotton Mather called them 'the hidden ones.' They never preached or sat in a deacon's bench. Nor did they vote or attend Harvard. Neither, because they were virtuous women, did they question God or the magistrates. They prayed secretly, read the Bible through at least once a year, and went to hear the minister preach even when it snowed. Hoping for an eternal crown, they never asked to be remembered on earth. And they haven't been. Well-behaved women seldom make history."

The line took on a life of its own, and still appears today on T-shirts, mugs, etc. Ulrich even wrote a book with the title, examining the appeal of the slogan and looking at feminism through the ages. Might be a good one to put on your reading list this month.

While you're remembering this month the notable women in history, remember one more. I never met Jana Mackey, even though she was from where I live now. I am inspired by her story, however. She worked for women's rights and counseled victims of domestic abuse. She was a law student at the University of Kansas when, at age 25 in July 2007 she was murdered by an ex-boyfriend. Who knows what she might have accomplished had she lived? Eleven hundred people attended her funeral, and her family and friends formed Eleven Hundred Torches, an organization to encourage others to carry on her work. March 8, International Women's Day, has been declared Jana Mackey Day in Kansas to encourage others to use some time that day in service to others. It is something we should do everyday.

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily difference we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee. -- Marian Wright Edelman

You can make a difference in the world with something as small as holding a door open for another person, helping a neighbor who might have difficulties with tasks around the house, helping a co-worker with a task instead of making fun of him behind his back ...

Whatever you do need not be big, because even something small might make one person's day better. And that can't be a bad thing at all.

I long to accomplish a great and noble task; but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble. -- Helen Keller

A busy week

I'm starting to feel like I have a life or something. There's so much to get done and not enough time to do it. Of course, if I'd quit goofing around on Twitter, I'd probably have a lot more time!

Actually, it was kind of a hectic week last week. Mom had some health problems, which meant not one but two trips to Hutchinson, where her doctor practices. She's OK, and actually impressed her doctor with how well she's doing.

In the meantime, I've been dealing with back and hip pain for about three weeks. I probably should have gone to the doctor a couple weeks ago, when the pain was almost unbearable at times, but I'm kind of stubborn. I've always had back problems and had to deal with some bad pain from time to time if I've lifted too much or moved the wrong way, but I'm used to getting over it in about a week or so. So as the pain went on, and since it was also in the hip, I decided I'd better get to the doc. X-rays showed no fracture, and nothing else that shouldn't be there, but there is some arthritis in the backbone.

So now I'm getting some physical therapy for my back. I've had one appointment so far and was given some exercises to do at home. They're not all that different from the yoga I (try) to do a few times a week. And the PT said I have a slight curve in my spine, and that's causing the joint between my backbone and my hip to be out of whack. So the therapy is supposed to put them back in alignment. It does feel better. I don't want to cry after I've been sitting for awhile now.

On top of all that, my boss' wife had a health crisis, too, so he was out of the office most of the week. That kind of put a burden on my-coworker, as he had to take on a lot of the extra work with me being gone too. Things are settling down now, though.

Unfortunately, I haven't had as much time for the Relay for Life Web site and newsletter. So I'll have to carve out some time for that this week. Hopefully the other committee members and team captains will get me more stuff to put in it!

Back to blogging

It's been almost a month since I've posted anything here. This time, it means I've actually been busy, not just lazy or avoiding it.

I've gotten caught up in Twitter, which is a lot of fun. There's a lot of times I just have something not real big I want to say, and the blog doesn't seem the place for that. Twitter's perfect. I've actually got two accounts -- a personal one (that's fed onto the sidebar here) and one for work (HDN_Juno), where I follow and tweet to others in the media. I even attended a webinar by Poynter's NewsU on using Twitter for journalism last week. It was very basic, and a lot of it I already knew, but I did some things about using Twitter. What was real interesting about the webinar was also following the tweets of the people who were attending. Lots of communication going on in ways that even just a few years ago would have been mind-boggling. So now my newspaper also has a Twitter account, NorthWestKansas, that I post to. I've invited other editors in the newsroom to join in, but so far no takers.

I was also busy putting together an in-house wiki for the newsroom. It's our stylebook, our reference guide, our place to share information that can help each other. Again, not everyone's as enthusiastic about it as I am, but one of these days, something's going to happen and they'll see the value in it.

I've also been writing a bit more for the newspaper. Not a lot, just an article once in while, when something interests me. But that takes time, too.

I've also been putting together the Web site for the local Relay for Life. That's all set up now, but I'm also supposed to be doing the newsletter, and that's been tough to find time for since I don't have good layout software on my home computer. I do like to get away from the computer at work once in awhile, so I'm kind of behind on that project. But it'll get done.

Just kind of seems like my life has taken on a lot more stuff in the last few months, and it's been hard to balance it all out. Something new to work on, I guess.

Speaking of things to work on, I kind of neglected my February resolution. I was going to make it eat more fruit & veggies, which I've kind of been doing, so maybe I'll stick with that. March can be for my spring cleaning/organizing, I think.

And how'd I do last month? My resolution was to eat out less. Looking at my Quicken account, I have 10 purchases listed under "dining," and I know there was once I paid cash while working at the mall, so that makes 11. In October, I ate out 14 times, November 9 times, and December 9 times. So I guess I didn't do so hot, although I did spend about $20 buck less than I averaged for dining out October through December, so that's something. And I probably made some better choices about what I was eating. At least some of the time.

Resolution update

I did only so-so last week on my resolution not to eat fast food. I got a bit down in the dumps about mid-week and didn't feel like making meals to take with me. Which was bad, because Wednesday and Thursday were also the days I worked the second job and so had to worry about two meals away from home. So I ended up eating out Wednesday through Friday's lunch.

I didn't do that bad, really. Wednesday's lunch was salad, soup and some fruit off the grocery store salad bar, and Thursday's was a turkey flatbread Sammie with soup from Quizno's. Dinner was another matter, though. Wedneseday, I had Chinese again from the place in the mall, and Thursday was KFC. And Friday, I really did bad with a chicken sandwich and fries from Wendy's.

But I did take dinner to work at the mall last night -- a baked potato with cheese sauce and shredded chicken for toppings, and I added a salad from the grocery store salad bar. So that's some redemption, right?

Happiness

Saturday afternoon, I took Buster on a walk along our usual route -- over the bridge just to the west of my house, south down the dirt road, back east over another bridge and then back towards home.

Going over that second bridge, I noticed some blue-colored birds flitting back and forth between the branches of a tree that had fallen into the creek and trees on the bank. I figured they were bluejays, because we have plenty of them around here, although it seems during winter they usually take off for other parts. There was one thing a I noted a lack of, however, and that was noise. Bluejays are pretty vocal birds, especially when disturbed, and I should have been able to hear them even with my headphones on.

Then I noticed little flashes of orange as they flew. They weren't bluejays, these were bluebirds! I don't recall ever seeing bluebirds before around here, although where I live is included in their range.

Bluebirds are supposedly the bird of happiness, so maybe seeing them now, just after the beginning of the year, is a good sign of things to come! OK, maybe I'm reading too much into that, but I'm a creative person -- symbolism means a lot.

There's more interesting ideas about bluebirds here and here.

Doing good

Forgot about updating, for those of you not following the tweets. Both checkups went well. Some of the numbers on my bloodwork were a bit lower than normal; the doc said those numbers usually indicate an allergy and viruses. She's going to have me go back in about a month for another blood test just to make sure. I have felt like I've been fighting something lately, waking up with a dry, scratchy throat, so maybe that's it.

Otherwise things are a-OK. And both the surgeon and oncologist said I don't need to go get another MRI. That was good news, because I don't want to go through that mess again.

So far, so good

Six days into the new year, and I've eaten out only once! And it was sorta healthy. Chinese food. I mean, there were lots of vegetables. OK, I didn't eat all the vegetables. But it wasn't a greasy burger or corndog, after all.

Tomorrow and Thursday are my three-and-half year checkups with the surgeon and oncologist. Feeling good, so everything should go well. Send some positive vibes, though. Every bit helps.

Healthier 2009

So it's the new year, and I've been thinking about resolutions, as everyone does. How can you help it with all the diet/exercise product infomercials and organization stuff in the stores?

One thing I want to do, as I've said every year, is to get healthier. It means a lot more now than it did, say, five years ago, though. And I have done better, at least somewhat. I eat a little better and exercise more. But I never seemed to be able to lose much weight. Until this year. Once it warmed up this spring to where Buster and I could walk everyday, I lost about 15 pounds without even realizing it! That's the difference, I guess, of walking with an elderly dog vs. walking with a 1-year-old dog.

Really, I'm not that bad off. According to this site, I have a BMI of 26, which is just over the limit of being "overweight." According to that site, I could get down to 100 pounds and be considered normal weight. Yikes. I look of pictures of myself from right after college, when I was about 110, and that just looks too skinny (although it probably didn't help I always wore baggy clothes). I'd be happy with about 130-135, so I don't have far to go.

Anyway, back to resolutions. I've tried lots of different methods of keeping them, and it never really seems to work. So instead of saying "Lose weight" or even more specifically, "Lose 10 pounds," I'm going to go with small steps. So first step for January: Cutting fast food from the diet. This one should be easy, because I've already done a lot of that. I quit eating at McDonald's about a year or so ago after they ripped me off on my change in the drive-through and the manager was a jerk about it, and I lost about five pounds in the two months after that.

I go to Sonic once in a while (OK, more often than I should) for a corndog and tater tots (they probably start fixing them when they see me drive up now). Chicken (popcorn chicken, nuggets, KFC) is my downfall. But I hardly ever eat fast-food hamburgers anymore. And there are healthy options at fast food places. Wendy's (which is one of the best places for lunch here, service-wise) has chili, baked potatoes, salads, etc. There's a Quizno's near where I work, and I'm taking my lunch/dinner to work a lot more often now. So if I can just control the corndog/chicken nugget cravings, this one should be a smooth way to start.

I'll be working on some exercise goals this month, too, but I'm really going to focus on success on one goal each month.

On turning 40

Today I turned 40. Five years ago, I would have said I dreaded that thought. But then, three and a half years ago, something happened. I found a lump in my left breast. It was cancer.

There are cancer survivors who say getting cancer was a blessing. Not to belittle anyone's beliefs, but I think they're crazy. It was hell. And not just for me. My family, my friends, my co-workers all also carried a part of what I went through.

But I got through it. Hell, I kicked its ass.

This year, I've come to realize just how lucky I really was. Lucky I found it when I did, because I never did regular self-exams and didn't think I'd need to go for a mammogram for a few more years. Lucky I'm in a place with a great cancer center and doctors. And lucky I have so many great people around me. It is in, in part, because of them I am here, celebrating 40 years.

So to my family and friends, thank you. Even if you couldn't be here while I was going through my treatment, I felt your support and good thoughts and prayers. And your e-mails and cards got me through some tough days. And to my co-workers who stepped up when I couldn't quite keep up the normal work load or just gave me an ear or even a shoulder to cry on.

And of course, to Nipper, my buddy, who didn't understand what was going on, but was always ready to curl up with me and comfort me.

This year, I have felt better than I have in years -- even before the cancer. The fatigue is gone, the chemo brain is gone. And it's not just a physical difference. It just feels like there are a whole lot of possibilities out there within my reach and all I need to do is grab them. And I will.

Cancer was not a blessing. But it did open my eyes to a lot of things over the last few years. One of those is that there are a lot of great people in my life, and that no matter what I might face in the years ahead, they'll be there to support me. I hope I can be as much to them as they have been to me.

Thanks, all. Here's to the next 40!

Long live journalism?

The Detroit Media Partnership, which publishes the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News, announced big changes are coming in how it publishes. Next spring, the newspapers will deliver print editions to homes only on Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays, their biggest advertising days. They will still print daily, but the remaining days of the week, the size of the print edition will be drastically reduced and will only be available at newsstands. The papers will push online delivery of the news over print.

I can't say that I'm shocked to see this coming, but it makes me pretty sad. However, I think it could well be the most workable business model for newspapers to come along. It certainly makes more sense than cutting your staffs to nothing and cutting budgets so that the reporters and photographers who remain can barely leave the building to cover the news.

Fact is, this writing has been on the wall for a long time; newspapers just refused to believe it. Or maybe averted their eyes. Yes, there is still an audience for print — and I think to some extent there always will be — but it is literally dying. I think that those who are in the early 20s and teens now are likely going to be the last generation to see print newspapers have much of a role in society. There will always be those small-town or neighborhood weeklies and specialty publications, I think, but the bigger papers (even ones like the small daily I work for) have to face that in order to survive, they've got to emphasize online. Home delivery of a print newspaper will, for them, become something "extra," an offering to those who can afford the luxury of sitting at home in their pjs reading the paper while the rest of us rush around with a job or two, or kids to rush to school, or whatever we do to get by while we hear the news on radio or browse on PDAs or cell phones or whatever we'll have in the future.

Our product has never been a piece of paper. It has been delivery of information, wether it be in advertising, articles or opinion. That can be done in many different media. Few papers took broadcasting seriously as competition, fewer still looked at the Internet that way. A very few did, and even embraced that competition. What the Freep is doing is quite likely the next step we have to take to keep delivering our true product.

Lights!

I've got the outdoor Christmas lights on finally. I put them up a week ago, I think, and just now got around to getting them plugged in. Because you know, you have to do it strategically ... what gets plugged into what outlet and so on. I didn't put up as much as I have in the past. I have enough lights to line the front of the roof and around the porch, but the lights I got a few years back, which I really REALLY loved, they, of course, do not make any more. So replacing them is the pits. And it's a lot of work to put them up.

But last year, on the after Christmas sale, I got some blue net lights for the shrubs next to the porch and a couple red rope lights. I debated about winding them up the porch poles, but hated to think about how to plug everything in. So I wound them around the split-rail fence next to the driveway, and I think it looks OK. I put up the cheap, plastic red ribbons on the fence posts. I have plenty of those so if the weather trashes them, I can replace them pretty easy. I might buy more of the rope lights after Christmas again this year and eventually wind it all the way down the fence ... which is actually quite a ways.

I might get to the tree later tonight. It's just a fake tree, and we'd always kept the lights on it when we put it away so every year we just had to straighten it out and put the decorations on it. But I also need to do some housecleaning and some laundry, so we'll see. Plus, I had a pretty busy day, so it'd be nice to just crash for a bit, too.

Talking to the future

Today I talked with a beginning newswriting class at the local university. It's taught by a professor I had when I was there, although I had that class before she started there. She has her class submit stories to the newspaper I work for as part of their assignments and I had edited some of their stories for us to use, so I offered to give them some feedback. I was able to take about an hour to talk to them -- all four of them.

A couple of the students were late, and so was the prof, so I chatted with one of the students while we waited. And when I did start talking to the class, I gave them he basic rundown of my job and offered some feedback to a couple of the students' stories, explaining why we made the kinds of changes we did.

They had some good questions, too, asking about the paper, the kinds of things I thought they should be learning considering the kinds of changes going on journalism, etc. It was kinda fun, really, and it's nice to know there are some younger people still interested in what makes journalism good and not just getting their name and their friends' names in the paper.

You were looking for what?

It always amuses me to check out my blog stats. Yes, I have a counter, and I like checking out how people find my blog. A lot are from friends and family, since I used it to keep people updated on how I was doing during my cancer treatment. But I also get a lot of hits from people who must just be ... weird.

It seems like the current most popular search terms people hit on my site with have to do with this entry, about finding out how I could easily finish my bachelor's degree after 21 years by taking two classes. People are seriously searching for "how to get a bachelor's degree in ..." two days, a week, a month, six months, you name it.

Then there's the recent hit on "how to buy a giant pink Serta sheep." You gotta earn one of those, pal. Buy a mattress in October and you'll get a small one.

I've recently seen searches for "Christina Applegate nude naked porn" lately. Get a life and get out of your parents' basement, OK?

Occasionally, I get hits from people searching for something about Mark Harmon's hairy chest. Only thing I can think of is that this entry about TV and this one — both from the same month — are drawing them in. I'm sure people have been quite disappointed it was my own hairy chest I was talking about.

There is a more serious side. This one, where I talk about the side effects of Novelbine, one of the chemo drugs I had, gets a lot of hits. That was a nasty time, and I'm glad it didn't have to last long. Hope that what I wrote in there might help someone else with their treatment.

Long overdue update

Can't believe it's been almost a month and a half since I posted. There's been lots going on, really.

Being a journalist, I guess I'll start with the biggest news. Mom has moved out of the house. It had been frustrating lately, probably for both of us, and after she returned from her last trip, she moved into the house she bought for my dad to live in when I was starting my cancer treatment. I guess they figured since they didn't kill each other on that trip, they'd be OK. And I'm getting along OK, finding a groove to get into to keep things running smoothly. I hate leaving Buster alone so much, but Mom still goes over to do her laundry and such, so he gets some playtime with her.

The other big news would be that I finally found a second part-time job. It's at the local mall, on the mall maintenance staff. It's a pretty easy job, mainly because it's not that big of a mall. Although we'll see what I think after working by myself tonight, "Black Friday." The Penney's store is staying open until 11 p.m.!

What else? Oh, yeah, I was a model in the Day of Caring back in October:

I don't get all made up ... uh, ever, so this is a rare sight. I ended up buying the outfit, except for the boots, which cost almost as much as the rest of it put together. And in the goodie bag I got for modeling was a little stuffed Serta sheep. Buster stole it out of the bag and made it his. I had to cut the eyeballs off so he wouldn't and choke on them.

That's about it for now. I'll do more later, but I've got to head to work soon, and while writing this I'm also chatting with a friend. Talk about multitasking!