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A couple days ago I picked up the Nike + iPod Sport Kit hoping it would work with the 5th generation 80GB iPod I had just picked up. I was 99% sure it would only work with the Nano, but that 1% of hope forced me to buy it. For the record, the Sport Kit only works with the Nano today. Lesson learned.

Fortunately my wife has a 4GB Nano that I was able to use instead. I also do not have the official Nike shoe that has a place to store the device, but I just worked it under my shoe laces and headed out for a 2 mile walk this morning. I started walking outside this week because I just can’t stand using the treadmill and I really have to do something. All the extra weight is causing me to snore really loud and my wife says I stop breathing 100 times an hour when I sleep. I really don’t feel like dealing with Sleep Apnea right now, and since the main cause of it is obesity I decided to try to cure myself through exercise.

If you like to walk or go for a run you will really like this little device. It’s so small you never notice it is there and it is constantly communicating with your iPod while you walk. A piece of advice though, the first thing you should do on your first run or walk is calibrate it with a distance you know. I didn’t do that this morning and after my first mile my Nano said I had gone 1.14 miles. I decided to calibrate it for my second mile, and I’ll know how well that worked out when I go for my walk tomorrow.

After you walk or run, you can then sync your Nano and it will upload your data to the Nike website and you can track your progress and set goals. This is really pretty slick. I never cared about it when Apple announced this new device, but now that I have used it I think I am hooked. I’m looking forward to the next time I walk with it. I especially like how it talks to you. Nice touch. For me this was definitely worth the 30 bucks.

It’s hard to believe that 11 years ago Megan came in to our life.  Time is really just flying by.  It was exciting and terrifying all at the same time.  That’s to be expected with any first time parents, but Megan made things a lot more interesting.  She was born prematurely at 28 weeks, weighing in at a whopping 1lb 15oz.  She quickly lost 3oz and dropped to 1lb 12oz.  When you’re that tiny, 3oz is a lot of weight.

Valerie had preeclampsia and had to spend a couple weeks in the hospital before they had no choice but to induce labor or we would lose Megan.  We later learned that Valerie’s preeclampsia was due to a blood disorder called Factor V Leiden - she basically over clots.  Thankfully they learned all of this before we had Bailey, so Valerie had to give herself injections every day during that pregnancy.

Megan spent the first 56 days of her life in an incubator.  Every day we would visit her in the NICU.  I’ve never washed my hands so many times in my life, but it was all worth it.  It’s hard to believe looking at her now, but my wedding ring would fit on her ankle.  She was so  tiny - any furry!  At that age they have not yet lost all of their fur, so that was a little interesting.  That’s where she picked up the nickname of “our little monkey.”  It was weeks before we got to see her without all sorts of tape on her face from the tubes keeping her breathing and fed.

Today Megan is a beautiful, normal, goofy 5th grader that I couldn’t be more proud of.  I can’t imaging how boring life would be around here without her.  It’s funny, but all the headaches that came along with the “terrible two’s’ (and three’s!) are gone.  I barely remember that stuff now.

So Happy Birthday Megan, and a huge thank you to the staff at Magee Women’s Hospital for doing everything they could to make sure Megan survived.  We’ll never be able to repay you.

I made it to my dental checkup to get my regular cleaning. Normally my Dentist does the cleaning but he is now in an office where there are dental hygenists. So a very nice woman cleaned my teeth this time. It was an hour and 15 minutes of torture.

As she cleaned my teeth she asked me who normally does the cleaning and I pointed to my Dentist. “It figures,” she said, “they spend 6 weeks on cleaning and then move on to something else. We spend 2 years on this and get thrown out of school if we do it wrong!”

Well, I don’t know what my Dentist normally does while he is in there, but the hygenist decided it would be nice if she spent an hour of our time together beneath my gum line. A couple of times she said she could tell she was hurting me. I told her I was having trouble finding my “happy place.” It was an experience I’ll never forget and I guarantee you that you will not find anyone on the planet that is brushing, flossing, and rinsing more than I am so that I never have to go through it again. I even bought a Sonicare toothbrush and tried it for the first time tonight. The problem is it tickles until you get used to it so brushing is now an event.

I’m looking forward to the next checkup. She’ll find no plaque on me.

That’s how long it took Valerie and her sister Marsha to walk the Cleveland Marathon today. Together they raised almost $4000 for the American Stroke Association and today they finally got to put all of the hard work and training to use. I couldn’t be more proud. The kids and I snuck up to Cleveland to be at the finish line when they crossed. They were definitely surprised.

Marathon pictures HERE.

While you’re checking out the Marathon pictures, check out the pictures I took while walking around Cleveland. Since I’m from Pittsburgh I’m not really allowed to like Cleveland (it’s in the official Steelers fan handbook). This was my first trip up there and I was blown away by how nice it is. We’ll definitely plan a longer trip and check out the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, etc. Beautiful city.

Cleveland pictures HERE.

All month I have been walking on the treadmill for 45 minutes a day trying to do some form of exercise. It gets pretty boring, but I listen to the iPod or watch DVDs to pass the time. I decided to move over to the elliptical machine today to change things up a bit. 45 minutes a day on the treadmill did nothing to prepare me for the elliptical because after 7 minutes on it I was face down on the carpet gasping for air like a fish out of water. My wife cruises right through it for more than 30 minutes with no problems. Embarrassing.

My wife is walking a marathon in May to raise money for stroke research with the American Stroke Association. It’s a great cause and anyone can donate. The ASA even setup a nice web site where you can donate on the Internet.

You don’t have to know us to make a donation. It’s a great cause and they need all of our help.

Did you know…

…every 45 seconds someone suffers a stroke?
…every 3.1 minutes someone dies of a stroke?
…there are 4.4 million stroke survivors?
…28% of people who have strokes are under the age of 65?

Click HERE to go to Valerie’s ASA site and help raise funds for the American Stroke Association. It’s a new year and you know you can always use another tax deduction.

Thanks.

As with most things in my life, I need incentive to get off my butt and do something. Weight loss is a funny thing. Last year we held the Biggest Loser in the Neighborhood contest and I did OK, but I am exactly the same weight I was last year at this time.

The repercussions from most of the incentives to lose the weight were mainly sad:

Do it for your kids.
Do it for your family
Do it for your health

Blah blah blah. I think I might have thought of the key this morning in the shower. I finally came up with something that doesn’t end in sad, but ends in mad. Really mad!

It goes back to the health thing but I always figured that I work really, really hard so my family will be taken care of. Bills are paid, nice house, some savings, retirement savings, life insurance. They’ll be taken care of if something would happen to me. Sad? Sure. But life tends to move on, people remarry, the sun will rise tomorrow.

Then it hit me. Wait a minute, it would be bad enough to have my wife remarry and the kids know someone else as Daddy. But no way am I going to let someone else come in to my life, live in my house, love my kids, drive my car, sleep with my hot wife, and spend my freakin’ money! No way.

Anger, a powerful motivator. Let’s see if it works this time.

If this really works this could be one of the greatest things I’ll get to see in my lifetime.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051006/hl_nm/merck_cervical_dc

We questioned why we couldn’t cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.

Read the entire story here - http://www.livejournal.com/users/sfsocialists/3687.html

My youngest daughter has never had an easy time with brushing her teeth and flossing. She has a terrible gag reflex and will do just about anything she can to get out of brushing well. She tries hard though.

Tonight she was brushing her teeth and flossing for a long time when she finally came to us and asked for help. She thought she had some popcorn from her bedtime snack stuck in her teeth and she couldn’t get it out. She tried and tried and even had my wife in there trying. I finally went and grabbed a flashlight so that we can see what was going on in there.

Ends up she didn’t have popcorn stuck in here teeth; she had a new tooth coming in. A new molar. So she’s pretty excited about a new tooth since she just lost one of her other teeth, but she was really getting annoyed at the “red stuff” that was coming out of her mouth when she was flossing. I guess we’ll explain that one to her when she is more awake.