The best part of this week?

It’s over.

Eyes on the skies

We’re supposed to have a spring time severe weather outbreak here this evening so I’m keeping an eye on what is happening west of us. These storms in Arkansas, where there have already been confirmed tornado touchdowns, will be here in around 5 to 6 hours.

It’s way early for this kind of weather but it’s also way too warm for this time of the year. It’s also way too early for me to have to start paying the roofers to repair storm damage.

Big Bang Thursday

Thursday means Big Bang Theory and Person of Interest. It’s also the only night of the week that sort of centers around TV for me.

Since I got my refurb Dell Streak 7, I rarely use my iPod Touch anymore. I’ve been playing IHeartRadio quite a lot. I listen to a lot of 70’s music and I’m sure they will be inserting AARP and Geritol commercials into my feed at some point. You can listen to my Fleetwood Mac themed station here.

Other than that, I am still battling sinus woes. I woke up with another headache this morning at 4:15AM. It’s really starting to get annoying. And, the earlier I get up, the earlier I want to go back to sleep. I’ve also “wrenched” my back (that’s the only word I can think to describe the constant discomfort). Getting old is a real pain – literally.

At least there is just one more day in this week.

Tuesday: I get sick, fuss about work, finish The Fault in Our Stars, and watch Courageous all in just 23 hours

Though I have never written about it here before, I have a fun thing called chronic hypoglycemia. This is really just a fancy term for low blood sugar that comes and goes. I spent a lot of time going to the doctor with it when I was a kid. As an adult, I’ve had to be quite careful what I eat and what I don’t eat. I typically only have what I would call “a bad attack” once every six months or so.

The odd part is that I am never really sure what will turn a mild (better eat something now) deal into a full blown (I don’t have enough energy to walk and wonder if I am in need of an ambulance) deal. Also, these things happen so rarely that I typically miss whatever signs there are that would warn me that the little blood sugar dwarves are about to have a riot in my insides.

Before I went to bed last night, I felt a small headache coming on. We had a big change in the weather coming so I thought it must be sinuses. I woke up at midnight still hurting and took some sinus pills. Then, I woke up at 2AM and thought my head was coming off my body and barely had enough energy to get from the bed to the bathroom thinking this was a stomach bug because, well, don’t worry about that part. That’s when it hit me that this was the blood sugar plummeting. Thus we have the paradox of low blood sugar – you must eat to recover but you feel so bad that the last thing you want to do is eat. And, I get so nervous and edgy that I can’t lay down. I have to sit up for all of this because laying down seems to make it worse.

I finally ate enough Ritz crackers and drank enough Coke to start to feel alive again but I never could go back to sleep. So, here I am, 23 hours later, sitting at the kitchen table typing out another entry in the blog. Also, you really need a full day and a night of sleep to get over a real good low blood sugar spell so I felt like warmed over in the hot sunshine crap all day and it was busy as all get out at work but I still propped myself up in my office chair and just kept going.

Sitting in the office window all day gave me a front row seat to all of the lightning. I had to finally close the blinds since I have no desire to leave this world being electrocuted while filling in a Sharepoint form.

The tornado missed us here but a bit west and a bit south and a bit north of us people had roofs ripped off. We complain about the snow but then get a reminder of just how nasty spring gets around here these days.

Now, I can’t sleep. Partially because I was stupid enough to look at my Blackberry at 7PM and saw an email that made me so angry that I nearly spit fire and partially because I still had 150 pages to go in The Fault in Our Stars at 9PM and got so engrossed in it that I had to finish the rest of the book and now I can’t stop thinking about it. I had read a review somewhere that said it was as good Catcher in the Rye,  which I have read multiple times starting in 1987. I disagree. It was better than Catcher in the Rye because these characters never stopped caring and never stopped trying. It was funny, it was honest, and yes, it was sad. One thing is certain – I may never read The Catcher in the Rye again.

Even sadder than the things in the book that I will not reveal here, it is over and part of the book is about another book that the main character is sad about because it ended with so many questions. TFIOS didn’t end with a ton of unanswered questions but it did leave you hoping for more and I personally hope that the assumption I have about the way the story would have truly ended if it were another 50 pages long might not really be right. At least us readers are left with that hope.

It was also the first real book, as in not an e-book, that I have read in a long time and I really found myself getting frustrated with the pages wanting to close and not being able to get comfortable holding the book. Either the Nook has really spoiled me or I am achieving a level of fantastic laziness in my middle age. Now I have to figure out what I am going to read next.

Oh! I almost forgot but after supper we did sit down and (in between work email-related rage fits) watch Courageous. We had watched Fireproof a while back and these movies are pretty similar. I was curious about this one and I was a bit let down. To me, Fireproof was much more believable.  I think one problem was that there were too many characters in Courageous and they were trying to tell too many stories and teach too many moral lessons. This also rushed the whole story.

A lot of people seem to think it is a life-changing movie but I just kept thinking that maybe things happen like this in a Christian-themed Disney World but not in real life. I tend to think that there is a certain danger in presenting people with a false idea that being a Christian solves (or leads to a nearly immediate solution of) all of our problems. When people realize that is not the case, they turn away from being a Christian and go right back to “winging it”. Faith means trying to live with the right goals in mind and trying to look to a higher power when things are and are not going right. You’re not going to hit the mark every time and you’re not going to get the answer you want every time.

That was my Tuesday – take it or leave it. At times, I would have rather left it but all-in-all it worked out just fine.

Wynton Marsalis talks about the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

CBS This Morning really seems to get better everyday. I taped it this morning so I could go back and watch it later and I’m glad I did. This is one of the best tributes to Dr. King that I have ever seen.

The Weekend in Pictures

We still have a lot of coughing going on in this house as the upper respiratory crud is continuing to make the rounds. Everyone seems to be getting better but the progress is very slow. It’s annoyingly slow. At least we’re not having an upchuck fest like these people in Canada. I think I had a sympathetic stomach ache just reading about it.

The weekend for the kids started on Friday due to our massive blizzard that came in Thursday afternoon. Watch this video to relive the horror of the 1/2 inch of snow we got that closed down all of the schools and totally gridlocked all traffic.

Here is the pic from Friday night. I think we were on the way to Chili’s. It was o.k., average, whatever. I would have preferred Waffle House.

I drove over to see my parents on Saturday. Check out all of the salt still on the roads!

I got back home to find my pre-ordered copy of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars had finally arrived! I follow John Green on Twitter and Tumblr and I kept reading all of these incredible reviews of this book so I had to order it. I just started reading it today so I’ll post a quick review when I am done.

John Green signed 150,000 preorders yet Walmart managed to get rare unsigned copies and sent me one! Am I special or what?!?

I guess I could return it to Walmart for a signed copy (they had some left a couple of days ago) but I’m just going to suck it up and keep my ultra-rare unsigned copy.

And, yes, you might think I am a bit old to be reading young adult but John Green is nothing like the little bit of young adult I read growing up. Remember I Am The Cheese or A Separate Peace? The Young Adult category is nothing like that now. The big plus is that this will get handed down to the kids when they are old enough to read it.

That leads us to Saturday night and another picture. It was still pretty windy when I took this one.

Now it is Sunday and we weren’t worth two dollars today. Driving west in the afternoon is no fun at all.

For some reason, I felt the need to commemorate mile 143,538 in the amazing Ford Contour.

That’s my weekend. I’m watching some Golden Globes now. Everyone but me is off tomorrow so I am quite jealous. There is a nice grocery list for them to deal with tomorrow so at least they will be tortured a little. That makes me feel better.

A new level in laziness – achieved

Why turn around to watch the news on TV when you can pop in your Hauppauge WinTV-HVR850 USB tv tuner in your laptop and stick an antenna up in the window?

I bought this thing almost three years ago and doubt I’ve used it for more than 3 hours. I spent around 10 hours a day working on the laptop and I kept thinking – I wish I could catch the news or weather without having to stop what I am working on. Voila! I open WinTV and there is our local CBS station in a nice window right next to what I am working on.

Next, I just need to install a potty in my work chair and bring in a mini fridge.