Gettin' this 2009 Party Started

Where do I start? There is so much to talk about this year.

"Hope and Change"
Economics
Sickness
New Jobs/Lost jobs
New Shows
New friends

Well... I had a lot of hope and knew there would be change... but... let's just say that I've debated for months whether or not to divide this blogs readership into two very passionate camps. Do I discuss politics or do I practice unbiased journalistic integrity like the journalists I wish we had in the lamestream media who claim to be unbiased. (sigh...) I like to use logic and reason and I know you do too so all I know is that I'm getting closer to an answer. More to come on that.

Economics isn't hard you just need to have a don't-rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul kind of mentality to avoid the ridiculous and avoidable mess we got ourselves into. We've got a moral problem here not a political left or political right problem. All I know is that a "spendulous" or "porkulous" bill won't solve our problems, it will just delay our recovery. I hope to expand on that soon.

Boy was I sick around Christmas. Bronchitis. I can't complain, knowing in comparison the suffering that goes on but I seriously thought I was going to pass out at one point waiting in the urgent care office. It was at that point that I had to get my mental strength "game on".

On one hand I am so happy I got a new job and on the other I feel bad sharing it with certain people. Especially, my brother who lost his. Well, he's just out of work at this time. He wasn't fired or anything like that. He has been a job-application-writin' fool for the last few weeks and I'm very proud of him. Sometimes havin' a kid can really motivate you even more to find some income.

"Biggest Loser." Ever heard of it? Yeah, I'm sure you have. Great TV show. We will be sad when it is over. But talk about seeing peoples lives change for the better. My wife and I love to watch it for that reason. Some weeks I feel guilty sitting on the couch watching. So during commercials I'll get on the floor and do push ups or whatever Bob or Jillian tell me to do.

Love Dare! Did you go cast your vote to Hollywood by watching Fireproof while it was still in theaters? If not check it out. Buy the DVD and especially if you're married go buy the Love Dare book. My wife and I are daring each other with other young married couples. I can tell you that in just five days it's done huge things for me personally. Not what I get from my wife but what I've been able to give to her and man it's so much better than just being selfish. I'm a first born and man is it hard not to be selfish. My wife and I have been sick that last week or so and it's given me ample opportunity to be selfish or to wait on her hand and foot and I've much more enjoyed waiting on her hand and foot. Don't knock it 'til ya try it.

Well that is it for this edition of A Few Thoughts Captive in this greatest nation on God's green earth.

The Shack and The Bug

It had crossed my mind... wouldn't it be cool to find a lady bug and place it right next to the fake one... but planning this? Finding a lady bug to shoot these shots? But when I saw the bug that we brought in the house with our new Christmas tree Saturday, I thought of the book. I'm 3/4 of the way through reading it. Great book. I still have some questions though. Beautiful imagery. You're not a real man until you get choked up while reading this.

And those of you photo pros need to know this was taken with a point-and-shoot Sony DSC-P150 7.2MP with macro turned on. That's it.

Yes. I'm still alive!

Just so you know... I did enjoy the Shamrock run a few months back and am training hard for the Hood to Coast Relay next month. The Race for the homeless is right around the corner so that will be a nice 10K to keep me trained up. I have a few posts still in draft mode from months ago waiting on pictures so I'll try to get those out soon. Well... off to work and enjoy your Thursday!

We've got a national radio show caller here

"Let's go to uhh... let's go to Joy in Vancouver, Washington. Hi Joy, Dennis Prager."

Two days in a row she heard those words with her heart a poundin'. Her excitement and giddyness just talking about when she called in to The Dennis Prager Show cracks me up!

If you want to hear her, follow these hopefully simple steps. I've tried to find the URLs to the podcasts and post it here but Apple has these things pretty well hidden.

1. Fire up your iTunes
2. Search for the "Townhall.com: Dennis Prager" podcast (you don't need an iPod to hear this)
3. Subscribe to it.
4. Get (download) Monday's broadcast(3/9/08, yes the date is wrong) hour 3 (H3: No Men Allowed in Harvard Gym)
5. Press play and listen to the whole thing or skip ahead to about 15min 30sec.

She's also on air Tuesday (3/10, yes this one is off too) briefly hour 3 again (29:15), this time on the topic of "thoughts versus deeds."

I jokingly told her she should call him again before the week is out and say, "Hi Dennis. This is Joy again. I just thought that really we should just host this show together. So, I'll be calling in every day bringing you great ideas and comments for your listeners to ponder. What do you think?"

What I love about Monday's is how she really stumped him with her question and then she laughed at what he said which made him laugh. Needless to say we both had a lot of fun this week playing those clips over and over again cracking up about how silly this whole thing is.

It's still really cool though. She handled herself well. She was eloquent and to the point bringing intelligent insight into some very relevant current events... basically every host's dream caller to a call-in show. Oh, did I mention that this was a NATIONAL call-in show by the way?

P.S. He had Cesar Millan on his show within the last few months.

Dog Whisperer show taking submissions from Portland

I don't know if you know but my wife and I are... well you could say we are "Dog Whisperer" or Cesar Millan junkies. Actually, I take that back, my parents are; retired and with a DVR watching at least two episodes a day. They now claim to have seen all three seasons in just a matter of a few short months.

We have a little doggie named Buddy that needs some rehabilitation and his owners need some training. As Cesar often says, "I rehabilitate dogs and train people. I love what I do!" So, pre-Cesar we thought all along that we just had a problem child. But now we've come to realize that we're the problem parents so-to-speak. We're learning to become calm-assertive pack leaders. A good friend sent us a Craigslist ad that says Cesar was coming to town in February. Well that has come and gone but his website says otherwise.

So we hope to put together a 5 minute video submission to see if he can come help us with Buddy. I better say up front though that I cannot post the submission online due to copyright/legal issues, otherwise I would love to share with you what we sent in. However, if you stop by for a visit some time we would love to show you the video.

So stay tuned. You just may get to see "the Bud" (as we call him) on the small screen and us humiliated because of our poor pack leadership skills.

UPDATE 12/8/2008: We decided against submitting a video because trying to film Buddy at his worst was not only time-sensitive but also we had to borrow a camera to do it. People often wanted their camera back before we could catch him doing bad things.

"Rusty... Humphries... HECK YA!!!!" at Beaches

Last night (Feb 5, 2008) my wife and I had the opportunity to go see Rusty Humphries broadcasting live from Beaches Restaurant on the Columbia River in Vancouver, WA. Why is that cool? Well, in case you've never heard of him, he's a national radio talk show host. He's hilarious, says what he thinks without abandon and really gets people fired up about various topics. What talk show host doesn't?

He was there to help us people in da 'Couve celebrate a little Super Tuesday action even if we're not voting in the primary until next week? Odd isn't it? Was anybody surprised at the results of the primaries in the "all important" states?

I tell ya it's been exciting and fun to hear the various hosts rant and rave about the candidates for the past year when each candidate came out of the wood work to start down their trails and pound the pavement. But that's nothin' compared to the energy you feel when you're actually getting out there and mixin' and a minglin' with other political junkies.

I saw one very classy middle aged woman wearing a nice sweater with a Mitt Romney bumper sticker across her chest. We could hardly get into the parking lot without noticing a man holding up a huge blinking Ron Paul sign. At first we thought it was to rub Ron Paul in Rusty's face because he is not a fan. But Beaches was having a Super Tuesday party regardless of Rusty taking over half of the always cramped bar.

Tornado Alley in Vancouver, WA

Yes. It's true. Vancouver actually had a tornado touch down in a few places. The clouds looked ominous and eery and some damage was done but I haven't heard of any injuries. Check out the tornado article from our local paper The Columbian.