Science, bitch

Why I like the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.
First its funny.  Watching people squirm is always funny.
Second, Science.

Science, Science, Science.

Supporting research for things like ALS is good for everything.  It doesn't matter which shitty thing your family has been affected by, researching one disease helps with research for all.

So get off your butts, pour some ice water on your face, and donate some money.  Because the closer we come to ridding the world of ALS, the closer we come to helping those with Parkinson's, Muscular Dystrophy, Multiple Sclerosis, and anyone suffering from paralysis or nerve damage of any type.

I support Science.

Year in Review

 2013 started with so much potential. I had a new job that took me around the world. I was ready to embark on a new journey that I thought would change my world. I was excited and I thought that I was heading in a direction that would bring the most satisfaction out of life.
2013 turned out to be a long parade of inefficiency and misery that made the years I spent in Iraq and Afghanistan seem fun. In short 2013 was the worst. I'm gonna have to chalk it down as a loss. 2013 was a shit show. The only thing that I really have left is the hope for something better. 2014 has to be better. I have a strange optimism about this year. If things suck in 2014, at least I can hold on to the fact that it's not 2013.
I have a strange habit of keeping track of all of the movies I have watched and books that I have read each year. Maybe if I analyze this list I can figure out why 2013 was so horrible. Is it my bad taste in entertainment? Let's see.

The list of book I read in 2013 is surprisingly short.

BOOKS I READ IN 2013
A dance of dragons
What in God's name!
The Gunslinger
The Drawing of the Three
The waste lands
Wizard and glass
I wear the black hat
Ender's Game
Ready Player One
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The movie list is a different story.

MOVIES I WATCHED IN 2013
This is 40
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Total Recall (2012)
Sexy Beast
The Lincoln Lawyer
Dredd
Klown
Small Town Murder Songs
Les Miserables
Argo
Silver Linings Playbook
Lincoln
Undefeated
Django Unchained
Life of Pi
Wreck it Ralph
War Games
The Hobbit: an unexpected journey.
Battleship
Wrath of the titans
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Bernie
The departed
Body of lies
The Bourne identity
Gangs of New York
Blood Diamond
The beach
Here comes the boom
Munich
The fellowship of the ring
The two towers
The return of the king
This is 40
Knocked up
Iron Man
Iron Man 2
The Avengers
Man on fire
I am legend
Training Day
Funny People
Wanted
Jumper
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Seven Psychopaths
Silver linings play book
Killing them softly
The Mexican
Project X
Braveheart
We were soldiers
Gladiator
Goon
Paranormal activity 3
Paranormal activity 4
The Master
God Bless America
V/H/S
The Frighteners
The hunger games
Lockout
Hungry for change
Fat, sick and nearly dead.
The Descendants
Rock of Ages
I, robot
Primer
Timecrimes
Trollhunter
Let the right one in
The Butterfly Effect
The Bucket List
The Untouchables
High Fidelity
The Amazing Spiderman
The Social Network
Little Shop of Horrors
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
OZ the great and powerful
Oblivion
Red Riding : 1974
Red Riding: 1980
Safety not guaranteed
District 9
Jennifer's Body
Iron Man 3
Cloud Atlas
The Cabin in the woods
Star Trek: into darkness
Love and other drugs
Pirate Radio
Kick Ass
J. Edgar
Deja Vu
Jack the giant slayer
21 & over
After Earth
The Hangover part 3
Sky Captain and the World of tomorrow
Donnie Darko
Dead Man's Shoes
Ondine
Movie 43
It's a disaster
The place beyond the pines
Side effects
Rapture palooza
Man of Steel
Super
Sympathy for delicious
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
21 Jump Street
Away we go
Avatar
The amazing Spider-Man
Moulin rouge
Les mesribles
Kiss kiss bang bang
Man of steel
Iron man 3
Life of Pi
Oblivion
The amazing Spider-Man
The dark knight rises
Drinking buddies
This is the end
Crazy Stupid Love
Phenomenon
Premium Rush
Silver linings play book
The heat
Prince Avalanche
The Lifeguard
Pain and gain
Star Trek: into darkness
Star Trek 2
Stranger than fiction
Kick Ass 2
Trance
Now you see me
R.I.P.D.
The Great Gatsby
World War Z
The Iceman
Raiders of the Lost Ark
The Last Crusade
Kings of Summer
Mud
I declare war
Pacific Rim
The Purge
Disconnect
The Way, Way Back
Jackie Brown
Side by side
Room 237
Olympus has fallen
Zodiac
Session 9
White House Down
Sinister
The East
Paradise
Dream catcher
Deliverance
Planes
3:10 to Yuma
Machine Gun Preacher
End of Watch
Division 3
Closer
JFK
The Mortal Instruments
Wall-E
The hunger games: catching fire
Wayne's World
Wayne's world 2
Captain Phillips
Gravity
Frozen
Hell Baby
The Spectacular Now
Don Jon
Elf
Rise of the guardians
Apollo 13
Saving Mr. Banks

Was 2013 bad because I didn't read as much or did my taste in movies influence my view of the events of the year? I think that there might be some other factors at play here, but it's easier to blame Netflix.
Here's to 2014 being better than last year.

This too, shall pass

Sometimes shit just doesn't work out the way you thought it would. Matt and I will be putting our house on the market in February.  He's been unemployed since getting laid off in August.  We love everything about Charlottesville, our neighbors, home, schools, and friends.  But my job doesn't pay enough to support a lifestyle in Charlottesville.

We are grateful to have our health.

Neither of us has cancer, and for that I'm extremely happy.  Our predicament isn't permanent or even long lasting.  

Matt has been deployed three times in four years, we've been married for ten years, and in that time we've moved four times, a fifth time won't break us.

This home and everything it represents, was all we wanted.  It's time to acknowledge that sometimes shit sucks.

We won't have the perfect family neighborhood for much longer, and that's ok, because our little family of three is perfect in itself.  This is the time of year where thankfulness is shoved down our throats, and I am, thankful/grateful/whatever other "full" word you can insert.

We've had plenty of challenges as a family.  Post partum stress, post traumatic stress and hopefully post unemployment stress will be in our future.

But for now, I say thank you to an awesome home and neighborhood that provided us a glimpse into stability that we hope to provide yet again to our daughter.  

Sometimes shit sucks, but we get back up and keep on keepin on.

Man's Best Friend?

Most of you already know how awesome dogs are. Apart from sniffing butts, bombs, and drugs, dogs are now sniffing cancer like it's going out of style. This is probably old news, but check out this article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110131194319.htm.

It's pretty amazing what our furry friends can do. I'm always impressed with new discoveries about dogs. I've seen them find explosives and drugs and whatnot, and the animals love their work. They get so much joy out of finding dangerous items. I saw a video explaining that dogs have a sense of smell 100,000 times more powerful than humans. Wow, right?
But wait a second. My brother has a dog and my brother-in-law has a dog. Those dogs sure screwed the pooch on that one. What the hell were they up to? They were probably playing poker or humping something. Check out this video:
CBS news

So this lady's dog tells her that she has cancer and we can't get a little heads up from our dogs? What the crap? We have a hound dog named Ramona who probably knows that we all have cancer, but she would rather bark at the UPS truck than save a life. There's probably cancer all over this house and our dog won't tell a soul.  Man's best friend indeed. And where the hell is Cesar Millan in all of this? The so called "dog whisperer" hasn't weighed in on any of this. The dogs were probably whispering this stuff to him the entire time. I declare shenanigans.

I'll part with a story of why dogs sniff each other's butts. I'm not sure which elderly person told me this story, but it has stuck with me. Without further ado: Why dogs sniff each other's butts:
A long time ago all of the dogs got together for a dog wide meeting to discuss dog issues. When each dog arrived, it would take its butt off and hang it on the coat rack. During the meeting, a dog catcher showed up and all the dogs scattered. In all the confusion, each dog just grabbed a butt from the coat rack without checking, put it on, and scurried out of the meeting. Ever since then, when two dogs meet they sniff each other's butts to see if that is the butt they left behind at the dog meeting.

I was convinced this was true until my late twenties.

Just for fun; this is our cancer ignoring dog who was paralyzed by a towel placed on her head.

Damn Nature, You Scary

I am not special.  News flash, none of us are.
Scientists just discovered proof of living organisms from 3.5 billion years ago.  Fuck! 

I can't even wrap my brain around 35,000 years.
This is amazing and also very humbling.

Not many of us will make a difference in the world.  We can only make a difference in the immediate few around us.  It is important to be nice to people.

This past weekend we hung out with some new people, and it was a blast.  Its been a long time since Matt and I have hung out with someone that really gets our sense of humor.  The person with whom we got to hang out, recently lost his daughter to cancer.  Its a rare cancer, so much that I'm too lame to remember the name of it.  It causes small tumors up and down the spine and brain stem.  Oddly enough we have also recently become friends with another woman who's spouse died of this same type of cancer two years ago.

I feel like a heel, because I have met this guy once before.  He is great, and when I met him the first time his daughter was alive.  She has since passed, and I didn't know what to say.  Do I bring it up?  This is only the second time I've been in the same room with him.  Do I tell him how very sorry I am, when I cannot imagine the pain that he has endured for the past several years, through her treatments?
I did not.
I am an asshole.
I chose the path of least resistance and that was to not say anything.  I didn't say 'I'm so sorry' or 'how very terrible'  because what if he was just trying to have a good time and not think about shit for a few minutes?  What if he wanted to hang out with people that had never met his daughter?  What if he wanted to NOT talk about cancer for a fucking second?

These are all of the excuses I made in my head for not stopping the laughing, for a god damned second, and saying 'hey guy, I'm sorry and it sucks so hard'.
It does suck, all of it.

Why a seven year old girl?
I know it sounds heartless to all adults that have cancer, but it just sucks so much more, when you hear about the death of a child.

The fact that we, as a race, are still thriving, is in of itself something very cool.  We may not all make a difference to the earth or the landscape or the other people living an ocean, state or city away from us.  But we can be nice to each other.  I do struggle with this sometimes.  In my narrow view of the world, I have my own shit going on.  But I will try to be nice, and to acknowledge that everyone is going through hard stuff.  It may not be the same type of hard, but it is shitty just the same.
We are not special, but we can try to make each other feel a little better about a bad day.

Forced Family Fun

We went to a safari park, and although the only panda was the one on Matt's face, we did get to see some cool things.  

We got to feed giraffes and pet kangaroos and we met a goat that was only a few hours old (ridiculously cute, btw).

Matt and I have decided rather than buying each other gifts for birthdays and anniversaries and other crap, we will partake in forced fun.

No more spending money on gifts, we will now do something as a family.  Granted Sofia will HATE this when she gets older, but us being able to torture her with it, will make it that much better.

33 is the new 73

I'm turning 33 tomorrow.  Whoopie.
I am not really going to talk about cancer, but I will say that I'm very down today.  I'm not sure why exactly.  It just sucks.
Having a birthday should be pleasant, I should be grateful.  I am grateful, I guess, but it has been overshadowed by this horrible nothingness.

I'm not exited, I no longer get the jittery fun feeling of the anticipation.  Its just another day.  When do we lose that?  and more importantly WHY do we lose that?
I want that back.

I want to be thrilled that I'm getting older.  I do want another year to set goals and disappoint myself with them.  But this past year has been especially challenging.  So much so, that I'm just too tired to be excited.  I'm tired, but I'm ready to keep on keeping on.

We lose the feeling of invincibility from our 20s and the 30s are a decade to figure shit out.  I've figured shit out, for the most part.  We are grown ups, we have a kid and a house, and a Subaru,  and a dog.  It is a normal suburban life.  The 30s are our decade to appreciate all of that crap, and not be concerned with aging.  I'm not scared about getting wrinkles or gray hair (mainly because I already have plenty of both) but I'm scared I'm not taking care of myself, but too lazy to do anything about it.

Tom Hanks was on David Letterman the other night, and told everyone he has Type Two diabetes, he then said "ya know, something is gonna kill us all, Dave. Something is gonna kill us all"

Tom (we're on a first name basis) then said:  “My doctor said, ‘Look, if you can weigh as much as you weighed in high school, you will essentially be completely healthy and not have type 2 diabetes.'  And I said to her, 'Well, I’m gonna have type 2 diabetes.’”

If I'm 33 and worried about cancer and blah blah blah, what fun will my life be. I guess I need to be conscious about it, but not let it overwhelm me, because something's gonna kill us all.

I've had two trains of thought, since our brothers were diagnosed.
1) "it doesn't fucking matter, eat that doughnut, fuck it, eat 10, and do a snow angel in the powdered sugar and cartwheel into chocolate frosting"
2) "oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, We need to buy every book Michael Pollan has ever written and spend our life savings on eating organic and juicing, and never even smelling another fast food restaurant."

As you can see, we struggle with this several times a day.  I love baking, and I'm pretty damn good at it.  So I want to eat yummy cakes and cookies that I bake.  I also love cooking, and guess what, I'm pretty fucking amazing at that too.  So we eat well in our house.  But dammit if McDonald's doesn't make a really tasty cheeseburger.  So I guess moderation will become our mantra.

Now I'm going to go eat another piece of pumpkin spice cake with cream cheese icing on it, then throw the rest in the trash can, so I can start fresh on my 33rd Birthday.  

Wish me luck homies.