Bag of Randomness for Monday, February 13, 2017

  • There should be a Bag of Randomness for tomorrow but I’m not sure what the rest of the week will look like.
  • For BoyGeeding’s upcoming birthday this week I started to make a Death Star pinata with him and his sister. I knew it was going to get messy, but I didn’t think it would get that messy. Also, the balloon popped halfway through which meant we I had to start over.
  • I wear a Fitbit but haven’t really been utilizing it until the last 25 days or so. I saw a National Geographic channel special about the fat that can accumulate around the heart when one doesn’t take care of himself during his twenties and thirties but how one can decrease the fat by moderate exercise and splitting it up during the day. At the same time, a friend step challenged me on the Fitbit app and then I decided to commit to at least 10,000 steps a day. Before, I’d get lucky if I’d break 5,000. Part of the limited steps comes from working from home and no long walks from the parking lot, meeting rooms, restrooms, and a lot of it comes from being lazy. Since Thanksgiving, I’ve stopped tracking my weight and blood pressure on a daily basis and it was starting to show. So now I’m on a streak of about 25 days of at least 10,000 steps a day and I’m surprised to see my resting heart rate has dropped ten points. I was working out before, mainly weights for about 20 minutes a day and thought my cardio was adequate. Well, I was wrong. Here’s hoping I can keep this up.
  • Mark Cuban was on Friday’s BaD Radio and admitted to taking Propecia to fight off hair loss. I wish the guys would have pushed him just a tad more and get him to admitted to dying his hair.
  • While watching ‘CBS Sunday Morning’ yesterday, I learned Tyrannosaurus Rex is Latin for “the Tyrant King.” The show also had a segment on the “bro hug” with the first part of the story based at Baylor. WifeGeeding was surprised to see the communications professor who was interviewed. He was in WifeGeeding’s youth group and his father was the youth minister. The youth minister was well loved, he died of a heart attack the day after WifeGeeding’s prom, sometime after teaching Sunday school.
  • A Valentine’s Day dance in Henryetta, Oklahoma was canceled after it was discovered that an old city ordinance bans dancing within 500 feet of a church.
  • Mississippi may bring back firing-squad executions
    • Concerned by recent court challenges and practical constraints that make execution by lethal injection increasingly precarious, Mississippi is taking preemptive action. The state legislature introduced House Bill 638, which proposes adding firing squad, electrocution, and gas chamber to the list of approved execution methods in Mississippi.
  • Kate McKinnon is great at portraying politicians, and she does a wide range –  Hillary Clinton, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Jeff Sessions, Angela Merkel, Kellyanne Conway, Betsy DeVos, and I’m sure I’ve left a few off.
  • The Bluebonnets Have Already Arrived – We love our state flower, of course, but it’s a little early for them to be blooming, right?
  • While listening to NPR’s “A Way With Words” it was stated it’s common for the people on the East Coast to say “I’m calling out sick” as opposed to “I’m calling in sick” and “I’m standing on line” as opposed to “I’m standing in line.” I’m not used to listening to East Coast folks.
  • I watched about ten minutes of the Grammys and about five of those minutes was an awesome Target commercial.
  • I’ve only started to follow Chelsea Clinton on Twitter for a couple days, but the woman has become unleashed.
  • I heard a comedian talk about the subject of her comedy, that she doesn’t feel comfortable “punching down” but will happily “punch up”.
  • It was neat seeing Ben Stiller tweet about Dirk
  • I’m reminded of the three-eyed-fish on ‘The Simpsons’ – Mysterious orange alligator spotted in South Carolina
  • An attention getting headline from The Dallas Morning News which has a little bit of everything – Gay porn star with Nazi tattoos arrested in meth raid that rattled Oak Lawn
  • Random “What if?” – What if someone or some entity bought Twitter and decided to just shut it down (not that it would ever happen), how would that affect the Trump presidency? Would updating his Facebook page make up for no Twitter?
  • Something from Gary Provost regarding writing:
    • “This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”
  • I’ll end by sharing these two videos I tweeted over the weekend. One if of OtherDogGeeding dreaming, the other is something I’ve mentioned many times before, DaughterGeeding taking her brother’s hand as they walk to the front of the church for children’s church. The hand holding, her looking over her little brother always touches my heart, and him allowing her. I know it’s not going to last much longer, he’s going to tire of it, but for now, I’ll soak it in as much as I can.

 

 

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7 Responses to Bag of Randomness for Monday, February 13, 2017

  1. John Mackovic says:

    it's "Tyrant Lizard King"

  2. Ben W. says:

    "There should be a Bag of Randomness for tomorrow but I’m not sure what the rest of the week will look like." Dang, your Valentine's Day plans must be a lot more interesting than mine…

  3. Towski says:

    Henryetta, OK. high school home of Troy Aikman. Now I'm picturing him leading some sort of Footloose style dance revolt.

  4. Triple Fake says:

    The alligator-turned-orange is obviously a show of support for Trump and his color shifting hair. Or maybe it migrated from Florida…home of the Orange Bowl!

    I don't understand the cancellation of the dance.
    The organizer says "We can't pick and choose what laws we uphold", but they evidently do. They've said it hasn't been (and won't be) enforced. You can pick which laws to break, and this should be one of them. If nothing else, it might get the ball rolling to repeal it.

  5. John Mackovic says:

    Be sure to remind BoyGeeding to aim for the thermal exhaust port when hitting that pinata!

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