4December2007
Posted by nate under: technology.
why did it take so long to update el blago? By the grace of Jason and Micah I have successfully uninstalled vista and replaced it with xp. And now that the switch has been made I couldn’t be happier. Vista stinks! xp smells like roses! and not the ones you buy in a gas station, the pricey ones you get at a real florist. Or from a guy that interupts your sidewalk dining and tells you to buy one for the lady you’re with. those are probably just gas station rejects, but in the context of eating outside and smelling bus exhaust and all the smokers taking refuge from mn law, they smell really good.
4December2007
Posted by nate under: health.
Nate gets a physical. Before and After.
BEFORE
Tomorrow (Monday) morning I’ll be going in to my new doctor and getting a physical. I’m not sure what his name is because he’s new and we’re not yet on a name basis. What happened to my old doctor? I’ll field that question. I didn’t have one. In fact I’ve never had €œA€ doctor. I’ve never called ‘my’ doctor. In 11th grade I broke my leg in three places and was seen by a doctor (who subsequently discovered I had double pneumonia and thought it best I stick around for a few days). My leg’s and lungs have healed since. In 1997 I had a physical in Nebraska and got a bunch of shots to fly to West Africa. And then in the last 3 years I’ve gone in to random, but very helpful, doctors on two separate occasions for throat problems. The first doctor gave me nasenex (which my wife called natonex) and when that night I saw a commercial for the stuff and after the weird voice at the end went through all the side effects I threw it in the trash. The second doctor tried to give me a strep test and I kept gagging and accidentally slapped her hand away from my mouth on her third attempt. I apologized.
That’s my medical history.
Why the physical now? Oh I don’t know, my wifes been asking me to do it for 8 years, I’m out of shape, I turned 30, my wife made the appointment for me… all good reasons I guess.
Last Wednesday when Jodi told me about the appointment my first reaction was, €œI gotta get fit quick!€ My second reaction, €œBut wait! That’s impossible!€ My third reaction was to sit down and eat some cookies while I came up with a better plan. And a better plan I did come up with: Get in worse shape. It sounds stupid but think about it. If you’re going into a physical and you know you’re out of shape than you can safely assume there’ll be another physical to see what kind of improvements you’ve made. Starting to see the genius? The worse I look at this physical the more room for improvements there are for the next physical. Brilliant. Have I stuck to my plan? Heck yeah. On Wednesday I had bacon and eggs and bacon and bacon for lunch. Wednesday night Micah and I played a fun show with Rachel Kurtz and ended up at Wendy’s where we were pleased to discover the Baconator. The name says it all. On Thursday I put some left over bacon on my sandwich. On Friday something healthy may have slipped in, but that night Jason and I went to Taco Bell on the way to a retreat we were leading music at and on the way home we discovered McDonald’s was selling Eggnog shakes so we bought some. They asked if we wanted fries with them and it seemed like a wonderful idea. It was. More crap food on Saturday, another Eggnog shake, today there was frozen pizza and hot dogs… And at 8:59pm I ate one last piece of leftover pizza. And now I’m not supposed to eat anything till 9:30am tomorrow. Which is probably good ’cause I feel pretty sick. In this case it’s safe to refer to it as the sweet sick of success.
AFTER
Totally uneventful. I’m not obese. I don’t have high blood pressure. They did blood tests so maybe when the results I’ll at least have high cholesterol. All that bacon for nothing? I don’t think so.
4December2007
Posted by nate under: music.
A month ago I was going through one of those ‘church sucks’ phases. It was mostly a result of lame church-related gigs. That and I was going through a little bout of depression. And there was other crap going on in my life. Anyways, it resulted me being in a very low, emotionally unbalanced place. On reading some of my blogs my friend Jonathan, himself an accomplished church rocker and roller and a heckuva stay at home parent, said, €œNate, you need to have a positive Church show where you feel like a sense of community has been formed.€ Well with the help of Jason Deboer-Moran and 40 seventh graders this totally happened. This last weekend Jason and I led music for a seventh grade confirmation retreat at the YMCA camp on the St. Croix in Hudson WI. On Friday I made a trip to Menards and came home to make 20 drums, 15 shakers, and a handful of bottle cap tambourines. Friday night Jason led the kids in a huge drum circle which they totally loved. We sang all kinds of sing alongs which I normally hate leading but they totally got into it and so my hate turned to love. Yippee. On Saturday Jason and I went back out, this time with my 4 year old along for the ride and we had more group singing and drumming, playing in the snow (we got dumped on), and all in all a wonderful day. So not only has my outlook on church been salvaged, the salvaging came from two things I normally avoid at all costs. Sing-a-longs and Seventh graders. I blame/thank the holy spirit. As an Irish friend of mine once wrote €“ it’s all right, it’s all right, all right. She moves in mysterious ways.