Crazy Games

I seem to have a penchant for going to crazy Twins games at the Metrodome. I don't go to very many games, maybe a couple each year, but I was at the infamous Chuck Knoblauch game with the Yankees a few years ago when the fans in left field kept throwing things (lots of hotdogs and bottles and a few balls) onto the field at Knoblauch until Joe Torre pulled his team off of the field in the middle of the inning for their safety. Tom Kelly eventually walked all the way out to left field to get people to stop so the Twins wouldn't have to forfeit. If you go to the Chuck Knoblauch wiki page, you'll even see a short reference to this game.

I was also at the Twins game where Santana struck out 17 batters. That broke a club record, and Joe Nathan added two more strikeouts in the 9th inning. That game was a lot of fun.

Last night's game, however, was much more like the Knoblauch game than the Santana game. It started when Denard Span was hit by a pitch. Instead of getting to go to first base, the third base umpire called it a strike since he was trying to bunt. Gardenhire fumed and came out onto the field to scream at the umpire for quite awhile. He was ejected, and as he was finally leaving he drop-kicked his hat about 15 feet into the air and left it on the field. That was all the crowd needed to go crazy and start throwing their own hats onto the field. After a few minutes of that, with some baseballs being thrown onto the field, Ozzie Guillen pulled the White Sox off the field in the middle of the inning. We got the same repeated warnings saying that if people didn't stop, the Twins would have to forfeit the game. Things finally calmed down and the Twins went on to win the game.

DotD: Portable solar power pack for your cell phone, digital camera, or iPod for $17.99. Pretty geeky and cheap at the same time.

Mobile Blogging

My how adventurous I've become. I am writing a post on my phone for the first time. And of course, in geeky fashion, I am doing it not because I have to, but because I can. I am sitting in front of my computer and typing on my new iPhone.

The yet-to-be-renamed Ms. Fiancé is going to be interviewed tomorrow by ABC about one of her patients. She's a pretty big deal. :-)

As for me, going to Viking's training camp was great. I'm always excited for football season. I just bought tickets for the Stielers preseason game at the dome. The inlaws are Stielers fans and are coming up for the game. My parental units are also coming with to help me cheer for the Vikes.

I finished the summer softball season with the highest on-base percentage on the team. Not a bad change from last year, when I was near the bottom. I'm getting luckier with age.

Deal of the day: Vikings training camp in Mankato. Free to get in, you just have to pay $5 to park all day if you park at the stadium.

Removing Viruses, Trojans, and Spyware!

A late night post from the Mac Man while I attempt to remove internet viruses, trojans, and spyware from a friend's computer. It's loaded. You boot up the machine and you instantly start getting flooded with pop-ups, fake security warnings, etc. Reminds my of one more reason I really enjoy my Macs.

The wife and I got a bunch of pictures and wall-hanging-things hung up Sunday night. Those are the kinds of things that I just don't think about, but they add a little character to the otherwise empty walls. 

My volleyball team won 2 of 3 games tonight, which was a nice change of pace from the previous few weeks. We started off undefeated for a couple of weeks, and then it went downhill fast, to the point that we didn't win a game for a few weeks. The ref has some sort of family emergency, so he left right before we were about to start. The people we played were good sports, however, and we were all pretty easy-going on calls.

The new iPhone was announced yesterday, as expected, and I'm super pumped. My contract with Verizon has been up since April and I've been waiting for the new iPhone to be announced to switch. The new version has faster internet (3G), GPS, and longer battery life, among other things. It costs a lot less up front than the old iPhone, but the data plan now costs more so over the span of a 2 year contract it really ends up costing the same. The math still works out in favor of it over my Treo, however, since Verizon's data plans are more expensive and a new Treo wouldn't be that much cheaper up front than the new iPhone. The release date of July 11th can't come soon enough, although I'm going camping that weekend and will not be near a store for the launch.

DotD: Musical pillow for $1.19. Just plug in your MP3 player and fall asleep to Kutlass.

What's new in your world?

February, huh? Yeah, it's been a little while. And even that was sort of cheating. December before that. Wowsers!

Life has been a little bit busy lately, and I haven't really been sitting around at the computer blogging, reading blogs, or hanging around facebook. Sorry if you all feel neglected, it was not my intent. 

The big news since the last post is that I am a freshly-minted husband. I have the jewelry to prove it. Married life has been great so far. I'm no longer the only person who feeds and walks the dog (Mac), the cooking has more variety, and most importantly of all, I now have half the closet and dresser space I used to have. It's my way of working on the simple life. ;-)

The other cool thing that I did recently was play 7 games of softball in 2 days. I played in a church league tournament this past Saturday, and we ended up playing 5 games that day: 9:00 am, 11:00 am, 1:00 pm, 2:00 pm, and 3:00 pm. Whew! Then I had my normal double-header on Sunday  night as well. It was a ton of fun, but I got some nice sunburn on my face, neck, and arms. Oh, and my legs were just a tad sore...

I hope to be a little more regular in posting again, but don't get your hopes up yet Dan on a daily schedule. Baby steps.

DotD: Free MacBook Pro battery. Okay, so it's not for everyone, but my laptop has been acting strangely when running off of the battery recently. It would be fully charged and then after about 20 minutes on the battery, it would just shut off with no warning. It's only about 1.5 years old, and I don't use it every day or anything, so the battery should be just fine. I took it into the Apple Store today, they confirmed that the battery was defective, and gave me a brand new battery right on the spot for free. They never even asked me for paperwork or anything, other than to sign the form saying they performed the work and I owed nothing. Sweet!

A post to post for lack of posts

So yeah, life has been a bit busy recently. But you already knew that since it's been two months since my last post. Sorry, this one probably won't fill that void in your life, since I need to get to work, but I did want you all to know that I am still alive and kicking. And being kicked. By kickers.

I did, however, finally watch Transformers and Live Free or Die Hard. Very good flicks! I also recently watched the movie Joshua, but as usual, the book was way better than the movie. 

That's all for now!

Chewing on the right

Well, I had surgery yesterday.

You know, they kind where they cut out gum tissue from the roof of you mouth, and then graft it onto the front of you lower teeth.

What, you haven't done that? Weird, I figured everyone has at least once...

Yep, I had the first of two gum grafts performed yesterday. Because of the way my mouth is structured, I never really had any true gum tissue in the front of my lower front 8 or so teeth. The tissue that was there was more of the flexible, semi-transperant tissue that covers the inside of your cheeks. Great for being flexible and stretching, but not so great for providing support for teeth. Because of this, the semi-gum tissue has been slowly receding and wearing away (since it wasn't really up for the job in the first place), leaving more and more of those teeth exposed.

Left untreated, eventually the roots would be completely exposed, and without any gum support, they could fall out. Not cool. At this point, they aren't loose, but were getting to the point where the dentist and periodontist were getting more concerned about it. So, yesterday we did the left side. The periodontist cut out tissue from the roof of my mouth (on the left side) and sutured it onto the front of my lower teeth where I was missing gum tissue. After a couple of months we'll do the right side too.

Have I grossed you out yet?

The actual surgery wasn't too bad, since they loaded me up with novocain. The worst parts:

1. Injecting the novocain. Not really that painful, but a lot of needle pokes and prods considering that they had to inject it into the roof of my mouth, the gums near my lower left and front teeth, and parts of my cheek.

2. Feeling like I something was blocking my airway. When the effects of the novocain reach the front of your throat (because it was injected in the roof of my mouth), it feels like you need to clear your throat, like something is there, but it won't go away. Creepy bad feeling that you just have to get used to, all the while feeling like you're about to choke.

3. Antiseptic solution applied to lower gums where the grafts were placed had a horrible taste the lingered and reached the back of my throat, such that I had to consciously try not to gag. This was the worst part. It didn't just taste bad, it really made me want to gag, and it was like that for about 5-10 minutes straight.

4. Stitches. Lots of them. Upper where they extracted the gum tissue from behind my teeth and lower where they grafted it. Not painful, just a weird feeling when you see the doctor sewing in your mouth. He just kept going, and going, and going...

5. Being awake for the whole thing, but not being able to see what was going on. No, I wasn't creeped out by what they were doing, rather, I wanted to watch. I'm the kind of person that likes to watch them stick the needle in while giving blood, and I wanted to see them working in my mouth. Every once in awhile, when his head angle was just right, I could see my mouth in the reflection on periodontist's glasses. The image was so smal though, that it didn't provide a great viewing experience.

You can't really see much of what they did, since everything is covered with a silly-putty-like dressing to prevent infection. There are basically three big globs of putty: one of the roof of my mouth, one of the front of my lower left and front teeth, and one on the back of my lower left and front teeth.

I have the stitches taken out in 2 weeks, but I'll have to eat on one side of my mouth for an entire month. I'm not even supposed to chew with my front teeth, since the left half of them were involved also. No food restrictions though, which is why I was willing to do this before Christmas. Penicillin to prevent infection and Vicodin (extra strength!) for pain.

Oh, and if you thought I was a slow eater before, wait until you see me now! ;-)

DotD: Wireless Lexmark inkjet printer and wireless 802.11g Buffalo router bundle - $20 - That's right, no USB cable needed for the printer. It's wireless except for the power cable (you can also use USB if you want). Buying the bundle together allows you to use a $50 rebate that drops the total price of both to just $20. Pretty cool! Only catch is that you have to use in-store pickup from Circuit City. They are not available for shipping.

First impressions are often wrong

Okay, so it has been awhile between posts. You can look at this two ways, depending on if you are a glass half full or a glass half empty kind of person. You could look at this as me being lazy, or you could look at this as, "Wow, you sure are posting a lot more than you did last year before you had a blog." I prefer that approach.

I'm also going to blame Facebook. I started blogging to communicate with y'all, but almost all of you are on Facebook too, so I don't always think to visit both. So yes, this also means I've been bad about reading other people's blogs too. However, there seems to be a strange linking between me posting irregularly and everyone else doing the same. The whole blogosphere has almost ground to a halt. I guess I am more powerful than I realized...

Enough appetizers, let's get to the main course.

I've had two things happen recently that have driven home the point that first impressions are often wrong. I'm not sure why this is. Is God trying to tell me something here? Am I judging others and closing myself off to them without realizing it? I'm not sure what to make of this quite yet, but I'll fill you in on the two events keep working on the meaning myself. It just seems way to coincidental to be a coincidence, if you know what I mean. ;-)

1. I needed some new razor blades for shaving, so I stopped by the appropriate aisle at Target or Walmart, I don't remember which. I first noticed that they had the same kind of razor I used on sale, which was the (insert commercial here) Gillette Fusion, with 5 precision blades, a trimming blade on the back, and a comfort strip which has some sort of soothing stuff in it that slowly releases. At the sale price, I figured I might as well get a new razor since it came with a new blade too. While looking over those razors, I saw next to it the Gillette Fusion Power Phantom, which is exactly the same razor, but it takes a battery and vibrates to (insert commercial here) provide a new level of comfort and the closest shave you've ever experienced.

Now, I do use one of those cheap Oral B electric toothbrushes, and I really like it. When I first saw the advertisements for the manual razor that vibrates, I thought it was a joke. And standing there in the store, I could not imagine who would buy such a thing. It was obviously just a play off the popularity of the battery-powered toothbrushes that have become so commonplace. And the battery powered razor was not even on sale, although they were only a dollar or so more expensive than the normal razor's regular price. 

You can probably guess where this is going. Yep, I bought the battery powered razor out of sheer curiosity, and so I could mock it later in all of my conversations. I even imagined blogging about it later, telling all of you how silly of a concept it is.

Except, I love it. You can not image my disbelief at actually trying it and not just liking it, but finding out that it is actually the best shave I've ever had. Not that I'm a shaving expert or anything, but I've experienced plenty of years of shaving each morning to know a good experience from a bad one. I used a manual razor for a couple years, then switched to an electric razor for a few years, and then switched back to a manual razor. This is, without a doubt in my mind, the best razor I've ever used. I'm not going to try to explain how a razor that vibrates could be so much better than the exact same razor that doesn't vibrate, but it is. Maybe it just distracts you or something, but there is so much less discomfort with this razor that I am still amazed each time I use it.

Yes, this is going to be a long blog. ;-)

2. Ms. Fiance and I decided to go see a movie the other day, and I was really disappointed to find out that "I am legend" was not out yet (Friday!). Ms. Fiance really wanted to see August Rush, which is a movie about a little boy who is a musical prodigy and thinks he can find his long-lost parents through his music. Sounded like a yawn-fest to me, and I had absolutely no interest in seeing it. But, being the loving fiance that I am, I told her we could watch it since there really wasn't anything else I wanted to see anyway (until Friday!).

Again, I was blown away. That movie has so many emotional highs and those WOW moments, that I totally got caught up in it. I don't know how many times I felt my eyes tear up, not from sadness, but from seeing the boy learn to play music and how powerful it was for him. 

I am not one to cry at movies. I just don't. At best I sometimes get that tingly feeling when something really builds up to an emotional high that clicks with me, like at the end of Shawshank Redemption when he finally escapes, or in Rudy when he gets to play in the game. I had that tingly feeling throughout August Rush, and while I wouldn't say that I actually cried, my eyes were definitely moist at least 3 or 4 times throughout the movie. It was just really good, and a great story. If you haven't seen it yet, go and watch it!

So there you have it, two times recently when my first impression of something was completely off base. I would have silently, or even not so silently, ridiculed both of these things, but they turned out to be really good. Just something for us all to keep in mind I guess.

DotD: Today you get two, big surprise.

Gillette Fusion Power Phantom - $10.99 - The only difference that I could tell between the Phantom and the regular Gillette Fusion Power razor is that the Phantom is black. They were both the same price, so I went with the Phantom. I just bought mine in the store, but I couldn't find it on a quick search of Target or Walmart's website, so that's why there's an Amazon link. 

August Rush - $7 or $8 in theaters - Go see this movie. After one viewing, it instantly moved near the top of my all-time favorite list. Both Ms. Fiance and I thought it was great, and can't stop telling people about it.