Childhood nutrition

I remember one trip to my Aunt Jo's house where I chewed a Ham sandwich bite or several bites maybe for the entire road trip to my Aunt's house. She lived in Orlando. We lived in Kissimmee. I believe it is about 30 miles, maybe more. That was the story of my childhood nutrition. I was picky and stubborn. I assume my parents just gave up trying after a certain point.

However, I think they missed the point. They never gave me the options the kid I saw in Mieneke Car Care this morning. I'm sitting there minding my own business waiting for my car to be finished and a girl, maybe 8-to-10 years old comes in with her mother. She sits down at the table I am at with a bag from Taco Bell and a bag from Wendy's. My kind of nutrition. So a couple of bites into one of her tacos, she lays it down and proceeds to dig into some fries from Wendy's. Moments later he mom says, "No more fries till you eat your taco."

I had a double take because when I was a kid it was no more dessert till you eat your veggies or no more something good till you eat something bad. This kid was getting no more fries till she ate her taco. I used to eat those Tacos and trust me they are both good tasting and bad for you. Hmmmm. I'm probably 60 pounds over weight right now. Imagine if I had those options as a kid. Good job mom!

US Postal Service, neither rain nor snow...

So the other day I go to the mailbox as is typical when I get home from work. I would say about 1 time a month or maybe less we get a piece of mail for one of my neighbors. I don't think that is a bad amount.

The most recent takes the cake.

Come to find out about 5 houses down from me lives someone who retired from the U.S. Postal Service.

So when I check the mail, in it is an incorrectly delivered piece of mail from the U.S. Postal Service Retirement Organization. If there was one piece of mail you would think they could deliver correctly, it would be mail to former compatriot about their retirement. So I enjoyed that little moment of irony. That the US Postal Service is not discriminating about what the don't deliver properly.

Disturbing News

I will get back to fun stuff soon I promise.

I am not going to go into much detail hear as I don't like having work discussions on the WWW, but this is a bit disturbing.

I am quite certain there will be appeals and other cases and all sorts of things I don't understand, but for now, just questions I guess.

What do you feel?

Just warning you this is pretty stream of consciousness. As most of you know by now, Jenn and I found out yesterday that we had lost the baby. What do you feel at a time like that?

I really don't know. It actually is a terribly mixed bag of things some of which I wonder if I should feel bad about feeling. I think all of it comes down to the fact that we heard a heart beat and that heart beat isn't there any more and that really sucks. Regardless of all the other stuff related to the pregnancy or now lack of pregnancy, we had created something and it is gone. Fears about money or health or being good parents, excitement over the new addition, a chance to be parents and a chance to raise a child; They are all gone for the moment.

I'm sure, God willing, there will be another pregancy and hopefully we will have a baby one day, but today just sort of stunk. It was my first day back at work and the fact that I had to tell a few people why I wasn't in yesterday stunk. The fact that when the girl who sits next to me asked when our baby was due, I had to tell her stunk. The fact that in a meeting, someone in reference to a product assortment life cycle said they wanted to know birth to death and all I could think about was an ultrasound two weeks ago that was loud and proud and an ultra-sound yesterday that was silence stunk. Like the silence on the other end of a telephone or a radio when communicating with someone and you aren't sure they are ok, only this silence represented the end of something small. No flat line tone like in the movies, just a silent audio track.

I guess I feel that it sucks. That's about it. We will move on. We will try again. I know God has his reasons and more than likely they include the fact that the baby didn't have a shot at survival or health. We didn't do anything wrong and Jenn did everything she could, bless her heart, to give that baby a healthy body to grow in. It just didn't work out and that sucks.

I guess that's it for now. Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers. I have talked to a ton of people about this and well, what do you say? I have told the same story over and over again. I hope the next story I tell over and over again is about how I witnessed the birth of our baby girl or boy and how that really didn't suck. Not at all.

You get your Mojo, I get da ba-be!

Well folks, Chiliburgers has officially gone mad. I have resorted to posting pregancy posts. Jenn has beat me to the punch with a couple, but here is my first. Color me papa-to-be, baby daddy or something. 8-)

Found below is the first ultrasound of our "bean." Following the ultrasound we determined that the baby is due on July 28, 2008. That means Jenn is about 6.5-7 weeks right now.

This was one of the coolest things I have ever seen. However, it comes with a few notes and comments as usual.

1. You always hear expecting parents talk about their first ultrasound and you think, "Wow that must be huge, like a big deal or something." The actual event is actually pretty depressingly anti-climactic in the fact that it was in the Doctor's office and took all of about 4 minutes not including the paperwork and prep and such. Don't get me wrong. The 4 minutes were really cool. Hearing the heart beat of our baby was super cool. Seeing something we created at the earliest stages of development. Crazy. But the process and the event, kind of sedate. Not sure what I expected, maybe trumpets and an announcer...maybe Michael Buffer.

2. Hearing the heartbeat was crazy cool. I never got into all the abortion debates about when a child is a child and la de da, but hearing a heartbeat of a child at 6.5 weeks knowing that in about 7-8 months that kid will be in our house. Purely Crazy.

3. When making this wave file, and hearing the heart beat again, all I could think of was the scenes from The Hunt for the Red October where Seaman Jones is talking about all the stuff he hears in the sonar.

Capt. Bart Mancuso: [after hearing Jones's findings] Have I got this straight, Jonesy? A $40 million computer tells you you're chasing an earthquake, but you don't believe, and you come up with this on your own?
Seaman Jones: Yes, sir.
Capt. Bart Mancuso: Including all the navigation maps?
Seaman Jones: Sir, I-I've got all the...
Capt. Bart Mancuso: Relax, Jonesy. You sold me.

Enjoy your viewing. Glad we could share through magic of technology. Sorry about the quality. We didn't have a blank VCR tape and forgot to buy one so well, it was recorded over some Sink the Bismark History Channel special. From the VCR into the hard drive and then the MPEG. DOH. gotta love technology though. When I was born, my mom was probably lucky to have baby photos AFTER I was out, much less 32 weeks before I was out.

Just an FYI -- Make sure you have volume up. At about the 1:55 point you can hear the audio of the heart beat. Woohoo!

Hail Dear Old Croom for Thanksgiving!

I don't typically spend a lot of time talking about serious issues but today is one.

Most of you know I grew up in the South. I went to high school and college in Georgia. I married a girl from Mississippi and the vast majority of my immediate family is from the South. As such I have seen my share of race issues at times through my life. Surprising considering I was born after the civil rights era of MLK and Malcolm X, but true all the same.

I have heard my grandfather tell me and my cousin that he didn't want us to repeat the mistakes or have the same feelings he had. He grew up in Alabama and went to college in Birmingham in the 40s.

I have heard people say it was nice to not see black people. I have seen racism in EVERY state I lived in, yes, Indiana included.

I have had friends here questioned or looked at funny despite acting and wearing the same type clothing as everyone else. I have had friends not allowed into clubs for no reason.

However as a kid, I pretty much learned the right way to treat people. Actually I never thought anything about the fact that many of my best friends, especially in middle school and high school were African American or Hispanic. I just treated them just like any of my other friends.

So today was a nice day for me for lots of reasons.

My wife Jennifer is a lifelong Mississippi State fan and her older brother went to school there. A such I have adopted the Maroon Bulldogs as my second favorite SEC team. Mississippi State was a pretty decent team in the 1990s on the strength of some cheating by Jackie Sherrill, but in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Sherrill got in trouble with the NCAA and his recruiting left something to be desired. So when Sherrill won 5 games and only 1 in the SEC in 2002 and 2003 it was time for him to leave.

The coach selected to replace Sherrill was the lily "white" Sylvester Croom. Croom was lily white in reputation, but he is African American. He was one of the first African American's to play for Bear Bryant at Alabama. He then played 1 year in the NFL before coaching as an assistant at Alabama and in the NFL for about 30 years. Finally he took over as the head coach of one of the two major state universities in one of the nation's most historically racially heated states AND also the first African American Head Coach in Football in the Southeastern Conference.

I loved the choice from the beginning not just for the race relations aspect, but for the fact that I felt he was one of the best coaches in the country that never got a head job when people like Norv Turner in the NFL and Bob Toledo or Butch Davis in college keep getting jobs.

For his first three years it was a massive struggle for Croom. He took over a team that was attempting to compete in the toughest football conference in the country with a team that lacked talent and was on probation with the NCAA. For three years he finished with 3 wins per year but improvement was there. They beat Florida to get Ron Zook fired. They beat Croom's alma mater Alabama last year to get Mike Shula (the man who got the Alabama job when Croom wasn't hired) fired.

Finally this year, the Bulldogs had broken through. They got blown out to start the season versus LSU, but plugged away through the season with wins over ranked Alabama and Kentucky. The five losses this season were against teams that had combined records of 44-19 including 19-3 by LSU and West Virginia.

So when the Egg Bowl was played today Mississippi State was in line to finish the regular season 7-5, go to a bowl game with their best record since 2000 when they also went to their last bowl game. It was also Croom's chance to put the exclamation point on the comeback for the Bulldogs and finally get people to believe the t-shirts that were sold early in Croom's career with Maroon is all that matters.

The Bulldogs made a huge comeback to overcome a 14-0 deficit for a 17-14 and Croom was speechless with emotion at the end of the game. This is one of my favorite sports moments of all time. Sly Croom, the first African American Head Coach in the SEC, beats one of the most historically racist schools in history to finish 7-5 and get to a bowl game doing it with integrity the whole way.

I loved it. Some of you know (well and all of you do now) that Jenn and I are expecting. I hope that our child will not have to witness the racism that has been in this country. I'm not naive enough to believe that it will never be there, but in baby steps walls are being broken down every day.

Cheers Sylvester...here's hoping you had the best Thanksgiving ever. I sure enjoyed it. I'm cheering you any week you don't play Georgia. 8-)

Coincidental fun note

While catching up on my Sports Illustrated reading tonight, I was thumbing through the 11/5 edition from the Red Sox win over the Rockies in the World Series.

Nice story on the Red Sox, but the interesting fact to me was a mention for my brother's alma mater, Osceola High School in Kissimmee, Florida, as well as my mom's alma mater, Fort Walton Choctaw High School in the same issue. The Osceola reference was in a high school football section about a big game with Lakeland High School. The fun note for me was that SI wouldn't lower itself to mention the OHS nickname. They are the Kowboys...yes, with a K. Anyways, the Fort Walton Choctaw mention was for a 14-year old swimmer in the Faces in the Crowd.

Meaningless to most everyone outside my family, but fun for me. 8-)

Cya folks...I promise I'll write more soon.