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This afternoon, I participated in my second Chili Cook Off at work.  Two years ago, I somehow managed to finish in 5th place.  I tried something different this year — adding noodles to my chili and turning it into Chili Mac.  Being an IT guy, I needed to keep with the technology theme.

Enjoy the photos below, courtesy of Mr. Sunshine.  You’ll rarely see photos of me here, since I’m always the one behind the camera.

Two years ago, after my mother died, I found five Super-8 film reels in my parents basement.  After shelving them for a while, I decided to finally do something with them.  I searched the internet for months to find someone who could convert the reels to a digital format at a decent price and found a company in Texas.  I was a little hesitant about shipping the reels to Texas because I had no idea what was on them.  I finally decided that by not knowing the contents of the films, I wouldn’t miss them if they were lost so two weeks ago, off they went.

Today, I received my films back, along with a DVD of the contents, and my portable hard drive that I sent with an AVI of the films.  Even though I really had to pee, I immediately proceeded to watch the movies. I finally discovered what was on them:

• Christmas 1980
• Christmas 1981
• my third birthday (February, 1982)
• my sister’s first birthday (September, 1982)
• my fourth birthday (February, 1983)

The clips also include many other special moments.  What is most important, however, isn’t what is on the video, but rather who is on the video.  All of the videos contain my parents, my grandparents (all of whom are long gone), and other cousins, relatives, and friends.  Many of them I am still connected to via Facebook but several of them are gone.  While watching the clips, I both laughed and cried.  This was the best package that I have ever received from UPS.

Tonight, I shared the clips with my family.  It’s amazing how much my kids resemble my sister and I and how much my sister resembles one of my aunts and how my mother aged to resemble her mother.  What was my uncle thinking wearing those red shoes — even in the 1980s?  And the clothing and hairstyles?  There were several toys in the clips that I held onto and passed on to my kids!

Of course, the clips will be uploaded to YouTube and featured right here.  But not yet.  I’m going to package the clips on a DVD as a Christmas present to my sister and father.  Although neither read this blog, they do occasionally look at YouTube.  I don’t want to spoil the surprise.

Remember my Year from Hell post from July?  It hasn’t gotten any better yet:

In August:

• The locks on my car quit working
• My lawn mower died

In September:

• We had to replace our mattress
• Our air conditioner pump malfunctioned, sending gallons of water into the air intake
• Kimberlie passed out at a church soccer game — the only soccer game I wasn’t at.  We convinced the ambulance and firemen that she didn’t need to go to the hospital.

And so far in October:

• We just had to replace the battery and one of the tires on Kimberlie’s car.
• Let’s just say that last Wednesday was one of the worst days of my life.  In October 2008, I was in my first car accident in my life.  In late September 2009, I was in another.  Neither of them were my fault and both involved uninsured drivers, leaving me to foot the bill.  This week, I was in the third accident of my life. Unfortunately, I can’t elaborate publicly in the event that litigation arises.

So far, 2010 has not been a great year . . .

In January:

• Kimberlie’s mother died

In February:

• Mackenzie gets kid-mono.  Between the two of us, we spent almost two weeks away from work, doing nothing but this:

  

In March:

• We went through a tough eating-out hiatus.
• T-ball.  Need I say more?

In April:

• Tristan learns to stick things where they don’t belong.
• Tristan has a major accident during a day trip.
• I went to the doctor (for the first time in 20 years).

In May:

• A house catastrophe.
• No raises at work.

In June:

• I ended up in 2 graduate classes during a 4-week summer semester.  Of course, I ended up with A’s, but it was a tough month.
• Mackenzie ended up sick (and very irritable) for half of our trip to Philadelphia.

And now, July:

• The cat chewed up my Macbook power cord.
• We lost our “free” cable and I my iPhone and digital camera went for a swim . . . in the same week.
• Ants seem to invade a different room of our house everyday.

Of course, there are things that have been happening (or not) all year:

• The stock market has really sucked for the last few months.
• I’m 31 and still not rich enough to retire.
• Publisher’s Clearinghouse still hasn’t knocked on my door.

Don’t get me wrong.  I still love my life.  But even number years just never work out for us.  2008 was equally as bad.  2007 and 2009 were fabulous.  Let’s hope I can make it through the next five months alive!

With Toy Story 3 taking over the theatres, I’ve been thinking a lot about some of the toys from my own childhood.  We recently visited the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia and found that they had many of the toys from my childhood in mint condition.  Please forgive the photo quality.  All of these toys were photographed from behind a glass case with horrible lighting conditions.

These Fisher Price blocks popped up around 1976 and I popped out three years later, so naturally I had a set:

I also had one of these, although it remained at my grandparents house:

I miss my Construx set.  It was like an erector set for kids:

The Spirograph was awesome:

I have this exact set of Tinkertoys (on the right) in my attic:

My favorite toy growing up were Legos.  I still have thousands of Legos in my parent’s basement.  I wish I had room for them at my house.

I also had this Snoopy Sno-Cone machine.  It looks like this one is missing a piece — the red shovel.  The Snoopy on top served two functions.  You pressed it down to push the ice through and you turned it upside down to squeeze the syrup through.

I had this Popoids before I got into Legos:

I still remember the jingle “Pogo Ball is what you call it”.  And I had one:

I also had this exact Tonka truck.  Tristan has something similar, but it’s bigger and the quality is much less.

SuperSoakers were the watergun that every kid wanted.  I remember the SuperSoaker 50, SuperSoaker 100, and SuperSoaker 250:

My sister and I had lots of Little People sets.   Little People are still around, though they’ve evolved over the years.  She had the nursery set, seen below:

My sister was also very much into Barbies.  She had the McDonald set seen in the next two photos.  I’m trying to do whatever possible to steer my daughter away from Barbies.

So what does a museum do with surplus toys? Build sculptures of course! This is a real size sculpture of the arm/torch from the Statue of Liberty, constructed of old toys:

This is an life-sized elephant, also constructed from toys:

Who know’s what the next popular toy is going to be?  Right now, “Silly Bandz” are all the rage.  If you’ve looked closely at photos of my kids recently on this blog, you’ll see that they have an arm full.  The museum even had some on display, and they’ve only been around a few short months!

Of course, this is not my complete “Toy Story”.  I had tons of cool toys.  But visiting the museum and watching Toy Story definitely brought back memories!

In case you haven’t noticed, I have blogged nearly every day this week.  And some days (including today), I have blogged multiple times.  I still have lots of things to post, including Mackenzie’s 3K graduation from last month.  I think I’ll go have a cookie now.

If it’s not obvious, I’m clearly avoiding school-work by blogging.  (I have two more projects to turn in before Tuesday.  One is 75% done and I haven’t started the other.) I’m also considering promoting this blog more to my friends, etc. via facebook and twitter, so I need to populate it with lots of content.

Next week, I’ll be blogging live from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Camden, New Jersey.  Stay tuned . . .

So this is what I was doing seven years ago . . .

(Sorry for the low quality picture. This was before we were 100% digital!)

Tomorrow, I’m going to the doctor.  I’m scared to death.

It’s been almost 20 years since I’ve had a checkup.  When I was 10 or 11, my mother decided that it just wasn’t worth the battle. (I literally fought the doctors).  I had my final immunizations and bid the pediatrician farewell.

My co-workers were in similar situations.  Our health insurance covers yearly well visits at no charge so we decided to go.  They visited their respected doctors in late 2009.  Now it is my turn to live up to my end of the bargain.

Did I mention I’m scared? I am petrified.

I’m totally clueless when it comes to medical stuff.  It’s probably a good thing that I’m not having any problems, because I don’t even know how to swallow a pill.  I’ve never swallowed one before.  In fact, the only non-liquid medicine that I have ever had was a hydrocodone pill chopped up in rocky road ice cream after my wisdom teeth extraction.

I don’t even know what to expect at a routine check-up.  I tried google, but it seems that everyone has different experiences.  I’m also scared of needles.  The last time I had blood drawn, was for the pre-marital blood test.  I passed out cold. On the floor.  They almost called an ambulance.  They brought me a green lollipop thinking it was a sugar issue.  I don’t even like green lollipops.  Let’s hope I don’t repeat that episode tomorrow.

So basically, I’m scared of doctors, I’ve never taken medicine, I don’t do well with needles, and did I mention that I’m extremely modest?  Why did I sign up for this?  Is (hopefully having a) long life worth all of this?

It’s going to take at least a ten mile run in the morning to alleviate this anxiety.

In a previous post, I talked about our restaurant addiction and how we are giving it up for March.

I’m happy to report that today is day #27 and we are sticking with it.  We did use our Chic-fil-A mulligan on March 6 and I have been extremely creative at finding free food at work.

I failed at the no-Coke goal.  I have had three so far this month: one with the Chic-fil-A meal and one after each 12K that I ran.  I am happy to report that the last two didn’t even taste good.

(On a separately related goal, I have not posted a Facebook status update since February 28! That one was easy!)

I have tried to talk Kimberlie into calling this silly goal quits.  It’s not like we’re doing it for lent or anything worthwhile.  This morning we were at the Cherry Blossom Festival surrounded by fair-food.  It was horribly tempting.  Same story two weeks ago at the Forsythia Festival.  But, I think the hardest times though have been the nights where Tristan has games right after work and we don’t get home until 9pm.  Stopping at Zaxby’s would be so much more convenient.

This goal really was pretty silly.  We are not eating healthier.  We are still pressed for time when it comes to preparing meals, so unhealthy frozen foods have become a staple. Maybe that’s better than restaurant food, but probably not.

On a positive note, we have saved tons of money this month.  I was more than thrilled at my credit card statement.  We only have four more days.  I can’t possibly screw it up this late in the game.  The hardest decision . . . is where to go eat on April 1.

Our lives have been incredibly busy lately: work, school, t-ball, races, and lots more.  With all of those obligations competing for our time, it is so easy to just zip through the drive-thru instead of preparing a meal at home.  In the last week or so, we have been eating out several times a day.  On Saturday: chicken biscuits after the 5K. On Sunday: McDonalds after church, O’Charleys for dinner. We have been eating out literally every day. That puts a strain on our wallet — and our health.  So for the month of March, we have decided to abstain from eating out.

I have also tried to limit my soda consumption in the past.  Unfortunately, in our combo-centric world, it hasn’t been possible to do so while continuing to dine out.  Who is really going to buy the chicken sandwich combo and fill the cup up with water?  So to take the health thing one step further, I have personally chosen to not drink coke during March.

Here are the terms of the restrictions:

• When there are events at work that have food, it doesn’t count as “eating out” — even if the food is pizza, etc.
• There is one exception: we can eat at Chic-fil-A once (because we have the calendars with the monthly free item).
• I am not allowed to drink any coke, even at the events above. This does not apply to other family members.

Today is day four and it has been tough.  Really tough.  I can’t remember the last time I went four days without a french fry and I never noticed just how many fast food commercials there are on the radio.  Also, social activities in the south are centered around food, so pledging not to eat at restaurants are starting to affect social aspects of my life as well.  The lack of coke has affected my motivation and energy.  It makes running a lot tougher when you take away a primary energy source. I am glad, however, that the symptoms of caffiene withdrawal have passed.

Can I successfully make it through the next 27 days? Tune in and see.