construction

When I was in high school I received one of the greatest gifts possible--a job that I desperately didn't want to make into a career.  The summer I turned sixteen I was having trouble finding places that would hire someone my age, and so a contractor friend of the family offered me a job on his crew.  I learned a lot from the experience, as I worked there the next three summers, but frankly most of it had to do with how I was not well-suited to working in construction.

The primary lesson regarding my incompatibility with construction had to do with the fact that didn't, and I still don't, do well working in the elements.  I recall one specific roof that we worked on on a day that was closer to 110 °F than 100 °F.  The sun was unrelenting, and it sapped the energy from the body as we did anything.  One of the guys in the crew who took a lot of pride in his work ethic got wobbly at one point, and had to take a long break in the shade on the ground.  It was impossible to do anything for more than a couple of minutes without downing a huge gulp of water, because we were sweating it out faster than it could be drunk.  I distinctly remember riding home from that job thinking that I clearly cannot do this for the rest of my life.

As bad as hot days were, the cold days were worse.  We didn't work many cold days, but I would help on random jobs in the spring or autumn.  I remember siding a house on a breezy October day wondering why anyone would put themselves through that.  At some point I couldn't reliably use my hands because they were too numb.  I cannot imagine how someone working construction outside on a winter day must feel.

I think about these situations a lot on days that are very hot or cold.  I am fortunate to have the opportunity to work in an office setting with a controlled climate.  That fact alone is worth the effort and expense I put into my education, and I am fortunate enough to know that I am fortunate.

A secondary lesson I received from that job was the fact that I realized that I am a klutz.  I have to have a job away from dangerous equipment, because otherwise I'll eventually hurt myself or someone else badly.  In the short time I was there I was able to observe that I got more cuts and bruises than the rest of the crew.  I have at least one scar from that period of time in my life, and I was fortunate it was as minor as it was.  I understood very quickly that it was only a matter of time before something very bad happened.  This was compounded with the fact that I took more chances on scaffolding than I probably should have.  My boss confessed to my parents once about watching me nervously on a scaffold, I assume it was from concern that I'd take a misstep from two stories up.

I didn't really need extra motivation to stay in school.  There was no chance of me quitting once I started, and it's the setting where I've always done best.  However, having a job like that, which I worked even through my freshman year in college, provided quite a bit of clarity regarding the sort of life I did not want to have, and the choices I needed to make to keep from going down that path.  There are probably a lot of people who don't have that opportunity, and they make life decisions without that same clarity.  I can now, twenty years after the fact, say that this clarity was a blessing.

a parable about spring

After the creation and the fall of man God decided to illustrate the significance of His creation to the archangel Gabriel.

"Gabriel," God opened, "consider the seasons that I have bestowed on the earth I have given mankind.  The variation points to My unsurpassed creativity and care for the aesthetic.  The cycles of life points to my ultimate plan for mankind."

"I see your wisdom and forethought in it," acknowledged Gabriel.

"Think about spring in particular," continued the Lord.  "The skies are populated by birds.  The streams and rivers swell and are filled by fish and other aquatic life.  Grass, flowers, and tress bud and spring to life.  What appeared to be dead only weeks prior is vibrant with life.  Animals of from the least to the greatest all multiply in spring."

"Spring does remind one of new life," agreed Gabriel.

"And the colors!  Where winter offered overcast grays, spring brings the bold yellows, purples, and blues of newly blooming flowers.  It brings verdant greens to the grasses and the trees.  Even the thunderstorms offer deep royal blues to the landscape."

"Spring is indeed a beautiful season," Gabriel opined.

"Think also of the food," reminded God.  "Where winter offered little hope for sustenance, spring is a hint at what is to come.  Crops are planted.  Fruit trees bud.  Animals are fattened.  Mankind is reminded of My provision and omnipotence."

"Humanity would be hopeless without your provision," Gabriel observed.  "This does make me wonder about something, though."

"Ask your question," God allowed.

"Well," Gabriel started, "if you have provided mankind with images of life, beauty, and provision all within the span of one season, isn't it possible that mankind will prefer earth to heaven?  Aren't you concerned that they will not feel a need for heaven if earth is too perfect, even if only for one season?"

God looked at Gabriel with an omniscient smile and responded, "Let me tell you about another of my creations: ragweed."

unique as a snowflake

Any time anyone wants to talk about how important or unique each person is there is one metaphor and one metaphor only that is utilized to make the point. Of all of the trillions and trillions of snowflakes that have ever formed, all of them are unique. If they're unique, aren't you as well? There is one thing about that whole discussion that always bothered me, though.  How did they know for sure?  No one has compared anywhere near enough snowflakes to know that two are not identical.  Sure, at the molecular level it would make sense that no two snowflakes are identical, but on a molecular level no two of anything big enough for humans to see with the naked eye is identical.

Recently, I started getting curious about this metaphor and went searching, sort of expecting this to be more of a legend than truth.  It was in that search that I came across an article in National Geographic that indicated that it is probably true that no snowflakes are or have been alike.  There is obviously no real way to prove this, but there are enough factors at play that it is unlikely that two flakes ever formed enough in the same way to create two identical snowflakes.

The question I have, though, is why does this metaphor matter so much.  Why is the relative uniqueness of miniature bits of frozen water mean anything to our own uniqueness?  Why does the fact that a snowflake freezes in different ways under different factors make me as a person any more valuable or special?  Ultimately, why do we care?

The answer is probably that people are grasping at what we all hope for.  We want to be important, special, significant, one-of-a-kind.  If God created each snowflake differently, that same process must be at work in us.

Truth be told, though, it does not matter.  We are not snowflakes.  While we are unique, that is not what makes us significant.  While a person's uniqueness may make him or her feel more significant, I do not see that this truly does make them more significant.  If I had a twin that was identical to me in every way, would that make me less valuable as a person?

Really, any significance we have comes from our Creator rather than whatever about us happens to be different from the norm.  So maybe I am a unique snowflake.  Maybe I'm not.  In the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter very much.

griping about winter drivers

Since Draco passed just north of us, this counted as our first winter storm of the year.  Since it was a glancing blow, it only amounted to an inch or two of snow and maybe a bit of ice.  Nevertheless, traffic offered the opportunity for nearly everyone I know, including myself, to make the same complaint.  Everyone forgets how to drive in winter weather over the summer!

I realized something this week, however.  This is one situation where people complain about other people to those peoples' faces without anyone being the wiser.  Some people, when they complain about other people forgetting how to drive, are thinking that the bad drivers are the ones who drive too fast in the ice and snow.  Some, alternately, think that the bad drivers are the ones who drive dramatically slower in bad weather.

Slow drivers complain about fast drivers and fast drivers complain about slow drivers, and they do it to each others' face.  It's a statistical certainty that some of these gripes are between the opposing types of drivers.  On top of all of this, everyone assumes that their audience agrees with the right way to drive.  The thought is just hilarious.

I typically drive a little faster than the average, so my gripes are usually about the people who drive ten or fifteen miles slower than I think is necessary.  There are people who blow by me at speeds I consider ridiculous as well, so that probably goes both ways.

Anyway, It's fun to have something to gripe about once a year.

looking forward to winter

I remember as a kid the anticipation I felt toward the Christmas holiday.  The little Advent calendar seemed so long.  The twenty-five days leading up to the holiday seemed to take forever.  Of course, at that early age what really excited me about Christmas was the prospect of toys, time off school, and an opportunity to play with cousins.  The time felt long in part because my responsibilities leading up to the holiday were minimal.  I certainly did not appreciate all of the responsibilities my parents had in the time leading up to the holidays.

After all of my excitement, it was over so fast.  I enjoyed the next few days of playing with the new toys, but the sense of anticipation was gone.  December 26 was always bittersweet.  The next week when schoolwork started again was downright horrible.

In the past several years I have seen December as a bit of a chore.  There are a lot of things that have to be done for the holiday now including gift-buying, extra parties, traveling, and coordinating schedules.  That has made opinion of the holidays a bit less festive.  I have an advantage today, though, that I did not have as a kid, and that is that the time after Christmas day is actually quite enjoyable.

What I look the most forward to is undirected down time that I can enjoy how I like.  What I am realizing is that, while the time leading up to Christmas sucks that up and destroys it, there is more of that after Christmas.  Like when I was a kid, I typically get some time off around the holidays and can enjoy that time.  Unlike when I was a kid, I do not have a semester of homework to look forward to in January.  Beyond that, a lot of the things (both that I do and do not enjoy) that take my time are less of a factor in January than in other times of year.  There is no football that I care about as a Lions fan, and fantasy football does not stretch into the playoffs.  There is no mowing or lawn care in general.  There are fewer outdoor activities that I am likely to participate in.  There are more evenings when I can enjoy a movie with Golden.  It is really the perfect opportunity to enjoy down time with movies, games, or a hobby.  I have been clear that I generally do not like cold weather, but I don't have to be out in the cold to enjoy some of the side-effects of the weather.

This line of thinking came about because I am now realizing that this is the third December in a row where I am feeling optimistic about how much I expect to enjoy the upcoming winter months.  That seemed unlike me. It appears to be an outgrowth of the fact that I know what it is like to have work and school and a lot of other things ahead of me for the upcoming semester, and so with fewer things on my plate I expect to be happier.  This could become a trend, and so I could be modifying my negative attitude about the winter in future years.  Who knows, maybe I will even start enjoying the cold.

shovel off

I have been thinking about this for a while, and this is the first good opportunity that I have had.

Maybe a month ago I was in the car with a coworker, who is also a good friend, as he stopped by his house to pick something up. When we approached his house he commented about how annoying it was to have a house that faces the north. I did not get it at first, so he pointed out that all of the houses on one side of the street had snow in the driveway and all of the houses on the other side of the street did not. The shade from the houses with driveways on the north kept the snow from melting as fast as the snow on the other side of the street. This might be a commonly known pitfall of owning a house that faces to the north, but I had not contemplated it seriously until now.

One thing that I have loved about living in the Kansas City area is that snows don't often stick for long. In other places I have lived, such as Michigan and South Dakota, a snow could be expected to stick for weeks or months on end before they melted away. This is the sixth winter we have been in our house, and I have probably shoveled the driveway fewer than five times in that stretch. Most of those times when I went to the trouble have been because we were going to have company and I did not want them to have to walk through the snow. Otherwise, it has just rarely seemed worth the effort if I have known that the snow would melt to a manageable level within a day or two.

I now know that it is possible that my experience may not be identical to my neighbors across the street. This was something I have considered today, since I had to hurriedly brush a couple of inches of snow off my car this morning. It is a bother to have to clear off my car, but the situation could have been worse. I could have to actually shovel my driveway at some point as well.

inauguration

Today, a new president is sworn in. That has only occurred a few times in my short life, but it probably isn't something that I will be watching today since I am at work and my classes start tonight. Actually, I have never really been too concerned about the inauguration, and that isn't really changing this time around. I don't even care to watch the State of the Union address, which actually has greater implications than anything that happens at the inauguration. It does illustrate one of two things I don't understand about the timing of the inauguration, though. Why is it being held during the day on a weekday and why is it in the middle of winter.

The first question I have about inauguration scheduling is clear enough. It made sense when the inaugurations first started that it didn't matter if they were held on the weekend or on a weekday. People had to read about the inauguration if they cared at all rather than watching it on television. In this day and age, though, why not either hold the main event in the evening at a sports complex or on the weekend? If the incoming president has a religious issue with the day in question (say that it is on a Saturday and the elected president is a devout Jew or Seventh Day Adventist), then flexibility to be built into the system to hold it on a Sunday in that case.

The second question of why is it held in the winter makes less sense to me. That fact alone caused the death of the ninth U.S. president, William Henry Harrison. Not only that, but the inauguration was moved from March to the colder month of January years after Harrison's death. Inauguration day would make much more sense if it were in May or June than in January. Things would be so much easier if people would do them my way.

trip observations

As I noted in my last post, I spent a few days in Pennsylvania to attend my grandmother's funeral. As is usually the case when I travel, I have a few thoughts.

First, I never noticed before, but people in that area have multiple viewings, whereas people in Kansas and Missouri tend to only have one viewing. As a family member, the one viewing is far less taxing.

Second, I have revised my opinions on what I want for my funeral. I had said that I would prefer complete honesty about me in whatever eulogy is delivered. I now think the family should get to decide what specifically happens. Really, the funeral is for the family, so what should I care about how the funeral is handled? The funeral should be part of a healing process, so however it can be most effective in healing is how it should be implemented.

Third, I think that funerals are held too closely to the death of the family member. I think families should take about a week to get beyond being shellshocked over the death before having to set up arrangements for a memorial service. Three or four days after a death just seems too soon.

Fourth, how do they train the stewardesses on flights to look so happy when acting out how to operate a seat belt and strap an oxygen mask on your head? I definitely couldn't look so genuinely happy during that portion of the job.

Fifth, I nearly got stuck in Washington D.C. by tropical storm Hanna. At least to hear the pilot on my flight into Washington, you would think so. That experience, coupled with a few other bad experiences in recent years with airlines, has really dampened my desire to ever fly again. I know I will have to at some point, but something always seems to go wrong. If the things that went wrong were things that I could control that would be one thing, but I have yet to figure out a way to control things like inclement weather or lost luggage. If I could, I would prefer to just take the time to drive the entire way.

I hope that the next time I see family it is under better circumstances.

tornado alley

Q: What's a tornado watch called in Kansas?
A: Spring.

Everyone who I am aware who reads this blog has lived in a tornado-prone area of the country at some point, so going through a tornado warning is hardly post-worthy stuff unless it includes video of a funnel cloud or an account from one hundred feet in the air. So, in case you are wondering, this is a post that falls into that "unworthy" category.

This is not meant to come off as a complaint, but I have lived in the Midwest for many years, gone through several tornado warnings, and I have seen nary a funnel cloud. I am thankful because this means that my home, family, and life have never really been in danger. At the same time, it feels like I have missed part of the Midwest experience to not have seen a tornado.

On Thursday night I was in class when the tornado sirens went off. It is a small class, so everyone crowded around the window to see if they could see anything. Eventually, we were instructed to go into the basement of the building. While this felt very safe, it guaranteed that I would go another tornado warning without seeing a funnel cloud.

Afterwards I heard about all of the destruction that the tornadoes from that night caused. My heart goes out to the families impacted. This reminds me why I may not want to see an actual tornado.

under cover

Yesterday morning I grabbed my umbrella as I ran from my car into the office. It wasn't a downpour, but it was raining pretty heavily. On the way to my desk I started thinking about the fact that I haven't seen another man using an umbrella in quite a while.I wonder why it is that I have seen more women willing to use umbrellas than men. Are umbrellas effeminate and I just don't know it? Do most men just not care if they get wet? Are men more likely to forget to bring an umbrella? For my part, I don't really care how it makes me look because I really don't want to get wet every time it rains.

What about you? Do you ever use an umbrella? Why or why not?

Update: ABCNews.com has a review of a new type of hands-free umbrella. At least I don't stick out now like I would with this thing.

in like a lion

Since I moved to Kansas I have heard several people relay to me that if I don't like the weather here I should just wait and it will change. Most of the places I have lived have been this way, but people issue the statement here more than anywhere else I have been.

Another saying that I have heard quite a bit is that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. I haven't really known that to be true, but I remember it when February turns to March every year. Do people in Hawaii have a saying too? "March comes in like July and goes out like July," maybe?

Most people who know me know one of the things I dislike about Kansas is that it gets cold weather. There are colder places to live, for certain, but we get our fair share of winter weather. Not only that, but the winter weather arrives almost without warning.

Yesterday while it was windy and in the seventies I started wondering when the warm weather would end. I was hoping that we would have some warm weather for a few more days. So, I went to Weather.com and typed in my zip code. The following is what came up.I said that I couldn't wait for March earlier. I am starting to think that it might be good to hold out for April.

february

I always kind of joked that I was asking for trouble in marrying someone who was born in February. I need to make sure to remember two important days in such a short month. All that really was joking, though, because Golden is not difficult to please.

I have had other reasons to not like the month. I am always impatient for Spring while it is February because it is cold and because it is gray. There are few good movies that come out in February, and even before NJ it was always difficult to find something fun and different to do in this month. Did I mention it is cold and gray?

The last few years, though, I have really disliked the month of February. Since I went back to school I seem to have had the most schoolwork assigned in February of any month. I know this because I have not truly dreaded any month other than February. Every other month has felt manageable, even when I was busy. Getting through February, though, has simply been a matter of survival.

This year is not much different. I am ecstatic that the month is more than half over. I can't wait for March. My life begins again in March.

by the seat of my pants

Tuesday night I had a few errands to run on my way to Homer's. The first place I stopped was the post office. When I got back into the car I noticed a strange sound. I felt the car seat thinking that maybe I sat in something. Nothing.

I stopped by the gas station and contemplated on how cold it was. The weather seemed to cut right through me.

I went to Home Depot and returned some materials that did not fit in our bathroom. I also headed to the plumbing section to pick up the last couple of things necessary to get our sink into working order.

As I bent down to look for a specific part that I need I noticed the same noise I heard in the car. This time it was more distinct so there was no doubt what it was. I had torn the seat of my pants. Later, I would confirm a seven inch tear along my rear left pocket.

I wonder what the people who saw me before I realized what had happened thought. Did the guy filling his mini-van at the gas station get a laugh out of me shivering with a tear in my pants? Did the people in the aisle at Home Depot with me hear the tear? Did I look suspicious because of how quickly I left the store? So many questions, so few answers.

a nice repose

I do not have too much to say this weekend, so this will be short and light.

As Golden mentioned on her blog, we have been working on the bathroom for the last two weeks. I should get the major stuff done today, meaning I expect to have the toilet and sink reinstalled by the time I go to bed. If this works, I am hoping that my next post will be a walkthrough of the transition that has been our bathroom.

Aside from the obvious fact that we have been without the service of a toilet and sink in our only full bathroom for the last two weeks, two other things have made this project feel like it has been going on forever. The first is that the cold spell that was snapped yesterday started roughly when we started the project. The second is that colds that everyone in our family has had and that we are just now completely getting over started roughly when we started the project. It is not just the end of the renovation that I am excited about.

Hopefully, the next time you see a post life will be a little more stable.

holiday recap

It feels like forever since I last posted something. A part of me wants to believe that someone else besides me has felt some withdrawal from my lack of posts over the last two weeks.

I will restart my normal posting schedule on Monday. Until then, here is a recap of the last two weeks.

• Golden and I visited her family and my family for Christmas. As I noted, NJ did well in the car. He got very fussy and stayed that way when we entered Missouri near St. Louis, though, so it did not end as well as it started.
• I did do well in Christmas presents, but I am always leery to go into too much detail about presents because I will probably not evenly express appreciation for my gifts.
• NJ got a lot of gifts, so now we are starting to run out of places to put his toys.
• We celebrated the new year with my parents, which was kind of funny because neither of them stayed up until midnight. Golden made it with the assistance of a short nap beforehand.
• I shipped my laptop in to get it fixed at the end of the trip, so that is the real withdrawal I am experiencing right now. I have rediscovered books and magazines in the last week.
• Maybe the thing that I am most happy about is that we missed a lot of the bad weather that Kansas City got while we were gone. Seeing news reports of the Kansas City airport from Pittsburgh made me happy I wasn't in the area.
• We visited Dash and T on the way through Indiana. It was nice getting to see them and to get the grand tour of their house. I also always like the opportunity to play board and card games.
• I will be trying to fit a small renovation project into the schedule before classes start again. This could get interesting, since it is not my forte.

To reiterate, remember to start checking the site again beginning on Monday, as I will be getting back to the old schedule.

if the holidays were perfect

Christmas time and summer are the best times for me to see my parents because my dad works with a school system near where they live. He is kept busy even when school is not in session, so if I visited during the school year I would barely see him at all.

This year I am taking six vacation days from work plus two weekends and the two holidays off so we can see Golden's family then my family. As we have been out in the cold some this weekend I have been asking myself why such a major holiday is held when it is so cold outside.

It almost feels like a waste of a vacation day to take it when the temperature is about twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit outside. There are so many wonderful spring and summer days I spend in the office, but when it is freezing outside is the time that I travel to see family.

I think that the holidays should be concentrated more in warmer months (to accommodate me, of course). Christmas and New Year's Day should be celebrated on consecutive days in May. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, President's Day, and Memorial Day should also be celebrated that week so American workers can get a full week off in Spring.

If we had this setup, I could have sixteen Spring days off in a row for the price of five vacation days. That would be time worth taking.

iced

No, I didn't take the above picture. It is from WikiMedia Commons.

We moved into our house in the summer of 2003, and I still had the ice storm from 2002 fresh in my mind. One of the first things we did was to hire someone to trim the trees in the front yard so that they would survive the next ice storm and not damage the house, cars, etc. With that move, I figured I had covered any major issues we may experience in an ice storm.

On Monday night the power went out on the house for a few minutes, then went back on, then went off, then back on again. This pattern repeated for at least a half hour at random intervals. At this point I realized that there was one thing I really had not accounted for. I did not know what we were going to do if we didn't have electricity for a long period of time.

While our furnace uses natural gas, the fan on the furnace uses electric, so the house would be cold even if the furnace stayed lit. This could be good in that it might keep the food in the fridge from spoiling. It would also be bad, though, because it could cause our pipes to freeze and make life with a seventeen-month-old difficult. While I was lying in bed, I decided that if we lost electricity for an extended time, we would have to find a hotel room in whatever town in the area still had electricity and stay there until we were online again.

I think I overdramatized the situation in my mind because this is a situation I have not dealt with, so I do not really know all the things I am supposed to do if the power goes out. Fortunately, this time it wasn't an issue. I am very glad we don't live in St. Joseph.

natural disaster risk

Long before Katrina hit New Orleans I determined that there was no chance that I would ever move there. It is not like there was much chance of me ever moving to the Bayou, but even if I would consider moving that far south, the idea of living in a city along the gulf coast below sea level just sounded unsafe.

Now everyone knows the dangers of living in New Orleans. Even so, many people have decided to move back to the city, and the federal government has committed to rebuilding the city. While this may represent some bravery, to me it is just a little ludicrous as well. There is no question whether another Katrina will happen. The question is whether the next Katrina happens in one year or in four hundred years. Add to that the potential of rising sea levels, and I start to question the sanity of the people who are willing to take the risk of living there, and the sanity of a government who will have to bail out the city again when that occurs.

I think it is hilarious to be around people who did not grow up in the Midwest when tornado and thunderstorm season starts up. I remember one person from Taiwan who I was doing a group project with at KU a couple of years ago pointed out that tornadoes were much scarier than typhoons. Truthfully, there are few places in the United States that I would feel safer than in the Midwest because anyone who has lived here long knows that, while it is tornado alley, a four-hundred-mile wide hurricane is a bit larger than the typical tornado, and much more difficult to avoid.

Last year, SustainLane.com ranked fifty United States cities on economic, environmental, health, and social sustainability risks due to natural disasters. Actually, Miami ranked worse than New Orleans. Even if I intended to move any time in the near future, I can guarantee that I would avoid the cities I have already mentioned as well as the entire California coast. A simple life in Kansas City is better than a homeless one in San Francisco.

survivordust

I'm typing this in front of the TV. When I talked to my mom earlier tonight she asked if I ever watched Survivorman. She isn't sure why she watches it, but we both agreed it is worth watching when nothing else is on. Interestingly enough, there is not much else on, so that is what I am watching.

For those who have never seen the show, a guy is dropped in the wild somewhere for a week alone with cameras and he tries to find ways to best survive until he is "rescued." Some of the places he has been dropped have not appeared too bad, but most of them do not look fun at all.

When I watch a show like this I am reminded how much of an indoor person I really am. I probably would not survive a lot of these scenarios that I see on TV. Things like eating raw meat, going on very little water, being alone for days on end, and being exposed to the heat and cold of the outdoors do not exactly appeal to me.

It would be cool to know I could survive if I somehow got lost in the Overland Park wilderness between my house and the office and had to live off the land for a few days. I guess I'm just going to have to take my chances travelling through Blue Valley.

a few updates

This is just a quick update on the status of things in my world and stuff I have posted on recently.

Since NJ is our priority, I'll mention him first. We're getting pictures of NJ done tomorrow. That doesn't seem like a big deal, but it has proven difficult to time pictures so that he doesn't have a bump on his head. Last week under my care he crawled head-first into the back door.

Regarding school, I got an email today saying that the four-credit reduction in my MBA program's requirements applies to anyone graduating December 2007 or later. That will save me almost a semester's worth of work and just short of two thousand dollars once textbook prices are considered. I'm ecstatic.

While I'm talking about school, I'll mention that I am two weeks from the end of the semester. I think I officially mentally checked out two weeks ago, so that's probably not a good thing. Anyhow, two weeks from this Thursday I can start going to coffee night again at Homers. The hiatus feels like it has been longer than the few weeks that it has been.

Regarding the site, I decided to take the poll down for now. It wasn't getting used much and I wasn't really happy with the appearance. I may put another one up in the future, but I need to think it out more before I do that. The last poll results are below.

Regarding my exercise routine, I should probably be doing more. I have walked quite a bit, and I actually did some physical work at work on Thursday. I don't know how a person is supposed to take the time to exercise with a job, school, a baby, and Kansas weather (which kept me indoors this week), though. It seems I have more pressing concerns than my body.