Random Babblings

For those of you scratching your noggins over who the heck I’m talking about, he is the evil mastermind for the P90X program. P90X is a deadly concoction put together by madmen to make your body hate you for 90 days, but in the end come back to love you forever. According to the program, it’s designed for those who are already somewhat fit to build more muscle and get a wee bit more toned and built. Maybe I should say “ripped” or “cut” in order to hang with these new age hip cats.

I gave this program a try for the first time tonight and decided that it feels really good to get up and get your blood moving. Steph and I did an hour of Kenpo, which, from what I could tell, is some kind of martial art aimed at kicking people in the nuts. I kid you not, there is a kick simply called the “ball kick”. I’ll let you visualize what that one looks like. I just read that sentence to Steph, and now I know just how little of a grasp I have on what Kenpo is. I’m satisfied with my simple definition however. So I spent an hour learning to kick invisible people in the balls.

It did wear me out quite a bit though. By about 25 minutes in, my arms were hating me, my calves wanted to eat my soul, and my groin was giving me the cold shoulder. I failed at breaking through “The Wall” at 25 minutes in though and took a short breather. Steph, however, is like a machine. I learned just how unfit I am simply by watching her laugh at Tony Horton’s feeble attempts at making her sweat. I also learned that if I am going to continue to do this stuff with her, then I need some real exercise pants. Justice League pajama pants just aren’t going to cut it.

I’ll keep you guys posted on this hardcore exercise thing that I seem to have wrapped myself up in. I’m not going to be doing full on P90X though. Steph has planned out a mix of stuff to do, and I think I’m just going to follow along with what she does. We’ll see what happens. I guess I should just start by trying to stay on it for more than a few days. As odd as this may sound, the only real reason I did it tonight was because I wanted an interesting subject to blog about. I think it worked!

Today was Super Bowl XLIV. That’s Super Bowl 44 for those not so “up” on the old school Roman numerals. I’m going to be honest and say that I had no idea who was going to win this one going in. I’ve never been a fan of the Colts or the Saints, so I just rooted for the team I thought wanted it the most. Which is kind of silly, because you know that if they are at the Super Bowl to begin with then they want it pretty bad. I decided that the Saints were going to win this a few days ago, and I really have no basis for why I thought they were. They have a lot of heart I guess

Steph and I were going to go over to a party tonight to watch it, but the snow totally ruined those plans. Didn’t bother us all that much though because we still had some killer spinach dip, a comfy couch, and an HDTV. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m pretty sure that’s all you really need to have an awesome night watching some football.

This snow looks like it’s going to mess up more than a Super Bowl party night though. I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to make it to work tomorrow or not. I think I’m going to have to pass. From looking at the way these cars are moving out there, it would not be wise for me to get out on the road in the morning. It’s not like the ice is going to melt in this 15 degree weather. I’ll just have to make up the time later in the week. Steph doesn’t have school tomorrow, so that is half the reason that I’m thinking I’m going to have to stay out as well. WVU never cancels classes, so clearly they think it’s too dangerous for the students to get out on the road. Which means that it’s probably too dangerous for normal humans too

We’ll see what happens! Until next time, mortals!

I’ve pretty much spent this entire day poking around on the internet trying to get into whatever it is one can get into on the internet. Minus the porn, though. I don’t really need to get into any of that. I’ve really just been trying to find some nifty software or websites that can do some stuff I want to do. One of the things that I have really been hunting down for the past few months is a decent comic collecting application for the Mac. I have Comic Collector Live for the PC and I absolutely LOVE it. The only problem with it is that it’s on Windows! Since I don’t use Windows as a primary machine, it’s kind of annoying to have to switch over to Parallels or Boot Camp in order to add comics to my database. It’s not that big of a deal, but why isn’t there software like this for Mac? It seems like something that would be very Mac-centric, but nobody makes anything good enough. If any of you know of something, please tell me in the comments.

Another thing I’ve been fiddling with and trying to figure out is Blippy. It’s a different kind of service that I’m trying to find a use for. Think of it as Twitter for your purchases or the items you get from services like Audible or Netflix. I think it’s kind of neat and I, of course, have a Blippy  page that you can visit and check out what I’ve been getting, though it’s pretty short. The one piece I haven’t jumped on is the credit card purchases tool. I’m currently showing my purchases from Amazon, Audible, and iTunes. I think the credit card piece could be pretty awesome, but I think one would definitely want a “special” credit card that you wanted Blippy to track. That way you could hide Christmas presents or birthday presents by using a different card. I’m still trying to figure out what purpose this will serve in my all around social networking world, but I think it has some possibilities. If you are on Blippy, follow me on my page!

I’ve also hooked up Ashley, of “The Penguin Legion”, with a URL that points straight to her blog of, you guessed it, www.thepenguinlegion.com. I don’t think she knows yet, but she will once she reads this post. So add her blog to your list of favorites and visit often. She’s brilliant.

I’m pretty sure that’s all I’ve really messed with today. That’s not to say it wasn’t time consuming. Searching for good software can be such a pain, especially when you have to test each one to see if it meets your needs. I think I’m going to go find some food now. Hopefully I don’t have to look much beyond the kitchen because there is about 2 feet of snow outside that I would rather not venture out into.

Today has been a whole lot less eventful than I expected. I woke up early and, in between bouts of installing Windows 7, cleaned up the house in an attempt to make it look nice for Steph’s family when they arrived. I cleaned the sink, picked up clutter, took out trash, and made the whole place look a little better than it did. Not that there was a whole lot to do because I tend to keep things OCD clean anyway. Unless you count my desk…that thing is a mess. Anyway, I went through all of this preparation and, lo and behold, the “Winter Powerhouse” found it’s way to the Northeast US and decided to CRUSH Morgantown in it’s icy grip. This, unfortunately, meant no Steph’s family and no trip to Pittsburgh. Oh well! I guess we’ll have to plan for sometime in the middle of the week because, by golly, these brides maid dresses aren’t going to buy themselves!

It ended up being a  good thing that they didn’t come up though. This storm is nuts! I’m talking crazy amounts of that fluffy stuff is falling from the sky and straight into my little corner of the planet. I swear we got 1/4 inch in about 5 minutes. It’s accumulating like crazy. Watching people trying to get up the hill across the way in their little cars is really suspenseful. So many people are running into each other it’s like watching a giant bumper car round out there. Except when these cars hit, they have to call the police. Blue lights everywhere!

Steph and I did manage to accomplish a little bit in that we got our “accommodations” cards printed to go with our Save the Date cards. These Save the Date cards turned out really well and I’m all excited about it. They are actually magnets that you can stick to the refrigerator so you can be reminded of the joyous event of which you will take part. The picture we took for it didn’t turn out half bad either. Granted it was snowing out and we were freezing to death. I think it’s pretty hard to tell that my teeth are chattering all over the place though. We did a good job masking the 5 degree shivers. Every time I see that picture I’m going to think about that now. That’s why I love looking at old pictures. They always bring back some crazy memories. I wonder how people remembered their lives before we had all this media. I guess they just told stories all the time, but I tell stories a lot and don’t remember some things until I’ve seen the pictures that are related to them. Something to think about I guess.

Now all we have to do is get our envelopes printed with all the addresses for the people receiving cards and we’ll be in business. We tried to do them on the inkjet, but the envelopes are too short and go crooked when you feed them through. I’m hoping that a print shop around here can do it so we don’t have to worry about it. One more thing to add to the list I suppose.

Tonight was H&H night for me, and I have to say that it went swimmingly! We had an absolute blast making the show, as we always do, and got a few people in the chat that I have no idea who they were. I thought one of them might be my dad, but this person typed to well for it to possibly be him. All in all, the show went off without a hitch, except for when I muted myself so Ash couldn’t hear, and when I had to take a poo at the beginning of the show because my bowels refuse to cooperate on show night. Good times!

I’ve been experimenting with sound effects on the show lately and I think it’s adding a bit of fun to the show. It’s great to listen to people chit-chat with each other about every little thing, but sometimes it’s good to add some variety. I’ve started throwing in rimshots, music, and other sounds to add some liveliness to what we’re doing. Overall, I think it’s going over well with the listener base. No complaints yet! I’m pretty sure that the Sanford and Son theme from last week put some listeners in stitches. They loved it! I’m trying to find a happy medium though and not completely beat people over the head with weird noises.

Another thing I’ve been doing differently lately is adding a special section to the show where we do something COMPLETELY different from anything we’ve done before. I made up a game called the Google Game, which debuted on episode 141, where Ashley has to guess the top “suggestion” under Google Suggests. So I type in some random word like “Cake” and it gives me back a search string like “Cake Boss”. I come up with a handful of choices and she has to guess the right one. That proved to easy to cheat with however, so I’m trying to vary stuff. Tonight we decided to guess who the Oscar Winners will be in some of the main categories. This one should be fun because neither of us can cheat at it.

I also decided to throw down the gauntlet on Ash, like I talked about yesterday, challenging her to a BLOG OFF. Anytime she forgets to write for that day, she has to buy me a drink…or something comparable. The same thing goes for me. So this should help us both stay motivated to write, and potentially help us form the habit of doing it. I think we’re on to something here.

What’s the next phase in H&H development you ask? Why WORLD DOMINATION of course!

I haven’t posted since October!? What in the world is wrong with me!? Clearly I need to pay this blog more attention. Twitter has officially taken over my soul and m ade me feel as though I don’t have to post long posts about things in my life. Well you know what? This blog is important, dagnabbit!

The big news of late: H&H Goes to Dragon*Con!

That’s right! Ash and I are taking our little podcast that could all the way to the big ATL (Atlanta for those not in the know) and we plan on exploding that blasted city with awesome. If you’re not sure what on earth I’m talking about, I’ll go ahead and fill you in with all the tidbits. Dragon*Con is THE science fiction/fantasy convention, and an all around nerd fest. Even if it doesn’t quite fit into the sci-fi arena, you’ll still find it at Dragon*Con. It’s stormtroopers, aliens, jedi, hobbits, rogues, scallywags, and ruffians of every shape and size. We’re going to be among those nerds, trying to do our best to cover the mass of geekery with our microphones in hand. I have to say this is the first “Con” that I’ve ever been to and I think it’s a good one to break myself in on. This one is close by and I’ll be among friends…thousands of them!

If you want to join us at Dragon*Con, you should go buy yourself a membership at www.dragoncon.org. Read a little about it and I’m sure you’ll decide you want to go. So many celebrities will be making their way to the big city to entertain us crazy, costumed weirdos and I’m sure you’ll find one you want to meet. I’m excited to have an opportunity to meet some friends and have an all around good time. I plan on sleeping VERY little while we’re there, but I’m sure I’ll survive.

So that’s the big news from Stephen-land. I’m not going to say that I’ll post here more often, because I do that all the time. I’m kind of inspired by Smashface to type in this thing because she started writing in hers again. I can’t let her get that far ahead of me! Anyway, here’s an open challenge to Smashy, should she read this: I bet I can write in this every day and you can’t do the same! How’d you like them apples! So there it is, ladies and gentlemen. Guantlet=Thrown. Take that!

Okay, I’m done being all Braveheart now. I’ll seriously give it a try. We’ll see what happens!

So it’s been a couple weeks since we actually returned from Nawlins, but I wanted to at least post a little about our trip because we had so much fun! I had a blast down there and got to see so much cool stuff, and I definitely wasn’t ready to leave when we had to. I’ll summarize how some of our days were while we were down there.

The biggest, most awesome thing about being in Nawlins was that my parents and sister came to see us! I haven’t seen them since May and I was so happy when they decided they would make it to Nawlins to visit with Steph and I and kind of have a little mini vacation. They were set to get to the hotel a few hours after Steph and I would, so we decided to go wander around the town for a minute and see what was out there. We didn’t do much but go down canal street and both of us were absolutely amazed at all the lights, music, and everything else about the place. We ducked down a street for a minute so I could look at a sign for a “Hat Store” and see if it was a hat store for baseball caps, or an actual hat store for fedoras, cowboy hats, and the like. It was totally a fedora store! I put that on my list of things to see while there. More on that later.

We got back to the hotel and met up with my parents who I was ecstatic to see! It had been way too long and I was so excited they got to come over. We helped them get settled in their hotel room, and then took off for some food.  We decided on Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, because we all love shrimp and I LOVE Forrest Gump with every fiber of my being. It was a good miles or so away so we just walked to it and got to see a lot of the city because of that. Wandering through the French Quarter for the first time was really cool, but it was a tad unnerving walking through there at night. Especially when we didn’t yet know what streets were safe. After we got back from this vacation I learned that Nawlins has the highest amount of pickpockets per capita in the US. I really wish I had known that before.

Anyway, I’m not going to detail my entire dinner at Bubba Gump, but I will tell you that I won us a free dessert. They offered a challenge, of which I had to take part, where they ask three Forrest Gump related questions. I was all like, “Lets do this!” I have seen Forrest Gump a ton of times, and I hold that movie very close to my heart simply because I think it’s amazing and quite possibly the best movie ever made, in my humble opinion. I totally nailed all three questions without so much as a hesitation and won us a free Mud Pie. I absolutely loved that Mud Pie, which was big enough for 4 people, but I think I enjoyed the satisfaction of knowing those answers even more.

We went home after that, sufficiently stuffed, and got a bit of sleep. We were going to have another big day the next day and felt like it was probably a good idea just to get some rest.

And that’ s another story for another night. I swear I’ll finish this whole saga in a couple more posts so hang in there, readers! It’s just finding the time to tell it now

Here I am to continue my story from yesterday. I’m sure I’ll eventually get to the part where we hang out in Nawlins and I tell you what we did, but for now we’ll just finish up the trip on the airplane.

One of the good parts about missing our first flight, which we were not seated together on, was that we were able to sit next to each other and enjoy the trip a little better. I guess our enjoyment was limited to just sitting together because both of us had a really tough time. It was impossible to get comfortable, and neither of us had slept more than 2 hours the night before. Our plan was to catch up on sleep while on the plane and feel a little more energized once we got to Nawlins. That did NOT happen at all.That was the toughest flight I’ve ever been on. It was the longest 3 hours ever. Continental Airlines has seats that are made out of cardboard and foam, or at least that’s what it felt like. I can be thankful however that we made it to Houston without any issues on a relatively smooth airplane.

We landed in Houston, TX around 9:50. That was about 20 minutes earlier than we were supposed to land but we weren’t going to complain. We wandered down to the gate to Nawlins that we were on standby for only to find that the original connecting flight we were supposed to be on was boarding! We could have totally made the flight. So we ran up to the gate and asked the lady, who spoke very poor english, if we could still get on or if our seats had been given away. She looked really confused and politely told us that we were still on standby for the next flight leaving at 11:45. We understood, and decided that we might as well go get a bite to eat and come back around 11 to sit down and wait to find out if we had seats or not.

We ate at Bubba’s Bayou Grill and had a delicious hamburger. I’m kind of glad we got to chill for a little bit and didn’t have to get directly on another plane. We were totally beat and needed some time to deflate. We went back to the gate and sat for a bit where I learned that Houston’s airport does NOT have free wifi. How do you do that?! What kind of sick airport makes you pay 10 bucks for internet access? George Bush International, that’s who!

I sat and talked to Steph and tried to figure out how much a rental car would be if we had to drive it. Turns out it’s not that expensive. Good news was that we didn’t have to drive! We ended up getting on the plane just fine. A group of 9 people coming from Philaelphia, PA had a delayed flight that was going to prevent them from making the connecting flight to Nawlins. So the 9 of us on standby got on the plan perfectly. Then it was off to Nawlins on a 1 hour flight instead of a 6 hour drive. I don’t think we’ve ever been so excited. We had to sit apart, but we made it just fine.

We landed in Nawlins, got our baggage (which arrived just fine), got in a cab and made our way to the hotel for a nice long well deserved nap. Then the fun started….and that’s a post for another day.

Steph and I have officially made it to New Orleans, Louisiana! We never thought we would get here with all the issues we had yesterday trying to hop from plane to plane, but here we are in a sweet hotel room with a beautiful view and one of the most comfortable beds I’ve ever slept in.

We started out at 3am on Friday getting ready to leave, and we thought we would have plenty of time to get to the airport and be well on our way to Houston (our first hop). Unfortunately, we didn’t really get on the road until about 3:40, still thinking we would definitely make it. Well, our hopes were crushed as soon as we walked in the doors the airport. Security was backed up to the door and it looked like the wait time would be 25 minutes at the least. Our flight was scheduled to take off at 6am and it was 5:20. We ran up the stairs to try to check our bags and got in line. It took us a couple more minutes to get up to the kiosk, now 5:26, and then we had problems getting it to find our reservation. After we got it settled, thanks to the already stressed staff, we tried to check our bags: FAIL! The bags had to be checked at least 35 minutes before take off. It was now 5:28. The staff was able to check our bags and told us to go, but we probably weren’t going to make it.

We went all the way back downstairs to get in the line for security, only to hear the security guard tell everybody they were opening up the alternative security gate BACK UPSTAIRS! So we wandered back upstairs with the mob of all the other late people, when we could have just stayed upstairs and been at the front of the line. It figures it would happen that way. We managed to get through security without a problem, 5:50, and ran to the trains to head to the concourses. We jumped on those and rode it to the concourse we were supposed to be in, headed up the escalator, and started speed-walking to our gate. It was now 5:59. We arrived at the gate to see the jetway pulled back. Disaster!

We walked up to the gate and talked to a guy named Ed from Continental. Nicest guy I’ve ever dealt with at an aiport. He hooked us up with a flight to Houston at 8am, a mere 2 hours after our original flight was to leave. Not too shabby. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find a single flight to New Orleans that wasn’t full. He didn’t think we would make the connecting flight we should be on, and we didn’t either, so he dropped us on standby for the next flight out. That one was scheduled to leave at 11:45. We can deal with that, just a slight setback. The only thing about being on standby is that you have no idea if you have tickets or not until you get there. So we went to grab a bite to eat and boarded our flight to Houston at 7:45. Things were starting to look up, and we figured if we could just get to Houston we could drive if we couldnt’ get on a plane.

More on this later. Gotta go meet my parents for breakfast. TO BE CONTINUED!

I just finished the latest book by critically acclaimed author Dan Brown, and I totally loved it! Because I have such a long commute, I decided to just pick up the audiobook version on Audible.com and give it a listen. This is one of the most intense books I’ve read/listened to in a while. Dan Brown really knows how to flesh out characters and give you a crazy puzzling story that sends your brain in so many different directions. I’d never read any of the Robert Langdon stories before, though I did give Da Vinci Code a try. I couldn’t finish that one, but this one totally sucked me in from the start.

I’m not going to give you guys any spoilers, so that pretty much means I can’t talk about the book at all. But I can tell you that it is definitely worth a read if you liked National Treasure at all. This follows that whole “Masonic legend” story, but it has much, much darker undertones and an incredibly vile antagonist. The mystery will keep you guessing and you’ll never see the end coming.

I typed all that just to tell you this: go get that book! You won’t regret it. The audiobook version was even fantastic, and the reader did an excellent job keeping the pace up and bringing out the intensity. Sometimes I wish he would have read faster, but that’s just because I eagerly wanted to know what the answers to this mystery were. Well, that’s it for now! Go read The Lost Symbol <– There’s a link to amazon just for you to go pick it up now. Why wait?