The Greatest Show

Hi Everyone. Looking at the comments from yesterday's post, it appears that maybe I haven't discussed the circus before. This surprises me. Anyway, figured I'd do a circus post today to explain point #3 on yesterday's post.

My dad was the P.E. and Health teacher at my elementary school. The school was affiliated with the local university, so he was both faculty at the college, and an elementary school teacher. One of the unique things about the college was that it had a circus. One of the only two universities with a college circus (I think). So my dad decided that he would start a circus at the elementary school as well. 

I think this highlights the difference between me and my dad. I come up with things like "wouldn't it be great if we changed the way that bananas are sold?" and then I do nothing. My dad does things like starting circuses. 

So from 2nd grade - 8th grade, I was in the circus.  The circus traveled to nursing homes, and the mall, and halftime of basketball games to perform. So being in a circus leads to an interesting childhood. Having a dad that started the circus and loves going to other circuses really opens your eyes. 

My mom likes traveling to big cities. My dad doesn't. So my mom learned that she could convince my dad to drive her to the big city if there was a circus in town. So most of our vacations were scheduled around the circus.  We've seen a Russian circus, other kids circuses, a few Asian circuses, Cirque (more times than I can count), we've been to juggling conventions, we've been to the Ringling Brothers museum. The list goes on and on. I think there was actually a 'soul circus' at one point, but I can't back that up. We would also do street performing during family vacations. Mostly juggling outside with a hat on the ground for donations. 

Oh, and then there are the clowns. My dad was the director, ringmaster guy of the kids circus for 20 years. It went from 60 kids to over 200 per year. To show their appreciation, the parents of the kids in the circus would always buy my dad clown figurines. So my house always had an obscene number of clowns. And keep in mind that about 50% of clowns are sort of creepy looking. My mom was not a big fan of the clowns. Or the G.D. Clowns, as she liked to call them. 

My dad wasn't just a circus founder/director guy. He found a little-known loophole in the college circus, that allowed faculty members to perform in the circus. So well into his 50s, my dad performed in the college circus. I'm pretty sure there were about 100 college undergrads and one AARP member.

I could go on and on about my circus life, but I've gotta get going. Kate's flying into town today, and I've gotta get to the airport. Oh, and my parents are watching a movie about tight wire walking tonight. I can't make this stuff up. 

My 25 Things

All you you Faceback users out there have probably seen something new popping up in your news feed. Apparently some genius started this whole 25 things nonsense. For the non-Facebook users out there (Kate) this is how it works: You type out a list of 25 random facts about yourself, then you tag 25 of your friends to do the same thing. And they tell two friends, and they tell two friends. So far I've been tagged a handful of times to post my '25 things' list, but have resisted. It's not that I don't want to share information about myself. I think this blog makes it pretty clear that I don't mind sharing details about me. No, the reason why I've resisted is that it sort of has a chain letter quality to it. Chain letters always stopped with me. I don't like asking other people to do things. So I thought that I could just post my 25 things here, and then if people on Facebook bug me to post my 25 things, I'll just send them here. And if I'm lucky, they'll be from South Dakota or Montana and we can cross those states off the list. On that note, we've had our first visitor from West Virginia...just thought y'all would like the update. So...here's my list of 25 things about me:

1. I wish I had more exciting celebrity encounters. All I've got is sharing a plane with the big guy from P.M. Dawn and meeting Phyllis from The Office at the airport.

2. I don't ever get 'full'. I just run out of food on my plate. I think this is a problem.

3. I've worn way more spandex than any man ever should. Between 8 years in a circus and 4 years of cold weather running, I've had more than my share of tights-wearing. 

4. I went an entire semester of college without wearing pants on Sundays. This meant going to Taco Bell in my boxers.

5. I'm not very good with colors. Another way to put it would be to say I'm Red-Green colorblind, but I like my way better. This led my elementary school art teacher to think I was special. 

6. I watch Oprah pretty much everyday. Even though I don't like her. My thought here is that if she's going to brainwash half of the country, I wanna know what she's telling them.

7. Even though I'm surrounded by technology all the time, I'm fascinated by fax machines.

8. I'd probably buy more flowers if they had more masculine names. Posies, daisies, petunias...who came up with these names?

9. I don't think I've ever been punched in the face. Always wondered what it would feel like. Not enough to try it.

10. I've run six marathons. I know why I ran the first one, but have no clue why I ran the last five.

11. I really don't like loose change. Or any paper money, for that matter. 

12. I'm the only person I know that has no interest in going to Hawaii. Ever. 

13. Every time I fill up Gilbert's bowl, I wonder what his dog food tastes like. Not enough to try it, but I am curious. 

14. If I've heard a song three times, then I most likely know all the words. 

15. I started playing golf because it was the only sport where I could beat my dad. Then he got good at that. 

16. During conversations, the first thing that jumps into my mind is always something smartass. If I respond with something serious, it's probably the second or third thing that came into my mind. 

17. I went to space camp. Nerd.

18. I do several impressions. My favorite is Mel Gibson's daughter in What Women Want. Kate hates that impression. Come to think of it, it is pretty annoying.

19. If I had to pick my top 5 bands or artists, the list would include Jim Croce, The Beatles, 2Pac, Elvis, and Harry Chapin. I have no idea if it's a coincidence that they're all dead (or partially dead). Numbers 6 and 7 are still alive, but probably not for much longer (Willie and Dylan). 

20. I don't know how to cook much of anything. I've taken Home Ec, a cooking class, and watch The Food Network. Still got nothin. 

21.  I hate being late for anything. Even if it's an arbitrary ETD that I picked out of the sky. Kate hates being on time. I don't think either of us are going to budge on this one. 

22. I'd lift weights more if there weren't so many strong people at the gym.

23. I want to own more power tools, even if I never use them.

24. I feel productive on trash day if I remember to take the trash out. It's not much, but it gets the day started off on the right foot.

25. I wish I enjoyed reading books, but I really don't. Sorry Mom. 

So there's my 25. Now stop asking me to post these on Facebook. And if someone asks you to post your 25 on FB, you can steal any of mine that you want.

The Lady on the News

The local news anchor on the 11:00 AM news hates her job. I can tell just by looking at her. For the first 55 minutes of this hour-long broadcast, she's pretty much just going through the motions. Murder here, layoffs there, peanut butter recall somewhere else. Blah blah blah. But then something amazing happens. She does a complete 180. All of a sudden, she's animated. She does some impressions, wears costumes, and just has fun. It's time for the Hot Spot. That's their version of the Hollywood update where they tell me all I need to know about celebrity gossip. Actually, I already know most of it. Between what I learned on TMZ the night before, what I learned from borrowing my mom's copy of People Magazine, and the gaps that Hoda and Kathy Lee filled in an hour earlier, I'm pretty much caught up on my celebrity gossip. Yet I still tune in most days to watch the local news lady. It just sort of makes me happy to see her go from disgruntled employee to Suzy Happyface during the commercial break. 

Now that I think about it, her behavior isn't really all that strange (except when she was wearing the replica Flavor Flav clock). Work is basically a series of tasks that we have to do. We like some of the tasks and we dislike some of the tasks. I don't really buy into the whole "find something you love to do and you'll never work a day in your life." I'm not buying it. If everything about work was fun, they wouldn't have to bribe you with a paycheck. So my theory is to really enjoy the tasks that you like to do. Prove that you're really good at doing that task and maybe someone will notice and then you'll have a job that revolves around said task or similar tasks. I'm not quite sure how to manage the tasks that you don't enjoy. You could avoid them altogether, but that's probably not a good strategy. The lady on the news pretty much just goes through the motions during the tasks that she doesn't like, and that's not a very good approach either. Hmm, I'll get back to you on how to handle those. 

Anyway, this got me thinking about my job and which tasks I like and which ones that I don't like. When I started my list of stuff I really like doing at work, I realized that it wasn't really work tasks that I was listing. It was stuff like 'coming up with new avatars for people' or 'trying to work random words into conversations on conference calls' or 'making prop bets about how many times someone would say some word during some meeting.' While all of these things are really fun, they aren't really work tasks. If I was to list these things during my performance review, I doubt they would result in a big raise or promotion.

So looking at my actual work tasks, there's plenty of stuff that I enjoy. An old friend has come back into my work life. A couple of years ago, I was posting frequently on our corporate blog. I started out with some pretty basic corporate-speak, but eventually started writing the kind of stuff that I write here. I think there was one post about Snakes on a Plane, and I know there was one about Chris Hanson on How to Catch a Predator. I went through a pretty serious How to Catch a Predator phase, actually. We even had a group Halloween costume with me as Chris Hanson, and then the rest of the cast (Predator, Tween Girl, camera guy, boom mic operator). Anyway back to the work blogging. My company is in the middle of a blog throwdown with another company (sort of like my throwdown with Heba, but not quite), so I'm back to blogging at work again, and I'm loving it. Yesterday I posted about an email that I got about a rabid raccoon loose in my neighborhood and today I posted about Gov. Blago. I don't know if anyone reads my work blog or if my Blago blog helps us sell more widgets, but I really enjoy doing it.

So there's my sage work advice. Break your job down to a series of tasks. Identify the ones that you like, and try to do really well at those. Deep stuff, I know. Oh, and even though I'm blogging at work again, I promise I won't neglect YIFY. If you've got some work tasks that you like (or dislike) feel free to share with the group. 

The Biggest Loser - Home Edition

Several of our loyal YIFY readers have asked for an update on my at home edition of The Biggest Loser. Or maybe I should call it Throwdown: Nate vs. Heba. I dunno...still working on the name. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, there's a post on here called 'food and drink' that describes my deathmatch with Heba. 

Oh, and I should also state that this is not a healthy living or follow my weight loss blog. I don't really know what kind of blog this is anymore, but I know it's not that. But since I'm exactly 6 weeks into the challenge, and since it's weigh-in day (for both TBL contestants and me) it seemed like a decent time for an update on how things are going.

The Stats

Heba: First 6 weeks on the ranch - Lost 41 pounds and was down 14% of her body weight. Damn, I really should've looked at this before challenging her to a duel. I mean all of this stuff is online...I could've known beforehand what I had to lose. I think my disdain for her 'character' on the show clouded my judgement here. I didn't realize that she actually did really, really well, especially in the first six weeks. Maybe I should've picked another competitor. 

Nate: First 6 weeks on plan - Lost 32.5 pounds and down 11.5% of body weight. So yeah, I'm pretty much getting my ass kicked. Stupid Heba. I also realize that anyone with a firm grasp on high school math could figure out my starting weight and current weight with the data provided above. I don't really care. If anyone really wants to take the time to calculate percentage change, then go for it. Damn, I just realized that my goal weight would put me well short of Heba' weight loss in both pounds and percentage terms. Really should have done some more research on this.

The Other Stats

BMI: I never really figured out why TBL doesn't do some kind of BMI calculation on the show. Seems like it would make sense. Anyway, since they don't do this, I can't compare to Heba's performance here. Since my scale tells me what my BMI is even when I don't want it to, I've added a new tab on my spreadsheet for this. Yes, I do have a multi-tabbed spreadsheet keeping track of this stuff. I know, I'm a nerd. Anyway, my BMI has a percentage change of 20.4% in the past 6 weeks. I've put in a solid 3 minutes of research on BMI. Some people think it's a great metric, others say it is completely flawed. I've found that when I do healthy things my BMI goes down and when I drink beer and eat pizza it goes up. So if it's a flawed metric, it seems to be consistently flawed.

Drinks consumed: 0 

Times when I thought a drink was a good idea: 6 (and counting). They are:

 1. RJ's Dirty 30. It isn't everyday that RJ turns 30. He also only drinks about once a decade, so I would've liked to be there for him. I was sick at the time, which helped me just say no to the nice bartender

2. Panthers playoff game. First because it was a fun atmosphere for drinking. Later because they were getting beat like a drum.

3-4. Couple of work trips. Just always seems like a good idea.

5. Flight from Indy - Charlotte. Was sitting on the front of the plane next to a man that smelled like garbage water. I was convinced that a mini bottle of just about anything would smell better than that man. I almost ordered a drink just to open the bottle and smell it. 

6. Sunday - Was cleaning my house after the completion of the downstairs ceiling popcorn scraping. This meant like 6 hours of cleaning, including dusting off all alcohol bottles that were covered in ceiling dust. That made me thirsty. 

Most ridiculous thing that I've done so far: I took my scale as a carry-on during my last flight

Best diet-related quote by a family member: My mom. Direct quote "so am I just supposed to serve carrots and water at our Super Bowl party, or what?"

Editor's note: I'm not just eating carrots and drinking water.

So there it is. I'm 8.5 lbs and 2.5% Heba after 6 weeks. 19 more weeks to go, although we'll start to reintroduce some drink and not so good for you food in another month or so (in small doses). I think she's hearing footsteps. 

The House Effect

I just watched House on Fox. I love that show. Kate's not a very big fan. She likes it, but doesn't like it when the patient coughs up blood or has blood come out of somewhere else where blood isn't supposed to come out. And that happens on pretty much every episode. I can say that with complete confidence, because I have watched every episode. USA likes to have House Marathons for 24 hours at a time, and I'm usually good for about 16 of those hours. I find it ironic that they call it a marathon, since it leads to me having a sedentary lifestyle on House Marathon days. I doubt this is what the Greeks had in mind.

Anyway, all of my House watching usually leads me to think that I have some kind of strange, undiagnosable disease. Probably something flesh-eating. This always happens. Every time I watch this show, I end up thinking something like "when was the last time I went to the doctor" or "maybe I should get that checked out." So this is The House Effect - watching or reading or doing something enough that it begins to alter your thoughts or behavior. Here are a few other situations where this seems to happen for me:

Country Music - I usually only listen to country in the summertime. But since I haven't landed on a single good radio station in Charlotte, I've been listening to country in January. Anyway, whenever I listen to country for more than a half hour, I usually end up thinking something like "I should write country songs - that would be a pretty easy job" or "I should probably go to church." The church thing might not be so obvious, but 78% of country songs say something like 'get on my knees and pray' or 'church on Sunday' or 'faith in heaven above.' 

Tyler Perry Movie Previews - I say previews, because I haven't actually seen any of the movies. But when I see the previews, I always have the urge to dress up like an old African American woman. Either that, or it makes me want to add Big Momma's House to my Netflix queue. Did y'all realize that they made a Big Momma's House 2? Were there really a lot of unresolved plot lines leftover after the original Big Momma's House?

Working in a Nursing Home - So this one is Kate's contribution. She says that working in a nursing home makes her think that everyone (myself included) has MRSA or dementia. It also seems to give people (my wife) some kind of special medical training where she thinks she can diagnose things or out-doctor the doctors on Discovery Health. That last one was my contribution, and it might seem kind of mean. But keep in mind that Kate called me tonight and said that she started reading one of the Twilight books. So I could've written a whole post on what it's like to be married to a 15 year old girl, but I'm not going to do that. 

Eating at a Chain Casual-Dining Restaurant - Always makes me want to talk to Kate more. Usually when you see couples at (insert Applebees, TGIFridays, whatever) they are pretty much just sitting silently, staring at each other. We don't really do that, but I'm usually analyzing the menu, trying to determine how I can get the most possible food for the least amount of money. Not because I'm super hungry or broke, but because it's the most efficient. But the silent couples around me make me think that I should just start talking.

Watching the News anytime in the past 3 months - Makes me want to start stockpiling food and various other supplies for the end of days. I realize that the economic news is fairly bleak. I get it. The mail that the 401k people send me can tell me that. But the news is over the top. You don't need to bring Jim Cramer on the evening news for me to know how bad the economy sucks. Cramer's appearance doesn't help or hurt the economic news, it really just makes Brian Williams look more handsome. That one was for my mom.

So those are the five or so that I could think of in our limited time together. If you have any other examples of stuff that you watch or listen to or do that alters your thoughts or actions, let me know via comment. 

And please don't use the valuable comment space to defend the Twilight books. You're not gonna change my mind on that. And I won't fight fair. I'll just come back with something like "Go clean your room, Kelsee. And stop texting your BFF."

Yep, these are my readers

Hi Everyone. Sorry for two days without posting. I have no excuse, but I'll try to make up for it with a decent one here.

So I stole the title of this post from Bill Simmons, who runs The Sports Guy on espn.com. If you haven't read his blog, you should. Actually, I'll back up a bit. If you like sports, pop culture, and sophomoric humor (and want them all in the same place) then you should check it out. If that isn't your brand of whisky, then that's okay too. Anyway, Simmons ends all of his Mailbag posts with that line. He usually picks the most ridiculous question that he receives that week, leaves it for last, and then answers it with "Yep, these are my readers." An example would be a question that he got a couple weeks ago that was something like "Hey Bill, if I hook up with the swivel-headed lady from the Southwest Airlines commercial, would that count as a threesome?" I warned you about the frat-tastic humor that is The Sports Guy. I don't really have a mailbag post, but I thought the title would fit this topic and because it would help for search engine optimization. We'll get to that a little later.

When RJ and I started this blog, we debated on what the appropriate metrics were to measure the success of the blog. We went back and forth with some of the more qualitative metrics like 'funny comments' or 'does the blog make us laugh'. We also wanted to look at some of the quantitative metrics like 'unique visitors' and 'referral sources'. Since we wanted to track some of the numbers, and since it was sort of work-related for us to learn something about web analytics, we had our friend Ben (another Running Club member and loyal YIFY reader) set us up with Google Analytics, so we're able to track all sorts of fun stuff about who is visiting the blog. So this post is about some of the fun data that I've looked at since the blog's re-launch about a month ago. Here we go:

There have been 3,417 visitors in the past month. I thought this was pretty cool. I think about 5% of those people are family members, 10% are coworker friends and clients, 80% are from Kath's blog, and 5% are randoms that found the blog accidentally because of some google search. More on the randoms later. The 3,417 number is accurate, my percentage breakdown is just a guess.

There have been visitors from 46 states. Shame on: Montana, West Virginia, Mississippi, and South Dakota. Not cool guys. I mean, I've driven through all of your states and you haven't visited my blog once? Especially you, South Dakota. I think I spent a whole day at your Mount Rushmore and Wall Drug back in '92 and you still won't give me any blog love. Poor form. So if any of you know people that live in any of those four states, please send them the URL so we can have global (or domestic, I guess) domination. You can lie and tell them it's a funny video or an e-card or something. I don't care how you get them to the blog, just do it. I could be mean and say something about the lack of electricity or internet connectivity in those states, but I won't do that. 

There have been visitors from 40 countries. There's plenty of room for improvement here. My analytics report is a big map of the world and the countries change color once I've had a visitor from said country. So if you know anyone from Greenland or Russia, let's start there. That would be the fastest way to color the map, since most of the other big countries have already visited. There's also plenty of room for improvement in Africa. I've had visitors from South Africa and Malawi, but the rest of the continent is there for the taking. So if y'all want to join the Peace Corps and then visit the blog while you're traveling, you have my permission. I'm trying to settle on a goal here for global domination. There are apparently around 195 countries in the world, but that seems like way too many. I think I'm going to go with either the number of countries that are in the United Nations, or the number of countries that won an Olympic medal in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Okay, scratch that. Google tells me that there are 192 countries in the UN, and we aren't going to get that many. So we'll go with the Olympic thing. That number is 87. So if you know anyone living abroad, send them to the blog. This can be our own little Epcot Center.

Lots of funny keywords. I think this is my favorite part of the web analytics. I look at which search terms people use on Google than brings them to the blog. Then I think about how disappointed they'll be when they end up here instead of something more relevant. Here's a sample of some of the search terms people have actually used in the past month:

guy on guy action

fat machine

has Suzanne Wong left househunters on HGTV

Ebert and Roper

Do your intestines really stretch to the moon

hippie eyewear

homeless hippies

hotel black light test

when is it okay to unfriend someone

grocery store tucamcari new mexico

exchanging numbers with a guy

Bob Ross

 

I think this is my favorite thing to look at. If you used one of these search terms and found this blog, then welcome. Feel free to look around. I just feel bad for the dude looking for a grocery store in Tucamcari, New Mexico. I mean, I only mentioned Tucamcari once and it somehow ended up in the guy's search results. I think that means they probably don't have many grocery stores there, but that's just a guess.

So that's the end of tonight's post. If you think it's sort of creepy that I'm looking at this kind of data, think of it this way: you're pretty much reading about all of the mundane details of my life when you're visiting this blog, so I think it's a fair tradeoff for me to know where you're coming from. Even if you're looking for grocery stores in Tucamcari.

An Inconvenient Name

I was thinking about writing a really positive, uplifting post tonight. But I'm sick. I think I've got bird flu or some kind of peanut butter SARS or whatever the news is telling me about. So that means another grumpy old man post.

I'd like to slap the man (or woman) who came up with the term 'global warming'. Not the person who came up with the actual concept, because that's pretty brilliant. I'm by no means a crunchy granola hippie, but I do believe in the concept. I made it about halfway through Al Gore's movie before slipping into a wine-induced coma. That was a couple years ago, so I don't really remember much about the movie. My logic is that if you do enough bad stuff for long enough, then bad things will probably happen. So I'm not mad at the people who developed the concept. My beef is with the term namer. Unless of course it's the same person. Then I wouldn't know what to do. I'm torn like an old sweater. 

So here's my beef with the term 'global warming'. It's unseasonably cold in Charlotte (check local listings). And I think it's pretty damn cold everywhere else too. So now every time it's really freaking cold I have to deal with two things: 1. The fact that it's really freaking cold, and 2. The fact that some local weather person is going to report the temperature and then some local news anchor is going to make some stupid joke like "so much for global warming" or "jeez Larry, what about this global warming that everyone is talking about." Just shut up. Seriously. Not funny. Just annoying. If they just would've called it something like 'global climate crisis' or 'impending wrath of Mother Nature' then I'd only have to deal with the cold, and not the unfunny local news banter. 

This got me thinking about Manwich. Yes, the canned sloppy joe sauce. I know, we switch topics pretty quickly here, so try to keep up. Anyway, Manwich recently changed their jingle. It used to be:

(Jamaican Sounding Guy Singing)

Momma don't ya make me another meatloaf/

forget the Mac 'n' Cheese/

I want some fun piled on a bun/

I want a Manwich please.

And their new jingle is:

(Annoying kids singing)

Hey you don't have to be a man to love manwich/

you don't have to be a witch either, it's true/

You just have to love a fun tasty dinner/

And wearing some of that dinner on you.

So Manwich is now using valuable jingle space to address the fact that their name is not literal. I wonder if this is because they were getting lots of calls to their customer service center with inquiries from women. Or maybe they were finding that only men and wiccans were purchasing their product. I can't think of any other reason to get rid of the best jingle and replace it with this garbage.

It's not just the global climate crisis and delicious sloppy joe paste that have inconvenient names. I'd like to submit Benjamin Franklin Plumbing into evidence as Exhibit C. What is Benjamin Franklin's connection to the plumbing trade? That's all I think about when I hear their commercials. Their tagline is something about Ben being the punctual plumber. I did a solid four minutes of research on Franklin tonight, and I can't find anything about plumbing or punctuality. He did invent the flexible urinary catheter, but that's a bit of a stretch. Flexible Urinary Catheter would also be a pretty awesome band name, but that's beside the point. The point is, their name doesn't make any damn sense, and I think they know it. That's why they end their commercials with another pop culture reference (that has nothing to do with Franklin, plumbing, or punctuality). The end of their jingle is as follows:

(guy who sounds like Tommy Tutone)

Benny's the punctual plumber/

866 - That's his prefix/

Then 8675309

I don't get it. Ben Franklin has nothing to do with plumbing. Ben Franklin has nothing to do with Tommy Tutone. Tommy Tutone and his song have nothing to do with plumbing. What the hell is going on here?

Alright, that's about all for today. I'm pretty much out of time here. That four minutes of research on Ben Franklin didn't help. Time to tend to my bird flu. Maybe a manwich would help.