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Dr. Graham

The most hilarious thing happened with us.  Just a few days ago, we called a friend about some private matter, and then our friend asked us about our baby and who our OB was. “Dr. Graham”, we replied.  As soon as our friend heard that name, she began a tirade about how upset she was with the doctor.  She also had Dr. Graham as her OB, and the doctor mentioned during her routine visits that the baby’s head was down.  When the due date approached, Dr. Graham went on vacation, so another OB attended her that week.  To her horror, the OB discovered that baby’s head was actually up, and she needed an immediate C-section.  She couldn’t believe Dr. Graham made such a big mistake!

Coincidentally, our Dr. Graham had also been insisting to us that the head was down, and Dr. Graham also went on vacation this week, two weeks before the due date.  By this time, goosebumps appeared on my arms and drops of swet began to roll down my forehead as I contemplated whether we had made a disastrous decision choosing our OB .  Why hadn’t we spoken to her about Dr. Graham earlier?  With Karen due any day now, we had no choice but to follow through with this dire situation with Dr. Graham.  What have we done?

Our friend then went on to mention that the reason she chose the doctor was because the doctor was female.  Wait.  Female?  Karen and I looked at each other before rolling on the ground laughing because our Dr. Graham is actually male.  Needless to say, we both breathed a sigh of relief as we once again look upon the arrival date with optimism.

Now if only we can make it past April 1st for that arrival date…

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Casualty of Snow

Recall my mentioning of Cherry Blossom as an imagery for the arrival of Spring in my last blog?  I love their appearance, especially when one exists outside my front yard, coloring the block for one lone week of the whole year before it sheds itself of all petals and hibernates until the following Spring.  Unfortunately this year it shed more than just the petals, as it was struck by the unannounced arrival of the snow…

Cherry Blossom, with broken branches

Unfortunately the branches was unable to withstand the weight of both the blossoms and the snow.  Oh and how I used to love seeing everything covered in snow, until now.

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March Snow?!

Just when I thought Winter has left town and Spring made its grand entrance with the blooming cherry blossoms, we get this…

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Karen and I had a comforting discussion in December about how we were glad that we would have to drive in the snow during labor because of the baby being due in April.  It appears that we spoke too soon!

Kids

The Anticipation

April 11th, 2008. The tentative date of the beginning. Or the end. Everyone familiar with this journey seem to offer the same condolences, that the days of the life as we know it is numbered. Date nights, TV marathons, and video games can be kissed goodbye. Sleeplessness, frustrating moments, and ceaseless work will rule the days. And nights. The luxury of quality eight hour sleep would be supplanted by short, interrupted naps. The eyes shall transform from the monochrome black and white into a crimson red traditionally associated with vampires.  Some call this Doomsday, but others describe this as the beginning of the most wonderful journey one can take. In the end, they say, it will be all worth it.

I hope so.

Sports

Chargers, Seahawks out of playoffs

So this is a slightly late entry, but both of my teams have lost in the playoffs. Seahawks were put to shame by the Packers, but at least Holmgren is coming back next season! Chargers made it to AFC Championship, but couldn’t punch it in the red zone. With no LT, slow Rivers, and hurt Gates, it’s amazing they made it this long, and the fact Norv got conservative against the Patriots didn’t help either. Oh well, but at least they put up a fight and didn’t get blown out like the Hawks.

There’s always next year.

Home

Cutting the Cable Bill?

Not long ago, we finally retired our old trusty Panasonic 27″ CRT television and upgraded to a new Panasonic 50″ Plasma. Unfortunately HD programming is needed to see the difference, and I could count the number of HD channels available by Comcast with my toes. Hence I ask myself the question, why pay for all this when it’s all available for free over the air? So I went on a little quest to try finding a way to save on cable bill.

First, I investigated what I can pick up from where I live, and for that, I found a nice web site, antennaweb.org that, given my location, revealed what channels I should receive as well as the direction of the stations. I later found that tvfool.com gave even better information, but either one works. After typing in my address, I found that I had all the local stations I wanted, but Fox would be very weak, so that would be my limiting factor.

Next, I tried hooking up some antennas. According to the web, all I need is any old UHF loop-style antenna, so I dug around my cobweb-filled garage and found an old Radio Shack UHF/VHF antenna…

When I tried it, the number of stations I got were limited and the signal strength wasn’t great. So I did some research on indoor antennas and found that the Philips Silver Sensor was a great indoor antenna. I didn’t find them being sold locally, and given that I wanted to be able to return it if it doesn’t work well, I ended up with an antenna with a similar design, the Terk HDTVa.

This antenna worked well, and if I pointed it at a specific location, I was able to pick up FOX. There was one issue, however, which was that it was directional and there was no spot that would pick up all channels. Given that I had a Tivo HD, which is always recording, I needed an antenna I don’t need to move.

Then I tried the omni-directional Terk TV-5, which is not as directional, but it was weaker and also was very sensitive to the degree of rotation of the antenna. Given that I still had to rotate the antenna, it might as well have been a directional antenna.

Finally I found the antenna that gave me all the stations…

The Radio Shack Indoor/Outdoor Antenna, 15-2187. It had great reviews, and given the size, it had a larger surface area, I decided to give it a try. Voila! I now have a spot where it picks up all channels! There’s still some occasional breakup on a channel during rainy days, but it’s certainly a whole lot better than the smaller indoor antennas. Despite some web sites mentioned that the higher the better, I found that the prime spot for picking up Fox was right on the ground next to the TV. It certainly isn’t the designer furniture I was looking for, but with it only half visible, it was acceptable, even to Karen.

I have currently hooked up the antenna to my Tivo have given it a trial run for a few days, and so far so good. As long as the antenna has a lock on the station, the picture is perfect because it is digital. Now with the writer’s strike, the original programming options are more limited, so this is the perfect time to cut the cable bill… completely!

Sports

Go Chargers, Seahawks!

The playoffs is here, and both my favorite teams, the Seahawks and the Chargers are both in the playoffs. The two teams have stadiums that will chew the other teams’ ears off, and both have home field advantage, which is great.

While Seahawk’s QB Hasselbeck is brilliant, I have my reservation about the hawks, though. The RB Alexander can’t run a yard without falling straight into the turf, we’re pressed to depend on the arms of Hasselbeck, and the game we had at Carolina revealed the weakness in that strategy, which is that external factors, such as wind, can really affect our result. As I type, I can hear the wind about to take my roof off, which is not a good sign. Hopefully the wind will die down a bit tomorrow.

As for Chargers, their problem is the exact opposite of Seahawks. The running game is excellent, as they have RB Tomlinson who does wonders, but QB Philip Rivers can be erratic and hit the umpire 10 feet away instead of his target. Then there’s coach Norv Turner, who is riding the talents of this team. I suppose having won last 6 games of the season means they’re how jelling together. Hopefully we won’t see any boneheaded decisions from Norv during this off season.

So there. Let’s go Chargers and Seahawks!

Health

Eat the lard!

We’ve heard that you can’t have too much of Vitamin C. Then we heard that too much of it causes cancer. We heard that eggs are bad because of the high cholesterol. Then we hear that perhaps it’s not as bad as we thought.

Now we have articles about how saturated fat may not be as bad as we thought.
I’ve always wondered about that because Chinese people eat all sorts of fat, yet we don’t see them having more heart issues.

Of course, studies change all the time, and you can’t go wrong with “everything in moderation”. But in the mean time, time to enjoy the hardy pig feet and beef ribs without the guilt!

General

New Years Resolutions

Every year it is good to set some new year’s resolutions. The key to making good resolutions is creating attainable, measurable goals, so here’s my crack at that list for the year of 2008:

  1. I will post blogs more frequently, at least once a year.
  2. I will keep the cleanliness of the house from being in disarray. The house shall never be compared to abandoned houses.
  3. I will not leave my preopened oatmeal packages on the kitchen island after having emptied its contents, for longer than a 24 hour period.
  4. I will not leave the soymilk container on the island when it is less than half empty, for longer than a 24 hour period.
  5. I will not covet my neighbors’ gadgets. I shall not go out and purchase the same item within 24 hours.
  6. I will work out everyday. Yes, that’s every single day. Of course, walking up and down the stairs should be considered step-aerobics…
  7. I will wake up and get to work early everyday. The work day should start no later than noon.
  8. I will sleep early every night. I need to be in bed and asleep before the sunlight is visible.
  9. I will eat healthy and keep my cholesterol level under control. I will not eat any single fast food restaurant, such as McDonalds, more than once a week.
  10. I will keep the TV watching under control. I will not use more than $20 in electrocity for powering on the TV in any given month.

There. Hopefully I can stay true to these goals for the year of 2008. Happy new year!