Here's to RSS Readers at 9:27 AM

Been a while, hasn't it? Well, I kind of lost my motivation there for a while, but I'm hopping back on the blog here to try out the old digs again. It'd be pointless to go into all the happenings of the past year in detail (those who are reading here are probably Facebook friends, so you know about it anyway,) so we'll just dive back into the present.

First, the kids. Luke is five now, and he'll be starting kindergarten here in a few weeks, which will bring to an end the era of being able to plan trips at any time of year. Sad on one hand, but on the other hand, that kid is ready for some school. He's the most curious and observant little kid I've ever seen. Always with the questions like "how does this work? what's that made of?" And while I love that he's going to prove smart, answering questions that I really don't know the answer to can get tiresome. So school will be good for him. Ronin is three, and he is a monster in every sense of the word. He's almost the same size as Luke (they can wear the same size clothes,) and he's built like a linebacker. If he ends up with that size and my brother's athletic prowess, watch out. Unfortunately, however, he may end up about as coordinated as I was when I was a kid (which was not very.) Also since he's this age, he is a miserable person. I don't know if everyone has this experience with three-year-olds, but in short, mine have been awful people. Luke is better now, which gives me hope for Ronin, who a year ago was a gregarious, outgoing, fearless little boy and is presently bad-tempered, demanding, and scared of everyone and everything. But we still love him. As for little Renae, she's pretty much the cutest baby ever. There are only good things to say about five-month-olds, after all. She pretty much just sits there and smiles and makes cute baby noises. The boys love her to death, which is both good and dangerous. They don't quite realize the size difference between them and her (mostly the oafish Ronin,) so we have to keep a pretty close eye on their interactions.

As for personal stuff, I'm still pretty much a fat guy, but I'm getting on a program to make that different. This has happened a few times before with moderate success followed by reinflating, but this time I've got a pretty good feeling about it. The thing with me is that I have to have a routine that I can follow constantly, and it's good to have my food regulated to "you can eat the following things, and if you eat anything else, here's how to do it." So Jessica and I are on the Power 90 program right now (which is the precursor to the P90X, because we're just not in good enough shape to do that yet,) and it's feeling good. We get up at 6:00-6:30 every morning and work out for about 40 minutes. I haven't been able to stay up as late as I typically like to, which is a drawback for me, but at the same time I feel good all day long and I have energy like I didn't have before, even with the same amount of sleep. I'll get into results once we finish the program--we've only been doing it for a week and a half now, so I don't want to talk it up too much just yet. Hopefully the results will be dramatic enough to post some before and after pictures.

I think blogging feels good again. I won't get into a bunch of media recommendations or witty anecdotes just yet (namely because I don't have any at the moment,) but that will come later. I do have just a few recommendations, though:

*If you haven't seen Breaking Bad, the AMC series, watch all three seasons immediately.
*If you haven't seen Inception, run - do not walk - to your nearest movie theater and take care of that.
*If you want to hear some good music, check out the new Black Keys album, called "Brothers." It's fantastic. I had just about given up hope that this group would release an album that sounded a bit different from all their others, and this one did the trick. Great stuff.