I was a First Class Jackass

Reading James Fallows' excellent essay on last minute bumps from first class airline cabins today reminded me of my own career as a "first class jackass".

It is the policy of AirTran airlines to give away unused first class seats to servicemen and servicewomen. I heartily endorse this strategery.

I had to fly once on very short notice from Washington DC to Atlanta. All the coach seats were sold, so I held my nose and spent my hard earned cash (okay....my company's hard-earned cash) on a full-fare walk up first class ticket. The sort of ticket that makes airlines obscenely profitable.

I board the plane at the last moment, and lo and behold, there's an Army private in my seat. The gracious flight attendant explains how I've purchased a seat and he'll have to return to his coach seat.

This did NOT sit well with my fellow first class cabinmates.

Much sniffing and tut-tutting and disdain ensued. I simply smiled and told my detractors that if they felt so strongly about it, why not offer their own seat to the private? I even offered a deal to two people: let's compare the dollar amount for the ticket paid on our itinerary. Lowest price could go to coach, no questions asked.

Gosh, it seemed my sanctimonious detractors didn't want to play my little game.....they were flying on comped upgrades.

First he wasn't, then he was...

While grilling outside earlier this past week, I opened the back door to my deck and a bright green flash bolted into my house. The most electric green lizard I've ever seen!

We had a fun time playing chase all through the house but I eventually gave up when he ran beneath the refrigerator.

Two days later, I was opening up a window and my lizard buddy jumped out at me from the windows sill....except he was dull yellow, the color of the wall!

How cool, I thought, a chameleon! We had yet another impromptu game of "Chase the Damned Lizard" and he escaped into a hole in the baseboard beneath the dishwasher....except every where he ran he left a trail of pollen. It wasn't a chameleon, it was a lizard coated in pollen!

This morning I got up and got the vacuum cleaner out. I switched on the motor and something large and BROWN flew across my brown floor. Yep. Mr. Lizard-who-wasn't-a-Chameleon is officially a Chameleon again.

Seeing as I haven't seen a single bug in the house since he's moved in, I'm leaning towards keeping him.

I'm going to name him Romney.

The Joy of "Pre-diabetes"

I had my yearly physical last year on my birthday. Okay, my birthday is in August but I didn't actually get around to having my physical until November, but hey I was busy...

I'm a year older and a bit more arthritic. As expected, osteoarthritis has arrived like a freight train right on schedule. Me and Celebrex have begun a lifelong intimate relationship together.

I had bloodwork drawn at my physical, of course. Results came in a week later. Losing weight (65 pounds!) has allowed my liver function tests to be normal, yahoo!

The only cloud in an otherwise blue sky was my fasting blood glucose test: it had ranged consistently between 95 and 99 for over 10 years, but this year it inched up to 100. Congratulations, Mr. Jensen, you're officially "pre-diabetic" now.

What does that mean? Oh, it's just a classification. I'm supposed to take the next step in diabetic testing, drinking 12 ounces of sweetened sludge and get my blood drawn for 2 hrs straight.

...not gonna happen.

My surgically sleeved stomach cannot hold 12 ounces of anything any longer, anything over 4 ounces gets flushed into my gut directly and screws up any and all lab results. Ooops!

So we go from stage 1 testing (fasting blood sugar) to skipping stage 2 (sweetened sludge) all the way to stage 3 (an a1c test).

Simply put, a1c measures how well your red blood cells process sugar for the past 3 months.

I had my a1c test yesterday, and got my a1c results back today. They were...interesting.

My number was 5.8

I compared that against my numbers from 1992, 1998, 2005 and 2008: I've been rock solid steady (ranging 5.7 to 5.8) my entire life.

So that's good.

I also found that they rescaled the "normal range" in 2010. 

 

Prior to 2010, "normal" was anything less than 6.0, abnormal was greater than 6.0.

In 2010, they broke it into 3 bands: normal (<5.7), "pre-diabetic" (5.7 to 6.2) and diabetic (over 6.2). So technically, I'm "pre-diabetic" on the new scale and "normal" on the old scale. Since my levels haven't budged in 21 years, I think I'm pretty safe.

They said if my cholesterol was high, I could lower my A1C by eating more fiber. If cholesterol was normal (and mine is), I can generally lower my A1C by eating less refined sugar.

Soooo....bottom line: less sugar in 2013!!

Gym Dandy

The first week in January is simultaneously one of my favorite and least favorite weeks of the year.

On the plus side, it's the only week of the year when I am guaranteed not to be the fattest person in the gym. It's also great for people watching there, huge crowds waiting to use gym equipment. People wearing their new exercise outfits, lifting gloves and especially weightlifting belts.

On the negative side, I cringe watching people do some really dangerous stuff at the gym. Slinging weights, dropping plates, and a myriad of technique flaws that must cause an average of about one torn knee or elbow ligament an hour.

I was doing incline bench presses today, trying my level best to concentrate on the bar, and overheard what can only be described as a "cougar attack" occur about 10 feet away from me: a 40-something woman, not in bad shape, pouring out her marital woes to a 20-something personal trainer. I wondered if he knew he was being propositioned.

In any event, I successfully tortured my chest and legs today.

You say you want a resolution?

To paraphrase the Beatles (they were a band that Paul McCartney was in prior to Wings)...

 ♫♫ You say you want a resolution....wellll, you know...we'd all love to hear your plan! ♫♫

2012 is in the books. For me, it was a pretty good year, a year of transition.

I'm looking forward to 2013. Every once in a while I get the urge to do a lot of  New Years Resolutions, this year is one of those years.

Sooo without further ado, here goes Bob's plan for 2013:

• Blog more. I enjoy writing short-form, blogs are the perfect vehicle for this. I want to make a conscious effort to blog at least weekly. (maybe I should have said "blog at least weakly"?)
• Earn my long-overdue Distinguished Toastmaster designation by May 1st, 2013
• Continue my quest to lose 100 pounds
• I lost 64 pounds in 2012 after I had my stomach sleeved ("stapled").
• 36 more pounds to go. I weigh 266 pounds today, January 1st, 2013. Hard to believe I was 330 pounds on June 1st last year!
• My first mini-goal is 260 pounds on February 1st, 2013. I will weigh less than my father on that date.
• My second mini-goal is 255 pounds on March 1st, 2013. On  that day I will be able to ride a Segway. I was crushed when I found out I weighed too much to take a Segway tour of Washington DC with my daughter last year....that was one of the deciding factors in my decision to have stomach surgery
• My third mini-goal is 246 pounds by May 1st, 2013. On that day, I'll be medically classified as being "overweight" and not "obese". I've transitioned from borderline "Morbidly obese" through "Severely Obese" and am now at plain old "Obese". I'll make a quick trip through "Overweight" to the final destination of "Normal".
• I will begin making motivational speeches this year. I am a very accomplished humorous speaker, and I can do dramatic and/or theatrical speeches as well. Motivational speeches are the one type of speech that is completely out of my comfort zone. Dramatic speeches were out of my comfort zone too, as recently as three years ago. I have a high degree of confidence to deliver any type of speech now, so I'll work on motivational/inspirational speechifying in 2013. I want to give at least 5 of them (if past history is a guide, I'll develop one or two motivational speeches and practice at various Toastmaster clubs.
• Help my "home" Toastmaster club, Cy-Fair Super Speakers, double in membership from 17 to 34 this year. I'm the membership chairman, I've done this before at other clubs.
• Save up for plastic surgery. I'm on track to lose 100 pounds, and realistically I'll need an abdominoplasty to remove extra sagging skin around my midsection. It's $20,000 here in Houston, or about $6,000 if I go the medical tourist route again. I'll probably choose the latter, as I had a lot of success doing medical tourism with my stomach.
• Upgrade my wardrobe..this sounds frivolous, but I have an extensive wardrobe that no longer fits me. I've tried getting suits altered but they have to be completely re-cut to accomodate the new, leaner me. This is going to be expensive.
• Discontinue cardio workouts for the first 6 months of 2013, and focus on weightlifting, particularly upper body. I have strong, muscular legs and a relatively weak upper body. I need to bring my upper body (chest/back/shoulders) in line with my lower body.
• Bench press my weight by the end of 2013!
• Take a "real" vacation. I've got a lot of vacation time saved up...and I want to go somewhere.

As you can see, I have a very ambitious 2013 planned....nothing but good times ahead! 

Hiding Political Posts on Facebook

Many of my friends on Facebook have lamented the explosion of political posts this year in their news feeds, and wished they could hide them.

I can show you a way to hide political posts on Facebook and it takes less than 5 minutes to set up.

1. Go to socialfixer.com and install the add-on version for your browser (Firefox, Opera, Chrome, etc). Just about everything EXCEPT Internet Explorer is supported!

2. Once you install the social fixer add-on, enter Facebook. You can (and probably should) turn off every single option EXCEPT "filtering".

3. Click on "filtering". Make sure "Filter posts on pages and profiles"is checked.

4. Go down to the Other column and and (here's the hard part) type the following line into the field labeled Matching Text:
/politics|conservative|obama|romney|republican|democrat|election/i

(you must start with a slash and end with a slash and letter i)

Between the slashes you can put any word(s) you want to filter, seperating each with the bar character |....or you could just copy and paste the line above to remove 95% of all political posts! (Be careful if you add a filter for "Ryan" if you have any friends named Ryan, they'll be hidden too!)

5. Next in the Action column, simply click the Move to tab: field and type "Politics" (or "hidden" or something).

6. Save and exit.

7. The next time you enter Facebook you will see two very small tabs at the top of your newsfeed: "Home" and "Politics". "Home" is the default. You'll never see another post from anyone again with the words listed above UNLESS you click the "Politics" tab.

The best part is that your friends' non-political posts will still display as they always do...just their poltical rantings are hidden!

I must confess I did not discover this on my own, someone linked these instructions to me a while back and I've been using it ever since.

Bob and Chuck and Ed and Alice

Just got back from a weekend at the Beau Rivage casino in Biloxi, Mississippi. My son Ed and I had a (rather profitable) Father and Son weekend.

The highlight of the weekend, without a doubt, was having front row mezzanine seats and backstage passes to see Alice Cooper, who was kicking off his summer "No More Mr. Nice Guy" tour that Friday evening.

I'd entered a contest to be the guest of bass player Chuck Garric, and won tickets with a whimsical essay about how I was a terrible father for not having taken my son to see Alice Cooper in his formative years.

I saw Alice in concert way back in 1975, the famous "Welcome to my Nightmare" tour. I was determined to see him this summer, and Biloxi was perfect since it was halfway between my home in Houston and Ed's home in Tampa.

The weather refused to cooperate, though, and we almost didn't make it. We were both supposed to arrive around 4 pm for the 8 pm show...instead we arrived at 7:30 in Gulfport, about 15 minutes away from the casino.

We rented a car from Budget in world-record time, and showed a healthy disregard for Mississippi traffic speed laws as we hightailed it to the casino. We got to the "will call" line for our backstage badges and tickets with literally TWO minutes to spare!

The concert was excellent, it was a great show. I finally got to hear "Elected" live...and after the encores, Alice had the band do a metal version of Lady GaGa's "Born This Way".

Afterwards we were milling around the stage entrance when Chuck Garric walked back on stage (which had 2 dozen roadies tearing  it down incredibly fast) and Chuck called me out by name. Ed and I got to go up on stage and Chuck was a gracious host. He answered a lot of questions, and even asked a few ("What did ya think of the GaGa number honestly?") He gave us bass picks and we took photos.

I'd forgotten how loud those shows can be, and we were sitting directly in front of the bass amplifier rig, so it took a while to recover my hearing!

Crosseyed and Painless

After three weeks with no eyeglasses and blurry double-vision, I was overjoyed when I finally got the call today that my corrective glasses had arrived.

A quick run over to Copperfield Vision ensued.

I put on the glasses....and became very alarmed when my bruised left eyeball started swinging wildly in its socket. Everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING, was doubled. I was equal parts panicked and irritated.

The fitting technician, bless her heart, calmed me down and explained that my eyes were adjusting themselves to the glasses "auto-magically".

Sure enough, after about 10 minutes I could actually see straight for the first time in weeks, and after an hour or so I can actually see everything perfectly.

No more driving my new Dodge Challenger like Mr. Magoo!

How To Pickup Flight Attendants

Flying the red-eye special from Las Vegas to Houston. I opted to spend $69 of my princely $85 in gambling winnings to upgrade to First Class. Sadly, all the window seats were taken so I was sitting on the aisle.

We had an uneventful climb-out of Las Vegas, and the guy in the row ahead of me asks the flight attendant for a blanket.

She opens up the overhead compartment directly across from my seat...

And a carry-on bag comes tumbling out and hits her...HARD...on the shoulder.

She topples backward...I have literally a millisecond to react, and I "catch" her as she falls directly into my lap. My left arm catches her back, my right arm is under her knees...basically she's pinned my arms to the arm rests, I'm cradling her.

Naturally, everyone turns to look.

I say the first thing that comes to mind:
"Please exercise caution when opening the overhead compartments as items may have shifted during takeoff and landing".

Much laughter in First Class.

The mightily embarassed flight attendant, who is being a good sport about this, nuzzles my neck and whispers throatily in my ear "You're such a smartass..."

Why yes, yes I am!

Eye Carumba!

Continuing the further adventures of Bob Jensen, a singularly uncoordinated man....(warning...not for the squeamish)...

I was very happy to find one of those "press on" LED lights you can use to illuminate dark rooms at the local Bed, Bath and Beyond. I had been looking for one for quite a while.  It was on a rack of various items that stretched from the floor to the ceiling, on the very bottom rack just a few inches off the floor. I was so excited to find it I swooped down to grab one....

....and promptly impaled my left eye on an empty rung two levels up.

That's right...I said "impaled".

By some miracle the empty rung hit me on the left corner of my eye, and slid into my eye socket about an inch, partially dislodging my eyeball.

A half-inch to the right and I would have punctured my eyeball and been blinded in one eye.

The little rung thingee got stuck between my eye and the socket. Did I mention it hurt?

...and it got stuck there.

I'm standing, crouched over a display at Bed Bath and Beyond, with a rubber coat metal display hanger stuck in my eye socket.

Not my best day.

I gingerly pulled back and was able to pull myself off the metal display hanger. My eye made this sucking "glorp" sound that sounded ten times worse with the echo inside my head when I finally pulled it off (probably took all of three seconds, but make no mistake, that was possibly the longest three seconds in my life). 

A little blood from a small cut on the corner of my eye and a lot of involuntary tears.

It started swelling up shut so I drove home (thankfully only  a mile) and put an ice pack on it.

No lasting damage but it hurts to look to the left today. I think my eyeball itself is bruised.

(and in all the excitement I never did buy that stupid light!)

Chasing a Buck

I had to pick up my dry cleaning on Saturday morning. I was in a bit of a rush, so I opted for the "drive thru" service area. Pulled up, got my clothes, handed the nice little Asian lady six dollars (a five and a one). She fanned them, as if counting...

...Then an enormous gust of wind blew the one dollar bill out of her hand! I was momentarily speechless...that bill took serious flight and was 75 yards downrange in a matter of seconds.

What happened next was even more impressive...the lady dove out of the window, squeezed herself between my car and the wall of the drycleaners...and took off at a dead run after the bill.

Right into traffic...there's a car wash next door and a steady stream of customers pulling in on a Pollen Season Saturday morning.!! She finally stepped on the bill...I estimate she'd gone over 100 yards...the length of a football field...for a lousy dollar.

I've heard of  business folks "chasing a buck" before, but had never experienced it..literally...first hand!

Bob's Steamiest Post Ever

Not pictured: Me

Most of you know that I'm not the most coordinated person in the world. Today, though, I reached new heights....or perhaps I should say new lows...for being accident prone.

I worked out this afternoon at the gym, then decided to go visit the steam room to work the kinks out of a tight shoulder muscle. The door to the steam room is heavy and spring loaded, it's designed that way to close quickly and tightly when someone enters.

I opened the door and stepped into the steam room, which was for some reason much more crowded then normal. Unfortunately, the door snapped back and caught the heel of my flip-flop/shower shoe.

I hadn't realized it had caught so when I took a step forward, my shoe's thong snapped and I pitched forward like a cannonball into steam oblivion.

If I was a bowling ball and everyone else standing around were bowling pins, I'd have had a perfect strike. Pins....I mean, bodies....went flying everywhere. I honestly don't know how many people I knocked down, but by the time I hit the floor there was no one else left standing.

So there is a tangle of people on the hot 'n sweaty floor of the steam room, and guys are trying to assist people to their feet (in a manly, heterosexual way, of course!).

Another fellow outside heard the commotion, and opened and propped open the door to see if anyone needed assistance....bad idea. The steam jets on the side floor of the room start firing like crazy  and those of us who had yet to get to their feet got a faceful of live steam. Not pleasant.

The topper, though, was the Good Samaritan who thought he was helping us by opening the door...a few minutes later, he told me, "I opened that door and for a second there I thought I was looking at live action gay porno from Hell!"