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!"

Fun at the DMV

Spent entirely too long at the Texas DMV today, getting my brand new Texas driver's license. $245 spent today on tax, tags and titles.

Sitting next to me today was an ancient Vietnamese lady. She had a great story....

"I come from Vietnam in 1972. I arrive this country, I always work. Work for cash. I pay no taxes. I have no social security card. I do this for years, many years. I never ask any help from government. Government no good. Almost forty years, today is first time I get identification card".

Wow, I say, what made you change your mind?

She starts laughing. People turn and start looking at her.

She reaches into her purse, pulls out a piece of paper very dramatically...and waves it.

Because.......I WIN LOTTERY....and Texas not cash big winning tickets without ID!

The rest of the time I was there was a steady stream of people coming up to her and asking if they could just touch her winning lottery ticket.

Rogue Cat

I have a cat. She is a rather ordinary housecat, with one striking peculiarity. She hackles when she hears mere humans breathing heavily.

I was doing a heavy kettlebell workout at home yesterday, swinging a 35 pounder and working up quite a sweat.

In my peripheral vision I noticed the cat atop a shelf, watching me swing the kettlebell back and forth.

On my last set of double armed swings, I was trying to get through my last 30 repetitions. I was seriously gassed and my heart felt as if it were going to explode through my chest....

It was then that the cat, having had quite enough of my heavy breathing, decided to pounce.

Tooth, Fang and Claw sunk into my right wrist, shredding skin everywhere.

Did I mention I was swinging a kettlebell at the time?

Kettlebells are very dangerous missles when you lose control.

The cat was hanging on for dear life and I was off balance. I somehow managed to right myself with just my left hand on the bell, the bell's momentum swung down through my leg and I did an interesting pirouette trying to simultaneously drop the bell and scrape the cat off my arm.

The cat got a serious lecture about interrupting my exercise time afterwards. I don't think she listened.

Things that go "BOOM" in the night...

Tremendous explosion in the main floor bathroom at 10:30 tonight. Scared the hell out of me!

My cat had had an accident in the bathroom earlier that evening (try as she might, she never seems to be able to poop inside the toilet).

I cleaned up the mess and sprayed the room top-to-bottom with Lysol. While I was straightening stuff up, I inadvertently left the can of Lysol touching a heating element on the baseboard in the bathroom.

Did I mention it was rather cold here in Georgia tonight?

The heat caused the side of the Lysol can to tear a one inch rupture, creating a tremendous missile that detonated against the door of the bathroom. Evidently the Lysol can spent it's dying moment swirling around in a circle, spewing about a pound of concentrated Lysol all over the walls and floor.

The whole house smells like Lysol now.

The cat is hiding under the sofa.

Things that go "blink" in the night...

This morning, I awoke to a rather surrealistic scene.... flashing yellow, red and blue lights on my bedroom walls.

Since my disco days were long since past, I naturally assumed I was having some sort of bizzare LSD flashback.

Upon remembering that I'd never actually done LSD, I got out of be and looked out my bedroom window.

I live on a corner lot at the entrance to my subdivision. On my side yard there was a broken down fire engine (flashing red brake lights). There was a police cruiser (flashing blue lights) directing cars around the engine, and one of the monstrous truck towing trucks (flashing yellow lights) attempting to position itself so it would be able to tow the disabled fire engine.

I never did get back to sleep....