Livin' Large

Yeesh!
Almost a whole has gone by without any new posts.
I'd like to say I've just been too busy, but the reality is only partially true.
I have been busy but not enough to prevent me from blogging.

What's been happening?

Well, I'm still searching for a job. Lots of resumes sent out but nobody has called back.

I did have an interview, but it turned out to not be for a job directly. It was a 'job placement service' and they called me in to get more information regarding my work history. I think the interview went well, but I haven't heard anything from them since.

Been doing a lot of babysitting and I just recently house-sat for our neighbor last weekend.

Other than that....? Not much.

So see, really nothing exciting to blog about.
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I did make a major upgrade in our house a few days ago.

I was out shopping with G-rod the other day and noticed a flat screen LCD TV on sale for the holidays.
I've been wanting to upgrade from our old 29" clunker for a while, but I've been waiting for a good price drop on the new flat screen HDTVs before I made the switch.

This one was marked down $200 from the original price and seemed to have everything I was looking for in a new TV.

I asked G his opinion and he thought it was a great deal as well, especially the price.

So I came home and talked it over with Hotness and did some research online to get reviews and price comparisons before making a purchase.

Almost all the reviews I read were positive (and the few negative ones were really petty complaints) and the prices I found online for it were about the same as the non-sale price I'd seen, so overall it looked to be a good buy.
I decided... "This is it".

It's a SONY Bravia 40" LCD HDTV.

To make a very long story short, there were a few mishaps in trying to locate a store that still had stock on this TV while it was on sale but after some dogged perseverance I managed to succeed in my goal of finding one.
I even manged to get it for LESS than the advertised sale price so... BONUS!!!

I loaded it into my car (which was a feat unto itself... take a look at the pictures)


and brought it home to hook it up.

One of the reasons I liked this TV was it had a lot of different types of inputs for various cables.
My DVD player used an S-cable and this TV was one of the few styles I found that had an input for that.
So after I got home and took it out of the box, it was plugged in and I was watching movies on it within 20 minutes.

I'm loving this new TV and do not regret buying it at all.
I've been going over scenes from different movies just to watch how they look on the new screen.

With the surround sound system I acquired not long ago, I feel like I'm starting to catch up with the 21st Century finally.

As for my older 29" television, I gave it to my aunt to replace her tiny, little 13" TV.
(Yeah, people still have some of those!)
So everybody's happy and watching programs on bigger screens now.

I recently bought the "Ultimate Cut of Watchmen", and I'm looking forward to spending the better part of 4 hours watching it on hi-def and surround sound. Probably today since I don't have any other plans to speak of.

The rest of this week will be filled with playing Heroclix with a friend's kids, more babysitting and... something else I forget. (Aw c'mon! I know it Christmas this Friday!)

I don't know when I'll get back to this blog, so in the meantime have a great Christmas and hopefully you have your shopping finished.

Be talking again (hopefully) soon.....

Das Krümelmonster sagt NEIN!

It's not Monday, but it would qualify if I was still doing those posts.

For your enjoyment, here's Cookie Monster singing with Rammstein:

Stress Symptoms

I gotta take Hotness to the doctor today for an appointment.
She's been feeling under the weather, much more so than I was when I had the cold I just got over. We're hoping it's nothing to serious (as in the flu, or particularly H1N1) so we'll see.

Anyway, it got me to thinking about some stuff in my life right now and I thought I'd talk about them briefly.

Stress does a wicked number on your health in more ways than you can imagine.
When I was selling aquarium fish (many years ago) we always informed customers about the many factors that can cause stress in the fish tank environment and how to try and eliminate them for the overall health of the fish inside.

The same thing applies to us humans.
We have sources of stress on many, many different levels coming at us at all times.
Not all of it is bad, but constant repetitive stress can really wear you down after a while.

About 8 or 9 years ago I started having trouble with my sinuses. I wasn't having infections or anything like that, but I was having difficulty clearing my nose when I blew it into a tissue. It never seemed to work and only got worse as the years continued. I even went to the doctor to try and see what the problem was, but he couldn't determine a cause so it went on without any remedy.
Occasionally I'd take an over-the-counter allergy or sinus pill to help alleviate the symptoms, but they always returned.
At night, I'd have difficulty breathing and wouldn't get a full, restful night's sleep. In the morning I'd wake up barely able to breath through my nose and would spend a good portion of my morning trying to blow it out so I could breath a little.

I thought I may be allergic to the cat, but I never had been before and the symptoms never got drastically worse when I was around the cat.

Then, about 4 or 5 years ago I started having trouble with my stomach. At least once (and quite often twice) a week I'd have an upset stomach.
My tummy would cramp up and I'd have to go. It was not comfortable in the least.
The medical term for this would be called "irritable bowel syndrome". No real way to stop it, it just happens and people have to deal with it for the rest of their lives.

Well a funny thing has happened in the last couple of months.
I haven't had one instance of an 'irritable bowel' at all.
And around the middle of November my sinus started to clear up. I've been able to breath clearly at night, and when I blow my nose... it clears out the junk and I can breath.

What have I been doing in the last two months to make such an improvement to my health?
Nothing, quite literally.
I was laid off two months ago and in these past two months, my body has started to recover from stress I was subjecting it to at a job that I wasn't enjoying.

When my sinuses started acting up, I had just moved into "Will Call / shipping". I was there for about a year or two before moving into sales. Then in the last 4 or 5 years of being in sales and having to deal with customers, vendors, and even some co-workers my stomach started acting up.

When I was let go from my job, my tummy troubles ceased.... practically overnight.
My sinuses took a little while longer to start to clear, but they have been for the last 2 or 3 weeks and I can not only breath easier but I actually feel a lot better than I have in recent years.

You'd think that being unemployed would add more stress and make my body react even worse, but I've really been more relaxed than I ever have been in a long while.
I'm looking for work, but I'm only looking for things I seriously want to do. Not just the first thing that comes along.
I'm not about to subject myself anytime soon to the same stress levels I had been before.

Now, if I would just get my butt into the gym.........