Archive for January, 2007
A Storm Is Heading Towards Florida
Tuesday, January 30th, 2007The Last Time the Chicago Bears Were In the Superbowl
Monday, January 29th, 2007The last time the Bears were in the Super Bowl…
In honor of the Chicago Bears going to Super Bowl 41. Here are 41 things that have changed from the last time the Chicago Bears played in the Super Bowl (which was Super Bowl 20 in 1986):
1. Brian Urlacher was in 2nd grade. Rex Grossman was in kindergarten.
2. Peyton Manning was 10 years old. Eli Manning was 5 years old. Their dad, Archie, had just retired from the NFL two years earlier.
3. Lovie Smith was in his first college coaching job at University of Tulsa.
4. Ronald Reagan was the President, and Harold Washington was the Mayor. James R. Thompson was the Governor running for re-election and his office was in the new State of Illinois Center, which is now called the James R. Thompson Center.
5. George W. Bush was 39 years old and still drinking. His father would run for President two years later.
6. Rod Blagojevich was just out of law school and was a low-level prosecutor working for the Cook County State’s Attorney, Richard M. Daley.
7. Barack Obama had just moved to Illinois, and Osama bin Laden was fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.
8. Red Grange and Sid Luckman were still alive.
9. The Colts had just moved to Indianapolis from Baltimore and were the doormat of the AFC EAST. The Bears were the champions of the NFC CENTRAL.
10. Property in Wicker Park and Bucktown was cheap because they were really bad neighborhoods.
11. CD players, cellular phones and fax machines were expensive, cutting edge technology and only a few people used them.
12. “Surfing the net” meant a volleyball game at the beach, and virtually no one used the “@” key on their TYPEWRITER.
13. Sam Walton was still alive and was wealthier than Bill Gates. Windows were panes of glass…not a computer operating system that was a pain in something that rhymes with glass.
14. The Soviet Union was our main enemy, and Saddam Hussein was our ally.
15. There were no lights at Wrigley Field, and the oldest park in baseball belonged to the White Sox.
16. Michael Jordan and Ozzie Guillen had just finished their “Rookie of the Year” seasons. Jordan’s coach was Stan Albeck and Guillen’s manager was Tony LaRussa. (Three out of four of those guys are now wearing championship rings, but what ever happened to Stan Albeck???)
17. Soldier Field had AstroTurf. The Houston Oilers played in the AstroDome.
18. The Fox TV Network didn’t exist, and ESPN had yet to air a single live pro football, baseball, or basketball game.
19. MTV played music and so did some AM radio stations.
20. Lindsay Lohan and Hilary Duff weren’t born yet; Jackie Gleason and Richard Nixon were still alive.
21. Hillary Clinton had dark hair and was the First Lady……of Arkansas!
22. “The Love Boat” and “Diff’rent Strokes” were still on network TV every week.
23. Martin Luther King Day was about to be celebrated as a National Holiday for the first time. “9-11″ was a phone number many cities were just adopting for emergency calls – not a date of terror.
24. I-88 was called “Illinois Rt. 5″ and I-355 hadn’t been built yet.
25. What the CTA now calls “The Blue Line” had just been extended to O’Hare, and the Orange Line to Midway hadn’t been built yet.
26. Q101 played adult contemporary music and most teenagers listened to WLS. Music from the 70s and 80s wasn’t “retro” yet.
27. Tiger Woods hadn’t won an amateur golf tournament yet.
28. Most people knew Seattle just as a city in the Northwest U.S. – not the home of grunge or Starbucks.
29. Only Southerners went to NASCAR races and only Northerners went to NHL games.
30. The Chicago area had no WalMarts, Targets or Home Depots, and Walgreen’s was only in the Midwest.
31. Depending on your bank, your ATM card was good at only “Cash Station” machines or only at “Money Network” machines, but there were no fees.
32. “The Phone Company” was Illinois Bell.
33. They still sold leaded gasoline and you couldn’t pay for your gas at the pump.
34. Discover Card hadn’t been discovered yet, and Miller Genuine Draft hadn’t been brewed yet.
35. Stereo TVs were the rage that HDTVs are now. 8-track tapes were still being made.
36. All of the Blockbuster Video stores that are now closing hadn’t opened yet. Betamax was still competing with VHS.
37. You paid cash for your groceries and fast food, and you used a travel agent to book airline flights.
38. Bowl games didn’t have corporate sponsors, and if the #1 ranked team was in a conference that played in one bowl game and the #2 ranked team was in a conference that played in another bowl game, then so be it! They let the sportswriters vote on the national champion. (and no college football games were played after New Year’s Day)
39. The Baltimore Ravens were the Cleveland Browns. The Tennessee Titans were the Houston Oilers. The Oakland Raiders were the Los Angeles Raiders that had just left Oakland. The Arizona Cardinals (the former Phoenix Cardinals) were the St. Louis Cardinals, and the St. Louis Rams were the Los Angeles Rams. The Jacksonville Jaguars, Carolina Panthers, Houston Texans, and the Cleveland Browns (not to be confused with the Cleveland Browns that are now the Baltimore Ravens) didn’t exist. The Seattle Seahawks (last year’s NFC Champions) played in the AFC.
40. Number 9 on the Bears was their Punky QB…not their perky field goal kicker.
41. There were no iPods – just Sony Walkmen – so if you said something about a “shuffle” on your Walkman, they assumed you were listening to “The Super Bowl Shuffle”
and one thing that will be the same from the Chicago Bears last Super Bowl appearance…..
THEY WILL WIN!!!!
Good Math
Monday, January 29th, 2007A man who knows his math:
I was riding to work yesterday when I observed a female driver, who cut right in front of a pickup truck, causing the driver to drive onto the shoulder to avoid hitting her. This evidently angered the driver enough that he hung his arm out his window and gave the woman the finger.
“Man, that guy is stupid,” I thought to myself. I ALWAYS smile nicely and wave in a sheepish manner whenever a female does anything to me in traffic, and here’s why:
I drive 48 miles each way every day to work.
That’s 96 miles each day.
Of these, 16 miles each way is bumper-to-bumper.
Most of the bumper-to-bumper is on an 8 lane highway.
There are 7 cars every 40 feet for 32 miles.
That works out to 982 cars every mile, or 31,424 cars.
Even though the rest of the 32 miles is not bumper-to-bumper, I figureI pass at least another 4000 cars.
That brings the number to something like 36,000 cars that I pass every day.
Statistically, females drive half of these. That’s 18,000 women drivers!
In any given group of females, 1 in 28 has PMS. That’s 642.
According to Cosmopolitan, 70% describe their love life as dissatisfying or unrewarding. That’s 449.
According to the National Institute of Health, 22% of all females have seriously considered suicide or homicide. That’s 98.
And 34% describe men as their biggest problem. That’s 33.
According to the National Rifle Association, 5% of all females carry weapons and this number is increasing.
That means that EVERY SINGLE DAY, I drive past at least one female that has a lousy love life, thinks men are her biggest problem, has seriously considered suicide or homicide, has PMS, and is armed.
Give her the finger? I don’t think so.
Positive Triple Screen Test
Saturday, January 27th, 2007I discussed this somewhat on my other blog, but I figured I’d talk about it here too. Whenever I figure out how to combine both blogs, this may end up being a double post, but what ya gonna do. Let me give you a bit of history for those of you who do not know me.
I use to be on Depo Provera. When I went off of it to try and get pregnant, I was under the assumption that it would take up to 18 months to get my cycle back. I had a kidney stone and when they did a CT scan (at least, that is what I think it was) I went a new OBGYN and he told me I was wrong about the Depo and ran a bunch of tests. He first told me that I had premature ovarian failure. Then when my test results did not come back to confirm that, I had polycyctic ovarian sydrome. He then started me on hormone replacement therapy. It made me sicker than I have ever been before. Then he wouldn’t return my call when I complained about it. I decided to go to another OBGYN and get a second opinion. Guess what? It takes up to 18 months for Depo to get out of your system. My cycle returned about 18 months after going off of it. I think it still took us another 6 months to get pregnant with Madison.
Getting pregnant with Madison was the easy (and fun) part. What was next to come wasn’t. I ended up in preterm labor with her 6 times (4 times it was stopped with medicine). One of my many visits was Christmas Eve. I ended up with 6 ultrasounds on the kid. On the 5th ultrasound, her waist was measuring short, so we had to get another one. They thought she had IUGR. Of course, after 5 ultrasounds, she was stubborn and would not show us if she was a boy or girl. On #6, she was cooperative. We found out she was a girl and that her waist was measuring fine. The funny part of this story is that she is most long waisted kid you will ever see now. At 2 years old, I had her in 4T shirts because otherwise they were too short.
Fast-forward to now. Madison is now three. In July, I suffered a miscarriage at 5 weeks. It was devastating. We decided to try again and I am now 4 months pregnant with a due date of June 25. On Thursday night, we got a phone call from my OBGYN and are slowly seeing our world crashing in on us again. My triple screen came back high. What does that mean?
That means that I have a higher risk for having a baby with a nueral tube defect. We went on the internet and did a search on that term. What this usually means is spinal bifada or Anencephaly (this is the really bad one. This is fatal).
I also found out that there is a high false positive rate for this screening test. However, I keep going to the place where what about the people who aren’t false positives. What happens if we are one of those?
Here’s our plan of action. I already have a Level II ultrasound scheduled for Feb. 2nd. Before the ultrasound, we have to meet with a genetic counselor who will tell us our odds of how bad this is. Then we have the ultrasound. We should be able to tell from the ultrasound how bad it really is (or how good). However, if the baby does not present correctly, we may still not have an answer. We then need to decide if we want an amnoicentisis (sp?). They will do one immediately if we decide to do it then. If they fast track it, then we would have an answer by Tuesday. Otherwise, there is a 7 – 10 day wait for the results.
Needless to say, I am a wreck. Bill keeps telling me to think positive and I am finding it hard to do. I think the miscarriage has jaded me. I am trying not to go to all the dark bad places in my head, but it is hard. And the wait till Friday might kill me. So if I seem a bit bitchy or mad or sad, this is why.
Positive AFP Test
Thursday, January 25th, 2007I just got a call from my doctor. I had a positive triple screen test. I am trying to stay calm. I keep reading that there is a high false positive rate. That does make me feel slightly better. However, I am still worried. I am already scheduled for an ultrasound on the 2nd of Feb. Now, after the ultrasound, we have to meet with a genetic counselor. Anybody else have this happen?
