I went to the doctor, and all he gave me were these yellow pills

Hello blog. It's been a while. You've been around longer than I like to think about. Because it makes me feel old.

You know what else makes me feel old? I recently found out I have high blood pressure. Pretty high, too. I guess. This sort of thing is still very new to me. I went to the doctor a couple of weeks ago because I was having trouble sleeping, and the nurse who took my blood pressure told me that it was really high and I should keep an eye on it. So I kept and eye on it and, sure enough, it was consistently high. Always well over the magic 120/80 numbers.

Why? God only knows. I don't drink much caffeine, I don't eat a lot of salt, I exercise regularly, and I'm not fat. I do drink a lot of alcohol, but that can only account for so much. Unfortunately, I might just be genetically predisposed to it. I do tend to stress out a lot, so that probably isn't helping.

They call high blood pressure "the silent killer" because most people who have it don't have any symptoms. I would say that I've had a few symptoms, but I never thought it was high blood pressure. I've had a few heart palpitations before and the occasional headache. Now I've got a bottle of yellow pills. I'm really not happy about it, either. I thought I'd make it through my twenties without any such medical problems, but no. 28 with high blood pressure.

Theoretically, if it is my lifestyle that caused it, I should be able to reverse it. All I have to do is cut out all the fun things: drinking, smoking, caffeine, red meat, salt, stress . . . that sort of thing. (Yes, stress can be fun. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug.)

The crazy thing is, I actually plan to do just that. I'm trying not to look at it as a sign that I'm growing old. I'm trying to see it as a sign that it's time to grow up. Is that really any less depressing?

Pretty Much Just a Bunch of Photos from Orlando

I have a headache. Damn! I have a headache. Actually it's only a small one, a little thumping below the apex of my skull. I think it's related to caffeine. Who knows?

I have been very productive today, but in an annoying way. I have worked on a lot of projects. I have edited reviews of magazines for a small online publication. I have emailed people. I have done all this while a piece of paper flaps and crinkles on the bulletin board where it is pegged. All this time the noise of it has pissed me off and maybe caused this headache, and all I'd have to do to stop it is to tear it off or retack it. But the idea of actually leaning up, standing up even, to do so is torturous. I think about this kind of thing a lot lately, or maybe I should say I notice it. An example: Friday night while walking to the kitchen I thought, This would be a good time to bring that coffee cup to the dishwasher. But then I thought: Then I'd have to shift my aim by a foot so I could pick it up on my way past the end table. Then I thought: When the fuck did I get so lazy?

I've also felt lazy lately because I haven't blogged much here. I actually haven't blogged much anywhere. I asked myself what to blog about here and couldn't come up with anything and then I thought, I'll spew a bunch of photos, chosen semi-randomly from my library, onto AA. Yes, why not? Here we go:

Probably you're thinking the same thing I thought when I saw this ad in Petco: This cat looks a lot like what Shannon would look like if a curse turned her into a cat. Maybe you're not thinking that. I'm kind of not thinking that anymore. I don't know. What do you think?

This is Sarah wrestling a gator. When Kevin and Shannon were last here, we went to Gatorland, and afterward drank white russians and watched Ernest Scared Stupid. I know: it was awesome.

At Gatorland you are not allowed to feed your or anyone else's babies to the gators:

When Wes came the first time we did not visit Gatorland, but Sarah and Wes did sit on gator statues:

In addition to not going to Gatorland, we did not go to this circus-thing in Fort Myers where you can, I guess, see cats jump through hula hoops:

We now live in an apartment, but when we first got to Florida the only place we could find willing to deal with an unemployed and bearded tenant like myself was this one, owned by a woman who probably did not need the rent, but who had a spare garret above her garage that was going to waste. The house was very large and the other houses were large and were lined with driveways full of SUVs and boats. Many of the houses had pools. One of the neighbors did not like my junky car being parked in the neighborhood. I wrote a story about breaking into his pool area but nobody wanted it. The woman who owned the house moved to San Francisco and then Sarah and I had the garage, and the entire house, in a sense (although of course we were restricted to the strange place above the garage).

Thankfully, now that we've moved we can have a cat:

and we can walk to events that happen nearby. Here is a Where's Waldosque photo of me in the audience at a book release party:

We also hooked up (not like that) with Jon Allen, who you may have met at UNI, and who now lives near here. I almost beat him at Settlers, but he longest roaded my ass into oblivion:

Nobody is posting. What is everybody doing for St. Patrick's day this year? I may be able to get a couple of days off from work, which means I might be able to visit everyone in Des Moines. Let me know if you are planning on doing anything, or if you are just planning on being stupidheads and working.

Also, this Saturday I will be moving into an apartment with Julie. We could not yet find a house that suited us within our price range, so an apartment it is. This means if you come to visit me, you will no longer have to stay at my parent's house. Thank god. And, it is a two bedroom, so there will even be a bed for the first to arrive! For those of you that may be somewhat familiar with the area, we are moving to Elgin, and the apartment is within walking distance of a train station that takes you to Chicago - thus we will be able to have fun drunken nights in Chicago and not have to get a hotel room. Free pizza and beer to anyone that comes this weekend and helps me move.

On a side note, Dave, do not post anymore really annoying videos - I watched that pizza video the day you posted it, and the damned song is still stuck in my head. Also, for some reason I could not stop watching it, as I thought maybe the song was going to get better. ... I love that "gonna" does not get underlined as a spelling error.

Time to watch Ong Bak 3, even though I never saw the second one.

New Years by Allison

This is all the fun you missed for not hanging out with us. Just because you were. So. Stupid. THE. END.

Valium is a Hell of a Drug

Also, wtf.