Troubles McSteans

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG It's snowing!!!!! It is snowing in Austin, TX. I can't believe it. All week, the forecast has said snow and I said "PEOPLE, it is NOT going to SNOW." It never snows here. Ever. Not only is it snowing, it's snowing in FAR south Austin (we're almost to Slaughter), it's snowing big fat flakes and it's sticking. Somewhat. Well, now it's back to raining. Or maybe that's ice. But I did get to see a small bit of snow while it lasted and that was fun. Blizzard 2010

Doug fixed my picture for me

My mom took me shopping today for my birthday (early shopping - it's more than a month away). In retrospect I'm really glad we decided to go to Barton Springs mall instead of the Arbor because of the plane crash situation. We were mainly looking for jeans, because my daily uniform consists of jeans and t-shirts and I don't know if I currently own any denim that's younger than 5 years. There's a reason I don't have any newish jeans: I hate shopping for them. Maybe it's because I'm rocketing towards middle age, but all the jeans now are totally ugly. They're either too faded or look like they've been mauled by tigers. So no jeans for me today, but I did find some other stuff. Thanks, mom! One of the shirts I tried on made me laugh. It was this t-shirt with a giant picture of a dog head. The only problem was that it looked a lot better as a flat picture and, well, I am not a flat surface. Let's just say the dog's face became a littl...

Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo is currently giving a press conference on the Austin plane crash that occurred earlier today and is scolding the reporters for their irresponsible journalism. As is typical in situations like this, there has been a good amount of sensationalism on the part of the news. CNN (which is national, but is a good example) is running it's coverage under an "ATTACK ON AUSTIN" splash screen. Chief Acevedo was clearly irritated that it has been suggested that this was not an isolated incident. One of the journalists could be heard arguing with him with information from "numerous blogs" and demanding how he could be sure. Really, guy? You believe heresay from Joe Blogger and not the police department, who has been on the scene all morning? Anyway, it was nice to see Acevedo giving him the smack down after that. After seeing footage of the site I honestly can't believe that only two people were injured. Eye witnesses are claiming ...

If you were reading Troubles back in 2008, you may remember that I had a procedure to determine whether or not I should get a defibrillator placed. The results indicated that they were able to get my heart out of rhythm and that a defibrillator was recommended. After about 3 months of mulling it over and not being able to decide, I realized my indecision was stemming from my resistance to the idea. I did not get the defibrillator. The reason I had this test performed in the first place was that I had had a series of results from previous, less invasive studies which were troubling to my cardiologist. These studies included a stress test and multiple Echocardiograms. An Echocardiogram is an ultrasound of the heart that helps determine your ejection fraction , which is basically a measure of heart function. More specifically: ejection fraction (Ef) is the fraction of blood pumped out of a ventricle with each heart beat - Wikipedia Healthy people generally have EFs of around 50-75%...

This guy says winter's not over. No s@*#. Has Punxsutawney Phil ever NOT seen his shadow? Wikipedia says he's only predicted an early spring 14 times in 113 years. I think it's a pretty safe assumption for 6 more weeks of winter the first week of February. Especially this year which has been so chilly. The bright side of February is that it brings the start of another, but sadly last, season of Lost. I know there are a lot of people watching that are itching to get answers in this final season, but I'm just enjoying the ride. There is no possible way after this much build up that Lost can end with a satisfying conclusion. I've accepted that. But that's also not why I watch the show. It brings on a regular weekly basis better writing, acting, music and cinematography than you see in most movies. I will be sad to see it wrap up this year, but I also applaud the creators and ABC for knowing when to say when and wrapping it up before it gets tiresome. The ...