I had heard about the political compass site before, but today I took the six page test. I wonder what kind of person sits in quadrant IV.. Ron Paul?

Just wanted to keep a little list about how McCain has shown his true colors over the years. So far he has shown that he has poor judgement, his influence can be bought, and he is a hypocrite... not a great choice for president...

I finally got the simpsonizer to work on a picture. I think the site has been slammed because of the movie. Once you get an image saved, it is pretty fun to play around with the app.

At 1:30 today I had a vasectomy. This is the second time I was scheduled for the procedure. The first time I bailed on it. Here's how things went down.

The Surgery

The whole procedure took about 20 minutes. My doctor used a bladeless and no-needle process. The bladeless part is due to the fact that he punctured a single hole (3mm in width) rather than making two small incisions with a scalpel. The no-needle part was due to the fact that he used a jet injection gun instead of a needle to administer the anesthetic. The procedure was performed in his office. I went in and laid down on a generic examination table with my pants off of course. I was flat on my back with my legs together. He prepped the area with the brown betadine antiseptic and then gave me anesthesia via the jet injection gun. It felt and sounded like a small rubberband snapping on my skin... a little startling but not really uncomfortable. He did the injection three times on each side. Then he snipped and cauterized the vas deferens. That's it simple and painless.

Our hot water heater decided to die last Friday night. I went to go light the pilot and found a bunch of water leaking on the pilot light.. no way I was going to get another second out of that heater. Since it was the weekend, the local plumber was going to charge me an extra arm for the install so we decided to wait it out until Monday.

We started to notice last Thanksgiving that Cole had developed a bit of a stutter. It started out as simple sylable repitition (e.g. I-I-I want to go.., Wha-wha-what are you doing) but progressed into a full blown communication problem (e.g. out of breath, full stops, frustration) by January. I did my undergraduate work in a Human Communication Sciences major which combined audiology, speech language pathology and learning disabilities into one curriculum. One of the main things that I got out of the coursework was that parents often let speech and language problems fester for too long before seeking help. We weren't going to let that happen.

The NSL started filming all indoor games played on the nicest field (south field). We have played on it a couple of times this season and one of the games (wisla) was 7:5 so lots of goals. Since this is my blog, I get to point out the plays I'm involved in.. I'm #7. In the Khaboor game, I'm the one carrying the ball up the field for the second goal (couldn't finish the pass off the boards). In the Wisla game I was credited two goals (our first two) and two assists. If the links die for whatever reason, I've attached the videos below...

We played our quarterfinal match last Sunday and it was a pretty fun game to play. We were playing on turf-grass so the pace of the game was a bit faster but the passing was much cleaner. It took us 86 minutes to tie up the match 1:1 and neither side scored in overtime. We lost 4:2 in PKs.. rough way to get knocked out. I have attached the game summary posted by the club. Hopefully, we can do better next year!

Our soccer team is definitely rolling now.. we played the first place team in the other group today and they got lucky to come away with a 2:2 draw. Our record stands at 9-4-2 (w-d-l) and I was hoping to get to 10 wins this week. Next week we play the first place team in our group (nice easy couple of weeks eh?), but I'm going to miss that game due to an out of town wedding. The week after that, the playoffs begin; we should go pretty deep into them. After our performance today, the finals are a very real possibility. Wish me luck!

Chewie lost the battle with Autoimmune Hemolytic Anemia. After 10 awesome years and 3 rough months, we had to say goodbye to "the Chew." We will never forget you...