surgery

I am very lucky in that I have never needed abdominal surgery. In fact, the two surgeries I've had were both VERY minor. When I was a baby, I had chronic ear infections, so the doctor put tubes in my ears. Then, in my late teens, I had oral surgery to take out my wisdom teeth. Both are pretty common procedures. I suppose, health-wise, it's good that I've never had any abdominal cuts. Cost-wise, it's DEFINITELY good. But I have to admit that sometimes I think a surgery would be kind of an adventure!

Bowling with My Brother and Our Families

Guest post written by my buddy Aldo Mays

My brother and I love to go bowling together because it reminds us of the days when we were kids. Our parents used to take us to the local bowling alley to bowl, play games at the arcade, and of course, to eat hot dogs and nachos. We try to go together a few times a year, taking our kids with us as part of the tradition.

Last weekend, we had my brother's family over for dinner before heading to the bowling alley. My wife made a big pasta meal and a delicious chocolate cake that was a huge step up from the days of bowling alley hot dogs. After we ate, we set our home security alarm from allhomesecurity and drove in our minivan to the alley.

Naturally, trying t! o figure out all of the shoes sizes for the kids was slightly chaotic, as well as trying to find balls that were lightweight enough for them to use. My brother and I both brought our own shoes and I borrowed a ball from him to play with. He's also in a league, so he has several balls that are really high quality and personalized with our last name. I think that ball may have actually made all the difference in my game. I bowled a 215, which is the highest I've gotten in a long time!

pizza

Two days ago my family watched a really interesting documentary about pizza. I never realized pizza had so much history! Everything from its original creation, to the addition of tomatoes, to the "Italian" pizza made with tomato sauce, cheese, pepperoni, and basil, to modern franchises like Pizza Hut and Dominos. Did you know it used to be a poor man's food? Seems like lots of foods we love now were once created by and consumed by the lowest class of society!!

taxes

Tomorrow I will do my taxes, and I'm hoping I don't owe much this year. I'm self employed so I have to send a check to the IRS every quarter (every three months) to pay for my contribution to Social Security, medicare, SSDI, etc. There's a chance that I've paid enough to merit a refund this year (which would be wonderful!!) but I'm not getting my hopes up because just as good of a chance that I will owe! :(

optometrist

Pretty soon I need to schedule another appointment with my eye doctor. I am lucky to have an eye doctor who is really one of the best around- not just in my opinion but also according to many major publications and organizations. The office has state of the art welch allyn equipment, and the doctors and optometrists are just brilliant. I visit roughly once a year so that I can get another prescription for my contact lenses, and it's one of the few doctors visits that I don't mind paying for!

health insurance

It is sure interesting to see how all this health insurance reform is developing. It isn't difficult to find people who believe we need to reform the health care industry, but there are just so many ways to do it and it's hard to know what will work and what won't. But speaking personally, I wish they would come out with catastrophic coverage insurance, like NC short term health insurance, because that's all that is needed for people like me who are overall pretty healthy anyway.

mesothelioma

Mesothelioma is such a funny disease. Sad, of course, and I don't mean to make light of anyone who suffers from it. But it's one of the few diseases that can be pointed to a single, specific cause (exposure to asbestos), and because of that, litigation attorneys are going nuts. It's their bread and butter to attack companies and corporations who may have exposed someone to asbestos at some point once day long ago. That's kinda sad in itself, because I wonder if that's really what our founding fathers had in mind. But that's the way it is.

diet and fitness

I think the diet and fitness industry is so humorous in its redundancy. You know, everyone is looking for the new magic pill or potion to make losing weight easier (like adapexin-p), but unfortunately that just doesn't exist. The only way to lose weight is diet and exercise- hard work. But people are still looking for an easy escape, and that's why we keep seeing new books and diet plans and pills!

self employment

I love being self employed, though even then, there are benefits to remaining a small business instead of trying to grow into something large. Larger businesses require larger and more complicated performance management software, although those also bring the potential for selling the business someday and receiving a tidy profit. I suppose both ends have their pros and cons. Either way, I am happy where I am and I look forward to this future.

printers

My father found a sale on hp printers in an advertisement and has started looking for a reason to buy a color laserjet printer. It's kind of a silly thing to want, because we really don't have a use for that, but the price has definitely come down over the years. Hard to believe that these printers, which used to cost thousands of dollars, are now only a couple hundred at most!

insurance

I don't have a lot of money, and I am so glad I have a good insurance company and don't have to worry about finding a cheap auto insurance rate. That's one less thing for me to worry about, and one less cost I don't have to struggle to pay. Plus auto insurance is so important- not only because it's illegal to not have it, but just in case you get in an accident, whether it's your fault or not, or even if the other driver is uninsured- auto insurance guarantees you won't go broke just recovering from that!

baby gifts

It seems like I've had just so many friends who have had babies over the course of the past year! I'm happy for all of them, of course, but I'm glad the year is done and the babies are born, because I am just out of ideas for unique baby gifts! The babies are all cute, though, so it's okay- they are totally worth it!

bathrooms

I need to get upstairs and clean out my bathroom. I'm honestly not as good as I'd like to be about keeping my bathroom clean. I've gotten better over the years, plus I got a cabinet- kinda like a robern medicine cabinets- and that's helped me to keep it clean. But I definitely have room for improvement! Too bad I don't make enough money to hire someone else to come clean it for me!