The Muffin Cups Have Spoken

     In everyone's life you come to a point where you need guidance, inspiration.  Some turn to religion, others turn to alcohol and still others turn to cable TV.  Us?  We turned to the paper muffin-tin liners.

     Perhaps the hardest part is that we've been getting conflicting advice for the most part.  Fat distribution and the internet quizzes have said one thing, the Chinese New Year told us another.  The muffin-tin liners have been very clear to us so far, though, tonight.

It will be a boy.


Unless it ends up being a girl.


     We're half-way along at this point and realize that a great many parents-to-be would have already found out and begun purchasing all the appropriately colored accessories and essentials.  Call us hippies, call us cheap, call us adventurous, call us boring; I just don't feel that my soon-to-be baby is going to care if it has pink, blue or Daffy Duck on its butt for the first year of its life.  I know I won't care.  Here is the only thing that will be going through my mind..."Five times tonight already and it's only 3am??  I hope we have enough laundry detergent, honey."

     Don't get me wrong, I am actually very excited.  The first thing I did when I found out...the second thing I did when I found out was I started my research on how birthing works and what a father does.  Fortunately, Dr. Bill Cosby created a pseudo-guide back in 1983 based on his own experience (Bill Cosby: Himself).  It seems that I've got some practicing to do before I'm very proficient.

     Sadly, pregnancy has led us back to a chronic argument in our relationship.  As I've said before, we regularly quibble about who's job it is to work.  Or rather, how to work out who gets a job.  It isn't really working though because we end up going back and forth: not in terms of who is right or wrong, but in terms of who gets to stay home and who gets to work.  Lately we've had some interesting career prospects that have excited us both for the working world and spiced up the argument.

     Naturally the baby has already had its first success at instigating a parental argument, and we've reversed course and have come back to both wanting to stay home with the kid.  As I said earlier, it's a chronic argument and we realize it.  I expect that about 35 diapers into the domestic role, we'll both be back to wanting to work again.  That's what the compass-technique revealed to us, anyway.

Campaign for Presidency

     No, I am actually serious.  I’ve been campaigning since at least 2010.  This was back when I was updating my Facebook “Political Views” and realized I wasn’t really quite Republican, nor really quite Democrat and not really quite any other political party either.  Registering as Independent doesn’t let you vote in the primaries, where your vote can sometime be arguably conceived of as worth something.  Thus was born my campaign “Eric Young for President, 2012.”

     Eric Young for President, 2012 got off to a fast start.  With 7 likes (not counting my own) within the first hour of posting, I knew I was on to something.  Unfortunately, with classes and such, I completely forgot to develop a complex platform and gather funding.  Thus, my campaign slowed down in terms of its function, not its slope.

     I only recently realized that I did not have a well-developed platform for my campaign.  Until today, my main tenet has been that everyone should vote for me.  While that is helpful in campaigning, it is not quite enough.  Thus, I set my think-tank to work on finding me a platform.

     I have decided that Snoopy doing his famous Snoopy Dance (the happy dance, which can be viewed in still-life at the top of http://www.peanuts.com/characters/snoopy/, will be my platform.  Yes, the dance itself will be my platform.  Related to it, however will be my aim that all Americans experience increased participation in this dance whether in private or among friends and non-friends.

     I have chosen the Snoopy Dance because it is unrivaled in terms of exultance and gratitude.  One cannot help but be a better person by engaging in the Snoopy Dance.  Indeed, anyone who is a true American will be proud to dance the Snoopy Dance.  The simplicity of this platform adds tremendous strength and clarity to my cause.  The first program I enact is that all Americans will adopt the tradition of dancing the Snoopy Dance after reciting the Pledge of Allegiance or hearing The Star Spangled Banner—afterwards, of course.

     A final note regarding my campaign is that I have crushed my first opponent.  Chase has informally agreed to not run in this year’s election.  He outwardly claims that this is so he can help garner more support for Vermin Supreme (official site: http://www.verminsupreme.com/; recently spoke at the New Hampshire elections, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2TsYHQnV5w) .  However, this is a clear indication that I have instilled fear in him and that he recognizes the superiority of my campaign.

Remember to vote for Eric Young this year.

Eric Young for President, 2012

Running Errands

This title is just begging for some kind of joke about your refrigerator, or traditional Native American names.  Alas, this is a free blog and you'll get no such entertainment out of me.  And I already used the refrigerator joke in September :(

     These are my new running shoes.  Their continuing mission, to explore uncrowded, lesser-run trails; to seek out wildlife and no civilization; to boldly go where most of us have such a hard time going: outside (or more generally: off the computer).

     I’ve been running since I was a kid, mostly from bullies but also around tracks, up roads and even for physical fitness tests when I was in the military.  I thought I was pretty fast, and at least a few of the other kids would have agreed, but I was never “THE fast kid.”  When I was in the military I took myself out on a lot of gut-wrenchingly hard runs, but never with enough consistency.  I would train for a few weeks, or even a few months this way, then ultimately get distracted by something else and have to restart the cycle.  My PFT scores would always remain quite good, but never amazing.

     Last year, as I have griped a few times, I had both mono and a motorcycle accident.  Both of these kept me from doing almost any kind of physical exercise (except thumb strengthening via the Nintendo, which I didn’t even do).  Well, absence makes the heart grow fonder, even for abusive relationships.  Thus, I came to long for the day when I could start running, lifting or even playing Ping-Pong again. 

     Since I had to start out slow, and since I didn’t remember with glee those gut-wrenching death runs, I decided to make running a lifestyle instead of an ordeal.  That was June and I haven’t missed a week since.  I think I’ve had a couple weeks of just 2 or 3 runs, but that’s still pretty good.  And only a couple runs have been anything harder than would allow me to keep a smile on my face the entire time.  That includes a couple trail races that I entered (but that’s another story).

     Today is the day that I can actually say that running has become a lifestyle.  Instead of going out on a particular course, for a particular length of time, or even to train for a specific race/goal, I went out to return my library book.  I ended up going the long way so I could be out for a little longer, true.  But the goal was to literally run an errand.  So while I may not be bouncing out of bed at 5am all chipper and ready to go set a record, I am actually starting to use running as way to get around and, more importantly, because I enjoy it.