I should be cained for my neglect of this blog.

Hello again fans and media to The Usual Scott's blog. I wanted to pose the following question: Isn't it curious sometimes, how we don't see the signs that are right in front of our eyes? No I mean literally right in front of your eyes. Seriously, right in front of our eyes. Look at the picture at the bottom of this post and you will see what I mean. This morning for the second time Ayden and I were awakened to the sound of our intruder alarm. Did we have a break-in you ask? Maybe. But as it turned out Tina just forgot to disable the alarm before she opened the back door to let Homer (our dog) outside. Hey it happens. You know what we should do; we should put up a sign on the back door reminding everyone to check the alarm before opening the door. Oh wait, we did. Of course I say this tongue-in-cheek, I very much love my little wolf crier. Another deep question for you: How come canned soup never tastes the same as the real thing? (Tina just asked me this question as I was writing this blog, so I wanted to give you a peak at our deep, intellectual conversations. This is the type of stuff you can't get anywhere else. Thought provoking questions, hard hitting news, sports talk, job grumbling. This blog is gold. If it is not one of your links or bookmarks then you are missing out on my random, infrequent, sporadic posts of grandeur).

Ayden has begun her movement. I use the word movement because she can get from one side of the room to the other, but it is not always crawling. She likes to roll over and then do her little lean pose to check things out. I tell Tina that Ayden is just lazy. If there is something on the floor she wants, she will legitimately crawl to it and get it. If not, she is content with just leaning and rolling around. So she can crawl, she just chooses to do it sparingly. Her second bottom tooth has broken through the gum. I have taught her how to make noises with her mouth by saying "ahhh" and then she puts her fist back and forth to her mouth.

Asher is doing well. He has been making a lot of parachutes with paper towels and yarn the last couple of days. He also likes making a variety of things out of paper; as a result I need to buy more printer paper. Asher won a little experiment at school in his science class, so that was cool. He is excited to play baseball but that doesn't start until April. Meanwhile we are going to try and get him in the Chess club that goes on after school. He likes Chess and does pretty well in it. He has been a pleasure to have in our home.

Meanwhile last and deservedly so is me. I am doing well. I am taking two graduate courses online. I have come to the conclusion that as much as I enjoy school, I can't stand night school and I am burnt out of going to classes in person. Maybe some day that will change but for the time being that is the way it is. That being said I am enjoying taking my classes in my own home at my own leisure. I was hired at a specialty grocery store a week ago called Market Street. I would be working in the cheese and deli section. My plan to work as a sub teacher didn't work because teachers decided not to miss any work, so there was no work for me. While I did accept this job, I still continue to look for one that is better for the family and our future. I had two interviews this week. One was a library position with Collin College. The other was a Technical Specialist position with a local software security company. I think I will get them both and will thus have a decision to make. Don't know what it would be. As far as my weight loss effort is concerned it is coming along. It hit a little bump during the holidays but I am back on regular track toward the sexiest man alive award. I will inform you of the statistical progress in the near future. Peace out.

Winds of change

Well a lot has transpired since my last blog. For those of you who haven't heard we are trying to get full custody of Asher after learning some of the things he had been going through over the years. We won emergency custody over the Christmas holidays so Asher did not have to go back to Oregon and started school with us here in Prosper. He is doing well. We have been playing baseball and football almost every day. I am going to try and get him into a basketball league starting pretty soon. He seems to be enjoying his school here so far. He is getting used to his new home here and we are getting used to having a 7 year old boy in our house. The decibel level changed when he arrived but it has been great, just takes some time to get used to it. The whole situation could be resolved in a week or two or might drag on for months depending on what the other side does.

In other news we had a nice Christmas and New Years spending and visiting with a lot of family. I took Microeconomics over the Christmas holiday since it was a class I needed for teacher certification. I am going to take the Social Studies composite test for 7-12 grades in February. That way I will be ready to get a job during the heavy teacher job fairs in March and April. I have interviewed for a computer tech job with the local school district hoping to get to know some people. I am set up to sub for Frisco ISD.

Ayden is doing well. She has been a bit crankier of late. Her one tooth is coming up and the other one is on the way and I think that has got her grumpy. She gets in the crawling position all the time but still hasn't figured out how to coordinate her movements to crawl yet.

Tina is doing fine as always.

In weight loss news, I let go during the holidays and probably gained about 13lb's. But the other day when I got on the scale I was back to 230lb's so I am only about 7lb's heavier than I was before the holidays. I am back to normal eating again and the weight is coming of again. The goal is still the same and I will get there but I am going to have to start doing some exercise. My playing with my brothers over the holidays has really hosed up my knee so I am unable to exercise at the moment, but Asher is keeping me active (which is probably also not allowing my knee to heal).

The Scott's are doing well, we are grateful for what we have and each other.

Back again

Well I haven't written for quite some time now. Nor I have updated the photo album lately. Well I have done both now. Having a little kid sometimes allows for interesting and tense situations. Much like the time Asher saw a black person when he was a little boy visiting in Texas. He loudly said, pointing to the black man, "look a brown person". Then even more recently then that, I had the privilege of taking Ayden out to the hall because she was being loud in Stake Conference. We went over to a quite area over by some of the bishops office to sit down. There were two chairs, one was being occupied by a gentleman who was sitting there with his eyes closed appearing to be in heavy meditation. The other was available, so Ayden and I sat there. It was nice and quite, we were all just sitting there relaxed when Ayden suddenly let one rip. She followed that one promptly with another one. I was unsure what to say or do. I didn't look at the man on my right to see his reaction, I just hoped he didn't think it was me. Good times. Other than that things are going alright. We have a good deal of our Christmas shopping done so we are happy about that. We went to the Frisco Mall today and oddly enough the power was out in every single store except for the department stores. All the stores were closed, no one could buy anything because the credit card machines were all down.

I started running this week. I started the first time on Tuesday trying to run a 5k on the treadmill. But only made it about 3.5k. Today I ran the whole 5k and did alright all things considered. I ran it in 34 minutes and 30 seconds which is not real fast but not to bad for me at this time. It is about a 11 minute and 30 second pace per mile. I continue to do push-ups 3 days a week, 3 sets of 40 per day. So I am doing 360 push-ups a week and over 1200 per month. I know I am going to be eating more than I usually would during the holidays so hopefully the exercise will help eat up some of the additional calories. Ayden is rolling over all over the place now. She wants to crawl but hasn't figured it out yet. She can scoot herself a foot or two here and there but nothing with proper form yet. She talks constantly (she gets that from Tina :)) and she screams a very high pitch squeal quite often. We think we saw the first sign of teeth today in Ayden. Ayden is eating quite a bit of physical food now. She eats a lot of rice cereal, sweet potatoes, green beens, carrots and has just recently started eating fruit.

Asher seems to be doing alright. He is doing well in school. I recently got his report card from his teacher in Oregon and he is doing well, especially in Math and Science. When he visited for Thanksgiving, I asked him what he would like to be when he grew up. He told me he wants to be a Scientist. I was surprised and happy about that desire. He is a smart little boy, who is fascinated about ocean life and the titanic. It is one of his favorite things. He can tell you a lot of information about it. He has about 5 books on the subject and is looking for more. He learned to play chess while he was in the hospital in about a day and was playing me and others for about 20 minutes at a time before we beat him. He is competitive like me, he doesn't like to lose, but no one should.

Tina is enjoying being a mother. She is so good at it. She has a routine with Ayden that makes things so easy for everyone. Ayden eats at certain times and sleeps at certain times. Tina has one more day of work at the dental office she is working at. After that she will only have her Saturday morning job to do. She is the best mother and wife any child or man could ever hope for. Ayden and I are so lucky to have her.

Stuff

Well all is as well as can be expected in the Scott household. For those of you who haven’t heard my son Asher fell off of his bike, knocked himself out, and fractured his skull. That is the bad news, the good news is he is doing fine and back to normal activity. We had a nice thanksgiving, we got to spend some time with family and eat some good food. Asher got to come down to Texas for Thanksgiving which was great. Ayden is doing well, she is jabbering like crazy these days. She talks on some days nonstop all day long. I tell Tina she gets that from her. But I know she gets it from me. My weight is still coming along just fine, still making progress. To quote a line from the song “Living on a Prayer”, “we have each other and that’s enough…”. That is pretty much what are live is about. We don’t have much money, I can’t ever seem to find a job I like. I generally like them all at first, but that pretty much always ends after a few months. But at least I still have my wife and daughter and son and family. You know growing up and being successful in sports and not really ever having much trouble with grades and stuff it never crossed my mind that I wouldn’t be successful professionally. I didn’t know what I would do, but I thought I would be successful at something. It is a real slap in the face to have friends who are doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc… and for me to have accomplished nothing professionally in my life. I know I have no one to blame but myself. Maybe I just haven’t found the field I can be successful in yet. I don’t know. My personality is like that of an artist, or a musician. The problem is I can’t paint, draw or sculpt and I can’t play any instrument or sing well enough. I have read that like the majority of artists in the world have my same personality type. It would seem that Heavenly Father gave me a certain personality but forget to give me artist ability. Which means I don’t fit in business because I am to inquisitive and free spirited. So once you rule out business you really only have a few work sectors you can go to. You can do a social type of work, education, government, hospitality or medical I guess. I have tried many different areas of business now. I thought training might work for me even though it is in the business sector. It appears I was wrong. It is still business. So I am left to find or try to find something that is a good fit for me. I fear I will never find it and I will keep bouncing from job to job every year for the next 34 years. Ayden is now rolling all over the floor. She can’t crawl yet, but I can put her down on the floor and a short while later she will be on the other side of the room because she rolled all the way over there. She still doesn’t sit up on her own real well, she is still working on that. She is just the cutest though. She really melts my heart, she smiles at me all the time, she is just adorable. Some day she will complain that I don’t let her date or am to protective, so I will just enjoy the sweet times with her right now. If any of you have any thoughts for me I would like to hear them. We are going through a lot of stuff right now and are just trying to hang in there. But as long as I have my lovely wife and daughter and son and family, we will make it through. Anyway these are just some random thoughts for the most part, I haven’t written for a while because we have been busy dealing with other things. Take care.

Movie List

I wanted to take the time to name my top twenty. This list is probably fluid and is in no particular order except maybe the top two. You will notice some R rated movies in there from back when I used to watch them. I haven’t seen many R rated movies in the last 5 years so if there was something rated R in the last 5 years that was great, chances are I haven’t seen it.

Braveheart – My favorite movie of all time.
Shawshank Redemption – One of the most powerful movie I have ever seen.
Dumb and Dumber – One of the funniest movies of all time.
Airplane – A comedy classic
Meet the Parents – I love this one
Goonies – This is the one movie that really stands out from my childhood.
Tombstone – The best Wyatt Earp movie ever made
Presumed Innocent – This was a great legal thriller
Bruce Almighty – Love Jim
Liar Liar – Still love Jim
Along Came Polly – This movie not many people saw, but I love it.
The Usual Suspects – This was a great crime thriller
I Robot – I just like this movie
The Harry Potter Movies – Love the books and after some removal from the books love the movie.
The Lord of the Rings Movies – Great movies
Star Wars – Empire Strikes Back - Classic
Unforgiven – I had to throw in a great western
Glory – This is a great show with many good actors.
Superman – The one with the 3 bad guys from outer space. I think it was 3.
Rocky IV – The one with the Russian. Man this Rocky pumps me up.
The Matrix – Awesome show.

End of week 23

Well yet another week has gone by. Ayden is another week older, as is Asher, Tina and myself. Ayden dressed up as a bunny rabbit for Halloween and Asher went with the ninja outfit. I like to remind people that by clicking on the photo album link to your right you will be taken to all of our pictures. There is over 200 pictures up there for your viewing enjoyment. I only put a few pictures actually in the blog, there are many, many more in the photo album so check those out. If you haven’t noticed I haven’t spoken to much on my weight loss lately. It is still going well but it has become a little redundant for me to write and probably redundant for you all to read. My original purpose for starting this blog was for support from you all in helping me reach my goals. Those goals were important because as you can see from my picture at 276 lbs it was imperative that I took action to change some really bad habits. Well you guys have helped me do that. I can say positively that my eating habits have changed and they have changed forever. I don’t look at food in the same way anymore, I still love it, but I look at it as a number value. In other words, how many points does that food cost. Sure I will have a meal or two or maybe a weekend in which I may go a little crazy, but I am always back to normal soon thereafter. I weighed in this morning at 225 lbs. So doing the math I have lost 51 lbs. This is probably one of the lowest weights I have been at in 10 years. I am 6 lbs away from my weight when Tina and I started to date. I am 20 lbs away from what I was when I got back from my mission, and I am 35 lbs away from my goal of 185/190 lbs. There is no doubt in my mind I will get there. It is just a matter of time and I am not in a hurry to get there . The weight is going to come off. We are not looking forward to the teething period Ayden will soon go thru. She is doing really well. She started eating pureed green beans about a week ago which took her back a little bit initially, but we think she likes them. She has always been an angry eater for some reason. She is still an angry eater. Sometimes when Tina is feeding her green beans or rice cereal she will do this very loud, very violent, grunt. I would compare it to the sound a weight lifter might make when he is screaming to get that last bench press up. Now I know what you are thinking, she is pooping. Nope, she just makes these loud grunts and screams between bites, it is quite comical. I am going to try to capture it on video and put it on the photo album. I will let you know when I do. Work is work, it is going fine. I am still not a company type of guy, I really don’t know how far I am going to get in corporate America. More on that topic to come at a later date. We had some of Tina’s family over a few nights ago for barbq. We wanted to try and do something nice for Amy because she was moving and she was such a big help to us. (We thank you Amy!) Tina and I will miss her being around on Wednesday and Thursday and so will Ayden. I made the barbq and a pasta salad. I have a wonderful pasta salad recipe I created. Everyone seems to really like it. The chicken was fun, I made some homemade barbq sauce and grilled them outside. That day I had a bad day at work and it was nice to come home and do something I really love and that is cook. In other news I have been called into the Elders Quorum presidency. I am now the second counselor in the Elders Quorum presidency. It was really a surprise. I have had times in my life when I have been living well, doing most of the things I should in life and would have felt relatively worthy of such a calling. At the present I don’t feel worthy of it so I am surprised it came. I joked with Tina that I have been trying to fly under the radar so I never get called to presidency positions and Bishoprics and that stuff but after now getting called into this presidency I think I need to go the opposite way. I need to be the best member in the world, then I would never get called to anything. Maybe I will give that a try. But seriously it will be an interesting learning experience. I may post some pictures of me tonight. I will put some new ones of Ayden up tonight on the photo album. Oh and one more thing. We recently heard from some old acquaintances. One of them was the Craikers who moved to Tulsa for law school I wanted to give them a shout out. The other one was Mindy Dalton (don’t know her married name). Let me say something about Mindy real quick. Mindy is one of sweetest, kindest people I have ever got to associate with. After my mission I got to spend some time with her and it was time well spent. I was glad to hear from her and her family and I wish them all well. She is the salt of the earth. I value greatly past friendships. I don’t like to make new friends. I have a limited number of friends, unfortunately all of them live far away but they are my friends none the less and they are people I come to trust and love whether they realize that or not. I miss hanging out with Phil at his old house in Lander. I miss hanging with Anson sitting on a skateboard going to his old house in Duncanville to steal some of his Dads M&M’s. I miss hanging with Josh, trying to get him to watch real TV instead of the learning channel (it paid off, he is a lawyer). And I miss hanging out with Chris in our old flat in South Africa. Later.

Our trip to Silsbee - End of week 22

Well it was quite a weekend. This past weekend Tina, Ayden and I took a trip down to Silsbee, TX. Where you say? That’s right Silsbee, TX. That is where some of Tina’s family lives. We went down there for a surprise 80th birthday party for her grandmother. It was about a 5 hour drive down there. It is pretty much right on the edge of Texas and Louisiana. The drive down there was actually kind of pretty. There are many tall trees, much taller then we get in our neck of the woods it seems. Perhaps that is because it is much older and the trees have had years to grow. Ayden got to see a lot of her family she had never met before. The first night we stayed in a hotel called the Pinewood Inn. The pictures on the website brought to vision sandy beaches and palm trees. I thought, sweet, we are staying in a nice place. …..hold that thought. So Tina and I pulled into the parking lot and I asked worriedly “is this it”? It was it. To set the scene, it looked like a two story prison without the barbwire fence. But wait, the outside seemed like the Ritz Carleton compared to what terror lurked inside. “Be right back”, I said to Tina and Ayden as I closed the door to get our room. I was greeted as I entered the bathroom size guest check in area by a woman I could only describe as the long lost grandmother of Methuselah. She proved to not only be extremely old but also completely incapable of following any train of thought. After about 15 minutes in her presence I was ready to sleep in a cardboard box on the side of the road instead of deal with her. As it turned out we got our room, for $18 more than we were quoted. I didn’t mention that they lost our reservation we made a week prior to arriving there. Or more specifically the old woman didn’t know where to find our reservation. Once we got to our “suite” we noticed the state of our room. To set the scene, we had two holes in the wall by the bathroom sink where electrical plugs should have been. Instead there were simply rectangular holes in the walls with electrical wires showing. Looking up in the bathroom afforded you the view of a large square hole in the top where a bathroom fan should have been. The paint in the bathroom wasn’t finished. A little later in the evening after one of us went to the bathroom we heard the sound of running water from the toilet. We waited…waited…waited. The sound didn’t stop, so we ended up having to lift the toilet cover and adjust the big black ball looking thing so the water would stop incessantly filling up in the toilet. The next morning as Gabi was attempting to cook her oatmeal in the microwave a fuse was blown, causing the power to go out. It was not the greatest hotel stay in my life. Other than that we had a fun time. Tina’s grandmother was surprised and I think having everyone there made it a special time for her. My health and eating continue and are going well. I will update with pictures and stuff when I have made some more progress.