I've got questions, who has answers?

Have you ever read a blog that is all in questions? Well, are you ready?

What would I do without all my technology? Why is it so hard to turn the TV off sometimes? Why do I love sports so much? Why is it so easy to waste time late at night but so difficult to get up and have time to spare in the morning? How come I say such stupid things? Why haven't I done more with my life in the first 29 plus years? How come I have allowed myself to lose contact with so many good friends? Why do I like brussel sprouts so much when everyone else despises them?

Why would I rather read a novel than the Bible? How could anyone possibly like going to the dentist? Why do I prefer to be by myself but then get lonely when no one is around? When will I get back to Africa? And for how long will I be there? Are the ideas in my head ever going to happen or are they just far-fetched thoughts? Who do we think we are anyways?

Why doesn't prayer always come naturally? Why do I keep ordering books when I already own a bunch of good ones I have never read? Why don't I blog more often? How come people don't seem to care about what happens after they die? Why does music have such an emotional impact? Why is doing the right thing usually 5-7 times harder than doing the wrong thing? Why aren't we more honest with each other? Where am I going?

Do we all have way more questions than answers or just me?

Operation Expect the Worse, Success!

So last week I let you into my little world that was riddled with fear and trepidation in preparation for my wisdom teeth surgery that was on Thursday. Before I give you the recap of what actually went down with the oral surgeon, a little bit of background is required. In the weeks leading up to the surgery I figured the best approach was to expect the worse. I expected the surgery to be long and painful, the wake up from the surgery to be uncomfortable at best and the days after to be filled with tons of pain, bleeding, and sleepless nights. My thinking was that if I assumed the worst was going to happen than anything less than that would be almost bearable. And that's exactly what happened...

The surgery itself was a piece of cake. They called my name and took me back to get put under. I took off my shoes and emptied my pockets while the anesthesiologist asked me a few questions about my medical history then told me to lie down and relax. She advised me they were going to put this mask over my mouth and start the flow of an obnoxious smelling gas and I needed to take deep breaths, preferably through my mouth so that I would go to sleep. Well, I don't know what's in that gas but man was it potent. I took a deep breath and thought to myself, "she was right, this gas is.........." Before I could even finish thinking the word 'obnoxious' I was out. What felt like 2 or 3 seconds later, I heard a faint voice calling me back to consciousness, "Brad, you can wake up now, the surgery is over." I struggled to open my eyes and get my bearings then the nurse spoke again, "do you know that you're surgery is over?" I thought to myself, well, you just said it was so I guess it is, but I responded with a simple "yes." I couldn't believe it was over that quickly and easily. I wasn't even in any pain. I felt really disoriented but no more so than when you wake up from one of those really deep, mid-afternoon naps on the couch. I'm not gonna lie, I was pretty impressed.

Of course, I knew the worst was yet to come. They gave me a goody bag filled with some extra drugs and gauze and a diaper for my pillow in case I decided to bleed while I was sleeping, then I was heading home. Not driving of course, I had a ride. Apparently once they put you under you are classified as legally impaired for 24 hours. I wonder though, does the Breathalyzer machine have a setting to test for obnoxious gas?

The next few days weren't actually terrible though. Sure there was pain, sure I looked more like a chipmunk than a person, and sure I craved solid foods like never before, but all in all it was practically bearable. I'd say the worst part of it has been the pain I feel in my jaw. I'm not sure what the Doc did to me when I was under but I feel like I was in a fist fight and took a few shots to the jaw. Even now I can't completely open my mouth. It's kind of embarrassing when you go to raise a utensil with some food to your mouth but get rejected because you can't make the opening between your lips big enough for the food to fir through. Good thing I didn't go out in public. With some well-timed Ibuprofen and a lot of rest I'm on my way back to normal. I just may never want to eat oatmeal, applesauce, yogurt, and/or soup again.

I am Afraid Right Now

It's a pretty manly thing to be afraid right? To be able to shout from the rooftops that I am scared about something? Bravery is overrated. What is it to be brave anyways? To disregard or overlook the fear that is within? That's my definition anyways. I choose to notice the fear within, and then tell others that it's there. Honesty is always the best policy right?

Well, just so you don't think I'm being a wuss in general and for no apparent reason, I'll fill you in. This thursday I'll be going under the knife. Well, the knife will actually be in me and cutting through me. I have to get my two bottom wisdom teeth taken out. The surgery itself actually I'm not all that concerned about. I will be unconscious while the oral surgeon is digging around in my mouth, and for that I'm incredibly grateful. But what about after, when I awake to what inevitably will be some pretty brutal pain? That is what frightens me. The fact there could be 3 or 4 days of pain after my wisdom is actually removed, that is what really scares me.

So, how am I going to be prepared to cope with those days of torture? Well, I have a prescription for pain medication that I will pick up, I will be sure to stock up with plenty of applesauce, ice cream, and soup, I have recently made 2 orders with Amazon.ca to ensure I have plenty of reading material, and on Friday I took my most expensive step to post-surgery happiness- bought myself a PlayStation 3.

I guess I'm ready, eh? Or about as ready as I'll ever be.

Whatever happened to...

...coat of arms? Or maybe the proper pluralization should be coats of arms. Either way, how come we don't have them anymore? Such a cool idea and a great way to unify a group of people and create and maintain a sense of identity. Well, as cool as they are, I can't see them coming back into style anytime soon. That being said, a couple years ago I stumbled on an old Dickinson coat of arms and I wanted to share it just to show you what we are all missing out on here in the 21st century. Here it is:

That my friends is the Dickinson Coat of Arms. When I stumbled on it I gotta say, I was pretty excited. I sorta feel like I have found a piece of my heritage. I've always been kind of curious about what my ancestors were about and where they were from and stuff. I know my background is mostly British and that is kind of boring but now seeing this coat of arms, maybe we were a vicious band of warriors. I mean look at those lions...very fierce. Those funny looking trees though...I've got no explanation for those. But can't you just picture a group of soldiers marching with this beautiful coat of arms emblazened on the front of their shields? Or maybe we were peaceful folks and you could find the coat of arms on our coffee mugs and bumper stickers on our buggies. Either way, it's nice to know the Dickinson's have been around for a while and even went through the trouble of coming up with their own coat of arms.

And if you were wondering what that latin phrase at the bottom says it means, "To be, rather than to seem". They said things in such cooler ways back then.


So, see if you can find something cool from your heritage, or maybe you already know a bunch of stuff. As for me, it's time for supper. In honour of my British heritage I'm going to pretend I'm half Mexican and half Indian- fajitas and butter chicken for me.


Cheers.

Silence is Golden

Sometimes we need more time to just stop and think. Life is too busy, we are always trying to do so much, to have so much going on. I'll be the first to admit that I have very few moments of quiet, when I can shut out distractions and just contemplate something. I always seem to need noise. The TV needs to be on, or the radio, or some music; silence is scary. Our generation is too noisy, it's like we purposefully try to create as many distractions and diversions as humanly possible. That way, we don't have to be faced with the quiet contemplation of what is going on in our hearts, our minds, our souls.

I am the chief culprit of this, so really, I'm writing this more for myself than anyone. I find that by externalizing some of my thoughts it helps me. By putting stuff out here for people to read, it makes me accountable and not able to hide things as easily.

So, how to shut up the noise? How do we quiet things so that we can come face to face with who we really are inside? Don't be afraid of silence. It's so rare and hard to come by. If you can manage to grab a hold of some, take advantage of it.

When a Pet Peeve Ruins Your Day

We all have 'em, right? I might have more pet peeves than others but does that make me a bad person? I hope not. The current pet peeve that is at the top of my list is bad parking. Actually, I'll take that a step further. Not just bad parking but ignorant parking.

I'm not claiming perfection here but let's be real, parking is not rocket science. You see a couple yellow lines (or white as the case may be), you position your vehicle between them and everyone is happy.

So why do so many people have such a hard time with this? Would it be weird if I kept a pad of paper and pen in my car so that whenever I see a person who has parked poorly I could leave them a friendly note to advise them that they could use some work on their parking skills? That is surely better than my initial desire when I see a bad parking job which is to ram into them or take my keys and leave a decorative bit of abstract art along one side of their motor vehicle.

But even worse then the people who just can't seem to find the area between the lines are the offenders who make up their own parking spots and disregard signs and basic laws of parking.  Take this guy for example who thought that the location of the fire hydrant had no bearing on where he should or shouldn't park:

He got what was coming to him and I bet he will never park in front of a fire hydrant again. That's the kind of justice that needs to be handed out to parking offenders. Maybe when a car parks over a line someone should come along and paint that same line from bumper to bumper on the car. Or how about when someone ignores the "No parking" sign someone comes along and removes their front left and rear right tires so there will be "No driving" for them. And for someone who tries parking in a legitimate spot on the side of the street but fails miserably, maybe someone should just come along and flip their car upside down. I guarantee you those people won't be repeat parking offenders.

Oh, and don't forget to leave the note to let them know they have just been punished for parking ineptitude.

So, next time you go to park your car, think of me. Think of how if you park like these yahoos you just very well might ruin my day. You don't want that on your conscious, do you???

Happy New Year!!...to my Nepali friends.

Who knew that there are New Years celebrations happening in different parts of the world all throughout the year? Ok, so maybe a bunch of people knew that but I wasn't so sure. Obviously I know about January 1, and I've always heard about Chinese New Year because that seems to be a pretty big deal, but all the others? I had no idea. For example, apparently Tibet has New Year from January through March, Iran has New Years on March 20 or 21, and Assyrian New Years is on April 1st. There has to be a good joke out there about Assyrian April Fools on New Years Day, but I'm drawing a blank.

But, at the current moment, we should all be well into our celebrations for New Years in Nepal, which is from April 12-15. And what would New Years be without resolutions? Now, the problem with New Years resolutions is we don't ever keep them, right? Well, you can rest at ease because I have figured out why we have such a hard time keeping our New Years resolutions- there are two things we do wrong. First, we often only make one resolution, where we should actually make a handful of them because then there is a greater chance we will at least stumble on one of them. And secondly, we should be making these resolutions for Nepali New Year, not our current January 1st deal. After all, see that picture up there? That was last year, so this year Nepal is already in the year 2067. Shouldn't we try to align ourselves with the people from the future? I think they know more than us.

So here are some of my Nepali New Years resolutions:

-I want to get back in some type of shape. We have a free gym at Westjet so I have no excuse not to use it. Oh right except that I don't want to. But, I have softball and ultimate frisbee season coming up so I need to be kind of ready for physical activity after a winter of solid couch time.

-I want to read more. I recently had to completely empty my room for reno's and what I found was I have a ton of good books that I have never read, not to mention all the good books my friends have that I need to borrow, not to mention the 7 books I just ordered from Amazon, and not to mention the other countless books in existence. Oh, and of course, don't forget the Bible. So, need to do more turning off of the TV and more opening of a book.

-I want to go to an NHL playoff game. Wait, I'm doing that tomorrow! Hooray! Thanks for that Ebay. And who knows, there might be a second playoff game in the future for me before June, we'll see.

-I want to go to a bunch of baseball games in places like LA, San Diego, San Francisco, and Las Vegas. Good thing I work for an airline, eh?

-I want to keep more and more people entertained with this blog. That seems like the toughest of all these resolutions because how can me rambling on about nonsense keep honest, smart folks like you entertained? Well, I'll give it a go anyways.

As always, thanks for reading and have a weekend. Oh and the other secret to making resolutions? Make one for something that has already come to fruition- just to boost your confidence. Happy resoluting everyone.