The BlogStalker

Hi Friends – Yes, I know it has been too long. I actually forgot the password to my account to update the site. Sorry I haven’t been posting, but we’ve been pretty busy creating life up in here.

That’s right – Kate is now my baby mama to be. Well, at least I’m pretty sure it’s mine – we won’t know for sure until our episode of Maury Povich tapes in the fall. Just kidding. Yep, Kate is preggers, or ‘up the duff’ as my classy friends in the UK would say. Needless to say, we’re ecstatic about this. Due date is November 30, so we’re not sure yet if Gilbert will have a little brother or sister, but we do plan on finding out. The doctor seems convinced that it’s a human baby, which is encouraging.

This has been a long time coming for us. We’ve been married for just about six years, and had about six years of ‘when are you guys going to have kids’ questions lobbed at us by friends, family, etc. For the first four years we weren’t really ready to have a child. On paper, we were ready (jobs, college education, not completely broke, etc) but we weren’t going to rush into anything. We both decided about a year ago that we were ready, and that we wanted to have a baby – not just because everyone else thought we should, but because we wanted to and were both entirely on board with the idea.  But then we were ready and had our share of ups and downs.

I mentioned in my health scare post a few months ago that we were dealt a pretty bad hand, but that I wasn’t going to get into it until we had a happy ending. Well, that’s what’s going on here. Several months ago, we were pregnant, and then we weren’t. I’m not going to use the M word, because other than ‘smear’ and ‘wipe’, the M word is perhaps my least favorite word in the English language. But that’s what happened, we were pregnant, and then we weren’t. Other than our parents, we didn’t talk to anyone about this, not because we were embarrassed or ashamed, but because we didn’t want to be pitied or the topic of dinner conversation. Anytime someone mentions the M word, people rattle off 4 or 5 names of friends or family members that they know that have been through the same thing. We didn’t want to hear anyone’s list, and we certainly didn’t want to be ON anyone’s list. So we didn’t talk about it. As I mentioned before, I did a really bad job of dealing with it – working, eating, and drinking too much. Writing about food blogs or just being funny in general wasn’t a priority when we were trying to deal with some pretty heavy stuff. It took several months and a health scare to get my head out of my ass, and to get us talking about trying again.

Editor’s Note – I hate that I just talked about ‘trying’. Whenever someone talks about trying to get pregnant (or the even worse ‘not trying NOT to get pregnant) it is impossible to not think about the people in question having sex. There, I said it. If anyone ever talks about trying to get pregnant, everyone automatically thinks about sex. So sorry to write that.

Anyhow, not sure where I’m going with this. Just wanted to let you all know our great news. We’re three months along and the doctor says everything looks great. I’d like to write about this experience (both the good and bad). Kate and I are learning as we go along here – watching lots of TLC and reading books that I never saw myself reading. I’m not sure where I’m going to post about this stuff, or what form it’s going to take. I’d like to write a book about both the ups and downs, but I’m not really sure how that works. Bloggers with book deals – hook me up with how that works. So far I’ve got:

1. Start a blog

2.

3. Get a book deal

If you could fill me in with #2, that would be great. I’ve already got some chapters/thoughts figured out. Stuff like:

1. Why it’s not okay for the lady doctor to have pictures of babies all over the walls in the office where you give people bad news (especially those damn Anne Geddes pictures)

2. 99 ways that a closet mother-to-be can explain away her not drinking

3. Appropriate and inappropriate things to say when your wife talks about her weight gain

4. How Gilbert knows that Kate is preggers and he’s acting like a spoiled little ass

I’ve got thousands of these, and I’m starting to write them down.

Anyway, that’s what’s going on with us. Life is pretty crazy, but in a good way. Health wise, it’s still a battle for me, but I’m still working on it and hope to lose my baby bump as Kate’s continues to grow. My liver is testing back in the ‘normal’ range, which means I can have a beer every now and again – Kate and I are just taking shifts on the wagon, I guess.

That’s all for now. More later. I’ll try to post again at some point before the third trimester. Thanks to TLC and the books, I know what that means now.

Hi Friends,

How’s it going? Good - glad to hear it. Sorry I’ve been slacking again, but by now, you’ve gotta be used to it. I haven’t been reading a ton of blogs lately, so I don’t think I could give a very comprehensive blog review. I am gonna get back to that, one of these days. But for now, I’ll just give a quick update on me.

Surgery
Since we last spoke, I had my gall bladder removed on 12.31. Loaded up on painkillers is a pretty awesome way to ring in the new year.  The surgery wasn’t too bad. In fact, The Today Show was on when I started getting prepped for surgery, and The Today Show was still on when I was in the recovery room - no joke. But it wasn’t too bad - the doctors laughed at my jokes, which is pretty much all I cared about - oh and the fact that I didn’t die. Here were my jokes:

Anesthesiologist - So, what did you have for breakfast today (this is his sneaky question, since I wasn’t supposed to eat)?

Me - Biscuits and Gravy, Hash Browns, Cup of coffee, and a Marlboro red.

That one got a mild laugh - although I probably shouldn’t be a smartass to the man who can knock me out and do Dateline-worthy things to me while I’m under  if he really wanted to.  But then after surgery I woke up and the first thing I heard:

Nice Nurse Lady - Can I get you something to drink?

Me - Gin and Tonic - make it a double.

She laughed, but did not bring me a G&T. Probably for the best.

Recovery

Week 1 - So surgery was fine and then I had a week of laying on the couch, feeling like somebody punched me in the gut, and not being very hungry. I was familiar with the ‘laying on the couch’ part, but the other two were new feelings for me. I also had lots of people tell me that I would magically lose a bunch of weight after this surgery. Sadly, that did not happen to me. Likely because I didn’t move off of the couch for about a week.

Week 2 -After about a week of laying on the couch, I started to get bored, so I ventured out of the house and went for walks on the Greenway. This was kind of odd. Whenever I see out of shape men walking by themselves for exercise, I always act like I’m in some kind of post-heart attack drug company commercial.

Here’s how it works - 60 year old out of shape guy walks by me, clearly getting his first exercise in quite some time and in my head I say something like (a heart attack at 57, boy, was that a wake up call - my doctor said I should try %%drug name%%).

Now that I’m the out of shape guy going for a walk by himself, I’m wondering if people are having the same inner monologue that I typically have. Am I the heart attack man now? Nah, they’re probably just wondering why a grown man is out for a walk on a random Tuesday afternoon wearing a hoodie and plaid pajama pants.

Week 3 - I go for my post-surgery appointment. This is basically the surgeon’s opportunity to look at my stitches and pat himself on the back for doing an awesome job. Also a chance to get another $25 copay out of me. We’ll talk more about money later. Anyway - he tells me that I can start running again, so I get back out for some short and slow runs.

Week 4 - Life is pretty much back to normal - with a few lifestyle changes that are outlined below. Work goes back to being busy and I start traveling again. I feel like myself again at this point (or better) so I can’t really use the surgery as an excuse to be a lazy ass.

Finances

I hadn’t really ever needed medical care since I’ve been a grown-up, so this was sort of eye-opening for me. Other than one physical and a couple doc in the box visits, I really didn’t have any medical expenses in the past eight years. I’m not going to go on a rant on the current state of our healthcare system, but I certainly could. Just from a cost perspective, I’ll just say that this shit is expensive - and that’s with insurance through my employer. Surgery was like 13 grand with a few thousand dollars left for me to pay after the insurance company was done sending me lots of mail . Awesome. Kate says it’s my 30th birthday present.  They itemize the bill for you, which is really fun - like the recovery room cost was $979. I spent a solid half hour in that room. A thousand dollars for a half hour in a room and there weren’t any strippers or clowns or anything exciting. They did have TV, but didn’t give me the remote and I’m pretty sure they didn’t have cable. That probably would’ve cost extra. Finally, after dropping a few thousand dollars, nobody ever told me what happened to my gall bladder. I thought I’d get to keep it and could try to resell it on ebay to make back some of the cost, but no dice. Oh well.

Changes Made

So the goal of not having to go back to the hospital remains. I don’t really want to go back for any kind of liver treatment (recall from previous posts that I was also an assbag to my liver, and it is mildly pissed off at me and needs some love for the next few months or so). So with that, I’ve changed what I eat and what I drink, as well as trying to exercise a little more.

Food

When I eat any kind of heavy foods, I feel sick, so I’m not going to do that anymore. For the first couple of weeks, I frequently accused Kate of bribing the doctors and having them give me gastric bypass surgery without telling me. I’m now about 99% sure that she didn’t do this, but I still can’t really eat a lot in one sitting without feeling gross, and I can’t eat any heavy/greasy/fatty foods. There goes my promising career as a competitive eater.

Drink

I think I’ve said before that it’s pretty much impossible to list the number of days that you’ve gone without having a drink without sounding like a recovering alcoholic, but I’ll do it anyway: no booze in 48 days. Again, the primary reason for this is to give my liver some time to heal itself. Hopefully I’ll get it retested in a few months and it will be normal again, but it’s sort of a no booze until that happens mode. I’ve priced livers on the black market, and with the medical bills, and some of my discretionary spending habits, I don’t think I can budget for a liver this year. So, we’ll continue with the no booze thing until the doctor says my liver is in good working order and I can go back to mildly abusing it. This no drinking thing is kind of a pain in the ass. Not in a ‘I’m getting the shakes’ kind of way, but just general annoyance. I like drinking. It’s especially hard while traveling. When you sit in the front of the plane and they offer you free drinks, it’s difficult to order water. I almost feel like I should give up my first class seat and give it to someone in coach who would take advantage of the free booze. But then I see all of the screaming children back there and think better of it. Besides, they put me in the front because of my loyalty, so they might be offended if I didn’t accept their gift of a seat that my ass fits in. So far, 8,000 miles this year without any mini bottles.

Exercise

Trying to do this without being a complete crazy person and crashing and burning. So slowly building up my millage and trying to do something aerobic everyday, but not freaking out if I miss a day. So far so good. Thinking about running a half in the summer and then a full in the Fall (NYC if I get in via lottery, Chicago if I don’t). Goals in every race will be to finish (with a sub-goal of finishing without any visible chafing). Don’t really care about marathon times anymore - and really not sure why I did in the past.

So that’s it for the update on me. In my limited blogstalking, I’ve noticed that some bloggers are ending their posts with a question. Seems like a good way to get lots of comments. You can comment on whatever you want, but I’ll throw a question out there too - Does anyone else think it’s a little creepy that Neil Diamond wrote Sweet Caroline about an 11 year old Caroline Kennedy? I love Neil, and I don’t think he deserves his own green dot next to his house on the sex offender website map for this, but it just strikes me as a little creepy. “Oh, one, touching one, reaching out/Touching me, touching you.” That’s all for now. We’ll try to do better next time.

-Nate

Hi Friends,

How is everyone doing? Good, glad to hear it. I still haven’t gotten around to writing my year in review post, so sorry about that. I’ll try to do that sometime soon. I’m having surgery in a couple of days, so whenever I get around to writing that post, I’ll likely be under the influence of pain medication. That should make it more entertaining.

Things are going well here. Feeling better and eating healthier. Those two things just might be related. Kate and I had a good time in Tucson, although it was odd for me to go to Arizona and not have any margaritas or chimichangas. I’m sure my internal organs will thank me later for that.

Since I’m too lazy to do an actual blog post, I figured I’d just do a twitter roundup post. For those of you not on Twitter, this will likely not make any sense to you. Or, maybe it’ll motivate you to create a Twitter account and start following all of these bloggers (and me too).

I’m still not sure how I feel about Twitter. Sometimes I think it’s great - typically when I’m in a waiting room, in a cab, or on the tarmac. It takes little to no effort, which is always a plus for me. But sometimes I agree with John Mayer (@johncmayer) who once said that Twitter was “one step away from sending pictures of your poop.” Then again, he tweets all the time and has 2 Million+ followers.

Tweeting is much easier than real blogging. So I’m guessing that a Twitterstalking post will also be easier than Blogstalking. So here are a few of the bloggers that I follow on Twitter and a brief description of what they usually blog about.

Angela at Oh She Glows (@ohsheglows) - I think Angela actually has about 14 different Twitter accounts for her various business ventures (globakery, green monster movement) - hell, I think her cat even has a Twitter account. Angela’s tweets usually focus on her multiple trips to the post office or the countless glo bars that she has baked on a given day. I’ve crunched some numbers, and based on her recent tweets, Angela has sold more Glo Bars than Tim Horton has sold cups of coffee in the past year. I was going to use McDonalds Cheeseburgers, but decided to use a Canadian reference for our blogger from the North.

Heather of Hangry Pants (@hangrypants) - Hangry Heather usually tweets something funny about Hangry Mark (@markremo). Then Hangry Mark usually tweets something about video games that I don’t understand. So then I have to Google whatever video game he is talking about. Then I end up spending 15 minutes on some video game website and all of a sudden Twitter has gone from being a painless time waster to a significant time commitment. Damn you, Twitter.

Caitlin Pancake (@caitlinhtp) - HTP tweets all damn day. Sometimes I just count the number of HTP tweets and then graph them out by day in Excel. Yes, my life is really that exciting. Anyway, HTP tweets about everything, from her lack of morning showering, to her day-drinking exploits, to 20 mile runs after day-drinking. I would vote her as the food blogger most likely to tweet about…well, just about anything.

Hmm, I guess I lied. These descriptions aren’t very brief.  I’ll try to shrink these down a bit…

Jenna (@EatLiveRun) - Typically something about wine and/or acrobatics (various yoga poses or, more recently, headstands).

Fitnesstestinista (@fitnessista) - Something about going to Starbucks. Per Twitter, she goes to Starbucks more than a full-time barista. But she turns into Snoop Dog whilst tweeting, so it is frequency referred to as ‘the bizzle’ or something similar.

Everyone’s favorite Homegirl (@homegirlcaneat) - Usually something about booze, Irish boys, or San Francisco.  Sometimes it’s the homegirl trifecta…something like ‘Shots in SF with the O’Reilly Boys.’

C’n'C Blogging Factory (@CarrotsNCake) - Mostly pictures of Murphy and Mal - I don’t mind, as both are cute as a button.

Twitter Stock Up
Missing your dog while on vacation
Tweeting about hotel rooms
Tweeting about whatever song you are listening to on Grooveshark

Twitter Stock Down
Pandora tweets
Retweeting from celebrities
Tweeting pictures of food

Well, that’s all for now. Hopefully I’ll be back in a few days for the roundup post. Oh, and if you have any good recommendations of famous people that I should follow on Twitter (or non-famous people, I guess) please post as comments. Have a happy new year, and I’ll try to do better next time.

-Nate (@blogstalker)

Hi Friends,

I’d like to start this post by saying thanks to all of you for your support. I really appreciate all of the kind comments, tweets, and emails. Even some of the Russian spam comments said get well soon - or maybe they were trying to sell me a bride - my Russian isn’t very good. Anyway, thanks again so much for all of the blog love.

Quick Medical Update
So it took four days and two more doctors appointments to  prove what the first doctor said. Turns out that my gall bladder is pretty much hosed and  I also have elevated liver enzymes. El Doctor says the gall bladder gotsta go, so that’s going to happen in the next couple of weeks. No medical treatment needed for the liver - it just needs me to quit being such a dickhead. No booze and no fatty food and it should start to forgive me.

So that’s about it…could’ve been a whole lot worse so I’m thankful for that. Still pissed at myself for damage done, but not much I can do about it at this point.

A Couple Things that I’ve learned

1. Our healthcare system really isn’t very efficient. Yeah, that one is probably obvious to anyone who had been to a doctor in the past decade, but other than a physical, I don’t really fit into that category. I was not aware that the family doctor is now some kind of doc block that is the gatekeeper between me and specialists. I think Brian Williams told me something about that on the evening news, but I got to see it firsthand. Family doctor is able to provide insightful commentary like - “altering your diet and increasing exercise should help in the long run. ” No shit? Did you read my blog? Can I have my $25 back now?

2. People in the healthcare industry don’t like my jokes. Here are a few examples:

Example #1 Doctor Office Manager Lady calls to schedule some tests. Here’s our conversation:

Lady - Just calling to confirm your appointment at 8:30 tomorrow morning with Dr. (Name Redacted)

Me - Okay, thanks

Lady - Also, you aren’t supposed to eat after midnight

Me - Right, and I’m not supposed to get them wet either, right or else they’ll turn mean?

Lady - Excuse me?

Me - Oh, haven’t you ever seen Gremlins?

Lady - No

Me - I promise that would’ve been funny if you had seen Gremlins

(Awkward Pause)

Lady - So 8:30 tomorrow

Me - Okay, thanks for calling

Example #2 - Ultrasound tech is taking pictures of my gut this morning and I tell her that I’m hoping for twins. No response.

Example #3 -Doctor tells me about liver issues and talks about the risks of a fatty liver. I say yes, but on the plus side, I could produce a delicious foie gras. I get crickets.

Example #4 - Kate thanks the Nurse’s assistant who is shaving my chest and says that she appreciates the manscaping, and that she’d pay extra if she shaved my entire chest. I laughed at that one.

Maybe I’d get a laugh if I sunk to a Patch Adams style of comedy, but I just can’t do that.

3. Some people can go to the gym at 5:30 in the morning. I am not one of those people. Kate goes spinning at 5:30 on most days, and I thought I’d go to the gym and try it out with her. That was not such a good idea. During my entire workout, I had that feeling that you get when you turn the lights on to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Like you know it’s necessary to have the light on for accuracy, but it’s really annoying to your eyes and the rest of your head. Hmm, now that I think about this, about 98% of my readers are female, so this one might not make sense. Al, Ian, Mal, and other male lurkers, you know what I’m talking about. Anyway, I’ve decided that 5:30 workouts are not sustainable for me in the long run. So I’ll stick with going running at about 7:15 in the morning, while the rest of the world is driving to work.

A Few Small Repairs - Here are a few of the things that I’m working on

Back to eating this for breakfast like Kath tells me to

And avoiding this

More nights spent here

And fewer nights spent here

Drinking more of these, like OSG does

Drinking none of these (at least for now)

More time spent with these people at their favorite place

And less time spent with these ladies

So that’s what’s up right now. I promise I’ll get back to our regularly scheduled blogstalking in the near future. Hangrypants has requested a Blogstalker year in review, so I’m going to do that before the end of the year for sure.

Thanks again for all the love,
Nate

Hi Friends,

Yeah, I know…no posts for five months is not cool. Not really going to discuss that at this point. Thanks for keeping me on your google reader or finding me through other means. Also, I’m probably not going to talk much about other blogs tonight. Just wanted to give you all an update on what has been going on with me lately.

I just figured I’d give you an update on my weekend. It started on Friday like way too many days have started for me recently - waking up at 4:30 AM to catch a flight. Then meetings, then my company holiday party where I had a great time, but ate and drank way too much. Then Manhattans at a cigar bar until 1:00 AM in the morning. Yeah, that was a super healthy day.

Saturday started with a super unhealthy omelette (instead of a run) and then Kate and I started driving to Chicago. About a half hour outside of Indianapolis, I started having chest pains. About five minutes later I was gasping for breath and on the way to the emergency room (with Kate driving super fast in Middleofnowheresville, Indiana). Which brings us to the fantastic ‘before’ pictures…

That’s me in the emergency room in Frankfort, IN. I was pretty sure that my unhealthy ass was having a heart attack. Pretty sure that isn’t the case, but it was a pretty fantastic wake-up call. Having a 17 year-old nurse’s assistant shave your chest hair with a disposable razor while prepping you for an EKG puts things in pretty good perspective. Sadly, Dr. House did not consult on my chest x-ray.

At this point, I’m not quite sure what made me feel like I was passing the octokids out of my belly button, but I’m headed to the doctor to find out. I’ll keep ya’ll posted on the official diagnosis. All I know at this point is that the doctor thinks it’s my gall bladder not wanting to spend any additional time in my body. He also mentioned something about my liver being sort of pissed at me too, but again, I’ll keep you posted when I know for sure.

If you’re keeping score at home, I’ve gone from this

to this

In record time.

How the hell did we get here? I’m not really sure, but I’ve given it some thought for the last couple of days. Kate and I were dealt a pretty shitty hand a few months ago, and my exponential weight gain seems to correspond with that major kick in the junk. Not going to get into the details of that one…it’ll probably be a book at some point (once we figure out a happy ending), but some really shitty news (and my inability to deal with it constructively) has led to my full on assult on the drink and appetizer menu.

So I guess that the moral of the story is that emotional eating is not reserved only for ex-girlfriends sitting on the couch in their pajamas eating Haagen Dazs directly from the container. Comes in all shapes and sizes, including too many drinks and unhealthy meals at the airport bar. Johnny Walker and Papa John should not be my best friends when shit happens.

And we’ve been here before. Mostly because of my inability to find some kind of balance. There has to be a place for me between Tim Tebow and Tiger Woods on the consumption spectrum. And to clarify, in my case I’m talking about cocktails and cocktail weenies, and not cocktail waitresses. Anyway, finding a balance between one extreme of running 40 miles a week while consuming less than 2000 calories per day and my current state of turning even the healthiest restaurants into the ‘not that’ page of Eat This, Not That. So that’s what I’m going to do at this point - look for some balance.

The words to live by on this quest were overheard a couple of weeks ago at Disney World. Kate and I were walking through Epcot Center over Thanksgiving break. If  you haven’t been to Disney in the past 20 years, you may not know that it has been overrun with super morbids and type 2 cases cruising around on rascal scooters. So we heard a young dad turn to his little girl and say “honey, just take care of your body and it will take care of you.” He wasn’t talking to me, but I’m going to take him up on his advice.

Since I’ve danced this dance in the past, but seem to be coming back to where I started, I’ve decided that I need some help. Actually, I need a lot of help.

Kate - She has already started helping me out. Making sure I drink water, take my vitamins, control my portion size, and get to the gym. Not the crazy crash bullshit that I have done too many times in the past, but really just trying to find balance. She’s even convinced me to drink a couple of Green Monsters. I think that’s her favorite part - getting me to eat/drink the stuff that she sees on all of your blogs. She does have a vested interest in this as well, as nobody really wants to be a 29 year old widow. So we’ll just act like an old married couple and nag each other about meds and diet, in the hopes that we’ll live long enough to actually be an old married couple.

Friends - Cut me off if a drink after work turns into a trip around the appetizer menu and a few rounds of beers. I won’t be pissed off at you, I promise. Really, I can live without going all ‘Noah’s Ark’ on the appetizer menu and ordering two of everything. Who needs that? And if you’re planning on going for a run, ask me if I’d like to join. It’ll be a good warmup for you, although it might be good if you know CPR, just in case. Just kidding. Not really. Maybe.

Clients - Yes, I know there are some of you out there. As much as you like to see my smiling face all the time, if I turn down an onsite visit, it’s not because I don’t love you. I’m going to try to cut back on my travel schedule a bit - still working just as hard, but fewer redeyes and trips across the country. Oh, and keep an eye on me during the three hour dinner meetings as well.

Coworkers - You all know that I’m pretty shitty at asking for help, but I’m going to try to do that in the future. I need your help as I try to play nicely with others on projects.

Family - Continued love and support. And dad, make me sign up for a couple of races with you and run with you on the greenway.

The Rest of Blogland - Comment, tweet, whatever, and ask me how I’m doing. If I tweet that I’m consuming a 96 oz steak, feel free to reply in all caps.

So that’s about it. I hope you enjoyed the awesome before pictures. I’m going to do my best to keep this journey documented. Not going to become a food blogger and take pictures of everything that I eat (if you think it’s awkward to take pictures of your food while you’re skinny - trying doing that in public while you’re fat…you look/feel like a complete freakshow). So not sure what this is going to look like. Might keep posting on blogstalker, and might start another one. I have a habit of starting (and abandoning) blogs. We’ll keep it here for now.

Thanks to all for your support. If I don’t post in a couple weeks, it probably means I’ve had a grabber and I’m dead. Just kidding, I’m probably just busy.

Talk to you later,
Nate

Hey there,

How’s everyone doing? I’m okay. Thanks for asking. Just wanted to let you all know that Rebecca at Rosey Rebecca is giving away some Chobani Greek Yogurt in this post. There are some rules and stuff, so you should go check out her blog and enter if interested. I’m probably not going to enter. We’ve already got a fridge full of Chobani up in here. For some reason, Greek yogurt is the only thing that Kate buys in bulk. Everything else she buys in single servings. Even stuff that she eats every day. It makes no damn sense. I think we went to the grocery store four times in one week to buy kale. If you’re going to feed this stuff to the juice monster every morning, maybe you should buy it in larger quantities. But she doesn’t have this problem with Greek yogurt. She purchases Greek yogurt at the same rate that Jim Bob Dugger purchases Aqua Net. Nobody could eat as much Greek yogurt as Kate buys…which is more evidence that she is sneaking this stuff into my food.

While I’m at it, why did all of you healthy people have to pick yogurt as your Greek food of choice? How about jumping on the flaming cheese or baklava bandwagon with me? I’d even be alright if you choose olives, as long as they are stuffed and drowning in gin.

And while I’m still at it…how is next week the season finale of Real Housewives of New Jersey? Not related to this post, but I’m pretty upset about it. I was just getting to know them and now they’re leaving me. Not cool

Anyway, go enter Rebecca’s contest. Win yourself some Greek yogurt, and I’ll talk to you kids on Friday.

Well hello there. Sorry if I disrupted your Google Reader schedules. I know, strange for me to be posting on a Tuesday. Or really any day other than Friday. It’ll be a short one, I promise. Just wanted to let y’all know that Janet at Pretty Green Girl is giving away some free shiz that you guys might be interested in. Apparently the wine ice cubes aren’t taking up all the room in her freezer, as she’s been eating/blogging about WholeSoy & Co with their soy yogurt and soy frozen yogurt (or fro yo as the kids call it). They hooked her up with some free shiz and she wants to give it away to all of you out there in blogland. Just go to this post and read the rules and regs for the contest. She says it’s good, and I don’t have any reason to think Janet is a liar, so go enter.

Oh, you’re still here? Well then, while I’ve got you here, I’ll just go on a couple of random tangents.  ”WholeSoy & Co” seems like an odd name for a company. It makes it look like WholeSoy is a person. I guess it would make sense, if the founder’s name is something like Winston WholeSoy. Maybe it is. I’ll do some research on their website.  

Also, Pretty Green Janet got her free shiz from someone named Yesica. My first thought was that Janet’s ‘J’ key was busted. I mean, it is on home row and since her name is Janet, it could happen. But then I read through her post and saw the word ‘just,’ so I’ve gotta go to my backup theory. Backup theory is that the lady’s name really is Yesica and that her parents were fans of the 70s progressive English rock band, Yes. Maybe they were going to name her Yes if she was a boy, but decided to go with Yesica when she was a girl. This is just a working theory, but there is a precedent. One of the Road Rules: Semester at Sea cast members was named Yes after the band, so I can see how Yesica could happen. In other news, I’m pretty sure that was the last decent season of Road Rules. 

Alright. That’s all I’ve got. Now go enter Janet’s contest, and I’ll see you kids on Friday.

Alright. I promise this is the last day (this week) where I just make a post out of promoting other people’s free stuff. Tomorrow I’ll do my blog roundup. Here’s some more free stuff for you:

Shawna at Gettin’ Fit and Happy is giving away five Prana Bars. You should go here to get the rules and regulations. Shawn at Gettin’ Fat and Depressed isn’t giving anything away. He’s an ass.

I don’t really know what Prana bars are and I’m too lazy too google it, so I’ll just talk about other stuff. Hmm, I’ll talk about my favorite five types of bars, I guess. In no particular order:

1. Candy Bars. First I wrote snickers, and then butterfinger, and then I decided that there aren’t many candy bars that I don’t like. Except maybe Charleston Chew - but I don’t think they’ve made those since Reagan was in office. When I weigh the pros and cons of visiting any city named Charleston, the dance is in the pro column but the candy bar is in the con column. Anyway, candy bars make my top five.

2. Gold Bars. I’ve never really seen one, except in movies. Gold is so much cooler in bar form than it is in coin or yellow gold necklace form. 

3. Dive Bars. I have many favorites, but I’d recommend Sherwoods in Jacksonville, Florida. Don’t let the creepy looking clowns on the windows scare you. 

4. Piano Bars. As long as there aren’t any bachelorette parties going on and they aren’t doing that damn thing where they play the college fight songs over and over again. Those two things can ruin a good piano bar.

5. Prana Bars. Not really. I’m sure they are great. I’ve never had one. I just didn’t feel like coming up with something for #5, so we’ll go with that. Now go enter Shawna’s contest here.

In other giveaway news…

Kelsey at Bites and Bowls became the 473rd blogger to give away some MixMyGranola. Go here to enter.

That’s all for today. I’ll be back tomorrow.

Hello Again Friends. I still haven’t figured out how to enable comments on my Free Shiz page, so I’ll just post all of the contests here for now. And it gets me out of having to come up with original content during the week, so everyone is a winner.

Iowa Girl Eats is celebrating her one month Blogiversary. Now I like creating new words as much as the next girl, but Blogiversary isn’t may favorite to write or say. Anyway, so she’s been blogging for a month and is giving away a bunch of free stuff. Impressive. I usually celebrate one month of blogging by taking six months off and then starting a new blog, but that’s just me. She here’s all the stuff she’s got going on with her contest:

One jar of Crunchy Barney Butter
Apple Pie Lara Bar
Chocolate Coconut Chew Lara Bar
Peanut Butter Cookie Lara Bar (my #1 fave)
Chocolate Brownie Cliff Bar
One package of Cocoa Roasted Almonds
One package of Dried Black Mission Figs
One coupon for a free frozen Kashi frozen entree

That’s a lot of free shiz. What is she going to do when she’s been blogging for a year? Well, I guess you’re just going to have to wait 11 months to find out.

I think I’d go for the Barney Butter. I’ve got a theory that it will become the next precious metal. After Cash Into Gold buys up the world’s supply of gold and the price drops, Barney Butter will come in and will be the new standard. Anyway, if you want to win this contest, you can:

Enter to win up to three times by:

Posting a comment here and tell Iowa Girl which item you’d most like to try

If you have a blog, link back to this post in one of your own posts. (If you don’t have a blog, email her at iowagirleats@hotmail.com to enter an additional time)

If you have a blog, add Iowa Girl Eats to your blogroll and email her at iowagirleats@hotmail.com to let her know!

Well that’s pretty smart. Getting people to link to her and add her to their blogroll. I should probably do something like that. I’ll look around my house and see if I’ve got anything I want to give away. Well, I mean there’s this massive juicer on my counter, but Kate would get pretty pissed if I gave that away. I’ll keep looking.

So that’s all. And brownie points to anyone who picked up on the post title reference. For those of you who didn’t, Kevin Costner used to make good movies.

Well hello there. Thanks for stopping by. Welcome to The BlogStalker. So here’s the deal with this blog…

I spend a lot of time reading blogs. Then I usually comment based on what I read. Most of the time it’s just me talking to myself, my wife, or my dog. Then I made some friends and they all read blogs too. So they usually got the stupid stuff that I said about blogs. Then about a month ago I started doing a weekly blog roundup on my other blog, where I basically just talked about what other bloggers were doing.

A few people seemed to like it, so I decided that I’d create a blog where that’s all I did. So that’s how we got here. Let’s take a tour of the blog and all it’s wonderful features. Here’s what we’ve got going on with the navigation:

The Stalker - That’s where I talk about myself. I promise it’s not too deep or preachy. I don’t have all the answers. I don’t even know the questions.

The Fam - This is where I talk about Kate and Gilbert. I have a feeling Kate will make me update this page frequently. She’ll say things like - “you need to update Gilbert’s hobbies.”

Free Shiz - This is a good one. If anyone ever gives me free stuff and I’ve got some to give away, I’ll talk about it here. Oh, and if you’re a blogger and you have some kind of contest or giveaway going on, this is where you can promote it. Good idea, right? Yeah, I thought so. 

Blog Reviews - I have no idea what I’m going to do on this page. We’ll figure it out later.

Pictures - Kate won’t use our Picasa album, but I think she might look at/post pictures here. So there you go.

That’s my navigation. Here are the categories of posts that I’m going to have:

Weekly Roundup - That’s what I’ve been doing for awhile now. If you scroll down you’ll see some examples of that. I’ll try to do this one once a week. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a weekly roundup, would it?

Extended Comment - Here’s a new feature. Usually when I’m reading a blog, I want to comment. Usually the potential comment in my head is inappropriate, too long, or some kind of inside joke. So I usually hit the comments button, sometimes make it to the point of typing out the comment, but rarely ever hit submit. So I’ll post those extended comments here with a little bit of context. I don’t know how often I’ll do that. I’d like to do it daily but it’s more likely that it’ll happen a few times a week.

So there you go. That’s what we’ve got going on here. Thanks again for stopping by.