What the what?

Michelle came across Milanoo.com yesterday as part of a Halloween ad - and this particular costume caught our eye.

If I were naming the costumes, this would be 'Zebra Sex Ninja'.

Is the model here a man or a woman? If it's a woman, she has no breasts I can detect. If it's a man, he has no package that I can detect.

There's just something hilarious about these poses, and I thought I would share.

This first pic has a pretty standard pose - feminine?


It's a shapely person, no doubt about it. You don't often see men in tights, so the default assumption of my subconscious is 'female'.


This next one make me a bit uncomfortable. He/she is getting a little too relaxed. I mean, hello - we just met.


The last one just takes the cake - what is this pose supposed to convey? That he is fabulous? She really needs to pee? I don't know, but it makes me laugh.

ZAP

Michelle had an appointment today (Friday) to have an implantable defibrillator (ICD) installed near her left collar bone - it's like having a couple of paramedics following her around just in case.


Here's a device similar to hers - it's actually pretty tiny, considering it can last 5-7 years without needing the change the battery.

There are a lot of different varieties of the device - hers doesn't need to do any pacemaker duties - it will just sit, wait, and monitor in case there's any kind of problem that requires the device to 'deliver therapy' which is a nice was of saying 'it zaps you'.

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Sunday Update!

Michelle's recovering well, she was released from the hospital early Saturday afternoon. It's good to be home, and she's doing great.

Do the kids still say WOOT?

We had a cardiologist appointment on Monday, and Michelle had an echocardiogram performed. We received the results on Tuesday afternoon.

One of the measurements taken in an echo is EF, ejection fraction - which is the fraction of blood that is pumped out of the ventricle with each beat - the average person's EF is around 58%.

In February, Michelle's EF was 15.
As of Monday's test results, her EF is now 30-35!

I'm very thankful for the prescriptions, Michelle's much improved eating habits, and all the exercise she's been very dedicated to on a daily basis. Keep up the great work Darlin!

For Posterity

Michelle is very funny, and makes me laugh all the time. It helps that we both feel free to be as silly as we like. I can't imagine living with a stuffy wife.

A few selected texts from yesterday:


Mike: Going to LJS for lunch. I think it's been a year since I went there. Mmwah!

Michelle: LJS?

Michelle: Long John Silver's? Hmm. Good luck. Enjoy!

Michelle: And yes, I looked it up.

Mike: Back at work. AC was broken at LJS, ugh. Loud guy was complaining about his child custody BS, ugh. Got gas. Tummy uncertain about near future. (Ugh)

Michelle: So... They've got a year to fix the AC then? As you exited, did you ring the bell and say "I'm out, bitches!"? That's what I imagined... Your car is happy about the gas I'm sure. Oh wait - maybe it's not the car we're talking about? You've got three bathrooms at work right? Tell tummy it's all good.

Mike: Gas for the car! And no, I'm keeping my discomfort on the DL.

(Well I thought it was funny, anyway.)

Thanks Paulius!

On Wednesday I posted something I thought no one would respond to, which quickly became the hot new online phenomenon known as 'Michelle's Chuckle Button'.

Ok, so I exaggerate a bit. It might not be a full-blown phenomenon.

Thanks to Paulius, who investigated, discovered and reported about the 'Reactions' feature already built into Blogger. Very cool!

So now my blog has a 'chuckle' button and a 'meh' button at the bottom of each post, terms which I think fully capture the broad emotional spectrum of online opinion.

It's taken a long long time, but Blogger has finally started delivering some very neat tools. I would have been willing to pay for all these extras, but hey - they're free!

121 Days Till NaNoWriMo!

November 1st seems far away until you count the actual number of days. For the first time since we met, Michelle won't be in the wicked clutches of Retail Christmas Hell during November, so she has no excuse but to participate! Bwa ha ha!

I've learned many lessons over the past few years of NaNoWriMo, and the biggest one is that despite my desire for an 'internal struggle' type story, I'm really bad at accomplishing them.

So I'll need an action-oriented story - not necessarily something action-packed, but something with an external pressure that keeps the story moving from A to B to C.

Without this pressure, I tend to provide ever greater detail about nothing (which is part of the problem of having a daily expected word count - a certain amount of rambling on about nothing can make you feel productive).

I've been toying with the idea of writing a new type of ghost story, but it would involve creating a whole new world (or new layer on our current world, more accurately) and I don't know that I have the energy for that level of creation.

At this moment, I have no idea what I'll be writing about on November 1st, but I will be writing something. It's definitely not too early to start thinking about it.

YAY!

My wife Michelle (also known as Cindy... it seems to depend on her mood - they're her first and middle names) has finally decided to come back into the blogging world - sniffle! I'm so happy!

While my posts tend to be offhand little quips, hers are well thought out and carefully composed. You can find her new blog here.

Go! Read! Comment!