18. Make nice dinner one time each month

I made dinner tonight. Actually I made it this morning and I ate it tonight. I used the crock pot. I don't know why, but I have been looking at this blog for awhile trying to find a good recipe and have become really intrigued by it. Ask Melissa, she will agree. This lady set a new years resolution last year to use her crock pot every day for a year. She's at 304 days and counting right now. I have looked over a lot of the things on her blog that she has made and thought, "Wow, it seems really easy to cook in the crock pot." After today's dinner, I realized, it is pretty easy!
I made a roast. Here is the link for the dinner I made. I didn't use the wine, because we didn't have it, I did some looking around and it said that it wasn't really necessary. Other than that I followed the recipe. I have to say it was pretty good. We had rolls and I mashed up some potatoes to go with it.
Melissa said that she loved the flavoring. She also said that I should do this one again. I thought it was pretty good. I think it cooked for a little too long.
Two meals down and just before the month was over. Like I tried to say in my last post, I should do it before I am pressed to do it quickly at the end of the month. Melissa said next week. I say, we'll see.

The Great Gatsby, a classic novel

I didn't want to post this for awhile. I was feeling so great about having a post that had so many comments, I wanted to leave it as the headliner. Unfortunately, I have to write more and bore everyone into not commenting ever again. If you want to continue giving suggestions for alternate goals, I am all ears. I loved the ideas so far.
I finally finished The Great Gatsby. I had to renew it from the library because I had it out too long (they consider it a high read book that high schoolers check out often, so they shorten the check-out time). I finished it in about four weeks. Not too bad.
The book was pretty good. I followed it pretty well and was able to know the general idea throughout (sometimes I struggle with older books, which is why I have this goal). If you want a summary of the book you can check it out on wikipedia. I looked their summary over and the stuff about the book checks out. You can trust the content on this one.
Overall, I liked the book. It is another classic book that I now know what is about. There are still plenty that I have no clue about that I will hopefully get to in the future.
What's up next? I am not yet sure. Probably a book about canoeing. I need to get some reading in before next spring when we have got the Walter V. Weis Memorial Canoe Trip. I'm sure I will keep you posted as to what I am reading.

I need suggestions

What should goal number 25 be? I need help. I don't know what to put. I have been reading over my goals and trying to figure out another one that I could do. I want it to be something that would only take one time to do. I don't want another goal that I have to keep track of it to make sure I am maintaining it. I want a one and done goal. I also want it to be something fun to do. I think I have a good mix of goals, and I want a task that I can put in there that I will look forward to doing and blogging about. Suggestions? Post a comment.

9 more miles down

Today was my first day that I ran a path that brought me to hills. I came to the conclusion that hills are a lot harder to run than flat areas. I thought I did pretty well considering it was new to me. The route I ran brought me about a half mile from my house, then, a one mile loop, 8 times. I finished the loop with the half mile trip back to home to complete 9 miles for the trip. The loop I ran had some pretty aggressive hills both up and down. I think it was good practice for me to get and it went well. With the hills I decided to put in planned walks in at the tops of each of the hills. Each walk consisted of only about ten steps for me to get enough water into me, then it was back to running again. It was a good plan.
Last night when I was getting ready to go, I got some spanish tutorials onto the ipod. I was looking forward to getting some new words into my spanish vocabulary. Unfortunately, I spent too much time getting the arm band on over my sweat shirt and not enough time remembering to bring headphones. Yep, I was the dork carrying the ipod around, but not able to use it. I did say "buenos dias" to a few people that I ran by. I figured that was some practical experience with the language. Hopefully next time I will remember the headphones.
I got to flag down a police car as well. As I was running, I came across a manhole that wasn't covered. I was in a groove running and didn't want to stop to figure out if I could lift the cover. I also didn't want to have a "Baby Jessica" incident, so I kept a lookout for someone who would be able to get it covered. I got about three laps in before I saw a police car drive by (two of the roads I was running on were pretty busy so I expected to see one sooner or later). It was a girl cop. I told her where it was and she said she would take care of it. I got to the place where it was about 4 minutes later and saw her driving off. I figured she wasn't able to locate it, but nope, she was able to find it and cover it up in that 4 minutes. Kind of embarrassing, but at least I didn't have to do it.
Overall, it was a good run. I was happy with my progress and thought I could have done a few more miles. I got home feeling good and think I might tweak my running plan to put more miles in in order to get me closer to ready for the marathon. Only 6 weeks left. I am pretty sure I will be ready for it when it comes. Matt, I probably won't need that piggy-back ride.

24. Drink no pop for two straight months

I am surprised I made it through this on the first shot. There were many times that I found myself craving a can of pop. Is that pathetic? Tonight was the first time in two months that I was able to take a drink and I crumbled at the first instant.
When I was driving home, I passed Pizza Hut and decided then and there that we were going to eat from there and I was going to have a delicious can of Cherry Coke to go along with the pizza. I did, and it was delicious. I'm probably not going to have a streak of two months again for a long time. I know it was probably really good for my body, but I don't know if I could give it up forever. I am a Coke fan and will be for a long time.
What do you think of Hannah's face? I love her "smiles". If you look close, you can see the scratch on the left of her forehead from her fall yesterday. It has healed up a ton in the past 24 hours. I am so thankful!

4.5 more miles down!

I got up this morning and ran. It was 40º outside. It felt nice. When I started running, I didn't really have my route planned out. I was supposed to run 4 miles and I was running through my head all of the different ways I could go this morning. Finally after a few blocks of running, I figured out where I would go. It was really dark outside. I looked up in the sky and was amazed to see a sky full of stars. I didn't realize that at 6:00 in the morning you could still see them as bright as you might in the middle of the night. During this time, I couldn't stop thinking about my brother's encounter with the wolf/coyote. What would I do if something came out at me? I couldn't see too far ahead of me. There were a few people out walking that I saw only when I was about 20 feet away from them. I also saw another runner. It is only the second week into my run and I saw one. Last time I was training for a marathon it was probably about 14 weeks in before I saw anyone out running. He was crossing a road that was ahead of me so I didn't get to say "hi" or anything, but it was nice to see someone else out there running.
During my run, I thought about my need to begin working on my Spanish. Goal number 29 for me is to learn Spanish well enough to have a conversation with my neighbors across the street. I don't want to just be able to have a quick conversation, I want this to be my chance to really get a handle on the language. I have a teaching assistant at my school that I am sure that I could begin conversing with her. I have plenty of podcasts downloaded that I can put on while running. I have plenty of books that I have purchased over the years. Now I just need to put all of those things into circulation to be able to actually learn the language. Today while running I was trying to think of all of the verbs that I already knew, I didn't get too far. I'm hoping that my knowledge will increase as this time goes on.

Driving Miss Daisy

Matt, you want a boring post? Get ready for this one. I watched Driving Miss Daisy yesterday. Yep, another movie down. I was expecting the worst as far as a boring movie and not being able to understand it, but honestly, I liked the movie.
***Spoiler Alert***
Miss Daisy is a widowed Jewish woman who is getting older and is not able to drive herself around anymore. She is very stubborn and thinks that even though she is getting older, she doesn't need any help.
Hoke is a black man who has been a driver for a few prominent people in his life. He is such a nice and genuine guy. He really wants to help and is hired on by Miss Daisy's son to be her driver.
They form a connection between them and Miss Daisy slowly warms up to Hoke. They eventually find that their differences in race bring them together as they both are from groups that have been persecuted. They finish the movie in being very close friends all the way to the end.
I think I enjoyed the movie also because it was only about 95 minutes. It seemed like the last couple of films were really long and it was refreshing to watch a movie without too much of a time commitment attached to it.

Centsports is killing me!

I can now tell you how tough it would be to be a professional gambler. At least from the earning money standpoint. I can't tell you about swindles or about getting an inside hint. I can not tell you about wasting an entire paycheck trying to earn lost money from the last grind. What I know is that it is incredibly hard to excel and make money easily.
Goal number 84 on my list is to cash out on centsports.com. This requires your account to be up to $10. This is not an easy task, ask Matt. How centsports works is, you start with 10 cents. This money is put up by advertisers. You have to put no money at all into this account, it is all paid for, which is what makes it a little more fun. You are gambling with someone else's money, and can never lose any of your own. If you lose your 10 cents, you get another 10 cents. When you win a bet, you can use that newly won money for another bet and increase your account through those means. I can not tell you how many times I have had to restart with that fresh dime. It is agrivating!
If you are at home doing the math, what has to be done is I have to grow my 10 cents 100 times over. That is a lot. One bright spot in my chance to cash out is that if I recruit people into this site, I get an additional 5% of what they earned. That is part of the way I kept floating for awhile. My brother Matt had quite a run back in August, and my brother-in-law Josh actually made it over $10 which gave me some nice returns. If you are interested in giving free gambling a try, click here and sign up! I can use all the pennies I can get!

Where have all the free throws gone?

So I haven't shot a free throw in weeks. The reason: the hoops are up in the gym. The P.E. classes are doing a football unit and need the hoops up. There are two hoops up on the end of the gym, but they are both under 9 feet and I don't think that would be a good gauge. I just wanted to let you all know that I am not neglecting getting this task done. I still think it is one of my toughest which means I am going to have to work the hardest on it to get it done.

Another run down

I have to say, the feeling I had this morning is exactly why I was very hesitant to register for another marathon. The training is very tough and boring. I have been "blessed" with missing the first 10 weeks of a typical 18 week marathon schedule so I missed those miles and weeks of on-going runs. The problem is, I have got a lot to make up that I had missed. Am I worried? Not really. Matt told me he would carry me if I didn't make it through in the race, so I'm good.
This morning, I didn't want to get out of bed at all. The alarm went off, and I did the snooze thing, then I turned the alarm off after it went off for the second time (I have a habit of doing this and then thinking that with it off, I will be more alert because it is then up to me to get myself up, it works most of the time) luckily I got up. It has taken me a little longer than I was used to to get out of the house, today I found myself slowly moving around the house. I have to improve my time to get out of the house. It should be about 10 minutes from wake-up.
Today's run went alright. It was 40º outside. I asked for cold yesterday and I got it. Now I want it warmer, it was cold this morning. It made me think of the days when I trained for the last marathon when it was 3º outside. I realized this morning how horrible those days were. I didn't bring the ipod with me this morning. That was attributed to the fact that I already had taken enough time to get out of the house and I didn't have too far to run. I realized a little over half-way through the run, I forgot to drink anything before running. This made me cramp up a bit toward the end of the run. I put in 3 miles today and wanted to do better than I did yesterday. Unfortunately for me, I had to stop and tie my shoe twice. Once for each foot. I double-knotted each one after it came untied. Jose, just so you know, I didn't walk at all. I used you as a motivation to make sure I didn't walk. I ran faster towards the end to make sure that I didn't think about walking. I beat my time from yesterday by 2 minutes. I am not speed training, but it felt good go the same path/distance and finish it faster than the day before.
Overall, I am not so worried about the race or the training that I have missed. I have felt pretty good after these two runs. I think the big test will be this weekend when I've got 6 miles on the schedule.

First run on the schedule

I ran my first scheduled run this morning. 3.2 miles. It was 58º outside. It was warm compared to what I am used to running in. I have to adjust to that for tomorrow and wear some shorts, I think that would help. The run went well. I ran down to the house that I grew up in on Fordham Ave. and back. I walked for about 15 seconds when I turned around and that was it. It felt great.
I rocked out to Amy Grant while I was running. I started by listening to some spanish podcasts that I had downloaded, but realized that I needed something more elementary. I will work on that tonight for tomorrow's run. I really didn't listen too much to the lyrics of the songs, but rather just had it as background noise. I got to the song "Curious Thing" and it was the first one that I started to think about. The song is basically about life and how things can change quickly. It's true. Things can change quickly. It is just a matter in how you adapt to the change. I would like to think that I take change pretty well. Some might think differently, but I have just learned that some things are tough and things happen that are out of our control sometimes. Remember, you can not control some things, so don't spend too much time worrying about something that you can do nothing about. This is something I learned while selling books and it stuck with me. I'm hoping it keeps sticking to me. I know there will be plenty of changes to come.

68. Find a doctor and get a physical exam

I went to the doctor yesterday after school. Not because I was sick, but because I wanted to make sure I was healthy. I haven't gotten a physical since I started teaching five years ago. While I am still relatively young, I know there are a lot of things that could be hiding that I don't know about. The doctor that I "chose" is Dr. Sachs. I called the hospital and asked for an appointment, they told me they had an opening at 4:20 and I said that worked fine for me. He was great. I would say he is in his low 30s and I felt very comfortable with him. He gave me a ton of time to talk about issues that I have and spent time on each one really checking it out. I hate it when doctors just jump to conclusions so quickly and move on because they are so busy.

It's good to have this goal done because now if there is an issue that comes up with my health, I know who I can call instead of wondering what to do. I got a good report and he said I was in great shape to be ready to tackle the marathon.

p.s. For those of you that care, I asked about my phlebitis in my foot and he referred me to another doctor to get that checked. We'll see how that goes......

59. Eat at a Waffle House (if they have a juke box, play "Magic Carpet Ride")

I made it! This morning I went to Waffle House with Melissa. I put this goal on because when I lived down in Atlanta with my brother and Nate Jarot, we went there every morning. Well just about every morning, we went to Shoney's first, but that didn't quite work out after awhile, so we made Waffle House our permanent breakfast spot. My breakfast every morning was the All Star breakfast. It consists of two eggs, two pieces of toast, three strips of bacon, a bowl of grits and a waffle. It is a lot of food, I can't believe I used to eat that much each morning. It used to be $3.99, but today, inflation has brought it up to $6.50. It still isn't too bad for all the food you get, plus you are paying for great service. The Waffle House that we ate at was much different than any ones that we ate at in Atlanta. It seemed to be somewhat clean. I think it is the fact that our waitress wasn't smoking in the corner of the restaurant between visits to our table. That was a good improvement. Melissa and I both enjoyed our meals. I was surprised that Melissa almost finished all of it. I was proud!
One sad point was that they had a juke box, but no Magic Carpet Ride. Actually, I was a little glad that they didn't have the song. Not that I didn't want to hear it, but that the restaurant was full and if I put it on, I would have felt weird because up to that point, there wasn't music going on. It would have been a nice nostalgic moment, but I am alright with that part not being able to be completed.
I enjoyed conquering this goal because I don't know when I would have ever made the effort to get to a Waffle House again. It was fun to get back to one, I would actually enjoy going again sometime.

Good thoughts

I was doing some blog hopping today and stumbled across a some good quotes. The blog is managed by a pastor in the Quad cities area. He is down at a conference in Atlanta (I think) called Catalyst. From what I have gathered it is a place for pastors and the such to get together and be bombarded with really good speakers.
The author of the page just shared his notes on his post and there were a couple that I thought were pretty good.
The first thought was that, "not all time that we have is equal." We have more time today than we will for tomorrow. Each day we live, we are that much closer to death. We don't know when our last day will be, but you will never get today back...ever. Make today count! This goes along with the book that our community group from church is studying, One Month to Live. The book is taking us through a journey of thought that would make us live each day as if we were counting down our last month of life. It is not as morbid as that last sentence makes it out to be. The key question that I have gotten out of it is, How would I live my life if I knew I only had a few weeks/days/hours left in my life? I will say, I sure do hug Madeline and Hannah a lot more lately because that thought is on my mind.
The second point that jumped at me was, "Good is the enemy of Great." It's true. It has comparisons to the lukewarm Christian. There are many things that we do in our lives each day that we strive for goodness. Some of those things don't always need to be great, but if in our lives, we always do just a good job, then have we accomplished the best for our lives?
I enjoyed the thoughts of Austin, the author of judahrock.blogspot.com. Thanks for sharing your thoughts with the rest of the world.

Did I just do what I think I did?

I just signed up for a marathon. Is this a big deal? YES! Why is it a big deal, because it is on December 6th. Just about 8 weeks away, and I haven't run in months. I will still be able to get it completed. At least I am not Chad with less than 24 hours of notice. That would be worse!

The reason I signed up is because my persistent brother Matt wanted me to do it. Honestly, I had thoughts of not running another marathon for another decade, I didn't know that it would be just over a half of a year past my first one.

If this marathon was a road marathon I probably would have said I would not do it, but it is a trail marathon which means that most of it is on a trail in some type of forest area. I think it will be nice to have a different experience. There are a few things I am worried about though. 1) It's going to be cold. I don't remember too many December 6ths that were in the 50s or 60s. 2) Training - I am going to have to stay on my game if I want to get to the finish line. 3) I hope it doesn't rain. 26.2 miles with mud on my shoes would be a long run. 4) Looking at reports from runners in the past, they said be careful running on the trails because they can be slippery. I don't want to fall during the race. Some have said that it is inevitable. If that is true, I hope Matt falls first. 5) This one is a big one. The elevevation chart looks similar to what you would see in a hospital showing someone's heart rate. It goes up and down a lot.

Those are some of my worries. I am sure I can overcome them.

I am excited to do the marathon, not because I want to go out and do another 26.2 mile race, but because I am excited to work toward this goal with my brother and to enjoy the time with him. We will drive down together and stay the night before the race together. It will just be a good time for us. He did say if I couldn't make it, he would carry me. I am just hoping that it is not too uncomfortable.

Stay tuned. Training reports to come. I am excited again for those because they give me some quiet time again that I missed out on a lot this summer.

Bible reading

I haven't really put anything up for Bible reading yet. I am doing it, I just haven't really had a chance to really write anything on this site about it to this time. There is a group of guys that started up a blog of reading the New Testament together that I am starting to get back on track. I stopped doing anything over the summer, just as I did with running and most of the other things that I was consistent in last year. I can't share this blog with the masses (all 4 of you that actually read this blog), because it is not all my work and we haven't really shared it publicly. What I can do is to include some of my posts into this blog to share with those of you that do read. As of right now, I am in Mark 10. I will share posts that I think are pertenant to others, some of the posts might not really be that interesting, or I don't want to share them, those I will keep to myself and the group of guys. Here is what I wrote for Mark 10:

Looking at verses 17 - 31, the part that talked about giving up all of your possessions to follow Christ, it looks hard. The only thing that I thought of that this would be possible would be in the field of missions. This would be where you would need to uproot yourselves and to relocate with the purpose of ministry. Is this the only way in which you could follow these scriptures to the letter of the law? I'm not going to sell my house, quit my job, and to constantly look for people to share Christ with, I don't think that is what God is asking me to do at this point. Not needing to get into the debate of how literal to take the bible, I was just curious how a guy living in the suburbs with his family could do this. I tithe, I go to church, I know I could do better ministering to those around me, but how can I put these verses to action?

Superman type skills

This post that I am writing has nothing to do with me. I play no part in this story. The only part that I am involved in is spreading the news of the legend of Chad Nelson.

Chad is a guy that my brother Matt went to college with. They hung out a bunch and I only knew him a little bit in passing. I knew who he was, and he knew I was Matt's brother. During my time knowing him I had learned that he seemed to be a guy that was always doing something, he's the kind of guy that couldn't keep his feet still. This was my thinking of him before yesterday, now, he has made the hall of fame in my book for always wanting/having something to do.

Sunday morning was the Lakefront Marathon in Milwaukee. My brother Matt and a few of his friends were running in it and had been training for months to be able to complete the race. One of his friends who was running the race, Nate, called Chad on Saturday to tell him that he was coming up to Milwaukee to run in the marathon and that he thought they should get together. Somewhere in the discussion Nate came up the idea that Chad should try to do the marathon (Matt told me that Chad's only physical preparation for this race was a kickball team that he played on in the summer), and Chad jumped at the idea. (editor's note: I don't know if this was all Nate convincing him, I know Matt has quite the ability to convince people to do things that they probably shouldn't do.) They went through the motions of the pre-race meals and everything that a good marathoner should do the night before the race and got their rest for the race.

Sunday morning came, at this point, Chad had less than 24 hours of advanced notice that he would even be attempting to run 26.2 miles. Chad showed up in his worn down sneakers and started the race just like all of the other competitors at 8 a.m. Matt did not expect much from Chad (would you?). After beginning the race, he had no intentions of meeting up with him until after the race. Matt thought that there was no way that Chad would have been able to keep it up for the entire race. It took a little over two hours until Matt would have his next glimpse of Chad. It was near the 14 mile mark! Matt had thought that Chad was behind him the whole time. What a shock to find him out in front of him. And for that long! How anyone can run 14 miles with no training is beyond me. Matt passed him at this point and eventually made it to the end of the race. He wondered if there was any chance of seeing Chad again that day. I would wonder as well. Could the guy that made it 14 miles have any chance of completing the next 12? Matt got to the end of the race and was slowly finding his friends that he had run with. They were discussing what they should do. Should they wait at the finish line for Chad, not even knowing if he would finish? He didn't have a phone that they could call him and see how he was doing. The only thing that they could do was to wait. Matt ate the post-race meal and watched the finishers. It was around the 5 hour mark that they saw him coming to the finish. Less than 24 hours earlier, he didn't have any intention of RUNNING A MARATHON! He did no training. Didn't carbo-load all week, he didn't even think about his shoes that he would have to depend on for the entire race. He, being a guy that flies by the seat of his pants, ran (and completed) a marathon just thinking it would be a fun thing to do.

I had thought I would be writing a post saying how proud I was of my brother for completing his race (Matt, I'm proud of you, good job!). I am sure that Matt would appreciate some notoritey, but I would guess that he would also say that the legend of Chad was bigger than the race, and that the word needed to be spread.

Chad, I barely know you, but that, was amazing!

Grocery Bag Ettiquette

Goal number 98 is for me to bring bags to the grocery store 50 times. I have done alright bringing bags over the past month and a half. I am currently at 5 times, but I could do better. Melissa got me a couple of bags for my birthday and they have been great. They fit just the right amount. I took on this goal, because I have been throwing grocery bags away for years and thought it would be a good thing to stop doing that. I am not trying to stop global warming (I'm with Sarah Palin in saying that I'm not sure if it is really a human thing), I just think it is a wise thing to not add to a garbage dump.

Most of the time when I go to the grocery store, I do the self check-out. When I am there, I am in charge of bagging my own groceries. I don't mind doing it at all, actually, I like it. The problem that I have is when I go to the regular check outs, I don't know how to effectively use my own bags. There is a guy (usually more of a boy) at the end of the register ready to bag everything. What do I do? Do I just hand him my bags? Do I just not use them?

That is the question that I am trying to figure out.

I know that this is probably ranking as one of the more boring posts that I have put out, but I was just thinking about this as I was at the store and it was on my mind. I'm sure that if you want something more interesting, you can stop over at my brother's blog in the next day or two. He is running the Milwaukee Marathon tomorrow and I can't wait to hear how it went. Matt has been training for 18 weeks for his race and I am sure that he will have a great story to tell after the race. I know that he is going to do great!

Validation of setting goals

So this blogging thing is pretty neat. It's cool to be able to write about things that are going on in our lives. It gives a place for people to openly journal about their thoughts and feelings. It gives aspiring writers a place to publicly share their work and hope to gain a following. I really think it is cool. My favorite part of blogging is seeing other people's blogs and checking out who they read. I was looking at the blogroll on my friend Jose's blog. I was proud to know that I had taken up two spaces on there. I came across a blog from a writer named Justin who is a pastor out in the Quad City area. I don't know much about the guy except the fact that his blog has two things I like in a blog: He writes almost every day, and he has interesting stuff to read each day. I was looking through some of his posts and stumbled across a post that talked about setting goals. He gives good reasoning for setting goals. In the post he quotes Emerson "the world makes way for the man who knows where he is going." Through having goals, it helps to set yourself apart from others that are just wandering around. I am not saying that having my list has given me a step above all others that do not have written goals, I am just happy to see Justin put to words the importance of having goals to set a direction of where you want to be.
I am going to add www.godinaheadlock.com to my daily reads. Thanks Jose!

OUCH!!!!

The latest financial news over the past week has been pretty rough. There has been plenty of talk about how the market is doing poor and that stocks are plumeting. I decided to check in on my Evergreen Energy stock that I bought last month and did not get good news. I bought it at $1.67 per share. It had gone down slowly for the past few weeks....until today. It started the day at $.99 and has plumeted down to $.56. This is a 43% drop in one day. (When I checked it after posting this, it had already gone down to $.54...another 2 cents gone. Thus making it a 45% drop.) I am glad of a few things from seeing this result. 1) I only bought 3 shares of this stock and didn't have a big financial commitment to this stock. 2) My other investments are in mutual funds that don't have the tendancy to drop at this rate in just one day. (although they have dropped quite a bit over the past month) 3) I got a $50 bonus for buying the stock, so my initial $5 investment has grown to over $50 in just a few weeks. If you go to Sharebuilder.com now, they are running the promo again. The code to use is 50CITIZENS and you will get $50 put into your account about 4 - 6 weeks after making your purchase. You only have to buy $5 in stocks to get it. Sounds like a nice way to make a couple of bucks as well as to try to pick a nice cheap stock that could be the next starbucks or walmart company. Unfortunatly at this point, I did not choose correctly.
This post went from being a sob story to a sales pitch. Sorry for that. I just thought it was a good deal that could be shared with others.