We spent the day in town today shopping and eating and having a good time. We wrapped things up around 6pm with a Subway dinner and headed home.

After about an hour of driving a warning light came on and announced that the rear passenger tire was low. Unusual since our car is so new. But 24 psi is not horrible. That is, of course, unless the 24 psi continues to 20, 18, 15, 10, 0. Crap! Flat tire. In the rain. In the dark. In the middle of no where.

While changing the tire, I realized that our spare tire is not a full tire, and that the space for the spare tire, therefore, won’t fit the flat tire. So I had to store the flat tire in the trunk with all of our groceries. Good thing we now have a large trunk.

So what did we run over? There was a small piece of metal poking out of the tire. Not cool.

This morning, I yanked said metal out of the tire. This is the whole of what we ran over.

I mean come on! Who blows a tire on a key? That’s like cutting your finger with a spoon. I mean really.

We found out a few weeks ago that “Battlefield Band” is coming back to Hawaii next week. We really wanted to go, but they are coming on a Thursday, which is Holly’s late night, and would be impossible to go unless she took off of work.

Mary let us know that she is going to see them when they are on Oahu and would pay for our tickets if we went over for the weekend (they are on Oahu on Friday). That is a really nice offer, but that would increase the cost for us from $25 per concert ticket to $160 per plane ticket. We reigned ourselves to the fact that we just can’t go.

Last night Holly walks in the door all excited saying, “Mike. You’ve got to take a look at this!” She handed me a flyer for the Battlefield Band concert.

Me: Yes. I know. Battlefield Band here on Maui.
Holly: Yeah but look where.
Me: Huh? OMG! There coming to Hana? Oh yeah!
Holly: Look at the price!
Me: FREE? OMG! That is so awesome. Let me see that again. Sweeeeet. That is so awesome. Your mom is going to hate us. We get to see them free and before she does. That is so AWESOME!

A few days later…

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Leif  didn’t make it very long. I don’t know what it is about bagpipes that puts kids to sleep.

Well. Leif went to an otolaryngologist today. What is an otolaryngologist you ask? It is an ears, eyes and nose specialist. Why is Leif going to see an otolaryngologist?

Leif has had a stinky runny nose for quite a while now. Quite a while being around 7 months? We took him to the health center here and they said it was probably an infection and gave us some antibiotics. With much relief, his nose stopped smelling as well as running. It was amazing. Just after Christmas, it started running and stinking again. This is why we made an appointment with the otolaryngologist.

So 7 or so months ago, Leif did something annoying and got a sugar packet stuck up his nose. We could see it there and it was gross. He ran around the whole day with it stuck up there. And all day we tried, to no avail, to remove it from his nose. Sometime after dinner, Leif laughed at something, sneezed, and shot a large sugar packet out of his nose. We laughed so hard, as only a parent can think that is really funny.

I received a call from Holly just after the appointment had ended. It didn’t take long, she said. The doctor sprayed some numbing agent up Leif’s nose, squirmed a pair of tweezer type things up Leifs nose, and pulled out yet more, large-sized, brown, deteriorating sugar packet. Leif was not very happy and cried of course, but I expect he will sleep much better at night now.

The new year has rung in and with the holidays over, I hopped on the scale to see the damage. Holy crap! The holidays cost me 10 lbs. I  hit the weight I said I wouldn’t go over again. Dang. Well. Here we go. Time to take a couple of before pictures. I must say,  my future self is in much better shape.

Holly caught me mocking the Captain Morgan commercials

And to start off Leif’s year, he broke his brand new Leapster 2 that he got for Christmas. That was fast. Now the game I ordered for him on Amazon is useless. No more nice things for Leif. Or any of us really. At least not of the electronic kind. We can now add his Leapster to the list of electronics he has ruined.

On the  plus side, it feels good being back in control of what I shove in to my mouth. I’ve signed up to a fabulous site called FatSecret.com. Lovely name. Holly and I have friended each other on their site. Anyway, it’s just your basic don’t eat more calories than your body can burn diet. So each day I keep track of what I eat. And the way I measure my success or failure in a day is whether I have enough calories at the end of the day to guiltlessly drink a bottle from my private collection of home brewed beer. So far, I’ve been successful. I’ve even lost 2 pounds already. Thumbs up for the beer diet.

P.S. As I have received a $50 gift certificate to the beer store (thank you Gavin), I am going to be brewing up a batch of Vanilla-Coffee Porter to help me get through my beer diet.

P.P.S. Compare above photos to me back in 2009 when I was still in shape.

If Ms. Holly tells you she wants you to sport a cliche mustache for her birthday, do you do it?

Note: If you feel bad about something you did (or didn’t do), this will only make up for it slightly. Tomake up the rest, you must then shave it off.