Update

I went to the doctor this past Wednesday. It went really well, the visit was much shorter and I didn't have to wait an hour to see the doctor! Plus I was able to see the doctor I originally wanted (he was out of the office at my last visit and I had to see this lady who has to be a resident or new doctor because she had to keep looking at her notes to remember what she needed to tell me for my first visit). Anyway I was able to hear the baby's heart beat again which is amazing! Pete still hasn't heard it. He had a presentation during my first appointment because we had to wait so long and he had a final during this weeks appointment. He will be able to come to the next appointment which is January 14th. I will be having another ultrasound and we get to find out the sex of our baby!!! Yay! I put up a poll on the right column of our blog if you want to take a guess as to whether we are having a boy or girl.

Last night we went to the Christmas Spectacular featuring the Rockettes thanks to Jackie and Steve! (Jackie and Steve are an awesome couple that I teach at the ballroom. Jackie calls us her adopted kids.) Their daughter got stuck out of town and they had to drive last minute to pick her up in Atlanta so they generously offered us their tickets. We both enjoyed the show. I always thought it would be fun to be a Rockette and wanted to train and tryout for their show but never did. I really enjoyed the dancing and i'm sure Pete enjoyed the music more than the dancing but still liked it.

Pete finished his finals on Thursday. He is really happy to be done and have a break! I'm happy he has a break too! They give him way too much busy work in the MBA program.

We are leaving for Utah this Wednesday and get to stay almost 3 weeks! We are really excited to see all our family and friends!

This Week

Since Kira hardly ever writes on here, I guess I will. This week we had Thanksgiving. We invited some friends over and had it with them and then played some card games and watched football. We watched a couple movies this week which we usually do almost every week. Neither of them were that great. We watched "Outsourced" where someone's job was outsourced to India and he had to go there and train his replacement, and then the job is outsourced again to China, so the Indian people lose their jobs. It seemed like a very low budget film. We also watched the new X-Files movie. I like that last X-Files movie better. This film wasn't much different than the psychic shows that you can watch anytime on Tru-TV.

We also went to our last football game at Alabama, the Iron-Bowl between Alabama and Auburn. We tried to sell our tickets, but nobody bought them in time to convert them. Alabama set up a ridiculous system where students have to convert their tickets for $50 bucks in order to sell them and let someone else use them. The last day to convert this last week was on Wednesday. We got calls and contacts for the tickets after 5:00pm on Wednesday, which was too late, even though the game was still three days away.

The game was pretty cool though, so we are glad we ended up going. We've been to a bunch of Alabama games, but this one was one of the most intense for the crowd, because of the Alabama-Auburn rivalry. I thought I was going to lose some of my hearing, it was so loud in the stadium. There were a lot of Auburn fans there. Alabama hadn't won a game against Auburn in six years and this year Alabama was number 1 in the nation. We went home during the third quarter and watched the rest on TV, because Kira has been a little sick the last few days.

(This is a picture we took from an earlier game)

We had to do the primary program at church today. The theme of the month is being grateful to be a child of God. We played a game where we put a number on the back of each of the kids. The kids were supposed to try to get close to the kids with the highest numbers on their backs and stay away from the kids with the lowest numbers on their backs. We then read the book "You are Special" by Max Lucado, where wooden Wemmicks spend all of their time putting stars on Wemmicks that look good and do good or impressive things, and putting gray dots on Wemmicks that are unattractive or mess up and do dumb things. The theme was the theme of the game and the book that as children of God He loves us no matter what we look like or what mistakes we make or no matter what others say just because He is our father and he created us. I thought it went pretty well.

Put Up The Christmas Tree and Lights

We put up the Christmas tree this week. We just used white Christmas lights with red and silver balls. Kira doesn't like using colorful lights on the tree, so we put them out on our balcony. It does look pretty good though with the white lights.


Here's a picture of a our tree. We'll have to keep using this one that we got at dollar general for our first Christmas until I finish school and we can start using real trees.

Honk Your Horn If You Support the Troops and If You Want to go to Jail

I received a ticket for improper use of my horn a couple weeks ago. So I have to blog about it now. I honked at someone who was behind me honking at me repeatedly, and then swerved around me and cut me off. I honked at him when he cut me off and then again after we got past the road block, and that was the end of our encounter, no harm done, except for the fact that the Tuscaloosa police happened to be nearby and got mad at me for honking at that car while they were nearby. They chased me down and gave me a ticket for improper use of my horn. I usually only honk at people about twice a year, when they do something like that guy did.

According to Alabama code §32-5-213, it is a misdemeanor - punishable by up to $500 in fines or 6 months in jail (see codes 13A-5-7 and 13A-5-12) - to honk your horn, unless it is a "reasonable warning." So next time you see people holding signs that say, "Honk if you support the troops," you better not honk or you could be sitting behind bars. Next time you see one of your friends and you want to get their attention to say "hi," don't honk, or you could go to jail. Next time you are stuck behind a red light that turns green and the person in front of you is talking on the cell phone and not paying attention, don't make a friendly honk to let them know the light has changed, or you could get six months in the slammer. Next time you see a person driving aggressively, recklessly, or rudely on the road, don't honk to show your disapproval, unless he or she is about to hit you, or you could be the one that serves time. Even if someone else honks at you first, don't you dare honk back or you could be the one with a criminal record.

Not only could you spend time in jail or pay an exorbitant fee, but regardless of otherwise outstanding citizenship, a misdemeanor will go on your permanent criminal record. This could increase your insurance rates, costing you hundreds or thousands in the long run. It could also cause you to have your license suspended for a period of time. Every time a potential employer does a background check they will see you have a misdemeanor.

This ridiculous, draconian law in Alabama needs to change. Most of the the scenarios above should not even be considered criminal activity and at the most honking one's horn should be punishable by a very small fee. Any cop who has the audacity to give someone a ticket for honking should be reprimanded.

Too Many Police Officers in Tuscaloosa

I (Peter) have been to many major cities in the United States. I have been to major cities in foreign countries. I have never seen as many police on a daily basis as I do in Tuscaloosa Alabama. The only comparable place for the amount of police I have seen each day is Saint-Petersburg, Russia, where they had armed police in front of every bank.

I actually started counting the police last summer that I would see each day, and it averaged between 10 and 15 cops a day. They are just continually driving around the streets or something. I was a political science major and studied the affects of police officers in cities. The mere presence of police officers does not have an effect of reducing crimes. More police officer presence does cause the people to feel safer, even though the police do not make much of a difference. This is only referring to the presence of police walking or driving a beat to just be there and make a presence.

Obviously if the police are doing undercover work, investigations, or solving crimes, or keeping an eye on threatening individuals and preventing crimes from occurring, then this does reduce crime.

When I see a lot of police just driving around on the streets, when I can count 10 to 15 a day my thoughts are that these police officers are not making much of a difference. They are not reducing crime in the city of Tuscaloosa. They may be making some of the citizens feel safer, but only because the citizens don't understand that the presence of the police officers alone is not going to have any effect on the actual crime levels. Really all these police are doing is giving out tickets for minor traffic infractions all of the time, mainly to good citizens.

Personally, I feel like some of the police in Tuscaloosa are causing more problems then they are solving. I had my car broken into a month ago and had some stuff stolen out of it. It cost a bit to replace everything and it was irritating to cancel my credit cards, but that was it, I took a hit and then I dealt with it. It was over. A week and a half later I received some questionable tickets from some irrational police officers in Tuscaloosa. The tickets would cost more than the money lost from being robbed. Not only that but they would go on my permanent record, raising my insurance rates potentially costing me hundreds or even thousands of dollars over the long run, and I could get a misdemeanor which would be on my criminal record for potential employers to see. I would rather have that petty robber on the streets than those cops. What the Tuscaloosa police did was much, much, much worse than what that robber did. Sometimes the biggest thief is government.

The police argument is that pulling people over often leads to the discovery of other crimes. That is very possible. But, if that is the reason, why should a lot of good citizens have to pay exorbitant fees and deal with being treated as criminals and having their insurance rates raised, because the cops want to catch other criminals? The cops could easily keep using that strategy, but the courts should lower the costs for tickets and provide more leeway for people to contest their tickets. The cops could still catch real criminals who are a threat to society without ticking off all of the good citizens of Alabama.

I think tickets have little impact on people's driving other than being an occasional nuissance/reminder. When Alabama does their "take back the roads" campaigns where they give out a certain high amount of tickets a day for a couple weeks, the people start driving slower for a couple weeks. After that they normal speed rates go right back to normal for the rest of the year. All the take back the roads campaigns do is increase government revenues from ticket fees by several million dollars. This also decreases the spending power of Alabama citizens by the same amount. Also, all of those citizens that got tickets have to pay higher insurance rates, further decreasing their spending power over several years by hundreds or thousands of dollars per citizen.

Around June 1, 2009....

we are going to welcome our first baby into our family. I went to the doctor today and they did an ultrasound. Here's pictures of our baby at 11 weeks:





These may be boring to most people but I know my family (or at least my mom) wants to see them. We are really excited!!! It is starting to feel a little more real now that I saw the baby and heard its heart beat!

Redistribution of Wealth

This is from a funny email that someone sent to me about redistribution of wealth. I (Peter) thought it was pretty funny, so I figured I would post it here for the world to see.

"In a local restaurant my server had on an "Obama 08" tie; I laughed, as he had given away his political preference--just imagine the coincidence--because... When the bill came I decided not to tip the server, and explained to him that I was exploring the Obama redistribution of wealth concept. He stood there in disbelief while I told him that I was going to redistribute his tip to someone who I deemed more in need--the homeless guy outside. The server angrily stormed from my sight. I went outside, gave the homeless guy $10, and told him to thank the server inside, as I've decided he (the homeless guy) could use the money more. The homeless guy was grateful. At the end of my rather unscientific redistribution experiment, I realized the homeless guy was grateful for the money he did not earn, but the waiter was pretty angry that I gave away the money he earned, even though the homeless guy "needed" it more.

I guess redistribution of wealth is an easier thing to swallow in concept than in practical application."

Our 2nd Anniversary and Chattanooga

Our 2 year anniversary was last Monday. Pete had school and homework so we only had time to go out to eat. We tried out a local Japanese Restaurant that was very yummy! Pete had never been to a Hibachi style Japanese Restaurant before, so we decided we should go there so he could try it.

We took this picture at the dance studio I teach at before we went out to eat.


We celebrated our anniversary in Chattanooga this weekend since we were unable to do much on the actual day with Pete's school schedule. We loved it there! The weather was beautiful and there were so many fun things to do! We loved that there were some "mountains" in Chattanooga! (Compared to Utah they look more like hills but a welcome sight none the less!)
These pictures were taken on the foot bridge that's over the Tennessee River in Chattanooga. There were some pretty views from it. The water is much more clean looking there than here in Tuscaloosa!

We took this picture at our hotel. They had a garden area with fountains and a gazebo.

The hotel we stayed at was the Chattanooga Choo Choo. It used to be a train station and they've converted it into a hotel. You check into your room in the train station and then they have 3 different hotel room buildings and some train cars that are hotel rooms as well. We stayed in one of the regular hotel rooms because we are poor college students and can't afford the train car. It was a cute hotel in the middle of downtown with access to the electric bus system. They also had a really nice pool with a hot tub so we went to the hot tub one night too. I wish I would have taken a picture of the pool. It had a waterfall and the hottub was in the middle of the pool with a bridge leading to it.

We went to Rock City while we were there. In one of the caves they have this fairytale land that they made (we thought it was kind of cheesy but i'm sure kids like it). One of the fairytales was Peter Pumpkin eater. Pete got called Peter pumkin eater as a kid, so we took his picture by his favorite nursery rhyme (actually he really hates it).

Me inside the cave. There's a waterfall fountain thing but you cant see it in this picture.

Pete by the waterfall at Lover's Leap.

Our attempt at taking a timed picture with our camera in the festive decorations. (That's the bench I set the camera on at the bottom of the picture. I know, I'm awesome at taking pictures.)

You can see seven different states from atop lover's leap in Rock City. The lady that took our picture didnt wait for me to look at her before she snapped it.

Squeezing between the rocks in Rock City. This place is not made for fat or tall people. Good thing we are neither!

We also went to the Tennessee Aquarium. Pete with the sharks above and me with a huge sea spider below.

It was a good trip; nice to get away and see other parts of the south!

Fall Break: Camping at the Beach

We went down to Gulf Shores Alabama during Pete's fall break (Oct 9-11, I'm slacking at blogging). We camped at Gulf Shores State Park and checked out the beach. The state park doesn't allow dogs on the beach, so we drove over to Fort Morgan. We parked in front of some condos and walked out to the beach. The beach was relatively empty and the weather was perfect! I was surprised the beaches were white and the water was clear. When I lived in Houston I would go to Galveston and the beach there is not so nice and the water is nasty brown. It's good to know that part of the Gulf Coast has nice beaches. We had a fun time camping (minus the bugs) and enjoyed playing at the beach.

Luckily we didn't see too many of these alive.


Sunset at the beach

Pete hates this picture but I put it on anyway because I like it. Captures what we looked like on the beach since neither of us brought our sunglasses.

Mila enjoyed the beach too. She started digging massive holes in the sand right when we got there. She swam in the ocean too. She doesn't love the water yet but she is getting used to it and is a great swimmer.

Huntsville Ballroom Dance Invitational

Kira and I competed in the Huntsville Ballroom Dance Invitational this weekend hosted by the Rocket City Dance Club. I recorded our dances and I put a few on YouTube for everyone to see. We stayed in Huntsville at a hotel Friday and Saturday night. We danced in the East Coast Swing, Cha Cha, Rumba, Waltz, Tango, and Foxtrot. We were in the Bronze IV division and won four first places, three second and one third.

The judges were the 2007 Ohio Star Ball Professional Showdance Champions:
Eulia Baranovsky and Steven Dougherty.

East Coast Swing


Cha Cha


Rumba


We had a pretty good time up there. The people from Rocket City Dance Club and the other dance clubs were awesome, and so were the judges. We from Farleys Ballroom all did pretty well and had a good time.

Our New Pup

Pete and I have been wanting a puppy for a long time now and finally broke down and got one this weekend. I've wanted a Keeshond for about five years now. I randomly decided to check petfinder for one and there was an adorable seven week old Keeshond mix available almost two hours from here. Pete called and she was still available so we made the drive to pick her up. She is sooo cute and very sweet and playful! It's fun having a dog around our apartment. It's kind of like having a baby though. I had to get up in the middle of the night with her several times to take her to the bathroom. We can't leave her unsupervised or she will get into everything she's not supposed to. She whines occasionally because she is not used to being the only dog but they said she would adjust within a week.
We named her Mila. It is russian for darling or sweetie.

Mila trying to drive herself to her new home.

Close up of her adorable face.

Me holding her on the way home.

Playing at the park right after we got her. She decided she needed to go to the bathroom right after leaving the animal rescue.

Taking a nap on Pete's lap on the way home.

Playing at her new house.

Mila already found her favorite spot in our living room next to the fireplace.

We had our ensigns and church news under the tv but Mila wanted to eat them so we had to move them. Once they were cleared out Mila wanted to lay in there.

Twilight Breaking Dawn Vampire Widower

Well, I won't see Kira for the next day. The new Stephanie Meyer book in the Twilight series, "Breaking Dawn" just came out tonight at midnight. I had to go to Walmart and wait for the book. They didn't actually put it out until 12:30 am, and that was after "I" went and talked to a manager. There were a bunch of girls there waiting for the book, but I had to go get the manager so that they could all get their books. I just wanted to go home and go to bed.


Now I will be neglected for the next day. I might as well not even exist. I am a Twilight Breaking Dawn widower. Maybe if I was a vampire Kira would like me more. Maybe if I were a preternatural being, a corpse, animated by an undeparted soul or demon, that periodically leaves the grave to disturb the living, an extortionist who preys ruthlessly upon others until I am exhumed and impaled or burned (see "vampire" at dictionary.com), then Kira would like me more than this book.

I think you have to have seen or experienced the world through the eyes of a 13 to 15 year old girl to like the Twilight series. I read the first book and I barely made it through to the end. It is hard to enjoy a book when you don't like the protaganist, an annoying, selfish little girl, who thinks of nothing but her own selfish, unnatural infatuation with with a "corpse, animated by an undeparted soul," who is tempted with eating her all the time. OOOHHHH, How Romantic!! If only you could express your love to someone by just not eating them. That's the story isn't it, that he loves her so much that he keep from acting on his strongest desire to eat her blood. I love you so much that I am not going to eat you and suck out your blood.

I guess I just can't relate to a teenage girl, especially one who is in love with an animated corpse. I don't know if she turned into a vampire herself in the next book, because I didn't read it, but it looked like the story was going that way. I guess girls like the story a lot for some reason though.

Anyway, I'm a widower for now, second to a romantic teenage vampire fantasy book.

Kira in the News

Here is some video of Kira in the News. They messed up her name though and called her "Kina Jay" instead of "Kira Jay." The "exclusive video" that they show on the news is some footage that Kira shot with our video camera. Kira was excited about getting on the news and getting her video on the news, but now she is embarrassed by it. I told her she looks good in it though, and the video turned out good.



This is the second time Kira and I have been in the News since coming to Alabama. The first time we were in the news was last year. We were playing bocce ball with our friends Joane and JJ and the photographer from the Tuscaloosa News newspaper took some pictures of us and put one on the inside page of the front cover. Here is the picture:

Held Hostage

So I'm being held hostage in my apartment complex right now. It's been that way since about 10:30 am this morning. I actually did not realize it until after 11 am when I was going to head out to get Pete. I started to driving out to leave my complex and got about half way through when I noticed a truck parked so that it blocked the road. There were two guys standing by the truck and one of them was signaling for me to go back the way I came. I thought that's weird, I can't get out of my apartment the way I just came from. So I rolled down my window to see what was going on. He said something but I could not understand him. So I yelled "what?" and he said "There's a guy in a truck with a gun" and pointed to the front of the complex. Upon hearing that I immediately turned my car around and called Pete. I called Pete to let him know I would not be able to pick him up from work and take him to the Law Institute. Luckily we have great friends and JJ was able to go pick Pete up from Graphics Packaging.
Being a curious person I decided to take a short walk and go talk to some people I'd seen a ways up from the crazy guy with the gun. I found a couple of guys chatting and watching the scene and asked them what was going on. One of the guys told me that the guy had threatened a family member and it had escalated to the point where he was threatening to kill himself. So I watched and chatted with these two guys for a little while and then decided it was way too hot so I went back to my apartment to change my clothes and charge my cell phone.
I went back to see what was going on about 30 min later and the only thing different was that more people had come out to see what was going on and the SWAT team had shown up. While standing and chatting some dumb girl drove by and we all thought she was going to drive right up to the guy in the truck and all the cops. She squeezed past the truck with the two cops in it who had stopped me earlier. The cops jumped out of the truck and about that time the girl apparently woke up and realized that there were about 20 cop cars in front of her and started into reverse. We all had a good laugh at her. I'm sure she was feeling pretty dumb afterward because she did not stop and ask what was going on like all the other people who had tried to leave but realized they could not.
Someone made the comment that they wished they had a video camera. Thanks to my parents, I happened to have one inside our apartment, so I went back to the apartment grabbed a sandwich (I was starving and needed something to enjoy the live action) the video camera and my cell phone. I came back and joined about 5 other people watching the crazy guy. Several other people came out and we all took some pictures and chatted about what was going on. The SWAT team brought out their robot which wheeled over to the suicidal guy and gave him what we believe was a cell phone or walkie talkie. At about 2:00 we saw a cop with a big bag of McDonalds. One of the guys standing and watching with me commented that he was hungry and wanted some food too and wondered why the cops could go out and get food but we couldnt. Come to find out the McDonalds was actually for the guy with the guns in his truck. The robot took the McDonalds over to the truck and left it on the hood. I have a video of the guy opening his door and grabbing the McDonalds with a gun or some kind of pole and then getting back in his truck. About twent minutes after that a cop came over to us and told us all that we were aggravating the guy in the truck. The cop also said the guy had a bunch of guns and ammunition and some of his guns could reach where we were standing and told us to all go inside our apartments. He said that if we came out again he would press criminal charges against us. I don't think any of us would have been out there to begin with if they would have told us not to be out there. They also should have let us know sooner if we were in any type of danger. Maybe they were about to take him down and they did not want a bunch of people to witness it. So now i'm stuck in my apartment wondering what is happening with no way to leave. They have our whole apartment complex blocked off. They even have part of Rice Mine blocked and the apartment complex next to us has police at it too so we can't escape that way either.
I'll post later about how it all ended.
I snapped a bunch of pictures of the ordeal. Here are some of them:


The white truck has the guy with the guns in it. The blue truck is the one blocking anyone from getting out. Where the cones are is where the dumb girl tried to drive through. After she did that they put the cones up.
I also walked out to Snows Mill and took a picture of all the cop cars and SWAT cars. The picture above is that picture. The entrance to our apartment complex is where you can see the side of the police car. All of those cars and truck belong to cops. Next to where I was standing and up the street were some fire trucks.
The SWAT robot is in front of the truck putting the McDonalds on the hood.

SWAT team

All kinds of cops.