A spectacular shot by Michael Jordan...

As a kid that was one of my most favorite things to hear. Reason being? It meant I was watching #23 himself beat that shit out of the competition, along with Marv Albert announcing from the side lines. MJ had an amazing game. Marv had a magical voice. I miss those days. To be quite honest with you I just miss Mike. Along with just about every other guy who watched basketball in the 80's and 90's MJ will always be one of my heroes.

Now I could write a book about Michael Jordan. I could talk about his style of play, monumental games for him or even the spirituality that lies within his very being. I'm not going to do that though. I'm going to ruin this post by mentioning one of my least favorite players of all time:

Kobe Bryant.

I don't like him and I never will, but holy shit.

The guy scored 81 points last night and shot over 50% from the field. That's incredible.

Read here for the rest of the story.

I can't hate on that. Congrats Kobe. Even if you do take advantage of slutty white girls because you're lonely on the road.

I'm going to leave it there.

Or here.

Final drag.

The Doctor told me that I would feel irritable. My mom would get “irritable” when I was a kid with her migraines. I don't care though. I'm so sick of being sick. I'll do anything to get over this.

Tuesday night Ashley took me to the Emergency Room. It wasn't a mad dash or anything. I pretty much planned it for about an hour. My chest just wouldn't stop hurting and it kept getting worse. I had never felt pains like these before so I figured as it was nearing 10PM that it would be a better idea to go now then later. It proved to be a wise idea.

They took all my vitals. Everything was pretty much perfect. Great blood pressure and my oxygen level was even at 100. Pretty good for a guy who smokes a pack a day.

They gave me a chest exam and ran an EKG on me. The EKG came back pretty good as well. The only problem was my fast heart beat. That was probably due to my low-grade fever though. After all of the testing I sat in an exam room by myself for an hour waiting on a doctor. I actually fell asleep for a while. After waiting for 45 minutes I asked if anyone had forgot about me and then went and got Ashley out of the public waiting room to hang with me. I didn't want her to think anything was wrong with me.

Shortly after she joined me a doctor came in to see me. He listened to my heart beat and I told him that it hurt to swallow food or drink and I could feel it burning going down. After checking me out a little he went to find my x-ray's. Ashley and I were just sitting there talking when all of a sudden the Doc. Walks in with a pretty concerned look on his face.

“How much do you smoke a day”

A bolt of electricity shot through my whole body.

“About a pack a day.”

The look on his face scared the shit out of me.

“You have to quit smoking now. I'll get you some hot line numbers. Your chest looks really bad. I've never seen anyone your age with this much damage to their chest.”

I was terrified.

“I'll quit. I promise. I won't ever smoke again. I don't have cancer do I?

He shook his head, “No, You're too young for that.”

I think my soul let out a little sigh.

“Is any of the damage permanent?”

Oh God! Let it be reversible.

“It's not permanent if you quit now.”

I have a new lease on life.

“I swear to God I'll quit!”

Ashley and I sat in the room quite relieved, but still scared at what might have been.

The doctor prescribed some antibiotics for the bronchitis,steroids,Tylenol and an anti-inflammatory. He told me the steroids would make me irritable and possible sick to my stomach, but I didn't care at this point.

The full diagnosis?

I have bronchitis. I've also taken so much medicine the last month that it has finally backfired on me and caused my stomach to be upset along with an inflamed esophagus and bleeding/swelling gums.

Pretty gross huh?

It gets worse. Since I've done so much damage to my chest in 3 years I now have pockets of air in my chest that would normally let sickness and disease out, but now are trapped due to the effects of smoking. I actually believe at this point since I've been taking all of my medicine that those air pockets are gone. They were in full effect last night though.

For the flaming esophagus and swollen gums it's a mofo trying to eat anything. I can't have anything acidic because it hurts to bad and everything must be soft so it doesn't kill my mouth. I'm hoping these side effects of taking to many drugs will wear off by the end of the weekend. I can only hope.

I had a pretty fucked up Tuesday night, but we managed to only be at the ER for a little under 3 hours and it was totally worth it. I'm on the way to recovery. My fever and sickness are gone for the most part. Now I'm just waiting for the inflamed body parts to cool off.

The greatest part though is that I've had my warning. I was being stupid, but I got off the hook. Who knew that smoking could do so much damage in three years? It's insane.

I do have a new lease on life though. I'm not worried about smoking at all. I had to stop eating sugar and I've done just fine with that. I'm excited about my smoke-free life. I have no desire to do anymore damage to myself that might actually be permanent. I'm so grateful that my body can and will heal.

I just hope my smoker friends will figure it out for themselves before it's too late. I'm just lucky that I had the fear of God put in me concerning the death sticks.

Here's to good health!

For Kevin...

Well, Kevin likes to poke a little fun at Johnny C. While he's all laid up being sick for the 4th time in a month an a half. Honestly, I've never really gotten better.

Ok, I'm done with the guilt trip now. I can laugh at myself along with everyone else. I do look somewhat like Chris Elliot in that photo, but in that photo only. My girlfriend even agrees. I even showed it to my boss at work.


This was his response:

















Alright, get it out of your system. I'm going back to my hospital bed now. Goodnight!

Freezing rain.

You'd be amazed at how cold Georgia can get sometimes. I was coming in this evening around 2 AM and i was getting hit by freezing rain. It was weird.

Anyway, I did end up going to The Strokes show. Some scalpers we're hanging out front asking us if we needed tickets. I thought I'd play it smart and test the waters by seeing how much they were selling them for.

Only $50.

Who ever was buying or selling them on the internet for over $200 was crazy. We decided that we should just go and watch them play. We stayed about 3/4's of the set and it was radical. They played all of the songs we wanted to hear and then we left. The lead singer was more lively than I imagined he would be. That was a nice surprise.

Life has been really good lately.

I got promoted at work. I no longer have to be a box bitch. I now help clients with one of our Sales Training websites. I feel like I was created to do this job. I get to talk with our clients, but I don't have to sell them anything and they pay me good money to do this. What a great job. On top of all of that since I use to sell the product they didn't have to train me on it.

It's just a big relief to start the year off like this.

Along with the promotion, I've been blessed to have a great lady in my life these days.

Her name is Ashley and this is her beautiful face next to my odd looking one:





Seriously, what the hell was I doing in this picture? She looks good in it though.

Is this it?

The Strokes are playing in Atlanta tonight promoting their latest album, "First Impressions of Earth".

By some odd "stroke" of luck I have been given a ticket to see them play. Since they're only playing small venues on this tour the ticket prices are outrageous.

$260 for The Strokes?

You have to be kidding me! I wonder how much we can scalp them for? I'm curious to see if anyone is crazy enough to offer an absurd amount of money to see them play.

I guess we'll find out.

The Future!

Happy New Year!

2006!

How odd is that? I remember growing up thinking that the year 2000 seemed so far away! 2000 came and went and here we sit in the foyer of 2006. I know i'm not old, so I'm not going to say that, but it's amazing how fast time flies!

A couple of days after Christmas I decided to drive up to Cincinnati to visit my best friend Ray who now lives in Hollywood and some family that I haven't seen in a few years. I would say that the trip was very successful. I spent most of my time with Ray and I got to see my Grand parents, my Aunt and Uncle, my Mom and two of my cousins!

It was really rad to see everyone and I was very happy to see how far and well everyone has done. I hope they think the same of me.

I grew up here so it's always a strange and emotional time for me to be here. Atleast it is this time. It's such a small town and the people are very small minded at times. I'm glad that my parents moved us down to Atlanta when I was in highschool. It opened up my eyes alot to the real world. It's just strange to have experienced quite a bit in my short life, to come back and see how so many people haven't done very much. I don't mean that in a judgemental way. I guess I almost feel sorry for them? Then again if they're happy, then that's all that matters.

I drive back to Atlanta tomorrow by myself. Some times I don't mind long drives, but i'm not looking forward to the one tomorrow. I don't want to be alone with my thoughts.

I'm a thinker. I try to rationalize everything. I try to make everything work in my head. Not everything does though. I have a hard time with that. I need to be more like my father. He's a realist. He calls it how he sees it. I'd like to think that I do that, but I still try to make outlandish idea's and situations work in my head.

2006 offers so much though.

I think this year is beckoning me to accomplish something great! I don't know what that might be though. It might be something personal. It might be something relational. It might just be something of legendary proportions. I hope it has something to do with all three.

Nothing is too far out of reach.

Here's to the future!