MRI

I had an arthrogram/MRI today on my right shoulder. It wasn't quite what I had expected.

I got to the Doctors office about 15 minutes early. Filled out the necessary paperwork and then waited in the waiting room for about 5 minutes before they called me back. I was taken to a changing room where I was given a locker for my clothes and valuables. The nurse asked me to change into scrubs. I then sat in the changing room for about 10 minutes. Next the Dr that was going to do the arthrogram came and got me and had me take off my scrub shirt and change into a gown so he could get better access to my shoulder.

After changing (again) he led me into the room where the arthrogram would be performed. The DR said something along the lines of "I'm just going to mark where I'm going to insert..." Whoa... "Uh, Insert? What are you inserting?" He explained that an arthrogram is a procedure where dye is injected into the joint (in my case my shoulder joint) to help with image contrast. I didn't realize I was going to have dye shot into my shoulder joint. I thought I was just going to go into the big MRI machine.

I laid on my back on the x-ray machine while the doctor performing the procedure began to tell me what he was going to be doing. First he cleaned surface of front of my shoulder with iodine. He then injected a numbing agent into my shoulder. He said, "Just a little prick and then a burning sensation." Although that didn't feel good, it was nothing like the next needle. While watching the x-ray monitor for guidance, he inserted what felt like a huge needle into my shoulder. This wasn't sharp pain, but was very uncomfortable. I could feel the needle moving around. It only took about a minute for him to insert the needle. Once he got it to where it should be he attached a syringe with the contrast agent and injected it into my shoulder. At this point he said he was going to pull the needle out, which didn't feel good either.

I was already feeling light headed when I sat up. The Dr asked me if I was ok a few times. Apparently, I was quite white. Although not feeling 100%, I walked down to the MRI room. As soon as I got in there, I asked to sit down.

Again, not ever having had an MRI, I wasn't sure what to expect. They laid me down moved me into position and told me to not move at all. They gave me ear plugs, as it was very noisy inside the machine.

When I was done, I asked how long I was in the MRI machine. To my surprise, I had been in there for 35 minutes. I knew I had been in there a while but didn't think it had been that long.

I went and changed back into my clothes and realized my shoulder hurt more now than it did when I went in for the MRI. Now I wait for the Dr to look at them. I hope he finds out why my shoulder hurts.

How do the Chinese do that?

For Christmas, we got a free movie rental at Hollywood Video. This was perfect as Ryan's been wanting to rent a movie for some time and we've been having a hard time finding it at Redbox.

Anyway, as we were driving to the store, Ryan was sitting in the backseat holding onto the free rental voucher. On the back of it, it had the Logo of Hollywood Video printed in special ink that if it was exposed to heat, like breathing on it, the Logo would temporarily disappear, so that you can tell if it's a legitimate voucher. Ryan read the back of the voucher and realized that if he breathed on it the logo would disappear. Then he said "How do the Chinese do that?"

Not knowing what he was talking about, I responded with "How do the Chinese do what?" He then explained the special ink on the back of the voucher and how it disappeared with heat. Then Ryan said, "Well don't the Chinese make the special ink."

The answer was "Yes, they probably do make the special ink."

The Smells of Chirstmas

This morning it was quiet in the house so I decided to get up and do a little blog reading and catch up on my email. Ryan eventually came up stairs and came over to talk to me. We were whispering as we didn't want to wake up Deni or Sydney. As Ryan got close to me to whisper, I smelt something very familiar. My favorite candy of all time, Chocolate Orange. I asked him what he had been eating this morning, even though I knew the answer. He smiled and said "a Chocolate orange". I quickly thought about my responses and the best one was this.

"Go get me a piece and then no more candy before breakfast."

Christmas day 2008

As usual, Santa, grandma's, grandpa's, uncle, aunts, etc found us.

It all started this morning with the kids yelling from the bottom of the stairs at 6:18am - "Mom and Daddddddd". Deni I both jumped up and got dressed and reported to the top of the stairs. I thought the kids would sleep in a little bit longer, but apparently Ryan woke up and then promptly woke up his sister. As we got to the top of the stairs, I said, "ohhh it looks like Santa's been here" and "wow - Santa must have eaten the whole pie that was left out for him". I remember my dad saying things like that when I was a kid, while I was waiting at the top of our stairs. It's funny how we do things like our parents.

It was snowing this morning, but not sticking. Plus with the "Spanish Fork Wind" blowing, the snow was blowing horizontally, however it was warm inside and the kids had their minds on other things than the weather outside.

Ryan got a new bike, even though he was more excited about the Pokemon cards his sister gave him. The bike was in the garage, but we couldn't convince him to put down the Pokemon cards to go take a look, even when we told him there was something "special" for him in the garage. Go figure. We eventually got it for him and rolled it down the hallway. After he saw it, he jumped up and ran to it. The local bike store was doing a "bike drive" where we turned his old bike in for 10% off the one we bought for him. Ryan's old bike was great, but he had outgrown it this last summer. Matter of fact, he asked for his bike a few times after we had already traded it in, so we had to tell him we had taken it to Grandpa's to fix a flat tire.




Sydney got "Disney Sing it" for the Wii. Most of the Wii games are a little too old for her, so this will be a great way for Sydney to be able to use the Wii. Sydney also got High School Musical things (jacket and cheerleading outfit).





Deni got a new phone. She's been needing one for a while and we've been putting off. I'm amazed that I was able to surprise her with the dufus from the AT&T store attempting to foil "Project surprise Deni" First the dufus almost wiped out her VM a week before Christmas, he sent 2 emails congratulating her on her new purchase, plus he sent a text to her phone. I luckily was able to intercept all of the above and pull my Project off.



I got a few things for my bike. First I got a new heart rate/altimeter/cadence wireless bike computer by Trek. Also, so I could ride in style, Deni got me a Tux (shown below).



I also got this cool tripod for out little Canon camera. Now we can take pictures of the whole family on our outings.




Finally, the family got Guitar Hero 3 for the Wii - Here's Deni rocking out. I love this video.

Christmas Eve

We got together at my parents for Lunch. That is whole family, minus Shane. We were running a little late, so I took off with the kids towards my parents house. (we needed to take 2 cars anyways) Deni followed shortly with the food that had still been cooking. While I was waiting, I went outside and was attempting to get the packed ice off of Mom and Dad's 40 degree sloped driveway. Deni got there and I continued to scrape ice. Not too much longer, Dad came out and said we were ready to eat and that all were waiting on me, so they could say the prayer.

I was just about finished, so I finished the small section and headed in. Everyone had their arms folded and heads bowed, but I didn't hear anyone saying anything, so as I walked in, I yelled "AMEN". Everyone started laughing. Apparently, Dad had gone inside and told everyone to pretend to be praying, so I stole his thunder by yelling "Amen" when I came in the door.

We spent the rest of the afternoon visiting and playing games.

Around 6pm we all headed home to do our own family traditions.

Our Christmas Eve traditions are:

1. Open one, preselected present from under the tree (it's always a new set of PJ's for the kids)
2. Open and read the Christmas book that Mom and Dad give us. This year we got "God Bless your Way - A Christmas Journey" by Emily Freeman. This is an amazing book. If you are looking for a good Christmas book, this is it.
3. We read the Christmas story out of the Scriptures (We actually have a binder with pictures, text from the scriptures and songs that we do as a family).
4. Put the kids down for bed so that Santa can come.

Hurt Shoulder

My right shoulder has been hurting me for about 2 months now. It's alternating the way I sleep (I have to have my right arm down by my side), so I decided it was time to go to the Doctor. The dumb thing is I'm not sure how I hurt it. Deni made me an appointment with the same Dr that just did my Dad's shoulder surgery. He took x-rays, which he couldn't see anything, and then suggested that I get an MRI, so next week, I'll be going in for an MRI to see if we can find out what's wrong with my shoulder.

Check the "Ruin your whole Christmas" pocket

I couldn't find my North Face jacket this morning as I left for work. Knowing that I have the receipts to ALL of Deni's Christmas in my jacket pocket, I stuck my head in to the bedroom and kindly asked Deni to not look in my jacket pockets, if she were to find my jacket.

While I was at work, I get the following chat from her.

(01:25:26 PM) Deni Berger: I found your jacket
(01:25:37 PM) Deni Berger: which pocket was it that you wanted me to check?
(01:30:38 PM) Brett Berger: Check the "Ruin your whole Christmas" pocket.
(01:51:29 PM) Deni Berger: he he he

I think she's playing my own game against me.

Sydney is going to be a great mom

Sydney woke up early this morning despite not going to bed on time last night, however she was happy. She crawled into my bed as I was getting up to shower at 6:45am. As I got out of the shower, I asked her if she was going to make me a lunch. She smiled, sat up in bed, and then headed towards the kitchen. I followed her to have some breakfast and she went to work.

She got the bread, peanut butter, and jelly out and began making me a sandwich. She got me an apple, some grapes and even carrots. Sydney is a great little girl and will make a great mom and wife someday.

7,804 lbs of coal

Just in case I get coal for Christmas this year, I was checking up on the going rate for coal (so I could sell it.) Turns out, I'd have to be really bad to make any profit on the coal I would get. However in the process, I learned some interesting things.

First, per the "Howstuffworks" website

The thermal energy content of coal is 6,150 kWh/ton. Although coal fired power generators are very efficient, they are still limited by the laws of thermodynamics. Only about 40 percent of the thermal energy in coal is converted to electricity. So the electricity generated per ton of coal is 0.4 x 6,150 kWh or 2,460 kWh/ton.

That made me look at my utility bill. On average, my family uses about 800 kWh a month.

800 kWh X 12 months = 9,600 kWh per year / 2,460 kWh = 3.90 tons X 2,000 lbs in one ton = 7804 pounds of coal to run my house per year.

That's alot of coal.

As far as the price of coal. It appears that for the Uinta Basin, the going price is about $73.00 a ton.

Ryan's Funny

A few funny things Ryan's said recently.

Ryan was watching a cartoon and one of the characters said that Santa could fly because he used "Pixie dust". I looked at Ryan and said, "I didn't know that is how Santa flies." Ryan said, "Actually, it's the because of the special corn the Reindeer eat."

I've also been teasing the kids that I'm getting Deni a puppy for Christmas. They know I'm not going to get one, but I continue to tease them about it. Ryan said "Whoever buys the puppy has to clean up it's poop." I said, good, then I'm going to use YOUR money to buy it, so YOU have to clean up it's poop." His response was "Sydney needs some extra responsibility." He's always thinking one step ahead of me.

Sydney found the Camera

I was taking the pictures off the camera and came across this little video clip of Sydney. Matter of fact there were about 30 little video clips similar to this. Sydney thought she was taking pictures of herself, but had it on the video mode.

I thought it was funny, it looks like she is jumping or something.



Thanks to her Mom for making her the Elf hat (seen in the video) for Elf Day at School.

Photo Splice

I was playing around with Picasa tonight and took these 3 pictures of my nephew Devin, niece Shawnee and nephew Logan and spliced them together. The cool thing is it makes them look like they all jumped at the same time. In reality, they all jumped at different times and all jumped in the exact same spot. These pictures are from this summer when we went to Goblin Valley.

How cold did you say?

I talked to my dad today. He asked if I wanted to go Ice Fishing this Saturday. I quickly looked at the weather and saw that in Spanish Fork, which is 4000 ft lower than where I go ice fishing, that the high on Saturday will be 16 degrees with a low of 0 Fahrenheit. Don't get me wrong, I love ice fishing, but I'm having a hard time wanting to go when the ice hole I drill will freeze over in 30 seconds.

I still have decided if I'm going or not. Not much more time to make a decision.

Originally, I wanted to go the morning of Christmas Eve and may still do that, guess we'll see.

Shhh Don't tell Deni

Two of my favorite pastimes are:

1. Teasing Deni
2. Surprising Deni for Christmas

When I combined the two, it's twice as fun.

The other day Deni and I were out and driving on I-15. I saw a Billboard about Laser Hair Removal and the idea came.

I looked and Deni asked her which side of the bed she wanted. She looked at me a little confused and I continued to explain that I was getting her Laser Hair Removal for Christmas, but I could only afford one leg, so I wanted it to be on the leg closest to me in bed.

We both got a good laugh out of it. It's fun to tease Deni that I'm going to get her only one leg of Laser Hair removal.

On a side note, I have my kids trained that they DON'T ever want to have a dog. I told the kids that if we got a dog, that they would be in charge of 2 things.

First, cleaning up it's poop and
Second paying for it's Vet bills.

If I ask Ryan if he wants a dog now, he says "No way, I don't want to clean up poop or pay the Vet bills." Awesome.

Ok back to teasing Deni about her Christmas present. We were out as a family shopping and Deni ran into a store by herself. As soon as she got out of the car, I asked the kids if they could keep a secret about Deni's Christmas present. They said they could, so I said "I'm getting Mom a puppy for Christmas". Ryan immediately started laughing and said "Ohhhh, so Mom can clean up it's poop and pay it's vet bills."

Berger Mento Experiment

Last night we went to the grocery store to get a few things. As we walked in, all the Coke products were on sale. 2 liters for 69 cents. Ryan went straight to the Diet Coke. Why Diet Coke? Blame it on Youtube. For some time now, Ryan's been begging us to buy Diet Coke and Mentos and to try the Youtube "experiment".

I agreed and we put the Diet Coke into the shopping cart. After that we had a hard time finding mentos, however Deni finally found them. It was too dark to do the experiment, so I told him we'd have to later.

When I got home I asked Deni if it was appropriate Sunday activity. Neither of us saw a problem with it and decided we'd do it Sunday Morning.

So here it is. one 2 liter of Diet Coke, 12 mentos, one 6 inch piece of PVC pipe and a slip of paper.



This was great family fun, all for under $2.00

A funny note, after we did this and watched the video Ryan said that his voice sounded different. We said that is how you sound. His reply was "Curse you Technology."