One Five Oh

This is my 150th blog entry. Wow. I knew I was full of bullshit, but really...I'm impressed.

(Okay, this is more like the 152nd or 153rd. I did delete a couple here and there. I'm not one to slash and burn, but I do delete on occasion.)

Friday night. Sitting on the floor of my living room. Typing on the laptop as it rips (for my own personal use) Beastie Boys Solid Gold Hits CD into OGG Vorbis files. You might've seen the "PLAY OGG" link on my page here. Ogg Vorbis is an open-source audio encoder that, to a lot of people, just sounds better than MP3s. My music player plays Ogg files...a definite selling point for me, when I bought it. Yeah, it's geeky, but those that really know me, know a) I don't do things the easy way, and b) I will geek things out when I can.

Sitting here with my shirt off (calm yourself ladies, please), occasionally rubbing my chest. No, it's not a perverted thing. No, I'm not feeling myself up. It's because parts of my chest were shaved this week.

See, on Wednesday, I had a stress test.

Don't panic. I haven't had any heart problems. It was more...preventive medicine.

See, there is a history of heart problems in my family. My Pop had a bad heart. My Kid has a pacemaker because of an irregular (and now enlarged) heart. There's a definite history of heart problems in my family, and I figure...

I'll be honest. I turn 40 next month. I've not always taken the best care of myself, but I always used the excuse that I was too busy taking care of My Kid to worry about myself.

I don't have that excuse anymore (even though she does have another infection and I've been calling out there daily, checking up on her...especially since I found out they were giving her an antibiotic that I told them she was allergic to.

So, yeah, I had a Stress Test. For those of you unaware of what a Stress Test is, it's where they stress your heart. They make you walk on a treadmill that keeps getting faster and goes at a higher angle until you reach a specific heart rate.

In my case, I had to reach a heart rate of 154 beats per minute. Normally, at rest, I'm about 60-70 beats per minute (less if I concentrate and relax). Walking, normally, I can reach 80-90 beats per minute.

To reach the magic number they wanted, I was on the treadmill for over seven and a half minutes, with it getting faster and higher every two minutes. By the end, yeah, I was getting seriously out of breath and my legs were feeling like mush, but I made it.

Toward the end, they injected me with a dye. They then laid me out on a table, and took pictures of my heart. After a bit of rest, they took more pictures, and were going to compare the two pictures to see if there's any problems.

I'm guessing there's no problems, since the doctor called my house (according to the caller ID), but didn't leave a message. No news is good news and all that.

Otherwise, the doc said I'm in good shape. Clean bill of health and all that.

But yeah, I did the stress test, and they shaved part of my glorious chest hair. Now, it's starting to itch.

At least it gives me an excuse to feel up my own chest. ;)