As of 3 pm today....

...Brooke will be finished with this semester!!! woohoo!!! she has done awesome so far. one of her habits is to figure out what she needs to make on her final to either pass the class or get a certain letter grade. since she's done so well this semester, she only had to make like a 12 in some of her classes to pass. i think she needed a 46 today to pass. anyhoo, she's done great, and i'm so proud of her! i know she's ready to have a break from studying and working on projects for school. now, she'll have some time to work on some house projects!

check back soon for bathroom remodel updates. we're bustin' up some tile!!!

Remodeling update (with photos!)

we have been tearing up our bathrooms in our house, but in a good way. we had started pulling down the wallpaper in our master bathroom. that came down MUCH easier than we thought. so today, i finally disassembled the old shower stall. that's where i'm standing on the ladder in the first picture. we have decided to remove that shower b/c there is a leak in the shower pan. it would cost an estimated $3,000 to get that repaired. we don't like the layout of the bathroom as it is right now, so we'll move stuff around. we'll put a shower head with the current tub, and move the toilet to where the shower is now. it already looks much better with those glass doors down. then, we started scraping off the popcorn ceiling in the master bathroom. that, again, is alot easier than i thought it would be. so we got that done.

then, we pulled off the wallpaper in the half bath downstairs and the full bath upstairs (the old cherry wallpaper). again, that came off REALLY easy. we were pumped. we wanted to keep working, so we started to pull the wallpaper off in the foyer at the front door.

big mistake.

that stuff is stuck on firm. as easy as the rest of the wallpaper has been, this wallpaper is that stuck on. so, we halted for the night. we'll have to score it, and soak it with wet newspaper to get it off. that will be a chore. but we got really lucky not having to do that for all our bathrooms.

so we've made progress. we can't wait to get all the popcorn off and the paint on the walls!

Happy Birthday Baby!

the love of my life turned 26 today! i'm so proud to be her husband. i tell her this all the time, but it's weird to think back when i was a kid about how i tried to dream of what my wife would be like. the funny thing is: in my wildest dreams, i never thought i could be this happy. i didn't think it was possible to love someone so much. i'm so thankful for her.

i hope you're birthday was great! i love you!

Thanksgiving weekend update

we had a wild weekend. we both had to work on Wednesday, so we planned to head to Montgomery to stay with my parents that night. well, plans changed. i developed waht i can only describe as "a headache from the dark side" late Wednesday afternoon. it knocked me on my back where i had to miss church that night. i can't think of the last time i've been too sick for church. it was bad. anyhoo, i woke up for about 30 minutes after brooke got home from church, just enough to try to eat some crackers, then back to bed. i was fine by the morning, thank goodness. brooke took such good care of me. i'm a pitiful patient. :)

we spent all Thanksgiving day at my mom's parents' house in Fort Deposit, AL, which is just a bit below Montgomery. we had a great time there seeing my side of the family.

we did get some bad news while we were there, though. that morning, brooke's grandfather, Marvin Pressnell or "Gandy", passed away. he was 80 years old. it was somewhat sudden, but his health and mind had been frail for years. he was a faithful Christian his entire life, which gives us more peace than we can describe.

so, we came back to work on Friday. after work, we drove up to Decatur for the weekend with brooke's parents. we had a great time there, too. we had the funeral Sunday afternoon. brooke's dad and her brother Chris conducted the funeral. it was a very moving service. he was a great man that has influenced thousands of people, either directly or indirectly.

one of the best parts of the weekend was the "Beatdown in T-Town"!!! i felt like Bama would win, but i was afraid that it would be a slobber-knocker. i'm so proud for JPW and the other 8 seniors. those kids came to Bama b/c they love Bama, and Saban has said they've been the ones who really deserve the credit in turning things around. it's great to break the streak. it's great to shutout Auburn. it's great to feel the pendulum swinging back our way. now it's gets really interesting. if we beat Florida, we can beat whoever else we face. i'm scared to death of Florida, but if we can sneak past them somehow, we'll beat Oklahoma/USC/Texas/whoever. i'll pull a "nicky pressnell" and just go ahead and call that. i might be wrong, but that's my opinion after seeing how this college football season has gone.

brooke has about 2 weeks left before she's done with this semester. then, she'll only have one more semester of classwork left! her senior year will be strictly clinicals. she has worked so hard for this, and i'm so proud of her!

My dad is famous!

my dad, Tommy Williams, is the topic of the feature story of the Business section of the Montgomery Advertiser today. they did an article about his clock repair business. not only is it online, but it's on the front page of the Business section of today's (Sunday) paper. the online version has a good video of him explaining his business.

check out the story online, and visit his website. i'm so proud of you, daddyboy!

Freaky Eye Saturday

i was watching the Texas Tech/Oklahoma game, but that is a laugher right now (42-7 at the half). so here's a some information on Diabetic Eye Disease.

it is estimated that almost 8% (or over 23 million Americans) have diabetes. so almost one in every 12 people that you meet will be diabetic. this condition can cause devastating vision loss if left untreated.

if a patient's blood sugar levels are out of control, their prescription will fluctuate dramatically. usually, this causes patients to seem more nearsighted than they truly are.

here's a fundus photo of an eye with diabetic eye disease:



just to orient you, the yellow circle is the optic nerve. the red lines are the blood vessels. the large red splotches are termed "blot hemorrhages" or large blood leakages within the retinal nerve fiber layers. when the blood is leaking out into the retina and not reaching it's target tissues, the body can try to grow new blood vessels (called "neovascularization") to compensate. this is a valiant effort by the body, but it actually makes things worse.

here's the main point of this post: every diabetic needs an eye exam AT LEAST ONCE A YEAR!!! if i don't see any blood leakages in the retina, once a year is plenty to monitor their eye health. if i see just a few tiny blood leakages, i will follow them every 6 months. if i see an eye like the one above, i'll probably watch them every month until this resolves. if any blood approaches the macula (our most sensitive area of vision), the vision can drop very quickly, and surgery might be necessary.

do you know someone who is a diabetic? ask them when was the last time they had their eyes examined. make sure they know how important regular eye care is for them. we only get one set of eyes.

the other day, i got a wild hair...

well, we got our foundation fixed last week. so that means we can get started on remodeling. so one night this week, i went to our master bathroom to try to peel some loose wallpaper. much to my delight, the glue must have broken down over the years, and the wallpaper just peeled off completely. this was a major relief. we vividly remember how difficult it was to remove the old wallpaper at our house in Alabaster....scoring it and soaking it with DIF gel. it was a nightmare. so now, we've got bare sheetrock to work with. :)

stay tuned for updates on how we're planning to reconfigure our master bath.

So what's new?

actually, not a whole lot. things are trucking along for us. brooke is still doing well in school. her study load is really high right now, but she's doing great. i'm so proud of her.

my work is good. i had a conference at the Wynfrey Hotel in B'ham this past weekend. it was good to see some old friends from optometry school.

i'm somewhat sick right now. i've got that crud that alot of folks have right now: sore, scratchy throat....dry cough....congested nose....yada yada yada. i was off today, so i've tried to get well before i have to go back to work tomorrow.

we had our Gospel Meeting this week at church. James Watkins spoke, and he did an amazing job. like i told him, of all the Gospel Meetings we've had in the 7+ years i've been at Shades Mountain, he's been my favorite. if you ever get a chance to hear him speak, take the opportunity. you'll be enriched by it.

hope i get a chance to blog soon about Bama heading into the SEC Championship game undefeated.

My favorite author......

...passed away today. Michael Crichton died at age 66 from a private battle with cancer. apparently, he kept the news of his cancer away from the public. this was the first i had heard of him being ill.

there's no other author that i read from. not stephen king or john grisham or anyone. maybe i should branch out more and find other authors to read, but Crichton always had a way of blending the scientific/medical side with the suspenseful/entertaining side that really appealed to me. he graduated from medical school before devoting his life to books, and he always incorporated difficult concepts into the stories in a way that i could really grasp.

the first book of his that i read was Jurassic Park. that was the summer blockbuster in the theaters when i was a teenager. we didn't have the cash-money to go to the movies, so my parents bought me the book. about a year later, i watched the movie on VHS. compared to the book, the movie was awful. i understand that the movie was a special effects breakthrough production, but it left out critical parts from the book, and the book painted a much more vivid picture than could be reproduced on the big screen.



i went on to read most of these selections in this cover collage. "Sphere" is one of my favorites that i read periodically. "The Great Train Robbery" was a piecing-together of an actual train robbery in the 1750's (?). i liken it to an "Ocean's Eleven" type adventure. i just finished "Timeline" for the first time. "State of Fear" is probably my favorite. in this book, he challenges the well-believed concept of global warming. basically, he exposes it for what it is: a theory that is one of 100's of theories for why our climate changes over time. he drew harsh criticism from environmentalists for his objective and documented views on the illusion of man-made global warming.

i know this isn't a blog about the house or our family or our work, but the sudden loss of such a great author seemed necessary to blog about. so if you're looking for a good read, give one of his books a try.

Happy Halloween!!!

we had some friends over for a halloween party Saturday night. i think we counted 33 total. so getting ready for this party forced us to get the new house somewhat in order more quickly. we had taco salad and LOTS of halloween candy. we watched some football and played our annual game of Celebrity. we had a great time, plus, we got an extra hour of sleep that night from the time change. woohoo! check out my facebook profile for more pics.

we've had some issues come up (quite literally) with the house. our first night, we slept without heat b/c i couldn't figure out how to get the pilot light to come on at the furnace. our master shower isn't working right, so we have to climb the stairs to the guest bathroom for our morning showers. and to top it all off, our sewage line was clogged, and "poo-water" spilled everywhere in our laundry room (and dripped into the unfinished basement). we've almost got that resolved. the clog is gone, but the stench remains. but, we're loving how close we are to work/school/church. it's been wonderful.

now that our halloween party is done, we can start our projects. be watching for more pictures soon.

ps.....how bout my Crimson Tide?!?!?!?! if you could jump in a time machine, travel back to 1/3/2007 (the day Saban was hired), and tell the masses that Bama would be ranked #1 in 2008 the week Saban returns to Baton Rouge to play LSU, you would be locked away in the crazy house. but here we are. we may lose to LSU, Miss State, Auburn, and Florida, but i'm enjoying this ride. i do think we're playing a little over our heads, but i believe we can make it undefeated to the SEC championship game. then, i'll be scared to death of Florida. they are good.