So You Think You Can Dance?

Not really. I don’t think I can dance at all. That is why I enrolled in a Hip-Hop Funk class at Vanderbilt. The first class was this week and let me tell you what…I looked ridonkulous. But the instructor was very upbeat and fun, and Susanna and I just had a total blast! I have already practiced my moves and can’t wait until the next session. Hopefully, some folks will beg out because with 52 bodies in a dance studio hip-hoppin around, it gets a little stuffy. Not to mention, when a move calls for “kickin’ it out”, best believe I gonna need a little space.
Watch out! I’m gonna bust a move the next chance I get! However, it might look a little out of place if the next chance I get happens to be downtown at a honky tonk.

Step Off, Home Slice!

That’s right, I’m talkin’ to you, else we gonna have a dance off. That’s right, I said, “DANCE OFF”. See, I just get signed up for a hip-hop funk dance class and I’ll show you if you give me any lip. I’ll go all Julia Stiles in Save the Last Dance on yo ass. Sit back, hilarity is sure to ensue.

Radio Silence…

Thanks to some friends who have been very helpful in getting remotivated to blog.

L – Boot is still going strong, but I am not going to take pictures of me flexing.

K – I ate your fudge off of your desk – mea culpa! – and am now blogging about it.

J – ARGH – can’t wait until your wedding.

Now back to our regularly scheduled blog.

So, a lot of personal stuff has gone on this summer that isn’t really blog worthy. But as a public service announcement, I hope all of you men out there are checking your PSA score. Prostate cancer is BAD.

In other news, Google and Microsoft both think they are going to kick start the new health care revolution. Hmmm. This article sounds a little bit like what WebMD (disclaimer: where I work was just spun off from this entity) is doing, but Google appears to be adding the portability of personal info similar to the Google Documents “share” feature. I would be interested to see how HIPAA plays into this. Actually, what WebMD does is cool – an online portal with all of my health updates available for me in a dashboard-type style. “Time to see the dentist!”, or “Your EOP is available to view online!” pops up as necessary. That would be so cool to integrate that into an iGoogle type UI.

Additionally, the article notes that Microsoft powers around 90% of the personal computers in the US…so simple math would conclude that Microsoft then powers around 100% of practitioners offices. Sad, but true. So, compatibility isn’t a very serious issue.

All of this, I hope, leads to a more transparent care cycle…from physician or procedural pricing and up-front collection to claim coding to facilitated claim tracking to payer reimbursement to patient billing (please God, make doctors bill patients via the web!). At any rate, the Microsoft and Google offerings point towards the consumer, not the physician – which is key – and hope this will spur other needed industry changes like the reintroduction of the American Express HealthPay Plus card and other payment methods that are paramount in the healthcare revenue cycle.

HEY GOOGLE OR MICROSOFT! HIRE ME! I know about health care technology!!

Shout Out!

To the woman driving the Suburban on Thompson Lane in Nashville today. You had 2 stickers on your car that said, “Jesus is my co-pilot”. I want you to actually think about that. Do you think Jesus would ride in a car that has such a damaging impact on our environment?! I’d worry less about who your co-pilot is and a bit more about your carbon footprint…that might come in handy on Judgement Day. Just a thought.

Nashville’s Country Music Marathon

Wow – one year ago yesterday I ran my first (and only to date) half marathon (which actually set me on the path of blogging). I was so sick with food poisoning I didn’t have fun at all. But this year I think I would have liked it. Past Monday, I called to see if I could register – just to do it, you know! – and they organizers had capped participation at 23,000 half-marathon participants. YIKES!

The Country Music Marathon is a blast and it is getting super-duper popular since Nashville is an easy destination to get to and there is a lot of fun stuff to do, not to mention the marathon itself is a blast with bands lined up all around the course. In reality, the bands are lined up all around the half-marathon course. The full marathon course is sparsely attended by runners and fans alike and fairly challenging so I don’t believe there to be a ton of stuff going on in the back 13.1m. Ugh – and I LOATHED my training runs on the back half of the course, over the river and through the hood. Bad.

This year, I was a mere spectator. Hopped on my bike @ 7a.m. and rode over to Belmont to meet up with the Hedges to support our friends and colleagues. Shanan, of course, came prepared with non-fancy champy for Kir Royales to toast the physical prowess of those around us. We saw a LOT of people we knew run by – I was looking for my friend Rachael Rowland who was my running buddy last year, but I never saw her. I was bummed out about that. I really wanted to cheer her on. But I did see Marshall, who I work out with every morning, and was glad to see she was strong and in good humor at mile 7. HALF WAY, BABY! I put her picture on flickr so check it out. We saw Eddie George running with a 6-person security detail. Hilarious. But I can’t hate on him – he is an amazing athlete (and SO TALL) and a Buckeye – HOLLA! I seriously heart him.

After watching two hours of people first whipping by, then running by, then struggling by, then laboring by, then walking by, we (me, Shanan, and Anne) decided to call it a morning and go to the fair grounds for the monthly flea market. I wasn’t looking for anything other than entertainment.

Boy did I get it. Never in my life have I seen so many MORBIDLY OBESE people. I kind of got really mad – I mean, they are going to be a serious serious drain on our healthcare system in years to come (b/c these were people of ALL ages). For-profit healthplans will insure these individuals, who are often times poor or of lower income, and it will be MY premiums that go up. I think there should be a tax break or something for people who maintain their weight within a certain healthy range – yes, I know that is TOTALLY impossible to regulate and police. But something has to be done – this was a pit of adult onset diabetes and heart disease and lifestyle related cancer and just nasty fatness. I can guarantee these people haven’t seen their genitalia in years.

Anne and Shanan, after having their fill of the fair, wanted to go have drinks with lunch. I opted out and went to the gym to run 6 miles (almost a quarter marathon! LOLz) – and thought about how I never wanted to get heart disease.

Catching Up On Lost Time

Lately, as you well know, I have been Super Healthy Girl, able to leap benchpress benches in a single bound. Well, to make up for lost time out, I decided to close a bar last night. Ed and I and a very large group of friends went to our hang out for some din-din. I was just there the other day and saw Nick Lachey and one of the Nelson twins, and the time before that I saw Lyle Lovett, and about a month before that I sat next to Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. Well guess who I touched last night (as he passed to go to the men’s room)? Joey Joe McIntyre!!!!!!!!!! Seriously I almost died!!! I couldn’t decide if I needed to laugh out loud or just swoon. Come on now, I was a HUGE fan of NKOTB waaaay back in the day! Loved them! Sad – I know, but I’m over it, you should be too. Sure, cheesy, whatevs. But I was excited for the first time to see a celebrity. I mean, I was excited when I saw Alan Rickman in Paris sitting near me at Le Theatre Du Soleil, and John Malkovich drinking a cocktail 3 feet away at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, but this was a little bit more fun and pop culture-y.

Ok, enough name dropping. After dinner, we all decide to go to our favorite beer joint, Broadway Brewhouse. Ed had to leave, he’d been partying for many many hours and just couldn’t hang. I, on the other hand, unable to shed my Super Healthy Girl persona, was fully hydrated and ready to socialize. All the way to 3 a.m. I have not been out so late to hear the words, “LAST CALL FOR ALCOHOL!” in ages. But there we were, all just chillin’ until we were kicked out. SO FUN! I can’t wait to do it again…in 12 months. I am exhausted now and have to hit the gym. Booooo. I hope my super powers can carry me through an hours of cardio and sprints….

Aged Beefcake

Aged beef past its prime was on the menu tonight at Ruth’s Chris in Nashville. If you recall, the last time I ate there was Valentine’s Day….that is the longest I’ve gone between visits and my waitress noticed. Anyhoo, with my New York trip, there are only so many weekends in a month. I digress…

Tonight, aged beefcake was on the menu…I sat next to one of the Nelson twins, of the group Nelson (you know, the twin sons of Ricky Nelson) and across the bar from Nick Lachey. Which is so ironic because I was just making some jokes about the midwest and Ohio in particular when Ed starts cracking up. I thought I was just particularly funny. No such ‘luchey’. Ed was laughing at the irony of the poster boy for Ohio (or maybe just Cincinnasty) walking by as I was cracking a joke. Either way, whatevs.

Please note, it is VERY un-Nashville to gawk and get star struck so of course I took no pictures. I mean, I didn’t take pics last week when I sat next to Jeff Fisher (Titan’s head coach) when we got our hairs cut, or of Demetria Kalademos (local news anchor) when we were buying techie crap, or of Eddie George (who actually I’ve met on several different occasions, even while we were both @ OSU) when I saw him out and about.

At any rate, it made for a hilarious dessert course. Nick Lachey. LOLz….ps: in case you are wondering Vanessa Manilla-envelope was not with him.

OFOP

[Old Folks On Parade]

Sorry you all, I have been slammed at work and Boot is living up to its name, as in Das Boot up my arse. UGH! Went to see Bang Bang Bang on Friday night and that was rockin’. We might have been the oldest people there, even among those hidden in the balcony away from the fray, but it was wild. As the Designated Driver, I was happy slammin’ water, even if the 19 year old bartender frowned every time I walked up to the bar. Hilarious. Brat. So, to further my quest for ultimate squaredom, I asked her for change from my $1 bill to buy ear plugs from the vending machine.

Not only was I completely out of touch on the beverage front, I clearly was out of touch on the music front. The first opening band, The Secret, was TERRIBLE. It was not rock and roll, it was crap. Sorry, gang – you blow. The best thing about this band was the tubby guitar player sporting the super-tight cigarette jeans. LOLz! Made my night! Seriously, the set was like 7 songs too long.

The next band, unbeknownst to me, has generated a TON of industry buzz. Cage the Elephant, out of BLOWING Green, I mean, Bowling Green, KY, seems to be pretty hot $hite. I didn’t particularly love them, but the front man boy (I swear he is not old enough to shave) was quite charismatic. Kind of Mick Jagger meets Axl Rose. So, in O-Town math where “Y” is zero:

(Mick + Axl + noise) x (Y)beers = irritating^9.

The song Ain’t No Rest was very good, but the cut on myspace is lame. So, hopefully they’ll change that for a single. At the end of the set, the guitarist (as seen on my flickr) stage dives in the the crowd of 15. He ’surfs’ around for a sec and upon landing stands up and pukes his guts out! LOLOLOL! Like 4 times!! And no one cleaned it up! I swear, it was the huge-est puddle of ick I’ve seen in a long time. Later on that night, I saw him ordering more beers from the bar! Thanks, dude, I am still laughing! Way to boot and rally!

Bang Bang Bang was really good and the Dazed and Confused look is obviously back in, but by the time they went on at midnight I was wiped. So wiped in fact, I didn’t even make it to see Cold War Kids on Saturday. Boo. Lame.

Redneck

During a nice lunch today at a little outdoor spot, Otters, I got sunburned. And I ran into a hot little friend of mine. Then we took a little tour around lower Broadway and snapped some pics. It was almost a shame to come back to work. Do I see a little Happy Hours in my future? Today is shaping up to be grrrrrrrrrreat!

Missed a Good One!

ARGH! Last night The Pink Spiders debuted some new songs @ Mercy Lounge – and Bang Bang Bang played too! I can’t believe I didn’t go. Grr. Why do I think 9p is too late for a school night?! So disappointing.

In related news, one of my fave juvenile bands, which happen to be from Nashville, is getting ready to release a new album. Hot Action Cop, while silly, does make you want to turn up your radio. Their single, Fever for the Flava, was kinda my theme for some “extreme” marketing I did back in school for Sobe chocolate. Hilarious.

Here is their video – just so you can laugh today!!