shawnbakken.net

If I remember correctly, February 2nd commemorates the 5th anniversary of me flying home to revel in my failure of being one of the four remaining Beauty and the Geek participants in the mansion. Okay, technically, there wasn’t much revelry—even if Scarlet and I had won the $250K, we wouldn’t be allowed to revel in our victory lest the producers take the money away and slap us with a big, nasty lawsuit. I wouldn’t think that going from victorious to penniless would inspire any festivities, but that’s just me.

The thing I’ll remember most about that day isn’t waking up in a hotel bed instead of my room in the mansion. It isn’t eating normal food instead of brand-name food with duct tape covering up the brand names. It isn’t even passing out on the airplane before the stewardess could tell me how to buckle my seat belt for the flight home. Nope, the thing I’ll remember most is getting off the plane. Read the rest of this entry »

I was at a restaurant on Sunday and had to use the bathroom before we left (one of the downsides of drinking three glasses of Mountain Dew in one sitting). I headed through the door, walked past the urinals and saw two toilet stalls: one regular and one handicap stall.

As you probably know, handicap stalls are designed a little differently to make them more accessible for someone in a wheelchair: the stalls are wider so the chair can turn and there are handrails to help the person lift himself from seat to seat. (The stall can also be helpful for someone with constipation: you can spread your legs wider and grab the handrails to brace yourself every time you squeeze.) There was just one problem.

As I looked at the stalls side-by-side, the one on the right was wider and had rails, but both were unoccupied and both doors were swung in towards the toilets. In other words, if you’re using a wheelchair to get into the handicap stall, you push the door open, roll your chair inside and the door gets pinned between the chair and the wall.

Since you can’t use the urinal, you need to use the stall. If you need to use the stall, all you have for protection from prying eyes is the wheelchair, so if you’re shy about peeing where people can stare at you in the face… better lay off the Mountain Dew until you get home.

Go ahead, call me indifferent, see if I care.

“Hello, my name is Shawn and I have a knee injury.”

It’s not a perfect comparison—there are no group meetings or sponsors—but I have been in rehab (i.e., physical therapy) for about two months and frequently feel the urge to relapse while watching my soccer team play. Then I bend my knee to a certain degree or twist my leg around and that urge goes away.

At least it did until last week. Before a game on Wednesday, I decided to help the keeper warm up by taking some shots on net. I felt okay after the first few times, so I started kicking the ball harder. Not as hard as possible, mind you—I thought keeping the ball in reach of the keeper was a little more important than powerfully sending it soaring up into the roof.

That five minutes or so felt great, but as the game progressed while I stood on the sideline, my knee started to let me know it was displeased. Very displeased. Ooh yeah, that was definitely a relapse. When I got home, I was having trouble walking up and down stairs again.

Thankfully, physical therapy has gone well enough that I recovered quickly and I’m doing all right. I went to the local YMCA today and rode on an exercise bike for about 20 minutes. I didn’t push myself really hard because I didn’t want to rupture anything, but after a semester of circuit training twice a week and then two months of not being able to work hard enough to break a sweat, those 20 minutes felt pretty good. As for my limping down the stairs towards the locker room afterward… I think it’s fair to say I haven’t graduated from KIA just yet.

That’s how my grandmother suggests that we live our lives: decide where we want to be in five years, then work towards that point starting now.

On January 17th, 2005—five years ago—I left a hotel with six other guys, got into in a van, stopped at Denny’s for breakfast, drove around for what seemed like hours, then eventually strolled through the front door of a mansion and into the midst of the reality TV phenomenon known as “Beauty and the Geek”. (The show being a “phenomenon” may be debatable, but please don’t spoil my delusions for the moment.) It was awesome, frustrating, amazing, sometimes nauseating… it only lasted two weeks, but it changed my life in so many ways that if I’d had a five-year plan at that point, it would have been shot straight to hell.

I sent a “Happy Anniversary” message to some of my fellow… you know, I’ve never put much thought into it before, but what were we? Participants? Contestants? Cast members? Probably all of the above, but regardless, I sent a message to a handful of them and hope that they’ve got a couple happy memories to reflect on after so many years. The likelihood of us getting together for a little reunion is minuscule at best—people seem to have gone their separate ways—but if some TV channel shows a mini-marathon of Season 1 in June (the month when the show first aired), I’ll be happy. I’ll also probably feel awesome, frustrated, amazed and sometimes nauseated all over again, but at least this time I can write that stuff in the margins of my five-year plan.

My apologies for missing the dates when these events occurred, but allow me to wish people:

“Merry Christmas!”
“Joyous Kwanzaa!” and
“Chhhappy Chhhannukah!” (I wasn’t sure how to type a throat-clearing “chhh” noise, so that’s the best I could do.)

As for those of you who consider “Chrismukkah” a legitimate holiday, you should be strapped down to a table, beaten with a candy cane, whipped with a cat-o’-nine-dreidels and banned from watching “The O.C.” ever, ever again.

If I missed any other real holidays, my apologies, but I’m busy getting ready to celebrate the end of a decade and party into the 10’s. Don’t forget to start things off on the right foot, everyone: Lift your left foot off the ground just before the clock strikes midnight. Happy New Year!!!

A few days after I hurt my right knee playing soccer (the Sunday before Thanksgiving), it wasn’t getting much better—it was still really painful trying to bend around to put on socks and pants, let alone climb stairs—so I went to the doctor to have her take a look at it. Read the rest of this entry »

The end of Movember has arrived, so to commemorate the event, I designed and took pictures of some seriously kick-ass facial hair (as seen on my Movember donation page). Actually, I’ve heard mixed reviews from people who like it to people who don’t think it’s my look to simply “Oh my Lord”. (You know you want to see it for yourself…)

If some of you are still willing to open your wallets/purses/bags o’ gold, donations of any amount are being accepted until Dec. 7th and the proceeds are split between the Prostate Cancer Foundation and the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Thanks to everyone for your generosity and for limiting negative reactions to “Oh my Lord” as opposed to “I’m going to saw that stuff off his face using the jagged edge of a credit card!”

I was playing soccer on Sunday morning and the team was doing well. We were passing the ball around, defending well, getting decent shots on net (which was really tiny, so the final score was only 3-1). What happened to me? Hell if I know. I took a shot at the goal from about 20 yards out—it wasn’t even a good shot—and when I landed, my right knee was displeased. That’s all. I called for a sub, limped off the field and bending that knee has hurt ever since.

It’s been an adventure trying to put on socks, sitting down on the toilet and getting into my car without hurting myself too much; I’m discovering new muscles that have been compensating for the ones I’m trying not to use; and I’m spending a lot of time “RICE”ing* my knee, but the worst part is simply how it happened. I shot the ball, I landed, ouch. No big collision, no battle scars, no decent story to go along with the limp. Just ouch.

In other news, I’ve been using some of my spare time to repost blog entries from years past. I was somewhere in the middle of September ‘05 and have since moved up to February ‘06. (Some people may be reading blog posts via RSS feed—since I’m editing the timestamp so the entries are appearing at the date when they were originally posted, you may or may not have been receiving said entries.) So it’s been… a while since I started shawnbakken.net and I’ve only caught up to the beginning of 2006 with the old stuff. At this rate, maybe I’ll have everything on here before the world ends in 2012.

There’s still about a week left of Movember and the MN Moustache Madmen and I are still accepting donations online, but I’m bending the rules slightly. In theory, we’re supposed to grow a mustache, but I opted for something a little less odd-looking and trimmed a week’s worth of growth down to a Van Dyke.

Three things:
1) The first person who makes a “Dick” joke in the comments section is getting punched in the groin.
2) You can follow the growth rate of my facial hair on my donation page, then check out Lance Armstrong’s efforts here. (Seriously, how could he be taking some kind of growth hormone if that’s all his upper lip can manage?)
3) I’m a tad depressed that I had my current style of facial hair during my senior year of high school, all through college and a few years beyond, but I’d always called it a goatee until I saw that website above. Sad, sad, sad…

That’s the scoop o’ the hour. If I don’t write another blog entry before then, I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving and, if nothing else, be thankful for the Internet connection that allows you to read my random blatherings. As for me, I’ll be much more thankful when it doesn’t take so much effort to use the toilet, ’cause if I’m lowering myself down by supporting my weight with my hands and one slips… I won’t want to tell people how I got those battle scars.

[*RICE = rest, ice, compression and elevation, not heat rice by rubbing it between your hands and then slap it against the injured area like Mr. Miyagi in Karate Kid.]

A friend of mine just told me about the Movember Foundation and recruited me for his Movember team, “MN Moustache Madmen”. I’m not sure how well that title applies to me now, but within the next 2+ weeks, it will: I’ll be growing out my facial hair intentionally to try to raise some donations, which will go towards the fight against cancer of the butts and nuts (a.k.a., prostate and testicular cancer).

So here’s my page if you want to make a donation or at least see how my upper lip is faring against the extra weight. (I’ll be posting pics there and on Myspace.) Since I’m starting from scratch now, I still have time to decide what style of facial hair I want to grow. I’m avoiding the porn ’stache like the Plague, but if anyone has other suggestions, I’m sure plenty of butts and nuts out there would appreciate it.