People that are Japanese like to kill whales. I learned that on Animal Planet when I was watching the show Whale Wars.
Sports Illustrated 2008 Turkey of the Year: Rich Rodriguez:
We're all for moving up. But you signed a long-term deal in West Virginia, bolted for Michigan less than a year later and then tried to back out of paying the price? And now, after the worst year ever in Ann Arbor, you knuckle-slap the fans? Maybe it's you that ought to be looking for a life, Rich.
Jason Shinn was Crossroads first paid youth pastor and Jess was our first unpaid part-time Youth Pastoress (or priestess?) With the dream of someday having their own summer-getaway beside an express way drainage ditch, they moved to Ohio. When they made the move, part of the deal was that we would have huge parties for them at a moments notice whenever they come back into town.
I miss having Jay around. He and I have similar loves of mockery and cinema and I like being able to just hang out with Jay and soak in his cynicism.
My girls were in heaven. Jess lived with us for a year and she is like a big sister to them. Jess came face-to-face with the consequences of her oddness being passed down to both of my girls. It's amazing how much one year can twist two little girl's fashion senses and senses of humor. Besides Jess, my girls other favorite people and baby-sitters were there, like Tiff and Katie. I love having my kids grow up with a group like this.
Saturday was no different except that this was a costume party. Stephanie Lyons was the only one gullible enough to wear a costume. I quickly through on a sombrero, a pancho and my sweet 'ol mustache to be a bandito so that Stephanie wouldn't feel awkward in her outfit from 1980.
We had a slew of people show up, including the people in the pictures, but limited to them. We hung out in the kitchen until there was no more room, and then we moved to the living room, until that got full too. We split things up and got a giant game of uno going along with Halo in the family room.
It was just a ton of laughing, mocking and pointing out how Reagan looked like a homeless person in a nice outfit.
Jason has a theory that he can't take a picture with just one other man without it having gay overtones. I think the picture below proves his point.
We lost some people somwhere before this shot was taken, but it's a big 'ol happy group. 
You can see the rest of the pictures here in Picasa.
On Friday we over to Cathie's parents for a little tamer version of thanksgiving. We had turkey and pork tenderloin and ate until we were ready to burst. Ed and I hung out in the den most of the afternoon trying to rid his laptop of a virus.
Lola and Justice (Ed and Stacy's youngest child/dog) hung out played together. 
Ed was very proud of his new hat. He kept trying to tell us that "Pink is the new black". Ed and Stacy live down in Dayton and I'd been telling them about Phil Wing's church, Apex. I called Phil and he promised that he would make sure they came on a day that didn't have snake-handling or "give-all-your-money-to-Jesus" day. He also promised not to ask Ed and Stacy any personal questions pertaining to me that might provide any future fodder.
Everyone but Ed and I hung out playing cards in the other room. I was disappointed that I didn't get a single nap in on Thursday, but it was a nice laid back Thanksgiving with everyone.
You can see the rest of the pictures here in Picasa.
Em occasionally sleeps with this weird sleep mask. I went in to check on her to find the cat in a head-lock and Em in her creepy penguin mask.
On Thursday, we celebrated Thanksgiving at my Dad's house. There were a slew of us, including my Dad's wife Judy, her Mom and some of her kids and grandkids. My Dad found a thanksgiving prayer to read (we think his impromptu prayers are just fine, but he has very high standards for his communication with God).
My Dad pre-soaked both of the turkeys in brine for 24 hours before and it made them amazingly tender. My step-brother Mark took the blue ribbon with his sweet-potatoes, which I confiscated and have been eating with every meal since Thursday.
We used the time to celebrate a slew of Birthdays, including Gabe and Matthews. Normally we combine Matthew's birthday with Christmas and just give him a $5 bill in addition to his Christmas gifts. I'm not sure why we're treating it any different this year. We got them both a tissue box with $20 in singles hidden inside.
I was very proud to see so many Kurt's sporting their Spartan wear proudly.
Gavin is my step-brother Mark's son. It was funny watching all of the kids play. Maddie and Em thought he was the cutest thing ever, showing her friends pictures of her cute little step-cousin. The boys kept saying how loud he was and kept interrupting their video games, which was hilarious, as we kept reminding them how they were about 10 times louder when they were that age, and 10 times more annoying.
Even though the Lions were dismal, we found a reason to all take a nap and watch the game.
We later celebrated even more birthdays, done with the most god-awful singing you can imagine, but one that we find very amusing.
In the tradition of getting my Dad gifts that he'll never use, Dan and Kris got my Dad a laser level that you need to use these x-men style goggles to truly see the beam. We all took turns, of course, wearing the goggles. My mustache made them look even cooler.
You can see the rest of the pictures here in Picasa.
Our first Kurt family dirty mustache race was met with mixed reviews. We had two true contestants - my brother Jon and I. Dan and Kevin are not able to grow a mustache (some believe it is due to their hormone replacement therapy), so they used strap-on mustaches (which are not allowed, according to the contest by-laws.
Our step-brother Mark participated, but with an existing gotee, which doesn't really count either. The winner (obviously) was me. Jon's brother-in-law Paul was very angry about the whole contest. Susan took this picture, which was one of the oddest, more poorly staged pictures she's ever taken.
While checking in for my flight on Monday, I stumbled across a new feature on Northwest's web site. It offered me the ability to have an electronic boarding pass, which seemed kinda cool. It sent a link to my iPhone, which I was able to pull up on my screen. The screen shows a 3D barcode and your flight info. Rather cool, especially for NWA, who is rare on the cutting edge of anything.
I never got around to reading the e-Boarding instructions that NWA has on their web site so I printed off a paper copy as well. I went through security and they scanned the screen on my iPhone on a new reader they have at DTW. It showed up my name and flight info, the second time. Apparently you have to have a clean screen, otherwise it won't read your ticket.
I went through security and got to my gate. The reader couldn't read it at the gate, and I didn't want to be "That Guy" who holds everyone up, so I handed them my paper ticket. This is just plain cool technology. Most business travelers have devices like a blackberry or iPhone that will work with this technology. It saves me the pain of having to print off a ticket, and saves on the paper as well. One less thing I have to remember, and one less thing to lose.
You can read this article for more info.
Good article on Anne Mulcahy, Xerox's CEO, entitled America's Best Leaders. In the article, she comments on what my group does:
Mulcahy is once again transforming Xerox—the plain paper copier company. Her new vision? She wants to eliminate paper in the office altogether and become the company that manages digital content.
Not usually a big John Piper fan, but I dig the line at the end:
God i most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him in the midst of loss, not prosperity.
I was reflecting on my post last night about not having my job define me. I was thinking this morning that over the past three weeks, that's pretty much exactly what it's done. I've been caught up in trying to figure out what I'm going to do "next". One of the great things about a big company is that they change and that you're given opportunities to move laterally and vertically. We reorganize and it's not uncommon for my job to change radically, or for me to be given the opportunity to take a very new position.
The crazy thing with my job is that I wake up just about every day looking forward to doing my job. I've worked virtual, out of my home, for the past 12 years and I love it. I like the people I work, I like most of the customers I get to work with and I like the challenge of what I do. To top it all off, I really believe in the stuff my company does and I love the company I work for. Most of the time. At the end of the day, those are the most important things. Money factors in to the fact that I want all of those job elements in a place where I'm valued. One of the ways my company expresses that value is through money. I'm a firm believer that if you love what you do, you'll be great at it, and in my line of business, that translates into money. I always find a way to spend what I've got, so while making more is nice, it's not on the top of my list really.
It seems like every 18 months to 2 years, I get an itch to change what I'm doing. I reach a point where my job stops challenging me. I can do the job too easily and I'm feeling too comfortable with it. At that point, I get restless. I want to do something new that makes me "uncomfortable" all over again. Something that pushes me to be better. I'm not a huge fan of being stationary. Being still just doesn't feel right.
I'd started looking at my options a few months back, most of them within my company. I'd identified a few that looked pretty interesting. I'd narrowed it down to one job that seemed silly to take. It was more work and more stress in a new group with a new job supporting a very challenging, very visible customer in a new way with more travel. The real upside of this would be the challenge. It was way outside of what I'm comfortable with, more in an operations role working as more of a general manager over $30M+ customer. I poured over this decision and even after I'd decided, the timing fell through and I'm taking a new job that I was promoted into. It's one I've done before and I'm pretty comfortable with, but I'm having to start from scratch to pull my team together. I've now got to figure out how to turn this into a role that will stretch me, when frankly it seems like it's standing still. On the positive side, I have a great job that I'm very good at, with people I like working with and that pays me well. I can't really complain, and I'm not.
Dan sent me this video of Myth Busters giant paintball gun at an NVIDIA graphics card press conference. They create a smiley face with single robotic paintball gun and then show the power of NVIDIA with a giant parallel paintball gun processor. Fast forward to about 3:18 to see the first robot and then 8 minutes to see the giant gun.
I almost never talk to people that I sit next to on the plane. I talk to enough new people in my job that by the time I get on a plane, I'm pretty much ready to get into my paper, my book or my e-mail.
The guy in the seat next to me saw that my mac was running parallels and we struck up some small talk. He, like me, doesn't usually talk to the guy next to him either. The conversation went from macs, to where we're from and where we were going to the standard 'what line of work are you in' conversation. It turns out he's a professional climber. Seemed like a conversation worth continuing.
I had no idea what this entailed, so I started asking questions. Lots of them. When Chris was 12 he had five goals that he wrote down, including: Having a big house with a pool, a Porsche, a million dollars, a dog and climbing Mt. Everest. Four years ago, Chris left a VP level job with American Express to fulfill his dream to climb Mt. Everest. He's since scaled 6 of the 7 tallest peaks in the world, including K2. He gets just enough sponsorship and the occasional speaking gig to pay the bills. He told me about the difficulty levels and what's involved in a climb in terms of endurance, risk management and decision making. He told me the story of his K2 expedition where 11 of the 24 people in his party died. He had decided to turn back on the final ascent, the other 11 did not. Wow. Great choice, in hind-sight. He showed me some pictures from the peak of Everest along with pictures of one of the guys who got frost bite on all of his toes (the before picture) and had to have them all amputated (the after picture).
He had some great stories about his travels and expeditions, and even his training (running and biking at Island Lake and Kensington when he's in Michigan). Great guy, very humble, very interesting to talk to. I'd love to bring him in to come and talk at a corporate event around teams, risk and goals.
What struck me is that he left his job to do something he loves. While we were talking, his story reminded me of Thoreau's line about how "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them." (this is about the only line I can quote from Thoreau). We talked about the people that we know in corporate america who live their lives only looking to get the bigger house or car, their worlds revolving around their jobs, their success and acquisition. Neither of us want to be that guy.
I like to think that I'm the kind of guy whose world is bigger than his job. As a result, I don't always take myself as seriously as some would like in a company where people typically take themselves very seriously. I have some senior management in my company who look at me as a bit of an anomaly and are at times hesitant about putting me into certain roles because of this. At the end of the day, the results that I'm able to drive with the teams that I'm given speak for themselves. My world is not my job and as a result, some people are drawn to that and others don't know how to deal with me.
It made me think about how thankful I am to have a job where I wake up every day loving what I do. I'm thankful for the people I have in my life who are willing to give me a reality check when I think I'm getting too big for myself. I'm thankful that I get to work with a bunch of junior high kids in my church that could care less how much money I make, what my title is, whether I can close a $20M deal or have a conversation with a Fortune 50 CIO.
I went to see my doctor today to see how my cholesterol medicine was doing and to get a flu shot. Dr. Kaminski has been my doc, and that of a bunch of my friends, for a while. He's roughly my age and happens to be a wolverine fan. He's got some big 'ol fat head decals of wolverine helmets and other U of M paraphernalia in the offices.
When I came in, I happened to take a couple shots at his team. When he came in to see me, he had a big 'ol crow bar and wrench in his hand and announced, 'time for the prostate exam. we've got a VERY new technique'. I explained that while my brother Dan may get the occasional voluntary prostate exam, I'm not old enough yet.
As he left, he told the nurse to bring in the 'rusty spartan needle' for the flu shot. The nurse came in with this syringe with a nice 3 inch needle filled with tar. Gotta remember to pick who I antagonize a little more carefully.
When I saw the title of this book, I thought the author was Will Brown. Wouldn't that be ironic? Comon Will, that's funny stuff there.
Due to a DirecTV glitch, my whole list of recordings got nuked. Here's what I'm watching with some regularity:
- Fringe
- The IT Crowd
- Testees
- The Big Bang Theory
- Heroes
- My Own Worst Enemy
- Sons of Anarchy
- My Name is Earl
- The Office
- Best Week Ever
These are some of the Reality Type TV shows that I watch:
- Dirty Jobs - The whole family watches this one.
- MythBusters - Nate, Maddie and I dig this.
- SurvivorMan - Maddie and I watch this together.
- Prototype This - Nate and I watch this together
- How It's Made - Again, Nate and I.
- Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew - Cathie and I never miss this.
This year has been a weird travel year for me. I had a four month window in the middle of the year where my travel was dialed back to maybe once a month. The upside of this is that I've been home a lot more and very productive, with a pretty flexible schedule. The "downside", and I'm not sure it's really a downside, is that it doesn't look like I'm going to hit all of my elite travel statuses.
You may be rolling your eyes and thinking, "prima donna". Not the case. When you travel a lot and you're away from your family, it's the little things that make it easier. Things like being able to quickly get out of the rental car lot when you're running late to a meeting, being at the front of the plane, not having to check your luggage because you board early and can get your bags on the plane.
Here's where I'm at:
National Emerald Executive - I think I'm on track to hit this. It gives me automatic upgrades, a select group of cars and not getting gouged for not refueling my car.
Hilton Diamond - I may be a a few stays shy, but it's a rolling window, so I will likely catch up pretty quickly. This gives me some pretty amazing room upgrades. I'm talking penthouse suite level upgrades. They treat their diamond members pretty well, most of the time.
Northwest Gold - This is the most important one to me, and not just for the first class. It lets me bypass lines through security, pick the premium seats ahead of time and some other nice perks. This one will suck to lose. I'll probably only hit silver, which gives only a fraction of those perks. I'll probably end the year about 10k miles shy of where I need to be. My options are to spend the money and take a trip that will rack up 10k miles for me to help put me over the threshold. This may sound crazy, but you'd be amazed at how many people you talk to at the end of December who are flying for the miles.
I got the airport with my usual 45 minutes to spare and got to my gate without a problem. If you've never been to Detroit Metro Airport, it's a great airport, but it's about a mile long from end to end, to to mention the new middle terminals. I headed to my gate at A6, only to find that it had been moved to A76 at the opposite end of the airport. Stuff happens. I headed over to A76, only to find that it was now at A20, back on the other end of the airport.
I guess we all know that plenty of older people live in Florida. I have confirmed that based on these Florida flights in the winter. Holy cow. The average age on that flight is 70 with 20 wheelchairs lined up. The elderly are very demanding in first class. I feel bad for the flight attendants because most of the older people have completely lost their filters, as older people (Dad) tend to do.
In order to avoid flying out on Sunday night, I had timed things with getting to my meeting to the minute, assuming that my flight would get in about 12:30, as it had the past couple of trips down. We were delayed and I ended up getting into West Palm Beach about 20 minutes late. I chose the Dodge Charger with the HEMI in it and started on my 50 mile drive at 1:15 North to Port St. Lucie where my meeting was being held at 2, normally about a 1 hr 15 minute drive. I made it in the door, to the meeting at 2:01, very proud of myself, only to find that the meeting had been shifted to 4:00. And then I found ten bucks.*
*The "And then I found $10" is a phrase we've adopted in our family from Megan and Katie Green. They'll use this phrase if they're in the middle of a story and determine that as they're telling it, it's really not that interesting. The problem is, that our kids have now picked up on this. We'll be sitting at the dinner table and Emily will start to tell a rambling story, as 7 year olds are prone to do. Nate will quickly jump in with the "And then I found $10" as Cathie and I both give our undivided attention to Em's story. We used to do the same thing with their jokes when they were little, once feigning laughter at the 100th "Why did the chicken cross the road" joke got old. Of course, this was after a certain age, and only after if the joke made no sense at all. Probably explains a lot about our dinner table conversations, huh?
This Thanksgiving will add a brand new tradition to the Kurt Family - the dirty mustache contest. My brother Jon has a big head start on me and his mustache has been getting rave reviews. People love a good mustache and tend to give you free stuff and avoid fights just on the fear of having to tangle with a mustache wearing person.
I've got big plans for my mustache and I've arranged my travel schedule so that I have the next ten days leading up to Thanksgiving to grow this baby out. The hardest part will be for my wife, who can't keep her hands off me when I have a good mustache going. She simply finds it irresistible. It's difficult for me to continually remind her that I have a job to do during the day and can't spend the day frolicking around.
Em and I got our picture taken with this monkey named Silas at the pet Expo. This monkey was the coolest thing ever. After he was done with the picture he turned around and gave me a hug. It could truly see myself happy with a help monkey of my own. He could get my remote control for me when I'm too lazy to get up and get it. He could get me a beer from the fridge and discipline the kids for me when I want to take a nap. I would have a laser pointer that I could use to direct him.
I might even teach him to read my mind so that I could have him dance on command.
Em and I spent the day at the Novi Pet Expo. If you know Em, you know she loves animals more than anything in the world. She looks at animals the way Jesus looks at people. She sees the good in every animal. It doesn't matter how ugly or old the animal is, scaly or slimy, she loves them all.
The Pet Expo was a collection of animal shows, rescue shelters, dog breeders and specialty animal training and toy groups. We spent three hours walking around the pet expo today, wandering up and down the aisles, back and forth, stopping in to see the same groups of pets 3 or 4 times each. You could pet all sorts of animals from dogs, to snakes and lizards. We even got our picture taken with a chimpazee, which was really cool. The dog on the left weighed 230lbs. It was huge!
There were a group of bird rescuers, all of them wearing these fancy bibs on their shoulders to prevent themselves from getting pooped on. Emily must have pet 100 different puppies, loving each one.
The snake on the left was a huge albino python and the collection on the right was a bunch of different kinds of snakes from another rescue shelter. She looked at every kind of snake. I'd be up for adding one of these to the Kurt family menagerie, but Cathie doesn't really like snakes, to put it midly (her exact words were, "If Dad had brought one home I would have taken the snake out and run it over with the lawn mower.")
She spent a while petting the greyhounds, and then we played with this sugar glider. It's kind of part squirrel and part bat, kind of a flying squirrel. The guy put it on the back of my hand and had me lift my hand above my head. It jumped off and flew to the guy, opening it's arms wide enough to glide.
This guy did some "magic tricks" and then brought out some pretty cool animals, like this crocodile, a cobra and a sloth.
We also found a bunch of groups that would be perfect for Ed, Stacy and their dog Justice. One group, the Dog Scouts of America, let you take your dog on different trips where you can both earn merit badges. Another group does choreographed dances with their dogs. Stacy would love this!
The more "interesting" group was the Fancy Rat association. They collect rats, love them and dress them up. I guess. They REALLY seemed to love their rats.
The puppy continues to be cute and clueless about being potty trained. He's got this weird thing he does with Maddie's hair, and only Maddie's hair. She loves to pull on it. She'll grab it with her mouth, yank on it and grab it with her paws.
Riley is no longer scared of the puppy and actually enjoys wrestling with her, most of the time. It's the first time I've seen Riley try and be the alpha dog with another animal. The cat has bullied Riley around since she was a kitten, but Riley regularly pins Lola down when they wrestle. It's hilarious to watch.
Cathie has a love/hate passive/agressive relationship with the puppy. One minute she hates the puppy for all the accidents in the house, another minutes she's cuddling and talking to her like a baby. We're trying to potty train the dog and teach it to ring a bell by the back door when she has to go to the bathroom. She actually did it today for the first time.
Maddie was class rep in 3rd grade, postmaster last year and was nominated for the class rep position again this year. On her own, she started working on her speech.
She did not take my suggestions to disparage her competition using innuendo like,
"I'm not saying that my competition hates puppies punches babies, but do you really want to take that risk in voting for her? I love puppies and babies!"
Here's what she came up with all on her own:
As you all know, I'm Maddie Kurt and I am running for Mrs. Hares Class Representative. The qualities I have that would make me a good class representative would be that I am responsible. I would make sure that I wrote down everything we talked about and will make sure all the information gets to you.
Another quality have is that I have had experience. I was a Class Representative in Third Grade. I know what to do and I will be able to get the hang of things a bit quicker. I promise I will be at the meetings on time and ask for YOUR input. i will ask for any ideas you have or I think are good ideas. For example I could ask for a divide yourself in half day, where you could divide yourself in half with mismatching clothes down the middle, at the waist , Or Both! Or maybe we could come up with fun fundraisers for Active Faith or different charities. Also I could ask if maybe at lunch we could ask for a pizza party where a pizza place comes in and we could have pizza! This one is a long shot but maybe we could have a movie/video game one night after school. We could maybe have a day where we could do crafts at recess or bring our dolls or stuffed animals out to recess.
The last trait I have that would make me a good Class Representative is I love to help people. I want to help the people and the school to be more fun. Remember, vote for Maddie Kurt and I will keep all these promises I made in this speech.
Back in September, Kevin and I ran in the local Witches Hat 10k run. I was surprised to see a friend that I'd hadn't seen some time running in the race Andy (now known as Andrew) Hively. He was behind me for the first 6 miles and then came out of nowhere the last .2 miles and we sprinted the last part of the race together.
I thought Andy had beat me by one second, but it turns out that I won. Andy posted a picture on Facebook that was pretty much just like this one. You know what they say: a picture is worth a thousand words. Apparently this other doctored picture made it onto the internet as well, but it's very obvious that it's been doctored:
For the most part, I have no idea who reads my blog. I go through ups and downs in the frequency, but lately, I've been putting more effort into Facebook stuff instead of my blog. I guess either my life has been pretty boring lately, I've been busy, or just haven't felt like writing anything down.
I received the following note from a couple of friends at work, Cyndi and Silas, who read my blog and have no qualms in telling me what they think about it:
Cyndi and I feel your blog has been really lacking good content over the past few weeks. To be honest you changed the backdrop and called that a revitalization and its no different then changing the wallpaper from roses to daffodils while keeping the fixtures and toilet the same. In the past it was fun, had technology tips, and made me want to go visit it. It used to be something we visited for enjoyment and pleasure reading, but lately.. Well.. It’s really not cutting it and I have moved it to the later part of my day instead of the first part as it just doesn’t excite me anymore. Perhaps in your new found extra time, since no big deals are beings signed, you can sign up for one of those online courses to help you improve your blogging skills. I am not sure where you can go for this but I am sure we will here about it in your blog as this might be the only thing you have right now to blog about.Some might say Cyndi and Silas have too much time on their hands. Some might say that Silas is the Haji to my Johnny Quest. I was laughing as I read this note to my wife. Her response:
We hate to sound so harsh but friends should not let friend’s blog like you have in the past few weeks.
I've been thinking the same thing. Your blog's been pretty boring lately. Just lots of pictures. Nothing really that interesting.
Cathie and Emily were at McDonald's the other day and had this conversation:
Emily: "Mom, what's that person behind the counter doing."
Cathie: "She's making french fries."
Emily: "Whoah! I am so working at McDonalds when I get older!"
My brother Dan sent me sent me this collection of big hits in Pee Wee football, including this kid getting drilled:
I'm a huge fan of Plantronics in terms of headsets. I use a Plantronics CS70N wireless headset in my office and a Plantronics Voyager 510 for my mobile phone. I have tiny ears and the Voyager fit my ear very nicely and seemed to have pretty decent sound quality on both ends of the line.
A couple of months ago, a friend gave me one of his extra Jawbone earpieces. He'd lost it, found it and didn't need two. I used it for a while and was amazed at the quality of the sound and noise canceling ability. I was walking through the airport, between the A and B/C terminals in an area with blaring psychedelic music going, talking to Cathie on the phone. The music was loud enough that I could barely hear Cathie, so I assumed she couldn't hear me. The Jawbone actually cancelled out the background noise to the point that Cathie's could barely hear it. The wind noise reducition was so-so with this headset.
My only problem with the Jawbone 1 was that it didn't fit my freakishly small ears very well. It was tough to get on and felt flimsy once I had it on my ear. I looked around and picked up a Jawbone 2 new on eBay for about $35+$20 for a charger. The new headset fits much better, is half the weight, and the noise cancelling quality is even better. I was on the phone with Silas yesterday in a wind storm and he could barely hear the wind in the background. (As a side note, Silas was sharing with me his view on how India will someday enslave America, but that he will take good care of me when that day comes. How very thoughtful of him.)
I'm in a rut again as I'm transitioning my workout for the winter months. I'm still exercising five days a week, but I haven't got a real rhythm going yet. I've been lifting most days, but I'm trying to keep running as part of my routine. The running part is hard with the cold and my increased travel recently. I dropped about 30 lbs, down to my lowest of 180lbs from 208. I'm hovering at about 187lbs now, which is decent.
I've been lifting over the past couple of weeks with one of the high school guys from my youth group, Rodney. I've been trying to impart some of the wisdom I've learned from Kirk, and originally even from Brad over the years. It was close to ten years ago that I started working out with Brad and he taught me how to lift weights. We went through a bunch of cycles of the Body-for-Life program, along with Wilbur and the three of us would work out together pretty regularly.
The girls had a mother-daughter Girl Scout tea-party on Saturday. The girls had the chance to learn how to set the tables, serve properly and use their best manners. Nate and I hung out at home and did guy stuff. Way more fun.
I attended an etiquette dinner in college. I shared with my parents all these great manners I'd learned and there response was, "Really?!" (Said in a Kasey kind of way). Apparently my parents had been teaching me the exact same manners all my life and I sorta missed it. They would roll their eyes as I would share with them the gems I'd learned in the class which they'd taken credit for. What goes around, comes around.
A couple years ago I bought a Canon Digital Rebel XTS. At the time, I bought the extended warranty for $99. It seemed like a good idea at the time based on it being a $1,000 camera. The camera seemed to die every time I would go on vacation. I brought it in four times and on the fifth time, they replaced it. They gave me a brand new Canon Digital Rebel XSi.
The new camera is great with a number of great new features. The downside is that I had to buy new memory cards (it takes SD memory cards instead of Compact Flash), new spare batteries and $199 on the new service protection plan. The nice thing about the plan is that it covers accidental (and maybe intentional damage) for four years from today, but it'll probably be worth it in the end. Hey, my $400 plan on a $5000 TV got me a brand new TV a few months ago.
The last words you want to hear your wife say after coming in from a date:
"Ewww! I thought I was picking up a leaf and just picked up a #$#@ piece of Lola's poop!"
Also, the wrong response to the situation is to bust into laughter. Apparently that makes your wife chase your around with poop on her finger. Not good.
Two of my idols (some would say crushes) are on Obama's economic team: Anne Mulcahy (Xerox's CEO) and Warren Buffett. (Hopefully they offset the lunacy of Michigan's Govenor and her failed policies, who is also on the team) I'd heard Anne Mulcahy talk about her personal politics at a Business Week symposium I attended in Manhattan. Regardless of her political views, I hold her in the highest esteem in terms of her ability to lead thorugh economic crisis, as she's done multiple times at Xerox. She understands culture, leadership and transition better than any leader I've seen.
Warren Buffett is an interesting bird. On one hand, he's the wealthiest man in the world with a wealth ranked earlier this year at $62 billion. He's brilliant, humble and frugal. On the flip side, he plans on giving away all of his wealth, with the majority of it going to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. He believes the rich should pay more to help those less fortunate. I've read and watched everything I can on the man because his simplification of the business world fascinates me. I also like his view on philantrophy:
I don't have a problem with guilt about money. The way I see it is that my money represents an enormous number of claim checks on society. It's like I have these little pieces of paper that I can turn into consumption. If I wanted to, I could hire 10,000 people to do nothing but paint my picture every day for the rest of my life. And the GNP would go up. But the utility of the product would be zilch, and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS research, or teaching, or nursing. I don't do that though. I don't use very many of those claim checks. There's nothing material I want very much. And I'm going to give virtually all of those claim checks to charity when my wife and I die.Paul and Jon may hate both of these people, but I respect them both greatly.
My Uncle took this picture when we were kids. Kind of encapsulates our relationship growing up. Much improved now.
Nate started wrestling practice last night. It's his first year and he was a little nervous going into it. He decided that this year instead of playing basketball in the fall he'd wrestle. I wrestled in 7th grade (82lb weight class) on the middle school wrestling team (along with Matt Tomlinson, whose not in this picture).
Nate is one of four kids out of 40 that haven't wrestled before, plus he's one of the smaller guys (73 lbs). I'm so proud of the way Nate is willing to try new stuff like this, even knowing that's it's going to be tough going in the beginning. Wrestling runs a little different than Panthers. It's a team sport where people compete as individuals. Starting in January, they have meets during weekend that they go to. The coaches are there to support them, along with the rest of the team when they're not competing in their own events. Practices are 3 days a week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday for two hours per night. It's great for Nate because it keeps him busy and active, not to mention what he learns from wrestling.
Emily (to her friend Kirstin) about our dog Lola:
"Lola is sooo hyper. She's even hyper-alergenic"
My brother Jon had seats to the game and every time they played music during time-outs, Jon would get up and dance:
Nate and I went to the MSU vs. Wisconsin game yesterday with one of his football coaches and his son. It was a perfect day for college football. The colors at MSU had turned, it was just cool enough to feel like fall yet sunny enough to not have to wear a jacket.
We had great seats on the North End of the end-zone about the 20th row up. We were right up front to watch Javon Ringer run this one in.
MSU's offense was hurting a bit with Ringer recovering from the flu and Mark Dell injured, but it was still an amazing game to be Nate's first MSU football game ever. The crowd was on it's feet the whole fourth quarter going nuts, causing Wisconsin to take a couple of penalties due to the noise. The place went nuts when Wisconsin's coach drew penalties for his sideline behavior.
Winning the game with seven seconds left put the crowd over the top. There were high-fives and conversations with total strangers.
My sister-in-law Beth is famous. The local news did a clip on her as a working Mom. For the record, Beth does not actually do her own children's hair. She has people to do that. Skip to about 1:30 in the video and you'll see Beth (and Jon in the background).
