Looking Back In Thankfulness

As the new year readies itself to hurl unexpected twists and turns into life, I cant help but think back over the last year with love and thankfulness to all that made an impact in my life over the last 12 months.

Pardon me while I write this stuff down for me. For my recollections some distant time in the future. Its rather personal, and I would assume completely boring for anyone else, so you can leave now.

My Father (the heavenly one), for sustaining me, providing for my family and me, and for continuing to love me despite my failures, mistakes, sin, selfishness, anger and shortcomings. It never ceases to amaze me that there is nothing I can do that would make Him love me less, or more.

My wife Michelle, for her love and thoughtfulness. For caring so amazingly well for our children, me and our home. For the overtime hours she always works in managing the household, cooking, cleaning, taxi driving, grocery shopping, errand running and a million other things. She is an amazing woman and I am completely blessed to have her.

For my four beautiful girls. They are growing in grace and loveliness, with kind hearts and thoughtful minds, smart, funny, witty, musical, artistic, athletic, and so many other adjectives that I might exhaust the English language. I love them dearly and they have added so much to my life.

My parents, for always loving me even when I’m a sarcastic irritating jerk. For helping out just in the nick of time, and for loving my family so well.

My co-laborers, Steve, Lisa, John, Bob and many others, that are patiently and kindly teaching me a new business. And especially Steve for being such a great friend and supporter. I love him dearly and pray for him and his family as often as I can focus long enough to do so.

And of course my extended family and friends, for always being there for me and my family, for good times, impromptu coffee hang sessions, and fun celebrations and gatherings. They all mean so much to me.

As the new year begins, I can think of really only one resolution that matters- that I slow down and take the time to be thankful and express it to those around me as the year progresses, and not wait until Dec. 31st of next year.

Memorial Day Olympics

On Memorial Day we went a step further than your ordinary backyard barbeque.

We invited family and friends over for a feast including hamburgers, hotdogs, chicken satay, Italian sausage, and all the trimmings, followed by some vigorous exercise to work off the massive carbohydrate, protein and fat intake.

The exercise? Backyard Olympics. I warned everyone ahead of time, and all said they were eager to join in. But when the appointed time arrived the complaints poured in. Evidently everyone ate too much and wanted to just sit down and get lazy. I insisted, and bullied everyone outside to start the games.

We had a total of 16 people, making 3 teams of 5 work quite well (the sixteenth player was my 2 year old nephew... he was kind of a floater, playing, or not playing, as the mood struck him, for any team he happened to be near.

The scoreboard was laid out meticulously, and the teams predetermined (and vetted by my wife and kids) to ensure skills, abilities, and the lack thereof, were spread evenly amongst the teams.

Of course I was somehow able to make sure Mike (my sister-in-law’s boyfriend), a police officer and former 101st Airborne member, was on my team. Funny how that worked out.

We won.

Christmas- Day

Good news for all peoples! Christ is born in Bethlehem!

A wonderful morning with my wife and kids, a relaxing afternoon, and a huge Christmas dinner with extended family.

What could be better? I’ll tell you. My sister Carla volunteered to cook and host the annual family gathering at her house this year- the first year in… I don’t know how many… that Michelle didn’t have to rush around like a crazy person starting at 9AM Christmas morning to get a meal for 15+ people ready by 4PM in the afternoon.

A very restful and peaceful day, followed by a 30min drive to my sister’s that allowed us to just show up, eat and drink, and then leave.

Wow. I hope she does it again next year!

Opinion Changed Twice In Two Minutes

Last night we had the last celebration of K’s fourteenth birthday. K wanted to have dinner at one of her favorite restaurants, Pei Wei Asian Diner. I can always eat there, but our two youngest don’t enjoy it at all. We stopped by Taco Bell drive-through to get them a few soft tacos.

We arrived at Pei Wei, ordered our food, and started wandering through the bustling restaurant trying to find a table. After finding nowhere to sit our group of 6, Michelle and the girls stood in a corner while I vultured around the people eating looking for the next table that might come available. I got lucky and grabbed two small tables next to each other, pulled them together, and grabbed a nearby unused chair to make a table for five. A & R, our youngest, had to share one of them for us to barely fit at the table.

Our food arrived, and as we ate Michelle remarked that Pei Wei used to have a person watching the parties coming in the door and ensure a table is reserved as each orders. It had been awhile since we were there, but they always used to do that. I agreed and thought perhaps they had cut the position to save costs, or just didn’t care anymore. I started thinking that maybe the food wasn’t as good either, and it was awfully loud.

Just then a very nice lady came to our table, apologized that she has been stuck in the back when we came in and ended up at this small table, and had two staffers come over, quickly clean off a nearby table, and pull it up to ours, giving us another chair, plenty of room, and additional apologies.

Suddenly clouds parted and the sun shined. It was, once again in our mind, as good a place as it had ever been. One person makes a huge difference in how customers perceive a product or service.






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A Stray Shot

The Fourth of July was a blast. Our annual tradition of fireworks at home went off without a hitch, even though we were worried the lack of rain would provide ample fuel for a wildfire. We had a fire extinguisher at the ready and figured we could handle any small blazes that popped up from falling cinders.

Ron and Joy and their two kids were staying with us all week, and my parents came over for the celebration. Playing in the pool until dinner, Hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill, tons of side items, and then the fireworks.

I guess there was on hitch I will mention. Ron and I handled the fireworks duty, and all was going well until I came up with the idea of shooting off two artillery shells at the same time. I set up the launch tubes, and Ron and I stood ready to light them off simultaneously. It went wrong.

I must have lit mine a second before Ron did, and when my shot went off the thrust of the it knocked over the other launch tube. When it went off it launched horizontally (we had our launch tubes set up on a table about 4 feet of the ground in the middle of the back yard) right towards where we all were standing. Including the kids.

For a second I thought about how beautiful it was, and how amazing the explosion looked so close to the ground. Then my brain went into gear and I realized if the tube landed a few inches to the left on the table one of our kids could have taken a shot to the gut. I also realized that where the shot landed at the edge of the treeline there are mounds of old grass clippings- a fire was sure to follow. Ron grabbed the fire extinguisher and did fire watch duty by the trees while I continued the show. A bit more cautiously than before.






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Good Friday Contrast

I thought it would be interesting to take the words of Isaiah, a prophet from among the Jews, written almost a thousand years before the crucifixion of Christ, and contrast them with the words of the New Testament. Interesting and contemplative reading during this important day:

ISAIAH (750 years before the birth of Jesus)
"Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.

MATTHEW
Jesus said “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

ISAIAH (750 years before the birth of Jesus)
“Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations.”

LUKE
and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased."

ISAIAH (750 years before the birth of Jesus)
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted.

MARK
The soldiers led Jesus away into the palace and called together the whole company of soldiers. They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him. And they began to call out to him, "Hail, king of the Jews!" Again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and spit on him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him. And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him.

ISAIAH (750 years before the birth of Jesus)
But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

JOHN
So the soldiers took charge of Jesus. Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull. Here they crucified him (nailed him to the cross), and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle. Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS. Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, "Do not write 'The King of the Jews,' but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews." Pilate answered, "What I have written, I have written."






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Follow The Leader

Yesterday I did something I RARELY ever do. Something I despise. I would rather have hot irons poked in my eyes. I went to the mall.

It was a special occasion of course. What else would bring me there? Three of our girls pulled awesome grades in their ½ year reports. Our youngest, R, didn’t qualify as pre-schools have not yet started handing out grades. A is in second grade, and while good performance in that grade is wonderful there is something not quite exciting about getting an S (satisfactory progress) versus an NI (needs improvement). Somewhere around fourth grade the As, Bs, Cs, Ds and Es start to kick in.

K & L nailed wonderful grades yet again. We are very proud of them. K pulled an A in algebra (the final I helped her study for and wrote about in Write This Expression In Point Slope Form put her over the top)- that was the one subject that threatened the fait accompli.

The reward for the girls (including R- we couldn’t just leave her out in the cold just because she’s in pre-school) was a shopping spree at the mall. And so the fun began.

I brought my trusty Blackberry and so was able to occupy myself checking e-mail (honestly, 95% of the time was spent playing Texas Hold’em and Chess), and spent most of my time standing in front of each store, on the couches our mall has mercilessly installed for men, or hanging both arms on top of a garment rack while wondering if a pair of Jacks would win the pot.

While waiting in front of yet another store, I witnessed a three year old girl completely directing and orchestrating the life of her family. She decided she wanted to press the elevator button. Her dad allowed her, and mom and two other kids waited patiently. She then decided she wanted to continue pushing the button, non-stop, until the second-coming.

By the time the people on the second floor had loaded into the elevator and were ready for the adventurous journey to a lower level of hell, their departure was delayed by this sweet little three year old that was trying to save their eternal souls and keep them from their decent. Doors closing, button pushed again, doors open, repeat. (By the way, after thinking about this a few minutes, I think the parallels between a mall and hell are amazingly numerous. Perhaps I will delve into that another day).

The dad was trying to gently direct the little one away from the elevator and back to the circular path to nowhere everyone else on the second floor was mindlessly walking. She would have none of it. She had mastered the squinch-down, drop, twist and roll maneuver that popped her out on the backside of dad and made a bee-line for the elevator button yet again as the doors were closing. Mom and the other kids just sat there watching, most likely accustomed to delays caused by this wonderful little girl.

This continued for a couple minutes, and as dad tried to get a bit more forceful, the girl got more emotional and started crying, screaming and throwing a tizzy-fit. As it continued, and as I watched a growing crowd of onlookers lose patience, it took all that was in me to hold me back. With every ounce of my being I wanted to walk up the man and say “For the sake of all that is good, man, get control of your three year old, pick her up and administer whatever discipline is necessary to get control of your families life back into their own hands. If you don’t, I will.”

Of course I said nothing. I just observed and was amazed. What finally got the girl to give up on the elevator button? She spotted something that was interesting in the opposite direction the family was originally headed and shot off. The rest of the family dutifully obeyed, reversed course, and fast-walked to catch up to the head of the household.







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The Burning Of The Christmas Tree 2007

A few weeks before the Christmas of 1989, Michelle and my first Christmas together as a married couple, my parents gave us a nice fake tree that they said would last us for years. It did. We used it for fourteen years straight, and it always looked wonderful.

In 2003 we made the switch to a real tree and we won’t go back. After the holidays, realizing that we no longer lived in the city limits of Franklin (we moved in the spring of that year) and left behind city garbage collection and Christmas tree removal, a new family tradition was born, and was practiced yet again today, January 13th, 2007:

The Burning Of The Christmas Tree

I know what you're probably thinking right about now- "It's the 13th! What took you so long! Christmas was 19 days ago for Christmas' sake."

Well, to successfully and safely execute “The Burning Of The Christmas Tree” you must have certain conditions present: No rain, relatively dry ground/fire pit, no wind, and time available to pull it all off. Over the last three weeks we just haven’t had all those things line up for us. Today they did- just barely.

We were just an hour or two from yet another rainstorm. It has been raining constantly here for weeks with just a few days off between storms. You can see from this radar image taken right about the time we lit up the tree that another storm was approaching. The red arrow is where our house is, and the yellow arrow is where K is- she is at camp this weekend, and missed the family tradition this year.

So, the tradition entails making sure all the decorations are off (Michelle did this the day after Christmas), the water is out of the tree stand reservoir (done this morning), and a clear walkway out the front door is made. We drop the tree onto a tarp, and haul it out the front door and place it on a small trailer hooked up to my mower.

Then off it goes to the fire pit at the back of our property.

I then dig a small hole in the middle of the pit for the tree trunk, and drop it in. You can burn a Christmas tree on its side, but you lose the towering inferno look I always look for in a burning Christmas tree.

Once positioned, it’s as simple as lighting the tiniest little branch sticking out from the bottom, and getting away. You have no doubt heard of the saying "Lit up like a Christmas tree." That old saying has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas lights strung carefully around a tree. No- its all about the nuclear fusion that takes place about 10 seconds after the tree really catches- 20 seconds, and everything is over.

Here is a photo montage of this years action. You can see the small flame that caught with the very first attempt...

Here we are at about T plus 5 seconds...

Now at T plus 10 seconds...

And finally a full 20 seconds after the first flame licked the bottom of the tree, it’s over.

The tradition is fun for the whole family- we all get out there and watch it burn up. One year we did it at night and it lit up the whole back yard.

Oh- this is the fire extinguisher my wife insists we bring out to “The Burning Of The Christmas Tree.” Ever since the fire I started in the yard a couple summers ago she just doesn’t trust me. More on that another day.

The tradition is fun, but there is something also sad about it. The Burning Of The Christmas Tree is the "period" to our family's annual sentence "Christmas is over."

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You Say It's Your Birthday

I was organizing some family pictures on our home network server this morning and stumbled on some old image files I had forgotten about.

On my birthday several years ago I arrived at the office to find my staff had plastered doctored photos of me throughout the building- walls, elevators, stairway halls, even the backs of the doors in the men’s room stalls.

Anyone who knows me knows I am a Beatles Fan to the 9th power. I got hooked, long after anyone really should have got hooked, when I was 8 years old in 1974- many years after Beatlemania subsided.

The birth and the zenith of the group happened before I was born, but when I was 8, my parents bought me my own personal record player (remember those bright plastic kiddie-players with the big plastic stubby arm and “Real Diamond Needle?”).

The player came with a starter set of records and one of them was “Yellow Submarine” by some group of no-name studio musicians that made kiddie versions of big songs.

It was my favorite recording of the set, and not long after that I remember walking into a Sears store with a buck burning a hole in my pocket. I went over to the record section (yes, Sears used to sell records) and found a Beatles record cheap. I looked and sure enough “Yellow Submarine” was on the tune stack. My mother warned me I wouldn’t like it- it didn’t sound anything like the songs I listened to on my record player, but I insisted. The challenge made me determined to “like” the Beatles.

Years and countless tapes, LPs, compact discs, posters and books later, I am a true fan.

I thought I would share the images I saw this morning that reminded me of my first record, a great birthday with old friends and co-workers, and the dare that set me on the path to collecting music.

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$10,000 Wedding Gift

I am not a heavy gambler, not even a moderate gambler. I have never taken a trip with buddies specifically to blow money at a casino, and I think the grand total number of times I have played poker for anything other than peanuts or valueless cheap plastic chips is 2 or 3 times in my life.

I do, however, enjoy a night at the casino every other year or so when I am in Las Vegas or New Orleans on business. When I have gone, I am always the quiet and careful guy at the $5 blackjack table whiling away the hours with a business associate or two while they bet and lose insane amounts of money. The people watching and light banter with table mates is really what I enjoy about it. Not to mention the occasional cigar.

A couple years ago on one such trip I found myself getting bored with the only casino game I know (I despise slot machines), and decided to tour the casino floor observing some of the more exciting games that elicited great shouts and applause from the other parts of the room.

As I wandered around I found myself attracted to the roulette tables. Craps seemed interesting, but too chaotic for me. I walked up to one table to observe how it was played. I really had no sense of the game other than what almost everyone knows about it- you put chips on a number and see if the little ball lands on it. That’s it.

I watched for a few minutes and thought I had a rough idea of how to play based on seeing players spread chips on different numbers, and reading the little plastic sign that gave a rough outline of rules and limits. I noticed that new players put cash on the table, and the guy that worked the table asked what value of chip was desired, and he exchanged the real money for the rubber/plastic disc shaped kind. I noticed that the table I was standing at had attracted a large number of observers, but I didn’t know why.

I pulled out my $100 bill. On occasions I do gamble, I take a $100 bill with me, and no other money. That’s the limit- if I lose it, its over. I placed it on the table, and the roulette table thingy was spun (not sure what that thing is called- a wheel?). I waited patiently for the guy to ask me what kind of chips I wanted ($1 chips of course), but nothing happened. I waited. The wheel starting slowing. I waited a bit longer. Something was amiss.

It turns out you can bet on other things than just numbers, and you can bet cash in addition to chips. For example, you can bet on sets of numbers (odd, even, 1st set of 12, 2nd set of 12, etc), and you can also bet on colors- Red or Black. The reason the table had attracted so many people is because the last 10 spins had resulted in black numbers, and a bunch of onlookers had been placing bets on red in hopes of doubling their money. I had placed my $100 bill right on top of the empty black space (the red space was piled high with various chips, cash and other valuables) and the roulette guy had assumed I was trying to double my money on black. I was horrified as I realized this moments before the little ball settled into its new home. My plan for a couple hours of once-every-few-years gambling was about to turn into 5 minutes.

It hit black. I doubled my money, and walked away. The next day I decided to give roulette one more try, but this time do it a bit more carefully. I found a table, and after some trial and error settled on a little system that seemed to work for me. There are 38 numbers on the wheel- 1 through 36, and then 0 and 00. I placed $18 in chips with each bet, $2 per number over 9 numbers laid out in blocks that covered roughly ¼ of the numbers at any one time. I reasoned that I would cover almost ¼ of the possible numbers, and each win would get me $72 providing me 4 more bets. It worked. Over the next few hours I won $800 and walked away. Not bad.

The last time I was at a roulette table, in Las Vegas last year, I watched an amazing thing happen. A wedding party had come to the casino floor from wherever people actually get married at a casino, and walked up to a roulette table. The lady who was working my table explained to the group that it was a tradition at some Las Vegas weddings to take a portion of the money received as wedding gifts and place it on a roulette table on the number corresponding to the date, today, of the special event. It was the 11th of the month, so there on number 11 went $300 of the wedding money. From the look of the wedding party, that was about all the money there was.

The group numbered around fifty guests, a rather large wedding party for a Las Vegas wedding I suspected. Our table stopped the action to watch the new couple lose their first $300 together. The thingy was spun, everyone held their breath, and sure enough 11 was hit. The couple turned their $300 into $10,000 in a few seconds. The place erupted in laughing, screaming, jumping and crying. It was amazing to behold. The couple grabbed their chips, and with wedding party in tow, went to the exchange desk, got their cash, and headed out the door.

My system, however, failed that night. I lost my $100.






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Almost Heaven- Legal Fireworks

In most of the places I grew up private fireworks ownership was illegal. You could always go to the city fireworks show for the 4th of July, but to actually acquire your own significant supply of fireworks, especially as a kid, was a fantasy almost beyond imagining.

Occasionally some new guy moved into the neighborhood and was able to secretly import contraband firecrackers, bottle-rockets, or (fingers-crossed) M-80s. Those that did quickly realized they could start a business selling the illegal goods for around 25 cents per firecracker, 50 cents per bottle-rocket, and up to a buck for the biggies. They realized this of course because a few friends and I immediately offered cold hard cash when we learned they had them.

Sunday night I bought 4,000 firecrackers (that would be about $1,000 in 1976 DigitalRich money) for about $30, and of course the Goliath Artillery Shell collection with 35 shots including double and triple shells (with 56 assorted effects!).

Here I am at 40, and whenever I pass by a fireworks stand during the holidays, or the 24/7 fireworks stores near the state borders in the south, I revert to being a 10 year old that somehow has a significant amount of financial resources at his disposal. My wife has to closely monitor my spending.

For New Years Eve the six DigitalRich crew members went to my folk’s house, along with my sister and her husband and baby, my sister-in-law, my aunt and uncle, and my great uncle Raymond. It was a packed house and a fun night of food and games. My brain was only half there though…the other half ticking down the minutes until FIREWORKS…I mean, New Years.
At about 11:40PM we all went out to the front yard. For 20 minutes we shot exploding shells high into the air, and blew off the roll of 4,000 firecrackers right at midnight (they continued to pop and crack for a full 5 minutes). Here is a picture of great Uncle Raymond moments before we irritated every neighbor within a 5 mile radius:


God bless the South and their liberal fireworks laws.






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You Eat What You Kill

In October my wife and I took our daughter K to Rome for her 13th birthday. To many this may seem extreme- including my wife. A friend of mine told me about how he and his wife gave each of their 2 daughters THE birthday gift at 13 instead of 16 or 18. The reasoning? I can’t recall really- but I remember thinking it was very logical.

Our ground rules for our 4 girls are simple:

1. For your 13th birthday you can ask for anything in the world you want

2. We can not borrow any money for the gift

3. We must be able to afford it (this is the best one- a sliding scale that can be adjusted in any year, with any daughter, because of our dictatorial powers. Unfair, I know, but Michelle and I are relatively benevolent dictators)

While K opted for a trip to Rome, L our 11 year old is laying the legal groundwork for her claim on a horse. I am considering an amendment to add a 4th line item requiring the gift to not incur any long-term or continuing costs.

The trip was wonderful (at the time of this writing, there are some snapshots on this page). Throughout our time in Italy I noticed an abundance of street performers. There was the “drunk” passed out by the wall of the Pantheon completely dressed and painted in grey to match the street and gate. If anyone dropped a coin in his box, he stirred and looked around, took a drink, and promptly passed out again. There were mimes, dancers, and balloon artists. One of the few musicians we saw was a man at Piazza Navona that was playing guitar left-handed with the strings still strung for a right handed player. I have been around many guitar players in my life, some of them left handed, but I have never, ever seen anyone able to do this.

The statue-still Statues of Liberty were aplenty, as were the Pharaohs. These are two of a special genre of street performers whose sole talent is to stand perfectly still on a soap box, and bow when someone gives them money.

One such Pharaoh, wrapped completely in a shiny gold sheet and wearing an expressionless gold metal mask, was doing an excellent job staying completely still and staring straight ahead. Until a 3 or 4 year old, unwatched by his mother, decided that whatever was in the can on the ground in front of Pharaoh must be interesting.

The young boy approached the loot, squatted in front of it, and was smart enough to shoot a glance at both his mom and Pharaoh to ensure they weren’t watching him. The boy made his move, reaching his hand inside the tall can. Pharaoh was not happy. He broke character, and started to watch the boy with wide eyes (its surprising easily to read emotion in the eyes, even when someone has a mask on- especially if you know that person knows he is getting robbed).

I jumped in to help. In a firm and gruff voice I told the boy “NO.” His arm sprung back, and his smile disappeared. He was caught. My Pharaoh was pleased. The boy made 3 more attempts, each ending with his retreat after my barks. Not once did his mother see what happened until she led him away. As they walked by, passing Pharaohs riches, the boy failed at one more half-hearted attempt at the money.

Street performers are pretty good examples of the old hunting maxim- now adopted by consultants and lawyers- You Eat What You Kill. While many people work for distant gains (saving for retirement, long-term investing, major projects at work that could create an end-of-term bonus, etc), these folks are working hard to get lunch money in the next 10 seconds.

As I ponder my next career move, I have met with a few folks that encouraged me to start my own business- and this maxim- you only eat what you kill- has been repeated to me by 3 people. It is both scary and exciting, and I look forward (I keep telling myself) to see what happens in the coming months.