yesterday i mentioned eric thomas, a speaker i've been enjoying recently. he's the voice on the how bad do you want it videos i posted a few weeks back. here is another talk he did earlier this year for a company in vegas. it starts a little slow but after the ten minute mark, there's a lot of meat on the bone. great message(s) with a strong style.
during the year i collect bits and pieces of information that i think might be helpful to share with my kids when the school year fires up. marty's insistence on a no-exceptions family dinner table makes for a perfect platform for me to subject enlighten my children with my sage counsel. a few examples.
we have been long told two things. one, that we have a certain potential fo...
it is said with numbing frequency that when you have kids you get to (1) relive your childhood and (2) experience a childhood you didn't get to have.
there is a very valid reason that sentiment is said with such frequency. to this day i don't know who loved those wooden thomas tracks (or many of the gifts and trips) more, me or my kids. ...
at the dinner table, during a lull in conversation alex, age nine, announced that he knew what the f-word was. this proclamation paused any chewing noises or silverware clatter that may have been happening. a few people then asked questions. one question was where did you learn it? at school. another was, you know you're never to use it? he knew. then came the smartest question. what is the f-word alex? to protect anthony's still virginish ears alex said he would have to whisper it in our ears. so one by one, alex rounded the table and in the cupped ear of marty, then bella, and then myself alex whispered the f-word — funk.
it's good to see marty leading a full-flavored life again
because of the way the daily school schedule cycles, once every seven days marty can eat lunch with two of her past colleagues (and friends) who still work at the school. they've known each other for about fifteen years and have remained in touch outside of work while marty was away. they are both guys and they are both bald. one of the guys recently brought a new, younger teacher to their lunch ritual. caught off-guard marty and the other fella paused at seeing the outsider. the new blood sensing the awkward silence said, "oh, what, i'm not cool enough to eat with two bald guys and a crazy woman?"
without missing a beat marty replied to the circle of four, "wait. what? there's a crazy woman? which one is she?"
the first time i swam 2,000 yards without stopping, it took me 55 minutes.
that day, i set a goal of swimming that distance in under 30 minutes.
it took four months to knock five minutes off my time to be under 50 minutes.
the next five mintues took me a bit longer, like a full twelve months longer. BUT as of last friday i can claim an under-45 minute pool mile.
and, in answer to your next question, yes, of course i have the blow by blow for you to enjoy. click through to see every swim i've swum over the last twenty months.
the big swings you see in the times of the last few swims are due to me trying different stroke styles out that i've dabbled in over the summer. keep in mind i've never taken a class or received a lesson. even though virtually everyone has told me to do so, i prefer finding a method that feels comfortable and natural for me. thus, i have a high-cadence fast stroke, a long, methodical stroke, and a few in between. usually in a swim i alternate between styles, trying to improve my technique for each. for my first few indoor swims this year, i stuck with one stroke through the whole swim to see if i could see a discernible time difference, and as you see, i did. so the plan is to focus on the technique that earned me this time drop and see if i can perfect it even further so the next time i'm talking about this with you, i'm clocking times in the 3X:XX range. as the subject line reads: giddy, giddy, giddy.
apologies for my absence. i had a project unveiling at work on tuesday and slipped into my obsessive persona to make sure everything looked fit and fancy for the first sets of eyes.
the showing went swimmingly.
then yesterday, wednesday, i had my first dad lunch with bella as a junior high student. the slight bummer is she only gets thirty minutes for lunch. and her school isn't near any eateries. in thinking things through i remembered a city park i used to play tennis at just over the hill from her school. it had some rolling grassy hills and lots of trees. so as time neared, i got a lunch together and headed to the school. after i got her dismissed from class we made the two minute drive to the park.
the day was crazy bee-you-ta-ful, especially on our bench in the shade. after getting settled i pulled from my cooler a snarf's ham and cheese (a favorite for bella and i), a bag of chips and a large ice water. we talked about a number of things: how this was different from elementary, how we were lucky this park was so close by, how we played ogre on the playground several years ago, bella wondered what we would do in the winter (i admitted that was a good question because we were surely not going to get weather this nice all year), and we might have even talked about boys for a minute or two. then as she was finishing up her sandwich i dove into my small cooler and readied the next treat i brought. bella leaned over trying to see what i was doing but i blocked her prying view with my shoulder. then, when i lifted the bowl of chery cobbler from the weekend out with two scoops of still firm ice cream on top, my girl's face lit up like the blue-sky day.
later that night, marty asked bella how our first dad lunch of the school year went. bella told her of the cobbler and ice cream. she then said that "dad did good".
it's funny how a room of adults praising a piece of my professional work that i've spent more than six months on felt good but didn't come close to the reward i felt in getting my daughter's "dad did good" seal after a thirty minute lunch.
here's my new favorite orator, up and coming eric thomas, in a treatment that expertly mixes video and music with one of his better know presentations.
last week our home received two paychecks for the first time in nine years. you'll never hear this household complaining about a teacher's salary being meager because it has catapulted us into a new and royal lifestyle. and it couldn't have come a moment too soon as in the last decade home repairs, car issues, and too-good-to-not-go travel opportunities have chipped our savings down from tens of thousands of dollars to tens of hundreds of dollars. fact is we've survived the last few weeks on money bella earned this summer dog-sitting. one of her early summer clients paid her in a pink envelope. bella would add money from subsequent clients to the envelope until it's glued seams were bursting with over four hundred dollars in small bills. if pinched for cash, and after asking her if we could borrow, say thirty dollars, from her envelope to, say buy the family dinner, we'd write on the pink envelope 'DAD - $30 - DINNER' and pull the bills. this is another reason it's good the double payday arrived as it was becoming challenging to find a spot to legibly add a line on the outside of this now tattered envelope.
additionally, my personal slush account (marty has one too) where i keep money i've made on my own was hurting as well. on my way to bella's dad day of horseback riding, i remembered the stables only took cash. i stopped at an ATM and withdrew $120 for our wrangler. what i didn't know until i tried to buy lunch a week later was that the withdraw left precisely one cent in my account.
there were many times during this one income decade that i told marty these would be our family's hardest financial years and it wouldn't always be like this. she always accepted this news reluctantly. in turn, she would tell me we couldn't shoulder this pace forever and the money would not last. i reluctantly took her opinion in. it turned out we were both right.
so here's to wise prognostication, two-paychecks, and the good dose of luck that allowed us to weather our one-income decade. we promise to never take our new-found fortune for granted or use it frivolously, well, right after i get the vespa scooter marty promised me before going back to work, but i'm sure we can all agree something that fun can't possibly be frivolous.
i've been routinely astonished at how my children, and wife, can transform our seemingly boring and boxy home into cavernous forts and sprawling cave networks. some of the more lavish constructions have used just about every blanket, comforter and pillow our home possesses. at the conclusion of these elaborate constructions a deep and serious reading fest often takes place. great stuff that i'm su ...
