Well, it’s taken two nights of extraordinary sleep (13 hours and 11 hours, respectively), but I’ve recovered from last week’s trip to New Orleans. I made the journey with 1500+ other money nerds to attend Fincon, the annual “digital marketing event for anyone creating personal-finance content”. (We used to just call it a money bloggers’ …
I have regularly scheduled video chats with a handful of friends. Also, irregularly scheduled chats with other friends. This is a new-ish thing in my life — only in the past five years — but I’m under the impression that it’s becoming more and more common for more and more people. (Kim does this too …
Since my epiphany last week about online interaction likely being the source of much of my stress and anxiety, I’ve been doing a lot of introspection. Overanalytical Man is flexing his muscles…but in a good way. I’m reading books (currently reading Waking Up by Sam Harris), watching movies, and talking with friends. This latter action …
Last night, we had our neighbors over for drinks. For three hours, we sat around sipping wine while chatting about life with Jan and Sheila. (Jan is pronounced “yawn”.) Jan and Sheila are both in their early seventies, about thirty years older than Kim and I are. But whereas some folks their age seem to …
2011 was a wonderful year. I met some awesome people, visited nine countries (U.S., South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Canada, Peru, and Bolivia) and five states, accomplished some long-standing goals, and generally lived life to the lees (to quote my favorite poem). Having said that, the last six weeks have been very difficult. In …
I’m a tired man. Adam and Courtney Baker rolled into town last week. They parked their RV on our front lawn, and I’ve been hanging around with them ever since — going out to eat, talking about blogging, and staying up late to play board games. It’s awesome — for me, at least. (I can’t …
When Kris and I moved to Oak Grove in 2004, we were surprised by the neighborhood. We’d just come from Canby, which seemed like a proto-typical small town. Yet we barely knew our neighbors there. We smiled at them and waved hello and helped each other with small tasks, but we were never what I’d …
On February January 24th, Kris and I will have been together for 22 years. Here’s a photo from right around our one-year anniversary: This was taken on approximately 14 February 1990 (my guess is the 10th 3rd) at Willamette‘s “Black Tie Affair”, a formal dance held in Portland. Man, we’re a couple of geeks.
Kris and I attended the Roth family reunion yesterday, as we do every New Year’s Eve. I’ve been going to this reunion ever since I was a little boy. It used to be held in the Smyrna Church between Molalla and Canby. I remember many cold January afternoons spent playing outside or in the kids’ …
For a long long time I’ve wanted to be be able to support my artistic friends by commissioning them to do art specifically for me. I’ve had this dream ever since I saw some of Nory’s work from the Art Institute of Seattle back in the mid 1990s. I’ve never had the guts — or …