Painting a Picture

Though this is supposed to make paintball look cool, it's worth noting
it looks like this guy has been hit.

There are random memories floating around in all our heads, tied to friends we no longer see nor hear from. It only takes a small reminder for them to come flooding back.

Nutmeg's Dad sent a short email asking for my thoughts on playing paintball, thanks to a Groupon being offered in Boston. I had many thoughts, all pertaining to a random day in February of my senior year in high school.

I vaguely remember who was there that day. Emerson, Paul, Mark, Chuck ... and a bunch of other people, presumably. I'm not even positive those guys were there. It's been a while.

We went to an indoor paintball center on the southeast side of the Twin Cities. It was February in Minnesota. We play games indoors there.

None of us had any idea what we were doing. We paid to rent paintball guns. We were about to start a kill-em-all game when a bunch of people in camouflage pants showed up. Tip: Never play your first game of paintball against people wearing camouflage pants.

I got taken out early with a shot that hit my leg roughly 6 inches below my crotch. That rattled me.

Of course, we got destroyed playing the Camo Club. It wasn't even close. I can't stand losing; moreover, I can't stand almost getting shot in the crotch with a pellet moving over 100 mph while losing. 

It's safe to say I'm adventurous. I enjoy skiing and going fast in boats and cars. Paintball? No, thank you. I have enough memories.

I Dream of Genetics

Despite my inability to skate, I think it might be fun to skate the Charles.
This photo has nothing to do with the blog.

Someone once told me they thought I would be a perfect fit to live in Florida because of my laid-back attitude and Florida is full of Jimmy Buffett clones. It was a stunning misjudgment of both my parents' home state and myself.

Anyone could be excused for thinking I wear Hawaiian shirts around town while humming "Don't Worry, Be Happy." I project that kind of attitude.

It's a front. I time everything in order to achieve maximum efficiency. I've clocked how long it takes to get home from the stoplight on Chelsea Street; it's about two minutes if you go left, three if you go right.

It's a 10-minute walk to Terminal A of Logan Airport, but I can jog it in six minutes. It takes five minutes to climb the stairs, run across the skyway to Terminal E, descend two flights of stairs and emerge out on the sidewalk in front of baggage claim.

If you're in line at Starbucks, the wait will be half as long if it's all men in front of you because they are more likely to order drip coffee than women. That's not something I can quantify for you but check it out the next time you're in line.

If you're in line at a grocery store, aim for the line with the fewest people in it because the act of paying is the most time-consuming part. That I can quantify.

You can thank my Dad for all this information. He didn't tell me any of that information, but it's his engineering nature that made me this way. Dad's an electronics engineer who worked at 3M. Give him a few palm fronds and some duct tape and he'll build you a rudimentary computer.

From time to time, I roll my eyes at him. That's what family does. Unlike friends, we have the courtesy to do it in broad view of the person causing the eye roll. More than my parents, I roll my eyes at myself because I have trouble stopping. In Salt Lake, I counted how many steps it took to walk a city block (about 300). While running, I pass the time on long straightaways by counting how many breaths I take in five minutes.

The Wife knows all this. That's why it was downright funny last night when she asked how long it took us to walk back home from the airport. I didn't know because I hadn't been timing. She was surprised. It was understandable, because we were coming home from a long weekend at my parents' house in Florida and she'd just had a fresh dose of Dad. It was late. I was tired. I didn't time the walk.

The trip to Florida did make me wish I lived closer to family, but every trip to Florida does that. This is not to say I wish I lived in Florida; I wish my family lived in New England.

Wither the Weather

The foreground is the Charles River, likely taken from around the MIT
boat house in neighboring Cambridge.

The Wife is a dyed-in-the-wool Minnesota, with lineage dating back several generations on some of the northernmost farm land in the country. In summer, she is miserable and talks about how much she prefers the misery of winter. Even today she would speak of her preference for winter, though I awoke to her text message, sent at 7 a.m., that reads, "Um, OK, that's pretty cold. Stay in today!"

About half the country is having a freakout. I'm having trouble not judging about half the country, and my judgment knows no bounds.

In New York, the Today Show is staying inside today. It's too cold to go outside, they'll tell you. It's 19 degrees. Minnesotans are rolling their eyes. That's a guarantee. Minnesotans watch people in New York talk about how cold it is and they roll their eyes. That's because the low in my hometown, Lakeland, is predicted to be -13 today with a windchill around -30.

That, of course, is nothing. On a Sunday afternoon during my senior year of high school, me and four friends went to the high school to play basketball during open gym. In my little Plymouth Sundance, we whipped some donuts in the parking lot, then played basketball for a couple of hours. While we were inside, the temperature dropped from around 0 to about -20. The wind also picked up.

When we came back to the car, we ran. We were all wearing basketball clothes. Sweaty basketball clothes. We jumped into the car. The engine started. It went into reverse. Nothing happened.

It took about 30 seconds to figure out what was wrong. The car was working just fine; the tires had frozen to the parking lot.

We jumped out and used everything in the car -- a couple of ice scrapers and an army knife -- to chip away under the tires. Frozen, we jumped back in the car. The Dancin' Dancer made a cracking noise as it pulled out of the parking spot; it drove as if the tires were shaped like squares for a few miles before the tires warmed up and returned to a round shape.

Every Minnesotan has a horror story, but that doesn't stop them from complaining about the weather. This latest cold snap has everybody complaining, taking pictures of thermostats at their desks. Nobody likes cold weather. I'm no better. I have Raynaud's Syndrome, which means my fingers and toes go numb at the hint of a slight breeze. I hate the cold weather.

Which brings me to my theory about life: If we could afford it and bring family with, the vast majority of the American population would all live in San Diego. Shutterfly, a Minnesotan who moved there in her 20s when she wanted to live somewhere cold, thought Southern California wouldn't be good for her weather-wise. After a trip to Disney, she's with me on this. Everybody should live in Southern California.

And we all could. There's nothing *really* stopping most of us from dropping everything and moving to San Diego. I could work at Starbucks. TW could find work. We'd live in a small apartment for a while as we establish ourselves. It wouldn't be glamorous, but it could be done.

What stops us is what stops almost everybody: We actually like it where we are and it's not worth the hassle and years of paying dues all over again. Therefore, we're going to suck it up and get through these few days of a frigid cold snap with our heads held high.

Also, it helps that TW and I are going to Florida tomorrow night. Suckers.

55 Miles From Home

The problem with living in Boston and working in Manchester, N.H. is obvious. It is why I am walking around The Mall of New Hampshire, the only indoor, traditional mall in the state, for an hour and a half before my shift at work.

I am walking through Macy's right now, typing on an iPad. I had to go to Human Resources at 2 to deal with yet another issue regarding me challenging coworkers to fist fights. Don't do that.

The shift starts at 4:30 and I have time to kill. This doesn't happen to people with normal jobs. The boss doesn't tell you to come in at 5:30 a.m. before your 8 a.m shift.

I really don't mind. I would be playing infamous 2 on my PlayStation if I had stayed home or gone for a hike in the woods. This way, I get to walk around the mall for an hour and a half. I need the exercise.

It's just a little strange is all I walk around with the iPad, playing sudoku or typing out a blog as I walk. "I ain't missin you at all" is playing on the mall radio.

These are strange times. And now I am tired of typing as I walk on this damn contraption. Plus, I need to play more sudoku.

Man O Manti

So many jokes to be made.

For over a week, Manti Te'o has been begging me to talk about him. If you don't already know, Te'o is a football player for Notre Dame. He told a heartwrenching story about his girlfriend, who had leukemia, dying on the same day as his grandmother.

It was great, only it wasn't true. There was no girlfriend, at least not the girl part. Te'o was either elaborately tricked or was in on a fairly simple plan to tell the media a lie.

That's not illegal, nor should it be. Lying is a great part of history when dealing with the media. Presidents like Nixon and Clinton all did it. A great many more have gotten away with it.

It's too easy to say you're disappointed in the media (or the sports media, if you want to be more specific) for not catching on to this ruse. It was fairly simple to unravel and a few reporters came within a few steps of uncovering it all months ago. But they didn't and Deadpsin.com should win a Pulitzer for uncovering the story.

If anything, the Te'o story shines a light on new media. Yes, Deadspin is a website that subsists entirely on advertising and venture capital. Moreover, it's the media establishment like Sports Illustrated and The New York Times that are taking a star turn, only it is the shabby state of fact-checking at our Publications Of Record that is in the limelight.

As revenues have dropped at virtually every major publication across the country, there have been cuts. There are fewer copy editors and fewer fact-checkers. Where there was once a team of editors poring over stories and verifying editors, there are now 50 percent fewer employees writing headlines, running spell check and moving the story down the assembly line.

We've signed up for this. Every time a newspaper asks you to sign up for web content and we find a different way to get that content, we're signing up for it. The Times charges $15 for a four-week digital subscription and they should get the subscribers because, as much as anybody, The Times still has the staff and drive to be the best.

But they don't always get the money because we're mostly not willing to pay for stuff any more. That's just a fact. And as news organizations try to do more with less, they're really doing less with less. Sure, they're streaming it out to iPads and smartphones, but that's work for computers. It takes human power to locate a fact and check it. When you consider the number of facts presented in a typical 600-word story, it's a more daunting task than it sounds.

With stories, we've become content with a crapshoot as far as editors' work reading and editing the stories. Sometimes they have the time to do a great job and sometimes they don't. The onus is on reporters to make sure their work is checked before they send a story to the desk because God knows what's going to happen to it after it's out of their hands.

The irony here is that it's my job to do this work. I don't believe in writing about work, but I have to point out that I'm not talking specifically about my current job at a newspaper. This is not a new problem. It's also not about the people I've worked with; rather, it's about the staffing levels that newspapers can afford.

I got lucky once and caught a story like Te'o's before it was a story. A guy in Salt Lake was trying to get my paper to write a story about him. He was teaching some fitness classes, playing semi-pro football and he made an offhand reference to how he used to play linebacker at Vanderbilt and was an All-SEC player. Twice. I looked him up. No reference to him as an All-SEC player. Vanderbilt puts its media guide online and I checked the section that lists players. He never played for Vanderbilt and we never wrote a story about him. Another newspaper in our area did write a story about the guy. They mentioned his football days. To my knowledge, they never printed a retraction and the story is still available online.

The media would love to say they have learned their lesson and move on from this as quickly as possible. People aren't supposed to be discussing copy editing and fact-checking; it's not the sexy part of what we do.

I'm haunted by the thought that Manti Te'o isn't the first person to throw one mostly past the media and he probably won't be the last. But it's risky business because, ironically, though the Internet has made it difficult for media organizations, it has also leveled the playing field. I've read Deadspin on a daily basis for about five years, but it's a niche' sports website, with stories drawing about 10,000 to 20,000 page views. All it took for them to bring down Te'o was some Google searches and some database searches. There was no Deep Throat. All they needed was a computer and an Internet connection. Anybody could have figured this story out. Deadspin did. They should win a Pulitzer. It's a brave new world.

My Friends Are Incredible ~ Blog 49

Oh, we are a witty bunch. The guy on the left is not doing what
it looks like he's doing.

It's easy to take your friends for granted because you generally aren't doing groundbreaking things with them. Sure, you enjoy spending time together and call each other for advice. But how often do you take a step back and admire who they are?

Take The Bearded Beernut, for example. He's my partner in shenanigans and a hell of a writer. We've spent more time playing a board game called Pegs and Jokers (or Pegs and Aces) than we've spent doing anything else in the past two years. It would be easy for me to think that all The Beernut ever does is drink beer, watch baseball and play games.

He's also applying to Ph.D programs; He wants to be an English professor.

You'd never know that from what we do. Monday night, we went bowling, played cards, ate bacon fries poutine (!) and played video games.

I drove away from Portland yesterday thinking about not just The Beernut but how lucky I feel to know all my friends. To a one, I'm convinced they are all better people than I am. Well, maybe not Molly Lu. She's down on my level. I'm pretty sure she just raised her eyebrows, shrugged, and said to herself, "Yeah, that's about right."

These people are incredible. I'm friends with TV anchors and doctors. One of my besties, Rossmosis, quit his job as an NBA beat reporter to go to law school. He lives in Seattle, does ridiculous workout routines with his wife and will soon own half of the state of Washington. Our relationship involves sending beer through the mail and attending baseball games.

JimBob was my best friend in Utah. We went skiing/snowboarding a couple of times a week. He was a photo tech at The Salt Lake Tribune when I started as a copy editor. He's now a freelance photographer for Reuters and covers Burning Man every year.

I think of my friends often. There's a square a couple of blocks from our house named John Davis square; I worked with a guy in Salt Lake who took care of Dukakis, my first chocolate lab, whenever I had to leave town. He's also the best headline writer I have ever known.

SMurphy is a stay-at-home mom whom I have met in the flesh twice, in late December of 2002 and at our wedding in 2005. Thanks to the miracle of Facebook, we talk almost every day. She makes me laugh almost every day.

If you haven't been mentioned yet, rest easily knowing I could say something glowing about you, too. The only people that read this blog are friends and family members, so don't get jealous. We're all family here.

My friends are an extension of my family because I find everybody so fascinating. When I say, "I have a lot of friends who are doctors, lawyers and dentists," what I mean to say is, "Lowly ME, who is a big, dumb animal, has friends who are doing big things with their lives." I am impressed by all of you, with no exceptions.

If you're reading this, you can go ahead and give yourself a slap on the back. If we aren't physically close to each other, know that I'd like to see you soon. My friends are awesome.

Maine puns are for the week ~ Blog 48

Oh for good intentions.

In fairness to myself, I drank as much as I planned last night. I also ate bacon poutine at Nosh because life is short and for the living.

Portland is my kinda town. It is small, beautiful, has a rural side, and there's bacon poutine. So much for not going wild on the calories.

But it's a new day and there's salad to eat. Salad with bacon on it, of course, but mostly vegetables. At least, that's the plan. One never knows when there's bacon poutine around.

You're On Vacation, I'm Not ~ Blog 47

Fenway Park, from the third-base side roof.

During our first year in Salt Lake City, The Wife and I entertained 16 different groups of visitors. The majority of those groups were people I knew and the vast majority were my family. Despite the fact that they pretty much all live in Florida, my family is like that and I love them for it. They'll visit me anywhere.

And so it was last week that my 19-year-old cousin visited with his girlfriend. Ry Guy and Dutch were in town for three days. This is the fourth time since July that a member of Ry Guy's immediate family has visited. My uncle came with my aunt; My uncle visited by himself; Ry Guy's Sister came with her boyfriend.

I've gotten pretty good at the touristy thing in Boston. We paid for a one-hour tour of Fenway Park that was worth it just for the views from the rooftop.

And, as is the custom in our family, we ate like hungry wolves who have just discovered a steaming pile of tater-tot nachos. Those are an actual thing here in Boston.

Living in Boston is a test to a food addict like myself under normal circumstances. For less than $10 I can get a giant container of great Chinese soup down the street. I can get cheesey calzones, Italian pastries or fresh macaroni and cheese at Quincy Market.

At some point you have to say no. Or punish yourself, like I did Saturday with a self-flaggelation of a run. Daisy Duke and I did 2.5 miles, then I ran another 4-ish miles by myself while she recuperated. Nutmeg's Mom and Dad wanted to go out to watch an NFL game Saturday night; I had 1.5 Guinnesses (around 200 calories) and didn't order any food.

You have to cut yourself off sometime. So it will be tonight, as I travel to Maine to visit Nacho Man, The Bearded Beernut and Molly Lu. We'll have crem brulee and I'm sure I'll have my share. We'll go to The Great Lost Bear, where it's talls for smalls night. You can get most of their beers in 24-ounce glasses while paying 14-ounce prices.

Living here is a challenge because there's always an excuse to indulge. Whether it's visitors, great restaurants or great friends getting together, I don't have to look far for a reason. When we lived in the desert of Utah, 30 miles west of Salt Lake City, there were no excuses to go out, unless you count Tracks, the worst/strangest/best brewpub I have ever known, in scenic Tooele. It was easier to keep things under control there, even with the 16 different groups of visitors.

It really boils down to control. We've lived in Boston for six-plus months and have had about 10 different groups spend the night in our 530-square-foot condo. I love the guests; I love the food; I also love fitting into my pants.

That's why I'm going to the track right now to run six 800-meter repeats. Then Daisy Duke and I will go for a little jog. I know I'm going to spend some calories tonight but I can do something now to not feel like a total blob tomorrow. Who knows? Maybe I'll even enjoy a Guinness at The Great Lost Bear.

A Blog Written Out Of Duty ~ Blog 46

The guy at the grocery store was in a hurry, but I got a look at him. He had shades on, but that's where the comparisson should end. He was middle-aged and paunchy. He looked nothing like Val Kilmer.

There was nothing in his appearance to justify the license plate that read, "ICEMAN."

I wanted a gum-chewing son-of-a-gun to step out of the car and chomp his mouth in my direction. Then we'd play volleyball to the tune of a terrible, terrible Kenny Loggins song.

Oh, New England. This is a funny thing to appreciate about you, but your license plates are consistently excellent. I can't figure out at least half of them. A former co-worker has an entire Facebook album crammed full of pictures of license plates; most are from New England.

It makes the 50-minute commute to work far more entertaining when you can ponder the hidden meaning behind license plates the whole way.

Why I Run ~ Blog 45

This is my motivation to run. Or something.

One of the primary reasons to get a chocolate labrador puppy is because you need to run. Labs are notoriously spazzy. There are myriad videos on YouTube of the phenomenon. This is a representative sample.

Instead of inspiration, I have yet another impediment to exercise. Daisy Duke is unusually laid back. In the mornings, she doesn't jump off the guest bed to greet me. Instead, she groans, stretches, rolls onto her back and lays there with her paws in the air for at least half an hour before deciding to come cuddle with me on the couch while I drink coffee.

I watch TV while I drink my coffee, and there, in plain site for all to see, are the annual spate of exercise commercials. P90X is on there, as are Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers and all the other members of the billions-of-dollars-a-year exercise industry. The commercials appeal to me and I weigh about what I weighed in sixth grade. That says a little about me now and a lot about me then.

Not much has changed since I was morbidly obese. I still like watching TV and playing video games. And now there's a 60-pound, cute-as-a-button (since when are buttons cute?) chocolate labrador sitting on my lap. Right this second, actually, she's got her snout wrapped around my right wrist, which makes it tough to hit the 'Y' key.

Contrary to what a lot of people think this year, being physically fit isn't about being motivated. At least, not for me. Those idiot guys at Gold's Gym who drink Muscle Milk and spend hours lifting weights? They're motivated, and often by girls or the thought of girls. I simply really dislike being overweight. It is my resignation to the fact that I have to exercise that gets me off the couch.

You can actually hear me rolling my eyes when I get off the couch to go exercise. It's about to happen here in a few minutes. There will also be an accompanying sigh. This is what it takes to be who I want to be. Damn that idealism.

Mostly, it's who I don't want to be. I don't want to be on medications, though the world wouldn't bat an eyelash at the news if it were true. I don't want to be a 70-year-old who can't go for a walk with his dog. I don't want to be unhealthy, and that's far more my motivation than actually wanting to be healthy.

And so I'm about to do yoga. Daisy Duke and I just got back from a 25-minute run. My back is a little bit sore. It has been, off and on, for about a year. It started when I went skiing in Tahoe, making aggressive turns at around 40 mph. The G-force from the turns tweaked my back; I walked like an 85-year-old for a week.

Therefore, I do yoga. It's not something I love admitting because I know what that sounds like. It sounds like I'm some urban yuppy who drinks lattes and spends far too much money on food and beer. That's not true at all. I don't like lattes.

Nobody would say a word if I decided to see a doctor about this back. The wife is a physician assistant; she'd probably approve the idea. But, if it's possible, I'd like to delay that doctor's visit. Like it or not, yoga helps.

I'll roll off the couch in a minute here and do Downward Dog in my living room with no yoga mat while I'm watching a YouTube yoga video. I don't really want to, but my back hurts. And my next dog, be it Beau or Luke Duke, would probably appreciate it if I'm physically capable of going for a run.

Boom ~ Blog 44

Note the police boats, of which I see at least three, sailing around this
natural gas tanker in Boston's harbor. Our house is about a half mile
from this ship's location, at the bottom of the picture.

The Wife and I went for a walk with Daisy Duke on New Year's day. At the end of the harbor walk, a quarter mile away from an open, grassy stretch, I could see a police SUV with its lights on. This meant I would have to put Daisy Duke on a leash.

As we got closer to the end of the walk, the SUV took off at a high rate of speed. Then I noticed the police boats. There were two helicopters buzzing around slowly overhead. On the other side of the harbor, I could see two more police cruisers running around with their lights on.

Then I saw the front end of the big ship that was moving through the harbor. I recognized it instantly from this PBS show about liquified natural gas arriving in Boston. If you have five minutes to kill, check it out. This natural gas place is a couple miles from us, as the crow flies.

There's good reason for the police presence. As it turns out, a rogue grenade launcher could set off an explosion that causes second degree burns anywhere within a half mile of the ship. These are what have been called "Boat Bombs." That's the least that could happen. Boston's mayor has sued to try to keep the boats out of our harbor and lost. There's really no way to be totally sure someone bent on a suicidal attack won't set off a really big bomb near my house. It's not like this is out of the realm of possibility. Two rocket launchers were turned in at a Los Angeles gun buyback last week. That's not comforting.

But this isn't about that. There's risk everywhere. I get that. Somebody could take out a gasoline truck in Minneapolis or start firing guns at a University of Utah football game. There's nothing stopping them. I could tell you about the scale of the explosion from a liquified natural gas boat blowing up in the harbor, but suffice to say, I think it would be pretty bad news.

I spend a lot of time on my couch, not worrying about the fact that I live in a potential terrorism target. The oldest boat in the U.S. Navy lives about a mile from us. On the Fourth of July, police take over the harbor as the USS Constitution floats out to sea for its annual turnaround trip. We have tunnels. We have an airport next door.

Thankfully, I'm distracted by everyday life. Chances are greater I'll get into a car accident and die on my way to work than by an act of terrorism. You can reason it away. But still, as a police helicopter and Coast Guard helicopter hover overhead, making sure you don't suddenly pull out a rocket launcher, there's at least a little reason for pause. We don't live in Maine anymore.

Minnesota Should Renounce Me For Being Cold ~ Blog 43

The most amazing heating devices known to man.

A year ago, my feet were really cold. There were two factors at play. For starters, it's fairly obvious that I am afflicted with Raynaud's phenomenon. If you don't want to click the link, the short version is that my fingers and toes go white numb at the slightest hint of cold. It's at least partly psychological, as 66 degrees in summer is fine but if I'm in a 66-degree room in winter, body parts go numb. Gloves and thick ski socks don't really help. It sucks and it partly explains why I must never live in Duluth, Minnesota, ever again.

It helps my extremities stay warm if we can set the heat in our apartment or home to at least 68 degrees. That was a problem a year ago. We were in a three-story home in Portland, Maine. Our home had a heating-oil system, as many homes in northern New England do, and heating oil isn't cheap. Take the price of gasoline, subtract 20 cents, and that's about the price of heating oil. Last winter, it was around $3.75 a gallon.

The Wife was in PA school a year ago, which means she wasn't making any money. I was unemployed, collecting federal benefits to the tune of about a thousand bucks a month. Contrary to what you've heard, living off student loans and federal money is not a lavish lifestyle. We qualified for food stamps. We could have gotten heating oil assistance programs. I wasn't OK with that.

Setting the thermostat at 60 degrees, on the other hand, I was OK with. The heat popped all the way up to 64 first thing in the morning, to make waking up a little more tolerable. Then, wrapped in a sweatshirt and blankets, I'd spend the day on the couch, applying for work.

We burned through about 500 gallons of heating oil last winter. A rough guess would put our cost at about $2,000 for the winter. At 60 degrees.

My feet are cold as I type this, but only because I went to the basement of our place in Boston to rearrange and organize the space. These are the things you do when you live in a small condo in the big city. The condo is a balmy 70 degrees, so those toes should warm quickly. There's a chocolate lab wrapped around my right arm, her snout almost on top of my right wrist, hindering my ability to hit the 'Y' key on the keyboard. I'm plenty warm.

Our rent includes the price of heat and hot water. The condo is heated by a little Rennai heater, which runs on natural gas. It's about 2 feet to my left. It pops on briefly and blows out rather hot air. This little unit, with no duct work in the condo, heats the entire 530 square feet rather nicely.

TW is out at work, making money to pay back those student loan debts and put food on the table. I have a part-time job, making about enough each month to pay the rent.

It isn't glamorous nor are either of us doing exactly what we want to be doing. We want more for ourselves, though not financially. We want careers that we're satisfied with, and there are signs that we might both make some steps in that direction in the next year.

A year is a long time. Three years ago, we were in a tiny apartment in Salt Lake City, living well below our means. We were preparing to quit our jobs so TW could go to PA school. We knew there was a rough road ahead, but we told ourselves, "We can do anything for two years."

I won't begin to comment on the naivety. Two years is a very, very long time to have cold fingers and feet.

A new year is a time to reflect on how far you've come. There's a saying that goes, "Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans." That's true for a lot of people. For us, life is turning out more or less the way we planned. That's gratifying, to be sure, but it's also exciting because we have big plans ahead. There will be curve balls. Nothing goes exactly the way you plan. But when I look at where we were a year ago and compare it to the present, it's easy to see things moving in the right direction.

Here's hoping we can all say something similar a year from now. God bless and happy new year.