Yes, You…

This just popped into my head the other day. I kind of liked it.

Keep Running…

Ah, Dreams…

This came into my head early the other morning, staring at the gray, felt walls of my cube. It’s true. Life in a cube is bearable if you focus on your dream.

My dream deals with my passion, running. I don’t know if it will ever happen, but it is nice to dream.

I stay where I am because of the potential but, I have to wonder, how long do I give them to live up to it? Will they?

I think I will hang in there until I finish with my MBA, early next year, and keep trying to help the company when I can and when they want me too.

Until then, I can always dream.

Aren’t All Just A Little OCD?

Jenny said, upon my return from PA, the way she shows me she loves me is by supporting my OCD, not by cooking a nice dinner.

She’s right.

Fore!!!!!

I spent last weekend in Butler, PA at the Conley Resort for a guys golf weekend. I was invited by a friend who I worked with twenty years ago (ouch) at Cedar Point in Sandusky, OH. He and about thirty other guys have been meeting the last seven years or so for this trip.

I had a blast! I got to see my friend, John, and turns out, there were other guys from our summer at the Point had been going every year, too.

John and I lost touch after I joined the Marines in 1993. Easy to do at the time really, specially when you are stationed on Guam and Hawaii and other exotic places in the world, like Pensacola, FL. Email wasn’t widely used at the time, so you lose touch.

John found me right before Christmas last year when a search on Google returned my LinkedIn profile. Long story short, he invites me along and now I have a friend back and made many more due to a social networking site. Cool.

I have reconnected with others from high school and college much in the same way. I do searches one or twice a week hoping a new, old friend shows up. It’s only a matter of time.

Have you found old friends this way? Have you tried?

Photo courtesy of an other John on the trip. It is me (on the left) and my friend, John, waiting to tee off on the first hole on the first day.

Message Received…

I commented this morning on a blog and feel the need to talk about it here. The paragraphs following the quoted part contains an expanded version of my comment.

Jon Swanson writes a nice blog called Levite Chronicles. This morning, he reposted an entry he wrote this last May called Looking Back – Pass It On. It talked about a man he knows who was having a problem with prayer and Jon gave him the following advice,

“Spend the next few days listening to how your children talk to you and your spouse. Listen to what is requested. Listen to the talking for talking sake. Listen to inflection and urgency and desire to be with you and hear you and love you. And then talk to God the same way.”

I have been in a crisis of faith for the last seven years, since losing our son to cancer in 2001. I pray every night but it is more ritualistic, repeating the same words, in the same order, never really deviating from the script, all because I feel I should, not because I want to.

I know God has been trying to get through to me but I have been choosing not to listen. I even hesitated at reading Jon’s blog because of the possibility of God-related subject matter. Not because of Jon and his writing. I just did not want to hear it, specially if it seemed God was saying something to me. But I enjoy Jon’s writing and decided to stick with it. After reading this morning’s entry, I have to wonder if there was a reason for being brought there.

I will choose to see a message in this, whether I want to or not. Don’t know what I will do with it or if I am even ready to anything but, message received.

Photo courtesy of stuart166axe.

Thinning the Herd…

This is from a joke between Jenny and I. It all relates to her recent brain surgery and hydro. We tend to make a lot jokes about her condition, some are inappropriate and take some people by surprise when I say she isn’t sick, she just drinks in the afternoons (the look on one neighbor’s face was priceless).

We tell people that you have to laugh. It’s better than sitting around and crying.

Individuality…

Chalk One Up to "Old" Media…

This is a great story. In the Races and Places section of the March 2008 edition of Runner’s World was a story called Found in Boston. Jennifer Graham writes that as a specatator at the 2007 Boston Marathon she is handed a pair of running pants by a lady running the race. The lad started out in running pants but shed them once she and the air got warmer. She placed her name and address in the pocket along with $5 so she could give them to a by-stander with the request to ship them back to her. Long story short, the piece of paper falls out of the pocket and Ms. Graham has the dilemna of what to do with the pants.

I don’t think it would go over well with Jenny (“You did what with your good fleece?) so I wear an old sweatshirt that can be thrown to side and collected for donation. But I can see the thinking of the pantless runner. Find someone in the crowd who appears to be decent and a fellow “freak” to hand pants, fleece, etc and would oblige to send them in the mail .

This month’s edition of the magazine had a nice follow-up. The owner of the pants, a Ms. Laura Burger, read the article and realized Ms. Graham was speaking of her. She emailed Runner’s World and at the expo for this year’s Boston, Ms. Burger met Ms. Graham for a happy reunion with her pants. She is quoted in the magazine as saying, “Isn’t amazing how running connects people in so many ways?”

That is so true. I have met many great people through running. But what made me smile was the fact that the connection was made through “old” media of a magazine, not the “New” media of social networking.

I am new to the whole social media thing and I love it and learn something new everyday. But this time, old media let the world know it’s not dead yet.

(picture is from Scene 2,”Bring Out Your Dead” of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”)

I am the Decider…

I have decided to go with my heart, not my head, and specialize in Marketing. If you recall, a couple days ago I had the conundrum of what MBA specialization to choose. I kept turning it over in my head and was always drawn back to marketing. I find it really fascinating. I don’t know what I will do with it. It really isn’t pertinent to my job but what the hell. Maybe I can parlay it into a side gig of some sort.

Have you ever ignored logic and gone with your heart? Did it work?