Life

I had lunch with someone last week who truly personified a quality that I admire – humbleness. I was surprised by this, not only because most people simply aren’t very humble, but also because despite being young (I’m not exactly sure his age, but it was likely 24 or 25) he had actually accomplished quite a bit – founding a finance firm, raising some capital and finagling his way into a handful of really interesting late stage deals (of course his perspective was that he really hadn’t done anything yet . . . but that was just him being humble). When I was in my mid 20’s I don’t recall being particularly humble (actually, I recall being pretty pleased with…

I made a simple change in my life a few weeks ago that ended up being much more dramatic than expected. For reasons extraordinarily practical – I wanted to keep my phone on at night when I was traveling without being woken up 30 times overnight with the ‘chrip’ of a new email – I turned off the email notification on my Dash. (I know – I could have created a new profile and programmed it to allow the phone to ring but I was in a hurry so I just modified my main profile.) A few days passed before I realized that I wasn’t constantly interrupting what I was doing at any given moment to check new emails as…

The world is full of people who have gone out of their way to be helpful to me over the years. I’ve been reminded of how powerful kindness can be in the past few weeks as a relative stranger – a ‘friend of a friend’ who I’ve actually never met in person, just over e-mail and phone – has gone out of their way to help me out and as a result is making something extremely important to me much easier. This truly is what makes the world go around.

Everyone deserves to have one truly outstanding dog sometime in their lives. For us this dog was Beau – our 100lb yellow lab. Beau was a truly sweet dog.  It’s hard to describe what this really means to those who never met him, but Beau was gentle despite his size and sweet in a way that sets him apart from all of the other dogs we’ve known.  His favorite pastime was to present people with a series of toys (typically stuffed bones and animals) when they walked into the house while vigorously wagging the entire back half of his body – just before making several laps between their legs.  Much to our amusement and unlike most labs, Beau didn’t enjoythings…

NPR has the answer.

Someone started ordering chai for our cafeteria and of course I had to check it out.  Having never made chai from a package you can imagine that I had some concerns about whether it would come out right – what would I do if it was too hot? what if it wasn’t creamy enough?  Not to worry – thankfully the package contained exremely helpful instructions (click on the image below for a better view).

Let’s face it – disco is a universally loved form of music (well . . . almost). This is certainly true of the under-6 demographic.  I witnessed this phenomenon first hand last weekend as several hundred kids and their parents descended on the Boulder Theatre to rock out to the sweet beats and floating falsetto of the Bee Gees, Diana Ross and other 70’s greats.  I can promise you that you have not experienced disco until you’ve seen a mass of kids rocking out, complete with bubble machine, lights and disco ball. I think our two year old had almost as fun as my wife and I did <g>

Birthday wishes to Ben Casnocha who turns 18 today. Ben sent an e-mail out last week asking a bunch of folks for their advice about life at that age. I’m afraid my response was a little late to make it into his post with some of the material he received. Here was my 2c (extra points for the haiku): always have more fun by enjoying what you do it’s all the journey Two things that I wish someone told me when I was 18: you can never travel too much – especially when you are young (I  should have taken time off to do this) you are never delaying living your life – you are living it every moment of…

One of my most memorable experiences from when I was an investment banker in New York (and one of the things that really turned me off from banking, now that I think about it) happened one year at our team holiday party.  One of the associates I worked with was going bald . . . all except for one spot on the very front of his head, which he refused to cut off despite it looking ridiculous – a wispy clump of hair in the middle of his otherwise bald forehead. We made endless fun of this hair over the years and that night, after much drinking, the group took up a pool to try to get him to shave…

Check out the 10 mph project. I bumped into them when they passed through my neighborhood (attracted by its funky architecture and bright colors). They spent a couple of months traveling across the country on Segways and filming their experiences. Browsing their site is a kick. You can also check out a clip from their video by clicking on the big ‘trailer’ link at the top of the page. It’s a great reminder that slowing down often gives you a completely new perspective.