Tagged

I have been tagged.

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose someone else to be tagged. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

So here you go:

1. I want to go to Italy
2. I love when my girls sing together
3. I once lived in a house in collage with 9 guys where everyone but me and my brother were musicians.
4. I broke my wrist once...playing twister...in math class...3 days before the end of the school year.
5. I just started learning biblical Greek (only working on the alphabet now)
6. One of my girl's favorite toy's is a simple helium balloon.
7. Hannah went down a sled hill so fast this year she lost her hat!
8. When I was a kid I always wated a black pickup truck, with a blue motorcycle tied up in the bed so I could drive around and always be ready for fun.
9. I used to have an imaginary friend named Jason.
10. When a group of cousins went out to a drive in movie, we almost rolled a Chevy Blazer with about 8 kids inside. Then we had to drive a few hundred feet sideways until we could drive out of the ditch.
11. I ran so hard in a race once that I was dry heaving through the last 1/4 mile. This scared the person I was trying to pass so bad that I beat them to the finish line.
12. I used to go around the U of M wearing suspenders hanging down, and a fedora - swing kids had a big influence on me I guess.
13. I was nicknamed "Socrates" in high school partly because of Bill & Ted's excellent adventure, and largley because I was known for asking too many questions.
14. My Great Grandma lived to be 103 and she remmebered seeing Haley's commit twice.
15. I chear for the Chicago Bears, Twins/Whitesocks/Tigers, Wild/Avalanch, Pistons/Wolves (in that particular Order)
16. My grandpa had a bayonete from WWII which I thought was one of the neetest things in the house I grew up in.
17. We also had some kind of wind/Pipe Organ in the house that was fun to try to play at the age of 5
18. The only comics I own are the Spiderman/Carnage series, and the "Death of Superman"
19. I thought I wanted to marry Cara within about the first 2-3 weeks that I had met her.
20. On our honeymoon, my favoriate thing we ate was a great Italian dinner, where they brought out frozen fruit and wrapped prochuto and cheese around it as an appatizer.
21. Cara humored me on our honeymoon by going to a live lobster roast place. They really creaped her out since they were moving around just behind where we were sitting.
22. Lilly and Hannah like Rootbeer floats, and Lilly just recently started calling it a "Floopbear"
23. I carry both the name of, and the weading ring of my grandfather.
24. I had a key supporting role in the musical "HMS Pinaphor" in Jr. High.
25. I enjoyed being a member of the general cast more in OKLAHOMA in Highschool, and being in the One Act adaptation of "A mid summer's night dream" with Caleb.
    

Table Topics - Paid too much

A friend of mine from work is part of a public speaking group.

He came up with these great table topic questions one day when he was in charge of the discussion.

I thought these were excellent so I decided to publish them one at a time over a few weeks. Feel free to answer any of them in comments or in your own blog or facebook post.  Just let me know if you answer because I would be curious to see what you said.

Tell a story that finishes this sentnce

• Something for which I paid too much, that was worth it ...
  

For me it would have to be learning Italian at the U of M.  I calculated this out once and I don't remember now, but I think I paid between $3,000-5,000 to learn the Italian language, plus Books and tapes - yes I am old enough to have had audio tapes in my class not CD's (use wikipedia if you don't know what they are :) which was hundreds in it self.

I say I paid too much because it was way more money than I had to spend on something so frivolous then.  Also I never did make it to Italy to practice my long studied skill.  

It was worth it because I did graduate...eventually, and that was a requirement.  It was also worth it because I came to really enjoy
Roberto Benigni from such films as Johnny Stecchino.  Also it is now on my and Cara's life list to make it to Italy some day.  And that is a wounderfull goal to be able to look out on fondly in the midst of every day life.

So how about you, how would you finish the sentence?

-- more topics to come in the future.

Challenges & Opertunities for Humanity

If you haven't yet herd of it, check out this site featuring the greatest challenges facing the world today (which engineering has an opportunity to carry forward).

You can access them here

Here is a quick preview

• CHALLENGES FACING HUMANITY
  Make solar energy affordable

  Provide energy from fusion

  Develop carbon sequestration

  Manage the nitrogen cycle

  Provide access to clean water

  Reverse engineer the brain

  Prevent nuclear terror

  Secure cyberspace

  Enhance virtual reality

  Improve urban infrastructure

  Advance health informatics

  Engineer better medicines

  Advance personalised learning

  Explore natural frontiers

Baseball & marriage?

OK, so following the worst game of my softball carer [*cough* - hobby], last week, I had only an below average two games at the double header this week. So...I called up my buddy Caleb and we went a swinging.

We went to the batting cages and I got 6 tokens ($10 worth) Each token gets you 18 pitches. Caleb pointed out to me "Think about how many games does it take you to see 18 pitches?" And in this context I can just worry about hitting them, not running, or getting someone out.

Kind of reminds me of why it is valuable to do the marriage conferences, or mentoring groups that Cara and I have enjoyed so much. They can provide a safe, focused, controlled environment where we can "see" a number of situations in a few hours that it would normally take several months to "see". In addition we can face them fresh, and with a good attitude where we would normally face them under less than ideal circumstances, and in high stress.

safe: (no one gets out)
focused: (only goal is to make contact)
controlled: (choose your timing to set your best attitude)
fresh: (avoid stress of the moment)

It gives you a chance to get back in your groove. My buddy Caleb said that baseball is a "game of streaks." You have a series of good games where you are on fire, and then you hit a slump. Sometimes you just have to shake it up and put in a little extra time in the cages to try to get back to the fundamentals, shake off the dust. The results may not be instant, but you just have to outlast the difficult moments, relax a little, and as my wife said "try to still have fun, that is why you wanted to play isn't it? Because it was fun." Soon enough you will be hitting strong again if you don't give up. Maybe marriage is the same way.

Just thinking.
Bill

Intimidation

Nothing is so difficult as starting a thing. Unless of course we consider finishing a thing well. A unique challenge for me since I am easily distracted. We will see how this goes.