Journal : OpenRoadWorks

I am ready for a break since I cannot seem to get out from under my current work situation. Good thing that the holiday is upon us so that I can slip into the proper mood and be of good cheer. Wendy decided that it was a good idea to break the cycle and jump-start on the festivities by sneaking in a couple of presents last night. Wendy & I have been fortunate to share in some wonderful moments this year, and some of those moments have been blessed with the presence of good friends from far and wide. I take a quick moment to thank all those people (you all know who you are!) for being in our respective lives and look forward to an even better year in 2008. So much to celebrate - it was easy to let Christmas overtake us. Presents under the tree, and I look forward to what is inside all those intricate wrappings! HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

The last milestone from my trusty, now old, Volkswagen GTI VR6 was 50,000 miles. It was December 2004, and I was driving cross-country from California to Ohio, on my way ultimately to Switzerland and a year abroad in graduate school. It took 8.5 years to reach that milestone. Little did I know that the next 50,000 miles would take just under a quarter of that time. I remember so much about this car. My mother dinged it not more than a week after it found itself into my parent's driveway; 10 years later, it would be hard for that to happen again - there is no more basketball pole, and the lane is wider after the house renovation. At 99,998 miles, I remembered the days in college. After an epic trip with my father cross-country from Ohio to Los Angeles, I wound up with a car on-campus for my sophomore year. What a privilege to have wheels - and what a benefit to friends. There was even that one evening where an impromptu van jam ended up with 7 in the car, from front seat to trunk. D...

It was Saturday night, and the Magic Kingdom was packed: teens acting cool with their friends, young tots fighting valiantly against fatigue, stroller babies laid out in peaceful slumber, and exhausted parents encircling them all with consternation. First, it was the spectacular fireworks, then it was the light parade. All the while, I was clinging to waking hours by the sheer joy I was experiencing with Wendy. What can make this place nothing but magic? It was the place where I raced in fascination as a kid - what boy can resist being a pirate and getting "trapped" in an enchanted yet haunted house? It was the place where I proposed to my future wife - what guy can resist being a prince sweeping his damsel off her feet? It is the place where creativity is free to roam and imagination is celebrated and not relegated to practicality - what person can resist the urge of freedom and self-expression that results? Perhaps it is too much to ascribe a make-believe place with such hy...

Southwest Airlines has many supporters - of which I am not one. Call me snobbish from prior days of inter-continental business travel, but I have never fancied the inevitable cattle call that comes when the gate agent opens up the mic. Tonight her call was honest and to the point: "line up, you know, just like gym class when you were long ago in school... and no so long ago for some of you." Correction duly noted - it is not just boomers with a pocket of pension money to burn. Students, military, modest couples, entrepreneurs, regional sales folks, the crowd was mixed - and all the more so because my flight was heading to Orlando. Ah yes, Orlando, that oasis of middle-class holiday-seeking so spot on attracting the bulls-eye median of the US population that chain restaurants like Red Lobster test their new fixin's down there. Simple reason: if the Disney crowd likes it, then anytown USA will like it too. Somehow I turn out to be a supporter regardless. Standing in line am...

I thought the week might get better. If only I could that last presentation done over dinner at the hotel, I would be able to leave from HQ at a reasonable hour. If only we would have reached resolution sooner on some big-picture dialogue then I could have gotten home before the strike of midnight. No dice. I hate to think that I am working like my father, but in these days, it is true. Granted, the long hours are paying dividends, both in gaining experience and feeling a sense of accomplishment. I am getting better at being more productive. Still, it is long days at the office - and there are other things to do than work. What long hours at the office lead to...

This week is already proving challenging. Driving up to New Jersey on Sunday night, I will be doing work from before dawn to after midnight, hopefully getting a few hours of sleep in between. In the meantime, there are meetings to attend to, presentations to make up, calls to dial in, action items to resolve, and all sort of other items to take care of. It's a mess, and I'm not entirely happy to highjack my schedule. That being said, there is light at the end of the tunnel - namely, Disney World. To celebrate all that this hard work has brought Wendy and I, we are heading off to Orlando for the weekend, a sort of early holiday present to step out of the every day and into the special. So close to magic, I can taste it - past this week's craziness, that is...

The house is quiet. The computer is humming. Keystrokes break the silence with staccato taps. The desk is cleared, and the notebook is open. Pen standing by, notations as necessary. This is the set-up for a moment all too brief, where concentration and activity meet to accomplish something often anticipated but never realized - a closed list of action items. Desk, computer, notebook, pen, cup of coffee (sometimes water or tea) - this is all it takes for the knowledge worker to realize a new world. Often, it takes more than this to find the necessary inspiration - website, photograph, song, even poetry as aid - and even then, the results do not materialize. It is the bain of knowledge work that output cannot be summoned like the clouds for rain. On this silent Sunday, I feel like I have summoned my own clouds. Let me take to work in order to make it pour - just like the grey pervasion of this day's precipitation.

I had my doubts about commuting to work this morning. I thought twice about the endeavor when I looked out the window as I made my daily lunch. An odd silence echoed the sight - a parking lot on the highway. To say that Washington DC traffic is horrible is an understatement - every year it climbs the tables to now reside at #2 worst in the US behind NYC - but today's sight on I-270 that runs from Frederick to the Beltway was unusual. Car-to-car parking lot, literally stopped on a five-lane highway. Out at the car, I made an easy decision - I would take the backroads to the office. My decision was confirmed when the daily traffic report made my mobile phone vibrate incessantly (every morning, 8am, the traffic report!). I turned on the radio, and the news became worse than the text messages - back-ups on 495 outer loop, inner loop, 395, 95 north and south, Baltimore-Washington Parkway, George Washington Parkway, 50, 66, Ohio Avenue, New York, nearly every major route in and around DC...

For some reason, the words of a Rufus Wainwright song went through my head as I ambled through the National Gallery of Art. Two special exhibits are on during this period: J.M.W. Turner , the great English landscape painter of the 19th century, and Edward Hopper , the iconic yet laconic American painter of the 20th century. Two different wings of the gallery with two distinctly different takes on the world. I took great pleasure letting the afternoon slipping away and frolicking with my wife; after all, this is what newlyweds do, right? In spending the requisite time studying some of the works, though, I got to thinking: who are these family of so-and-so and endowment/foundation groups who own these works anyway? Special art exhibits have a penchant for bringing together the varied works of an artist that have long-since scattered the collecting elites. Some of these pieces come from museums naturally, but a good number come from private collectors, some of whom remain nameless on the...

I am distracted. I am sitting at work and trying to get my head around each of the various things that I have going on and need to move forward. I am organized but not on top of things. I feel at any moment that an order will come down from "on high" (as it usually does) that blows up all these various activities. I am apprehensive to commit to do anything, but then I feel like the rock is rolling fairly slowly uphill. I hope that the email stays in check long enough so that I can bite into the piling workload in other areas. What to do? Play video games. Go on a date with my wife. Put up the holiday tree (that will come this weekend). Read a book. Pack for a trip. Anticipate for the inevitable intrusion of Wendy's work on our Disney World plans in mid-December. All these wonderful things are enabled by the messiness of the office environment. After all, what pays the bills are what I am supposed to do sitting at this desk. I guess a little motivation is nec...

Back in Akron for some holiday cheer, the family trekked downtown for the annual Children's Hospital Holiday Tree Festival . Over the Thanksgiving holiday, over 100 holiday trees go up in the John S. Knight Center with all kinds of themes - Akron cheer, Notre Dame & Ohio State spirit, racing, autumn, candlelight, children's dreams, and all other sorts of themes. Throw in Santa Claus, mini-globes, and wreaths, and you've got a cornucopia of holiday fun. A nice feeling, to be sure. Surrounded by all the decorations that a great holiday should have, the event was for good cause, namely the assistance of children in medical need. Many kids have benefited by the good work that Children's Hospital does both locally and nationally, and it is all too easy to share in such an event for that benefit. And might I mention the reminder that Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa are just around the corner? So here's to a winter wonderland ( photos ) and a bevy of holiday tree...

On a cold, snowy morning in Ohio, I ventured out for a morning of competitive golf with the family. Odd, you might say, for such a round of golf at this time of year, but an annual tradition has risen from the post-Thanksgiving food comas in the area. The local country club holds a cross-country golf tourney that reconfigures its course into a nine-hole adventure that criss-crosses the existing layout in new ways. Around practice ranges this way, over the trees that way, a new tee box where the existing fairway starts, and you have a test of golf refreshing and entirely novel. Trouble is that the snow keeps the ball hidden half the time, and assuming that the ball is found, the challenge of keeping hands warm and swinging through the layers of clothing is enough to keep minds off the fact that the feet are frozen. But no matter. What kept us occupied was the competition between the two threesomes in the group. Surprising birdie after surprising birdie, the fight was to the last h...

A random entry before heading off on Thanksgiving holiday - fun with Facebook. The internet fascinates me with its way of evolving the way that people communicate. Ever since the dawn of humanity, we have been working out how to better share our thoughts and feelings with each other. From cave wall scrawl to today's computers and mobile devices, we have come a long way - but the underlying urge to express ourselves has remained fundamental and constant. Which brings me to Facebook and any number of "social networks" that are out there. The buzz is around what is new and additive to our society - no doubt that MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, and the rest are new sorts of "online communities" that connect people in new ways. No doubt also that the implications for business can be profound and that many business plans are built upon the chance that these sort of social networking sites could change the way that we interact with each other as consumers. But the simple fact...

...the midnight oil. Inexcusably, work has crept up on me again - not that I intended for the office to draw me back in. I am trying to stay on top of a number of items and finding a hard time to say no to the efforts. No worries, though - it is now Friday since midnight passed! I can slumber in peace knowing that all the efforts of this past week threw me straight into the weekend without a second thought. At least tomorrow I am afforded a nice sleep-in to start the Saturday off right!

We are all waiting on something. It could be an event, a person, or a feeling. Sometimes waiting is hoping - either for the future to arrive or for the past to come back. In many cases, waiting is all that is available in the moment - a wait that does not stop the moment at hand from passing swiftly by. A simple thought, to be sure, and a good reminder to enjoy the moment. Because if a moment is all we have, waiting is a poor substitute for what really happens around us.

I was whirring up Park Avenue for a meeting at the Waldorf Astoria (oh, how posh!) when I pulled out my cameraphone to snap a picture uniquely indicative of New York City. Something representative without being overdone (easier said that done!). Something relatable to almost anyone that has been to this wonderful city. Something easy to recognize. Something difficult to forget. Sitting in a NYC taxicab, it was apparent where the shutter would point itself. Of all the places that I have been in Manhattan through the years, none have been so welcoming and iconic as the backseat of those yellow beacons of light after a bender of a night. An United Nations of drivers mans these vehicles, representative of the dream that the United States has often been for the fortunate, displaced, and ambitious - not that disillusionment did not follow when finding the cab as an occupation hopeful for a better future. Regardless, the taxicab is often friend, sometimes foe - and sometimes the instigator of...

Used to be, a train could take you anywhere in the US you wanted to be. From Boston down to Washington DC and over to Chicago, you had everyone from big shots to hobos hopping on the line. There was even a rush to make that train go all the way across this great, big country, from coast to coast. Forgotten in the modern age, Abraham Lincoln's greatest achievement at the time (1862) was signing into law the Pacific Railway Act which government-sponsored two railway lines - Union Pacific and Central Pacific - to connect the Eastern United States to California. Lincoln never saw this great vision come to fruition since the famous "golden spike" was driven into the tracks after his death, in 1869 (May 10 in Promontory Summit, Utah, to be exact). Regardless. it brought the railroads to great prominence and drove the Pony Express and the stagecoach into the relics of history. Now it is the railroad that has nearly been driven into the relics of history (thank you planes and au...

I wrote yesterday that a down home Sunday afternoon ensued as Wendy & I got back into the groove of getting our house in order. Since the backyard was taken to task the weekend before with mulch and new storage shed, it was time to bring the garage up to snuff with some shelving and storage space. So, off to the Container Store a couple of times and into the mode of do-it-yourself furniture assembly. In little more than a weekend, the space went from clutter to cramp-free - and now we can walk around the car (kind of) when it is pulled into the garage! The funny thing is how such little effort for noticeable result leaves one with a feeling of mission accomplished.

Very few moments can command the pleasure like a down home Sunday afternoon. As I type, I have a number of thank-you cards scattered about me and am looking out to our freshly-manicured backyard. It has been a busy few months with the wedding, honeymoon, and time-consuming business deals at work, but now Wendy & I are stepping back into blissful domestic life. What does that mean? Trips to Home Depot, The Container Store, Staples, Giant groceries, Barnes & Noble (another book doesn't hurt, right?), and driving around. Rationalizing bank accounts. Cleaning out the garage. Making the home office more functional. Paying off various debts. Writing thank-you notes for wedding presents. Selecting photos for the wedding album. Getting ready for the holidays. So much to celebrate - and nothing like the present to jump in to the mundane of homemaking. And this is the best part of having a down home Sunday afternoon - all the time in the world to make that blissful domest...

Somehow I started to read Proust. The blame goes to Alain de Botton , a writer whose witticisms deconstruct modern thinking and make intellectualism seem but a trifle and a whim. He wrote a book in 1997 called "How Proust Can Change Your Life" which distills the enigmatic French novelist into a self-help dispenser of pithy ideas. How clever I found Mr. de Botton to be when I dipped my toe into the vagaries of Proust; I picked up volume one of "In Search of Lost Time" and instantly fell into the deep end. What author dares to run sentences onward into the stratosphere that sometimes seemingly mellows behind the stars of a bright night, but never so much as an introspective person that wretches for the meaning of a simple thought, sometimes stumbling, but always emerging strongly as that same night in starry sky, almost an homage back to Van Gogh, whose rich paintings greatly represented the mood of a generation - and generations often afford a few mis-steps in l...

After a beautiful honeymoon all over Europe (Barcelona, Venice, London, Paris), I have re-entered the "real world" with the requisite meetings, bills, gardening, and handiwork. Wendy started a new job, that just happens to be local (lucky me!), and we were left pondering the next big decision as a couple - how to survive with one car? I hate to admit this, but we are an all-American couple. Meaning, one car for every driving-age adult (that seems to be the rule - check out traffic during rush hour!). That left us one car short for daily commutes. After briefly considering some non-American options (ie. carpooling or ride-sharing), we indulged in the trip down to the local car dealership. What did we find? First, that a car-buying experience can actually be fun! First, we interacted with a chilled-out sales person. Second, we got a chance to test drive. Third, we got a great deal - and without painful haggling. We even got the interest change lowered just by asking (t...

It's been awhile since I have jotted down an entry, and it will be another short spell until I have some proper time to reflect as I swim out from under a tidal wave of stacked-up work items, but it feels good to put fingers to keys and write something. I figured a good place to get going again is with some wedding pictures, since Weddings Perfect, the photography studio we hired for our wedding, has been able to post the collection of photos from the engagement sitting as well as the ceremony & reception. So without further ado: Here is the link to the wedding photos You will need to enter the event code on the left-hand side of the page as "wendy" Frankly, I was quite happy with how the pictures turned out; Carroll, our photographer at the event, was all over the place and captured so many moments, I wonder if he was really a set of twins that tag-teamed to get in on all the action. In any case, the pictures are posted for a bit of reminiscing & recollection: ...

Italian sojourns have become my secret travel vice, ever since my exchange student days in Milan. A day in to the Venice leg of the honeymoon reminded me again of this fact - and no sooner than the hour-long vaporetto ride that introduced Wendy & I to the deserted nightlife of post-ferragosto Lido, an accompanying island to Venice. After a semi-restful first night (Wendy's introduction of the paperback thriller "Angels & Demons" kept me turning pages later than I would have liked), the adventure took us by water taxi around to Piazza San Marco and the center of Venice. 10 hours later, we were happily fed (pasta, pizza, frittata mista, and gelattoed out), newly dressed (a wonderful present of a shirt from Wendy and other close calls for her too numerous to list), monumented (the impressive Doge's Palace with an equally superb temporary exhibit on Venice's connection to the muslim world through history), and walked out (including narrow lanes and bridges)...

A solitary moment to drop a quick note. On my honeymoon and loving it, after a restful night from a long flight. The weather in northeastern Spain is superb, and the people are their usual festive selves late into the night. I am content the morning after a truly amazing paella and resting in the honeymoon suite which overlooks La Rambla. Who could ask for anything more?

It is a day on from the end of the wedding weekend, and I am still trying to figure out what happened to me. The affair that I thought was just a dream ended up leaving a ring on my left hand and a house full of gifts. What was once a source of stress became at the march of the bride a source of immeasurable joy, such that the rest of the wedding night ended up passing as a cascade of wonderful moments beyond measure. I remember the wedding ceremony distinctly. Walking along the side of the deck out to the front of the altar, with a closely packed group of onlookers that had been there through so much of my life. After setting myself at the front, briskly walking up the aisle to get my parents. Once at both their sides, focusing all my nerve on walking delicately back down the aisle without engaging them too deeply, lest seeing their beaming faces turn into tears that might throw off my composure. Catching Wendy move like a ghost through the cocktail room before emerging onto the...

I had a moment when I wrote the last entry. Searching for photos to illustrate the topic, I stumbled across cover art for the song "The Final Countdown", the great hit by the Swedish rock band Europe (learn about this famed song at Wikipedia ). It just so happened that this was the first album I ever bought, back in 1986; I was 8 and music had just enchanted me for the first time. It was a cassette tape, and I remember buying it at the music shop with my mother. That first night, I sat on the edge of my bed listening and listening and listening to that song, wearing out the rewind button on the cassette player. It was a short time later that I got a Walkman portable cassette player as a birthday present, and my horizons were expanded again. I remember walking in my neighborhood with headphones on, listening to that cassette as well as various radio stations. The sound was bursting out of those headphones and seemed to encircle manicured lawns and mature trees that dot...

My last weekend as a bachelor just passed, and I am equal parts excited and nervous about putting a wedding ring on my finger. Crazy for a guy to say that, but I am also crazy about Wendy and have been anticipating this day for quite some time. Just checking in to share my feelings in the final countdown...

How quickly we become attached to pets. No later than the end of a thunderstorm that doused the heat choking the air today (some reports put the temperature above 100 with very high levels of humidity), Wendy and I made our little trek into the backyard to feed our fish. But much to our surprise, we saw something absolutely shocking in the nibbling on the flakes - a veritable newcomer black fish! If you recall from last weekend, there were three fish that accompanied us back from Petco in the plastic bag - Oscar (brightest orange face), Minnie (slighter orange face), and Mickey (mixed color face). And, in case you are also keeping score at home, these are newly minted names as the fish had no name when first returning home. Back to the point, at hand, though - where did this new fish come from? At this point, we have no clue as to the mysterious appearance of our new pet. But I can only guess one of two things: either our fish are super-fertile and breed like gremlins or we have u...

On an unusually warm Friday evening, Wendy and I ventured into Bethesda to experience what the rest of the world calls date night. Amidst the bar vultures at Houston's, we lingered over drinks - she of a French martini, me of a Campari e soda. We had front-row seats for a couple of guys looking to impress their dates, best part witnessing their bumbling efforts to validate their manhood. Asking the bartender in a quizzical, uncertain way, "What do you think of a scotch and soda, you know, to show the women that we are real men?" they got a bemused response from behind the bar: "So, I know that you cannot drink that. You might want to try something with vodka in it." She went on to mix the gentlemen vodka tonics while delivering up Pinot Noirs for their dates; it turns out the women knew much more about libations than the men. But that was only the opening act for the main event, namely the comfort food that followed back in our cozy booth away from the bar....

Wendy was trying to guess what I was going to write about this evening. Work? Gardening? Wedding? These seem natural topics, but no - I defy. This evening is about writing. She forgets that once upon a time I was a (ah ha - Wendy spotted a missing "a"!) single young man with a lot of angst. During those days, I used to fill up journals with all kinds of anxieties and ambitions and hopes and fears and all the little peccadilloes that surrounded my travels. Because travel I did as a consultant. Now, I am a bit more grounded and "normal", worrying about keeping a house going and not getting fired at work. But I am distracted. What I was really thinking about was sitting down at the old computer to do some writing. Good, old-fashioned, unadulterated writing. Feet on the desk kind of writing where the thoughts spill all over the screen, and all one needs to do is mop them up into short story or poem. Sometimes, I get these moments, but not as often as in tho...

Out back of the townhouse, there is a small pond. Upon move-in, this pond included a nameless koi of decent size, about 8 inches. He was a fine fish but shy; I thought nothing of his hiding tendencies in the early days. It was only a few months later that I realized the nameless koi was no longer part of the family, so to speak; he literally disappeared from the pond. A befuddling occurrence, considering I never found the body of this fine fish. It took many months more for the idea to sink in that, in fact, some animal might have made friends with the koi and escorted him somewhere outside of the pond. Since the koi disappearance, the pond has been vacant... until this past weekend. Some new family members joined us on Sunday, three new goldfish that came courtesy of Petco down the way off Rockville Pike (thanks to Wendy for showing them off!). They don't have names yet, but they do have the luxury of spreading their gills to take in the nearly fresh water of our little pond. We w...

There is nothing like a pressing deadline to get the blood pumping. One just moves along without a care until a date is associated with an activity, and then the thrashing begins. What have I left to do? What really needs to happen? Who is going to do these things still remaining? And what I have gotten myself into anyway? These days, I know all about deadlines of the personal and professional variety. Important presentations and big events, these are coming quick in the coming days, with associated pomp and circumstance. And it seems, at least for me, that the pomp and circumstance is getting more and more involved. I used to be able to meet my commitments with a bushel of email inquiries and a few hours of online research, but now that is only background towards reaching real progress. Could this be the true mark of an adult life coming on? Perhaps so, but the fact of the matter does not change - deadlines regardless of magnitude are all around and bring about the swiftest o...

As a sometimes aspiring writer, I cannot imagine a world without books. My fiancee' cannot imagine a world with as many books as I try to cram onto an office library wall, but that is another topic altogether. Books are a direct passage into the wandering recesses of our brains, encapsulating knowledge as idea, moment, or discipline as well as a writer could possibly hope to capture it for posterity. I remember elementary school days, when Scholastic provided book order forms to teachers so that pupils in their class could order straight from the source on all the best children's stories of the day; this was before big chain bookstores and Amazon. I would always leaf excitedly through those order form pages, dreaming about having the infinite time and money to buy up the list: "Rover", "The Indian in the Cupboard", and anything by Dr. Seuss. If I was fortunate, my mother would cave on my simple requests, and the order form would turn into a submission e...

Sleeping in. Baseball game. Wedding. Presentation revision. Night out with friends. Contract review. Emails. Multimedia uploads. Blog. I'm ready for bed, now that I have lost all advantage that I might have picked up from earlier efforts to try and catch up on sleep. That work should be the culprit again this evening is no surprise, and I cannot help but think of what life could be like if I could better manage the "scope creep" that my work affairs do to the other parts of my life. At least there is the upcoming honeymoon and the 2.5 weeks of pure bliss that di fare niente in various European cities will mean. Beforehand, I have a boatload of things to do - not unlike this past whirlwind weekend. So off to bed, sleepy head - only a precious few hours separate me from the next week of avalanche workload at the office.

Wendy warned me - 15 minutes until I absolutely need to get off the computer. I've been blazing through some action items and trying to get on top of the work stuff that prompted my prior post . Now, I have to quickly jump in the shower before we go out for dinner with friends. This gives me pause to hurry up and log some sentences before I run off to the bathroom. Not such an elegant post, but enough to remind me that I need to make this more routine as I noodle out more thoughts from the creative subconsious. It is amazing what just a few moments of cleared mindspace can do to find the inner voice. Speed typing, and I am done with this entry in less than 5 minutes!

One moment out of the day to keep the writing end up does not seem like too much to ask. However, these past few weeks the idea of penning a few small paragraphs of text has seemed like a major chore. With work pressures, big project deadlines, and wedding planning swirling about, I am at a loss for time. And so I am left figuring out what item next gets crossed off the list - the idea of blogging does not even seem to make the list. I have figured that this eternal quest for "being on top of things" is nothing more than a hope that perhaps any one of us have a shot at controlling our own destiny. The hope is alluring, but the reality is much more daunting than our greatest wishes. That leaves me sitting at the kitchen table on a Saturday morning, allowing myself a nice, old-fashioned sleep-in, and a few paragraphs of text. Of course, I am in the process of re-prioritizing my list of things to do, but that process has been ongoing for quite some time. All for the chance...

After 3+ hours of driving, I end up in New Jersey to find a castle. Not just any castle, but a castle built into a hotel. Not just any castle built into a hotel, but a Sheraton. Ou... It is late, and I am tired; a long day at the office awaits me tomorrow. I have been so absent from the blog, so I figured to give it just a little post to feel some love. After all, this acts somewhat like my castle online, where I can be king for a moment of words.

So much fun sitting at the kitchen table. These are the priceless moments that get cataloged in the memory for safekeeping, the moments that will accompany me in those dark moments when encouragement is needed. Wendy and I sitting at the kitchen table, being dorks together with our dueling computers - there is nothing so simple and yet profound as these sorts of moments that bind us together in ways that elude any sort of description. A moment to wish Wendy good night and more wonderful moments to come.