• Catching Up, Part 1: Sightseeing in the Upper Peninsula, or not, as the case may be

    This is the start of a series of catch-up blog posts. I fell off the wagon of writing, and had a hard time getting started again. Life sometimes just gobsmacks you, and you have to roll with it and have faith you’ll come out on the other side. So here I am on the other…

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  • New beginnings

    I’ve been taking a bit of a break from blogging and most social media for the past several months. 2015 was a pretty rough year and 2016 didn’t exactly start off all sunshiney and great. But hey, it’s a new day – I mean, in a world where Donald Trump is the Republican nominee for…

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  • Another goodbye

    My brother Tom passed away on January 22 after a two-year battle against a really nasty adversary: Multiple Myeloma. He was 66 when he was diagnosed and still full of beans, a healthy, active guy who ran and was excited about starting to train for a Half Ironman. Cancer was so far off his radar,…

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  • Finding the next thing

    I’ve been spending some time lately on a few self-improvement-ish websites (Live Your Legend, Life Reimagined), reading and contemplating. I guess it’s all part of my not-midlife-crisis where I am trying to figure out what the next chapter/act of my life is going to look like. Full disclosure: I had a recent birthday and, well, I’m not…

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  • Change of scenery

    After a few months of nose-to-the-grindstone working, we went to Austin, on points (thanks, Chase Sapphire!) for my post-birthday in mid-October. Neither of us had ever been to Austin, so it seemed like a good destination for a short vacation. We were there for three days, so it was a bit of whirlwind trying to cram…

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  • How to Fail at Customer Service

    As we go through life, we encounter all sorts of customer service experiences. There’s the incomprehensible person taking orders at McDonald’s drive-thru window (bad), there’s the awesome barista at Starbucks who patiently corrects a problem with a drink order (good), there’s the helpful person at the drugstore who walks you over to the aisle where the…

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