Pithy Title Here

A very close friend of mine ran the Los Angeles Marathon a few weeks back with a time of 4:08:48. Had he been in Boston today with that time, he’d probably have been somewhere between getting a medal and grabbing a recovery banana when things started to explode. In other words, way too flipping close. And sadly, many others were closer.  Had he been there, it also would have been his second day of surviving a terrorist attack. No doubt, some of the runners and spectators today were in New York on Sep. 11. My friend was, too. And so was I. The thing is, we talk about these sorts of things in terms of lives lost. In terms of people injured. The cold will look at property losses and dollar figures among these other grim stats. But can one truly say one attack is “worse” than another? I’m not so sure. Watching the footage was one thing. Watching it unfold in real time was another. We didn’t have Twitter in 2001, but today, even the distant could watch as events unf...

Did you know me back in high school or college? If so... yeah, sorry about that. In all seriousness, I'm sure we all have moments from the past we cherish and some we wish had panned out differently. What I think is more interesting is how things evolve. Or, in some cases, fail to. Just figure: I graduated high school in 1997 and college four years later. Some of the folks I shared a walk to "Pomp & Circumstance" with haven't been in touch with me for at least 10 years. I don't even know these people, at least. How much have you changed in 10 years? Judging by how much I have changed, probably more than a little. Yet, when I see a Facebook update from a friend from high school or spot a once-familiar face on a trip back to where I grew up, I seem to not give the person that credit. And it's not fair. What I mean is, I might hear something from my mom about such-and-such who I went to high school with who's now doing this-or-that-with-so...

This past week, I traveled to New York on business. I had been back east since moving west, but this time, in particular, the signs were all there... I've become a west coaster. Let's review: Tolerance for heat? Gone. Especially the east coast favorite of "HHH" weather - hazy, hit and humid. Last Tuesday, I basically wilted in the NYC heat and it was the coldest day of my brief trip there. On Weds, it hit 95 and, despite having grown up in this sort of weather, I was done with it. I guess it's more of a testament to the miracles of nature and how we're able to acclimate to the areas we live in. For now, though, if it must be hot, let's do dry heat, k? Apparently, I no longer jaywalk. Or I have to remind myself to do so. I was walking to meet a friend in NYC and the sign said "don't walk." So... I didn't. If you've never been to/lived in NYC, this may mean nothing to you. If you do, you're probably going "You're the pedest...

In early 2003, I worked at a PR firm that promoted BBC Video. Not a bad gig for a somewhat-recent college grad. Especially if you like British humor (oh how I still think it's a tragedy what the USA did to Coupling . And don't even start me on my thoughts on the original British version of The Office ...). There was one DVD release, though, that took me by surprise. I had never heard of The Singing Detective . Our product managers on the client side spoke well of it... very well. And, when a member of the PR firm spoke to then-TV critic at the New York Daily News David Bianculli (he's now a guest host and TV critic on NPR's Fresh Air and founded TVWorthWatching .com), the well-respected critic referred to the 1986 BBC production as one of the best bits of dramatic TV ever. He ended up writing the DVD liner notes. Most of you have likely encountered Michael Gambon in the Harry Potter films. A younger Imelda Staunton (who also made her way to Harry Potter ) has a ro...

No surprise here but in the six months I've had my Kindle, I hear the occasional argument of "Oh, well, I read real books," as though there is an intellectual preference to do so. You and I might both read Anna Karenina , in other words, but since you read a "real" book and I read it on my Kindle, somehow, your experience is superior to mine. This sort of thing has to stop. Unless Tolstoy intended for you to be taken by the sheer weight of the volume (dear lord, it is a bit long, no?), who cares how you read it? And fine, you read a "real" book. Let me go find someone who read a "real" copy of the book. In Cyrillic. Then, where are you, huh? The point is nowadays we all have different ways of consuming media. Is one so far superior to another? This is hardly a new issue. I spent many a day in high school in ridiculous conversations that went like this: Some guy: What are you listening to? Me: Smashing Pumpkins. Some guy: What album? Me: Siam...

I just changed the settings on my computer and Blackberry so that everything is on Pacific Time. From here on out, I'm three hours behind the east coast I have long called home. In five hours, I hop on a plane and land 3,000 miles away... at home. Kinda cool, no? Sarah, Ashley and friend Jen are en route, as well, via car. I strongly suggest you follow their travails on Sarah's blog over the next few days. There will be much to report on a new city, but before that, I think it's only proper to send off Charlotte, a place I have enjoyed greatly. I've made great friends, had good times and learned a bit about what makes the South the South. So... a few things I will miss about Charlotte and some I won't (and people don't count on here. I am talking about material things...) I will miss: The trees. Charlotte is still a city of trees. Crepe Myrtles, Magnolias, Mimosas... even some palms here and there. The coniferous Northwest beckons, but there is something ab...

In 1999, I decided to take on a 10-year project. Toward the end of my sophomore year in college, the U.S. Mint started the 50 State Quarters Program and, despite not really being a coin collector, I thought this would be cool. It was a conscious decision. I decided it wouldn't go seeking out quarters or anything of the sort. I wanted to simply come upon them. With five quarters released each year, I knew I had at least a 10-year project on hand. And so it began. First, as a small stack of quarters in my dorm room. That summer, after I told my mom I was doing this, she picked me up a $5 folder with slots for each state's quarter. Last week, after 10 years of looking carefully at virtually every quarter that came my way, I found a Montana quarter from the office vending machine... and my collection was complete. One of the reasons I started the collection was so I could sit back and see just what transpired in my life between acquiring that Delaware quarter and the comple...

I read a fair amount of pop-econ and pop-psych. For instance, Malcolm Gladwell's excellent books, such The Tipping Point , and recently, Outliers . I recently read Chris Anderson's Free , breaking down the potential of companies (or bands) to make money by giving stuff away. It's interesting to see some topics arise in several of these books and one I've seen in the above - and in some other articles lately - is Dunbar's Number . In basic terms, Dunbar's Number is 150 - being the maximum size of a given person's true social network. The number was established through research... of course there is some dispute that 150 is the number, but, Dunbar did notice some interesting things. You can find plenty of examples through history of societies that broke apart into two groups when their total populations exceeded 150. Roman army units were made up of 150 soldiers. The idea is that, once you exceed 150 people in a group, cohesiveness - or common mutual int...

Wow, how has it been a month since I last blogged. Yikes. I'm all for heat. For whatever reason, I like extreme weather as much as a nice, mild 65-degree day. When it's cold, I want it to be cold. I once walked across my college campus when the temperature, not the wind chill, was -12. And I liked it. So this week, we've finally hit the time of year when the South turns into the South . I mean that in terms of summertime weather. It's going to be 97 here today. And, to me, the only thing that could be better would be 98. Sure, it's roasting. And you need to drink fluids every 10 minutes or risk dehydration. But, for me, the heat defines summer. It was always roasting in Philadelphia growing up. Without fail, it was roasting in NYC. In fact, NYC often gets hotter than it does here (gotta love the heat island effect). But the heat is conducive to a number of things, such as: Laying out in the sun - I mean, if you sweat just by going outside, might as well s...

The announcement came out yesterday that The Freedom Tower will now be called One World Trade Center . I have to be honest, as a former New Yorker, this announcement has only come about 7 years too late. In general, I don't like anything that feels forced. I hate ESPN because they try to tell me what I should like. I like the new U2 album because it's the first time in 10 years they haven't been making music with the overt goal of convincing me how good a band they are. And with the World Trade Center, we've attached so much "importance" to what happened there that we had to attach symbolism. And patriotism! What always irked me when I lived in NYC was how it always seemed that the rest of the country had a lot more say about what happened on that site than the people who lived in New York and the people who had worked in the original World Trade Center. That's funny, see, because up until about 8 a.m. on Tuesday, September 11, 2001 - when I was walki...

Happy new year all! How are we ringing it in? By sitting the hell out of our couch. No joke, yesterday, it was 4 p.m. before we made ourselves presentable and here we are today, nearly 3 p.m. and we're both sitting here wearing pajamas. And, I'm not going to lie: it's awesome. Both of our offices are on holiday time today and I'm sitting here realizing just how flipping busy we've been for the past several months. Not just work... it's honestly been the out-of-work stuff that's really been keeping us extra busy. Choir rehearsals and concerts, Sarah's freelance writing, my local board position... all of this is stuff we enjoy. And that takes time. We will head to the gym in a few... we've still been pretty good about that. Plus, I am in the throes of a cold, so being sedentary is, I think, really helping me out. But makes me think... almost every weekend is a sprint of getting chores and errands done and squeezing in some social time... and som...