Awesome site...

This is, perhaps, what happens when you give creative people a little license in the creation of a website. You have to wait a bit for it to get started--let it unfold. CLICK HERE. My favorite is the magnifying glass.

Test Results....

...are back and everything is just fine! No worries and everything is clear and clean! Eighteen months down, onward and upward for the next 6 months!

Perfect

What I Learned: Success

What I Learned This Week
I had a meeting with an insurance agent and she gave me a common-sense piece of advice that is also very wise. I asked her what the secret to her business was. She said that to be successful in business, the one thing you MUST do is return phone calls. I had never heard it so succinctly put, and I thought it was brilliant in its simplicity. I started thinking about it, and realized that is half the battle.

In order to return phone calls, you must first GET phone calls. Chris Lytle, my first sales "guru" once asked, "What is the most important thing for catching fish?" People said a hook, or the right bait, and a host of other things. The real answer, of course, is FISH. Fortunately, I am in the fish-bringing business.

The other part of what I think is important? Woody Allen once said eighty percent of success is showing up. I would add only this: Show up on time. I cannot count the number of times people have meetings with me and don't show up, or they're late and don't call. I'm not just a salesperson, I'm also a potential customer. Treat me like one. Additionally, when I show up, usually five minutes early, they're often shocked. They say with genuine surprise, "Wow, you're timely." Of course.

Quote of the Week
I was talking with a truck cap installer, another early-riser like me, and he said, "I like getting up early, getting a cup of coffee and looking at the world before they've had a chance to #%*& it up."

What I Learned: Duh

If you're calling the pizza guy to set an appointment, don't call him at lunchtime. Don't call him BACK at dinnertime. On Friday. Here endeth the lesson...

Test-taking

What I Know
A lot of you have been asking about my blood work and CT Scan. I have heard nothing so far. This is because my doctor has been out of the office all week. He is due back this coming week and I should have the full report then. Thanks so much the kind thoughts and prayers.

Cemetery Run

Went for an early morning run today. I dressed for the cold, but it was unusually warm this morning (55 degrees!) when I stepped out. Because it's been raining and snowing, the warmer weather left us with a dense fog. I thought, correctly, with the early hour and the fact that today is a holiday for most people, I wouldn't have to worry about traffic at all. I left the house and loosened up pretty quickly.

Warmer weather also brings out the little beasties, notably skunks. While I didn't see any, I had to run close enough to an area one had sprayed that I got a little nauseous. I picked it up through there. It's amazing to me how much you can smell on an early morning run, especially since I have a fairly lame sense of smell, by most accounts. I can smell the diesel from the truck that starts up in the driveway, the fresh cut plywood in the housing development that is going up as well as the deeper smell of excavation and drywall, and the cigarette of the person who drives past me.

I run through my development and out the long road to the cemetery. It's never bothered me, running through a cemetery, but for some reason I got the heebie-jeebies today. Not a malevolent, you're-being-watched-by-the-ghost-of-a-dead-clown kind of heebie-jeebies, but more of a you're-not-alone kind of thing. The hair stood up all the way to my scalp as I ran onward.

All-in-all it was a good run. I am going to be a little sore and a little stiff for today, but it felt really good to get out and run again.

It's All Over But the Waiting

I went to the doctor for my eighteen-month checkup and eveything there checked out just fine. They also took blood and urine, to check for things like elevated white blood cell count and other tumor markers. On Friday I took the day off with Little Fish and went over for my CT Scan. The worst part of that experience was, of course, the barium cocktails you have to drink one and two hours before the test. They're doing something different with them now, though, where they have more of an orange-chalky taste, instead of a chalk-chalky taste. I suppose anything is an improvement. I find out all of my results, hopefully, this week.

More obligatory cat-related pictures for CT Scan Entry...


....and the one Little Fish picked out for my background....

Fish's Sense of Snow

A couple of years ago, there was a book entitled Smilla's Sense of Snow, an absolutely incredible thinking-person's thriller about a spinster in Iceland who gets involved in a mystery involving a young neighbor boy and a dead body. It was later made into a movie which I avoided like one avoids the line at the grocery store attended by the kid with the runny nose. If I love a book, I make a point of avoiding the movie; they just rarely pass muster when they take what you've imagined and throw it up on the screen. I know it's a cliche, but it's a cliche that's true.

Anyway, I was reminded of this book on my drive in to work this morning. I left in the tiny hours of the morning, and there was nobody on the road except me. One of the observations Smilla is constantly making is the type of snow that is falling; in Iceland they have a different word for every type of snow that falls, based on what it looks like and how it behaves. Thus, the word for super-heavy-water-laden snow is different than the word for snow that gets that crunchy frozen crust on it. This morning's snow fell in tiny little crystals, and as I drove on it, my headlights hit the individual crystals and reflected them back to me in tiny glints. I'm not sure what Smilla would call it, but I called it beautiful.

Eighteen-Month Checkup

Today is my 18 month checkup for cancer markers. I was nervous and a little scared this weekend, and got a little "wrapped around the axle" as my friend Carl likes to call it, thinking about things. Funny, I am fine now. I tried to understand that level of peace, but quite frankly, it was beyond me.

Auction to Fight Sexual Abuse

Beginner Triathlete is hold an auction to help fight Childhood Sexual Abuse. You can CLICK HERE to find out more and see if there's something you want to bid on. Membership is required to bid on or list items, but it's FREE!

Professor Randy Pausch...

What would you say in a lecture if it was the last one you could give? Randy Pausch has a better answer than most, perhaps because it really is his last lecture.

Nice...

From my friend, Schwammy...

Sarah Reinertsen...

...so what's holding you back?

Awesome...

I don't remember what the most interesting thing I have seen from my bicycle is, but I'm sure it wasn't...

...a wolf! Just one more reason Arctic Glass is a new favorite (favourite, for my international readers) read.