Picture experiment

I've decided that blogging is a little like talking to myself, only harder on my fingers. However, those wacky college kids I work with (for) seem to think it's all the rage so I will continue the experiment and try to figure out how to harness the power for good.

Part of the experiment is figuring out pictures, so I am going to attempt my first picture insert here:

Fabulous. On an entirely unrelated thought if you haven't checked out Flickr at flickr.com it is a pretty fascinating photo posting site. It's fun to put in stuff like "Deer Lodge, Montana" and do a search because you end up with pretty wacky stuff. Also fun because my friend Phil has a picture from my wedding which seems weird, but the rest of his phots show how a guy can go a long, long ways from Deer Lodge, Montana to sailing outings on the east coast.

Fall is great

I can't believe how nice the fall is in Minnesota. No knock on Montana, because I'm sure it is great there too right now but the sheer beauty that comes out in these days almost makes living in the great midwest worth it. Tonight we get to drive out to a small park on a lake and watch my son run cross country, and there are a lot of goods things about that, but just the trees and all make it pretty spectacular.

Also, as a note to self I'm realizing that I'm a poor political and personal prognosticator. Conrad Burns most recent ad was featured on You Tube. I think he may in fact be in political decline, the folks particularly in Bozeman better consider the giant sucking sound of federal dollars going somewhere else - because they don't give that kind of money to guys with flat tops.

Best times?

As I was waking up my kindergartener this morning I realized that this might be the best time in my life. O.K., so having said that there are a lot of things that aren't really right. I have a career that feels like I made a critical mistep somewhere along the way, financially things are shaky at best, and everyday part of my brain is dedicated to wondering how my granfather's health is. But, as I look at the ages of my kids and what they have going on I get the sense that they just don't get much more enjoyable than this. So far I don't have to worry about dating, cars, or too many other evils out there and I get to spend a lot of time with all of them. (The upside or blessing of bad career choices maybe?) They still think I'm pretty O.K., they laugh at my jokes, yet they can all make themselves cereal and more or less pick out their clothes for school in the morning.

All in all, I'm realizing that though there are many storms in life, I'm lucky to have both my immediate and extended family.

Organizational yuck

A guy by the name of Marc Cohen had an album during my high school years and in a song he said, "My friends will ask me how I'm doin, and I can't lie to em', not feeling fine today."

I seem to be trapped in a organization where I am supposedly a "communication expert" who is consistently miscommunicating. Here we don't discuss or dialogue, there are just directives and middle management is supposed to jump. In the end, that may be the definition of middle management, but I know that for the effective organization there is something more. In the effective organization there is a moment where communication is co-creation and everyone contributes to an idea and it becomes great.

Somehow the image of a garden just came to me. If I water, somebody else plants, somebody else weeds, somebody fertilizes, etc. then in the end we can have a pretty good garden. My image of the current professional garden I am in is that we are each busy trying to care for our one seed, each trying to grab the hose or the fertilizer or the rake and when the harvest time comes we are going to find that we will starve because we are each harvesting one small kernel where there could have been an abundant harvest.

School Daze

After spending the weekend with 194,000 of our closest friends at the Minnesota State Fair labor day has passed and the kids are all in school. It's a weird year because for the first time we have no kids at home or daycare during the day. I'm not old enough to have three kids in school is one of my issues, but there are many others. One thing is that school seems to be the place where every fall both my kids and my money go. The good news is that the kids are doing well. The youngest couldn't wait for us to leave her at kindergarten. The middle is a big middle schooler and feeling the joy of being a big kid, and the oldest kicked off his first day of school by placing 14th at a cross country meet. He is running a mile in under 7 minutes which may not seem that impressive unless you have seen his father run.

Fall is a great time in Minnesota, and it's actually a pretty long season here. It's not as long as winter, but then again nothing is.

By the way - alligator tastes like chicken.

State Fair and Free Stuff

This weekend my family and I get the opportunity to attend the "Great Minnesota Get Together", otherwise known as the State Fair for free. Well, somewhat free. My son won tickets which is a great blessing because just getting inside the gate will set a family our size back about $40.00. So this year, we are taking the tactic that we each have a $7.00-$8.00 food budget. The rule is that each person has to buy one thing each that we can share and one thing each that they want to try on their own. My son wants to try fried alligator and the girls are scared that will be the thing he wants to share. Without the free tickets, we just couldn't go so it's a pretty big blessing that we get to go do this.

Having said that, as a stranger in a strange land I accused my wife last night of going native Minnesotan on me when she wanted to put something out in the yard with a "free" sign on it. You see it all over out here, especially in rural areas. It's not uncommon to drive down the road and see an old dresser here and especially baby stuff here or there. Like a good agriculture state, the harvest of free goods seem to peak during the fall as garages need to again accomodate vehicles. Sometimes, the stuff isn't free. Another common site is an older snowmobile or car parked along a farm road with a big red "For Sale" sign purchased for the local hardware. I'm not making a judgement, it's just one of those, "You know you are in Minneosta when. . ." signs.

A friend once talked about having spiritual "gift of free". They just seemed to come into stuff, whether it was cars, movies, vacations, whatever. Who am I to complain, I'm going to take my "free" stuff and run.