As a Marketing major in college I studied advertising theory. In one of my textbooks was a picture of some speakers and the quote “Ever notice how you don’t pay attention to speaker ads until you need some speakers?” The point being that if you are not receptive to what’s being advertised then you tend to not pay attention to the ads. I have found that this is true in many things, not just advertisements. If something is not immediately applicable to you, the chances of you processing and retaining it decreases greatly. Read more »

Posted: June 16th, 2008 under Family, Improvement.
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I love my wife. She is easily the best thing that has happened to me and I feel very lucky considering she once told her friends that she would never date me. We dated six years before we got married and I figured that all of the major issues that would impact our relationship had been dealt with by then. I see you shaking your head. Yeah I was wrong on that one.

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Posted: May 20th, 2008 under Family.
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The very first formula you learn in Accounting class is the one for profit. It is a simple one and yet it is what every company in America chases after.

Profit = Income – Expenses

See, it’s not rocket science. Logically, to increase profit (i.e., left over money) you need to have greater income, less expenses or a combination thereof. So what does this have to do with balancing your life?

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Posted: May 9th, 2008 under Balance, Family, Financial, Health, Time Management.
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So picture this, early on a Monday morning in the dead of winter, I hear a loud crack outside our window. I get up to look out and see that an ice storm has passed through during the night, not unusual in Oklahoma. The ice has so thoroughly coated my neighbor’s tree in his back yard that limbs are starting crack off of it. I dully hope that none hit my fence and go back to sleep for another 30 minutes before I have to get up and get ready for work. During that 30 minutes, I keep hearing the sound of cracking wood all across the neighborhood. You know how amplified sound seems when there is snow or ice floating in the sky? Add to the sound of wood giving way and you have a pretty surreal moment while you are shaving.

Luckily for our house, we only have one tree in our front yard and it isn’t too big, so I’m not concerned about damage to the house and I just continue on with my morning rituals. Right as I’m brushing my teeth and getting ready to head out the door, the power in the house goes out. Not entirely unexpected and I’ve pretty much finished everything I needed to do so off to work I head. The roads are suprising clear, but everywhere I look, I see tree limbs on the ground. It looks like a bomb went off all around the neighborhood. Throughout the day I talk to my wife, the power is still not on in the house and now her parent’s have lost their power. It becomes rapidly apparent that this is no ordinary ice storm. It is one of the hardest hitting storms in the city’s history, at least in regards to damage to trees and powerlines. At the height of it, over half the people in the Tulsa metro area (with a population of 500,000+) will be without power. Read more »

Posted: April 25th, 2008 under Family, Stress.
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So my son will be turning three at the end of the month and we are in full swing planning his birthday.

Traditionally, we have parties at home because we are old-fashioned that way. My wife and I remember playing the silly games like whistling with a mouth full of crackers or pin the tail on the donkey, and we want to make sure our kids have the same memories.

So Piers is having a trucks and digger party and my wife is just amazing at coming up with games and decorations, it will be a lot of fun. With our older child, Hope, we kind of backed into a rule where she invites as many people to her party as she is years old. When she turned three was the first time she wanted to have friends over and she invited three, the next year she just assumed she could invite only four kids and we just agreed with her. It has acutally turned out to be a perfect match as the number of children at the house is controllable and Hope still has the freedom to choose who she wants at her party. I figure the parents of the other children in her Kindergarten class appreciate it too as that is one less party they have to attend (except of course for the ones Hope invites).

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Posted: April 22nd, 2008 under Family.
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