Author Archives: route53

Rio Hotel Las Vegas – Hotel Review

15 Thursday Jan 2009

Posted by in Route 53 - Life is A Highway, Travels: The Route 53

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View of the Rio from the top of the Palms

View of the Rio from the top of the Palms

Rio All-Suites Hotel ( a Harrah’s Property)

www.riolasvegas.com
3700 W Flamingo Rd
Las Vegas, NV 89103
(702) 777-7634
Cost: $
Hotel Decor:78(feels like an older hotel with sterile and not very tasteful decor.  Floor to ceiling windows was the best asset)
Hotel Amenities: 80 (Like all hotels this one has a casino. All rooms are suites )
Neighborhood Scene: 80  (Not located on the strip but across from the Palms)
Miscellaneous: 80 (Restaurants are not the equal of those on the Strip)
Overall Wow Factor: 77 (Nothing spectacular here.  The hotel is not very glamourous compared to its neighbor, The Palms)
 
I recently stayed at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas for a convention.  The room rate was $129.  Next door the Gold Coast rate was $29.  The best part about the Rio is that people love the spacious rooms, the floor to ceiling windows and the views of the Strip.  The main performer at he Rio is the longtime Vegas act of Penn and Teller.  The hotel is also the home of the World Series of Poker
Rio Hotel Deluxe Suite

Rio Hotel Deluxe Suite

Obviously if you don’t like gambling or can’t deal with all the smoke, you wouldn’t be in Vegas.  This is definitely a hotel for conventioneers.  The one interesting amenity in the room is a strange looking frame next to the bed that turns out to be a window from the bathroom to the bedroom.  Yes you can actually watch someone in the shower or watch your bedroom from the shower.  It supposed to let light into the bathroom, but it just seemed odd to me.  The hotel’s amenities were not that great.  They charge you another $20 to use their gym.
The Rio is part of the Harrah’s chain so get a Total Rewards card and you will get credit for some of their more upscale properties such as Caesars.  The hotel is only 51 stories high in the Masquerade Tower which has a nightclub and restaurant (VooDoo Steakhouse).  If you are a steak connoisseur I might suggest going somewhere else although the dinner was not that expensive.
For those with kids, once again I suggest that Vegas is not for children.  Reserve a home off the Strip if you are bringing a family
Hotel Room view

Hotel Room view

Mind Over Matter

15 Thursday Jan 2009

Posted by in Breast Cancer - A Loving Fight, Route 53 - Life is A Highway

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Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.  ~Winston Churchill

As most runners know, there are times when you hit the proverbial “wall”.  I’ve found that it doesn’t matter whether you are running one fast mile or 5 long ones, the wall is always there. Your body aches and screams for you to stop but it is your mind that powers you on.

In a way I have hit that wall in caring for my wife.  That tough edge has been hard to keep up lately.  I’m not giving up on her though.  In fact her strength is coming back and I’ve been able to let my guard down a bit and that has allowed me to move on a little bit.  i think she is showing me that strength again to let me know that I can go on too.  She has now started going on and doing her own research online.  It has relieved me from having to read some of the more tragic or difficult stories online.  I used to go on Breastcancer.org to find answers but lately she has found a few good friends with the same physicians and they have encouraged her, helped her to mentally get stronger to face her fears, and she is spending more time talking to other women online.

She still is fragile though.  I just got back from being away four days in Las Vegas at a convention.  It was very difficult to be away from her and to leave her with no back-up.  Our nightly calls were more about wondering if she was okay.  It was also about telling my 9-year old son to watch out and take care of his mom.  I’m hoping that I don’t scare him, but I see great maturity in him.  I always have see it since he was little baby.  He just had this “old sage soul” look about him.  At the same time he still has the other issues that little boys have, not cleaning up, not lifting the toilet seat, and not slowing down around the house.  All in all he’s a good kid though and I trust him immensely.  My favorite moment (you’ll see the relevance below) is when he was 7 and as an advanced reader had picked up an encyclopedia to look up the word embryo, a word he had heard on Animal Planet.  The next thing you know he is telling me that apes and humans are very simliar and that men have sperm and women have eggs, but they don’t lay them like chickens.  My daughter (5 at the time) stood behind her brother with her arms crossed and looking at me as if to say, “Hey, what’s the big idea?”  well let’s just say I don’t think I’ll ever have to have the bird and the bees talk with my chilldren ever.  Hopefully that is a fatherly chore that I won’t miss.

It has been 5 weeks now since my wife’s latest surgery and I have had a hard time honestly looking at her scars and even at her chest.  Tonight she wanted to start documenting and had me take a few photos of her reconstruction.  I was a little nervous.  It was the first chance for me to take a look.  It is hard for me to look at my beautiful wife with her scars and say that they look great only because I know she is able to sense any hesitation or trepidation in my voice.  It is still early and even she knows they aren’t quite ready to be looked at.  She is going to need to get some revisions as the original scars haven’t healed straight.  She will have a follow up appointment on March 23.  It should be an hour procedure. 

The hard part was that today the doctor called to make the appointment and our 9 year old son listened in on the other line when my wife was talking.  He later told my wife that he had listened.  He is really worried that his mother is going to have a third surgery and asked if she was going to be okay.  Our daughter caught on and told us that she thought we got rid of “mommy’s lump”.  We told them that just like we need to go to the doctor every year that mommy needs to go every month and that she was lucky that her doctors could spend so much time with her.  Listening to her talk to the children I realized she is getting stronger.  She doesn’t want them to worry.  She is even telling me she will just need local anaesthesia for the final surgery.  I would prefer general if it were me but she is game.  She told me she knows she can “handle it” .  I told her that I didn’t think it would be a good idea but she’s the strong one when it comes to blood and guts and told me I was getting soft and where was the guy who stripped her drains 4 months ago?  We had a good chuckle.

All this means to me is that my wife is almost fully back and I couldn’t be happier.  She’s taught me a lot about myself and our relationship over the past several months.  It has been painful and although there are times we wanted to give up, but somehow we’ve built the strength from each other and kept moving and pushed through that wall.  The aches and pains are still there but the goal line or finish line is still out there on the horizon. 

Life goes on and we’re traveling down the road together.  We’re helping each other out and making sure the other doesn’t give up and that we don’t give up on each other.

Affiliate Marketing And Its Fight

11 Sunday Jan 2009

Posted by in Breast Cancer - A Loving Fight, Business - Affiliate Marketing, Route 53 - Life is A Highway

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 Our success is a direct result of knowing how to market a brand and having the right people representing the brand. –  Greg Norman, golfer 

Lost among all the well known conferences going on in Vegas right now is the Affiliate Summit, a marketing conference for online affiliates and their networks.  So while on the other side of the highway, the Consumer Electronics Show, the Adult Video Network Consumer Show, and Internext take place, we are quietly having our annual meeting.

What is affiliate marketing?  Affiliate marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer by paying them some kind of bounty or revenue share based upon performance.  Its the same as a large company hiring a bunch of sales people to get paid for selling their product and they will get a commission. 

I have been in this business since the late 1990s when I first left my comfortable consulting position to join the wild and fast internet retail industry.  I joined a company called Reel.com which 6 months later was bought by Hollywood Video.  When I first started, one of the key investors, a venture fund, asked if I could start an affiliate program similar to what Amazon.com did.  Brashly I said sure.  If they could do it for books, we could do it for VHS tapes and these new things called DVDs.  I rapidly built into the 4th largest program on the Web behind Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and CDNow.  With over 250,000 affiliates it was like being the sales manager of over 250,000 sales people.  Each had their own quirks.  Some wanted more money, some wanted more hand holding, some had problems with other affiliates creeping into their territory, etc.  In the physical world it is similar to managing an army of Mary Kay or Avon door to door salespeople or those who used to have Tupperware parties.

The main difference is that almost anyone can set up as an affiliate.  most people do this as a side hobby to collect a little cash, but the people at this concference are mostly professionals who make a living at it.  There are many kinds of organizations who are affiliates.  Coupon sites, Loyalty companies, Shopping sites, fan sites, donation sites, etc.

The big deal these days is how to capitalize on social media and turn your blogs and personal social media pages into pages of casual affiliation.  Affiliate arketing has always been about B2B2C (Business to business to consumer) or B2C (Business to consumer).  I think with social media it is about to change to B2B2C2C or B2C2C in such that you the consumer are hlping to virally sell to other consumers.  How’s that?  Well just think for example how you buy things today.  If you want to go see a movie or a a record or a book.  Many of you might read a review in the news or a magazine, but there are many who buy that record or book at the advice of a friend.  Our job is to find those affiliates who are tastemakers and pay them for their heartfelt recommendations. 

Well that at least is my personal take on where things are going.  The key is building the right technology and processes for making that happen in the online world.  The conference that I am attending does rev up my juices each year and helps to reenergize my batteries to keep pushing forward in a much forgotten and sometimes ignred part of the online advertising world.

This conference is led by two individuals, Missy Ward and Shawn Collins who act as stewards for awareness of the industry.  Missy is also an activist in the fight against breast cancer awareness and has a site to make sure people in our industry support the cause.  It is called Affiliate Marketers Give Back.  Each conference ends with a little fundraiser for a fight to “Save the boobies” as Missy likes to call it.

Keeping the Family Together

10 Saturday Jan 2009

Posted by in Breast Cancer - A Loving Fight, Route 53 - Life is A Highway

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Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get — only what you are expecting to give — which is everything. What you will receive in return varies. But it really has no connection with what you give. You give because you love and cannot help giving. – Katherine Hepburn

I found the quote above on a site about Spousal Caregiving and it really hit home.  We’re done with all the surgeries yet this week my wife had three days in the hospital and if you thought the waiting was excruciating before and during the surgeries, it is only worse now.  I guess it is like they say about Chinese Restaurants.  You know it is good and authentic if Chinese people work there and it is busy and filled with Chinese people.  I think the same goes with a breast cancer clinic.  If you have to wait hours even if you have an appointment, then your doctor must be real good.

Last night my wife spent 4 hours at the hospital for a shot, a visit with the nurse practitioner to go over her side effects from her clinical trial, and then to visit with her rock star oncologist.  You are wondering why?  Well the reason is that she spends so much time caring and listening to each patient that she does fall behind that most people understand.  Today was a follow up meeting with the plastic surgeon.  My wife has some nip-tuck things she wanted to have taken care of  he took a look.  and told her to book some time.  We checked his schedule but we’re talking about mid-April!!  Well his wonderful nurse said to book a time but if we could do something on four days notice, we could get something done pretty quick if we just sit on stand-by. 

My travel schedule looks crazy already this year and I just hate being away from my family, especially now.  Today was the first day that I had to watch my son practice his basketball.  He’s good at it.  Not great, but the joy on his face is all that I care about.  I drove him home and started to talk about how he could be better, but realized that telling a kid on a Friday afternoon about the nuances of practicing hard and being a floor leader were just not something he wanted to hear.  I chuckled at myself, “Come on dad, it’s just practice”.  I was just trying to make up for my missing his first game of the season as well as his favorite thing…the annual Little League Skills Assessment Day.  Last year I was so nervous watching him that my stomach was in knots. All these men with clipboards and stopwatches taking notes on my 8 year old, 55 pound kid as if he was some kind of bonus baby.  Well he did well enough to be put in the elite group where they take the top kids and spread them evenly so no one team is overly loaded with skilled players.  This year my wife gets the fun duty.  It did feel good though to spend some time alone with my son.

Despite the stress of today’s waiting at the hospital we were able to have an early dinner as my daughter was requesting some family time.  Fortunately my flight was late and we could squeeze it in (amazing as I still only arrived at the airport 40 minutes before my flight on a Friday night).  My daughter has such a nurturing nature about her for a 6 year old.  She loves her older brother and she is always looking after her mom and telling me when she is doing something that she doesn’t think my wife should be doing (yes, she is a bit of a tattle tale in that way).  She cares deeply and is sensitive to the fabric of our little quadrangle of a family. 

I guess Katherine Hepburn was right…..you do what you do when you truly care.

I did buy some tickets for Valentine’s Day for the two of us.  Hopefully my mom won’t mind having her grandchildren over as her Valentine’s.  I really need to get my wife alone and see her have that smile back on her face.  When we lived in the New York Metro area, Valentine’s was a big day when I courted her.  We usually planned one big meal where we would eat at a top 20 NYC restaurant.  I remember those Valentine’s Days 20 years later!  We’d have to make a reservation before Thanksgiving to get any of our choice restaurants in NYC. Ah…to be young again….

I did pick up the Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama at the airport tonight.  I was curious.  It almost reads a little too highbrow like a lawyer wrote it.  I’m sure the intellectual Democrats follow it, but I’m not sure if the average joe on the street Democrat would really follow.  I’m not big on politics personally as I feel like it is a topic that divides and not brings people together so you might not see much about my political opinions here…and that is a good thing.

Take care of your bodies….

Breast Cancer Caregiver Guide for Spouses

09 Friday Jan 2009

Posted by in Breast Cancer - A Loving Fight, Route 53 - Life is A Highway

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The source of all life and knowledge is in man and woman, and the source of all living is in the interchange and the meeting and mingling of these two: man-life and woman-life, man-knowledge and woman-knowledge, man-being and woman-being. – D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) English writer

I hinted at this yesterday but it has been beating on my mind all day.  When I retraced my steps over the last several months I looked back and wonder how I made it with my senses still intact. 

Let me first say that what the men go through when their wives have breast cancer is nothing compared to what their wives or mothers or daughters will experience, but I believe the life partners  (I’m mostly talking about husbands) are a critical part of the management when cancer enters a woman’s life.  There is no doubt that men get a bad rap about how we react when our loved one tells us that she has cancer in a part of her body that is such an intimate part of our physical relationship.  But aside from where it is located, we just aren’t ready for cancer period.   Even if we men were better prepared, all it takes is one bad apple to spoil the cart and our reputation as a group would be back out curbside.

I’m not saying we men are the fairer sex.  Heck no.  We definitely have a few (make that many) flaws.  That’s why we love women so much!

What I am saying is that while my wife came home with packets of information and videos, there was nothing for me.  Not a word of guidance.  I spent hours taking notes at each doctors visit, I ended up having to do lots of research and looking to other women and their spouses for what to do and more importanly what not to do.  Its harder than you think.  I don’t even think that my wife’s surgeon shook my hand the first time we met.  Mind you she is a wonderful lady and we have a great relationship, but I don’t know if the doctors know what to do when the spouse shows up.  Rightly so, they spend all the time talking to our wives.  They need tools to give us. I don’t need much.  All I needed was a one pager.  Something that said, the best thing you could do right now is hold your wife’s hand.

Well I gathered a lot of information.  Unfortunately I found some good resources after the fact, but I saved them.  I have links to most of them in the Cancer Resource Links in the right column of this blog.  So if you’ve just found this, take a look at these links specifcally for men.  Some come from friends I’ve met and others from research I’ve done:

Good Websites:

Men Against Breast Cancer

Breast Cancer for Husbands

Breast Cancer Husband

Some Real Personal Blogs:

The Moutray Chronicles

The Price of Love

Articles Every Husband or Father Should Read:

Love Her Tender

A Guide for Clueless Guys

A Supremely Kind Spouse

I hope you all find these useful in your journeys wherever you may be.

My Life With Laura Blog Book Tour & FightPink.org

06 Tuesday Jan 2009

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If you’re going through hell, keep going.  ~Winston Churchill

Before I begin my post for today I want to thank Stacy from FightPink.org.  Stacy was kind enough to post my original three blog posts on her site in the co-survivor section of her website.  I hadn’t read them in a while and it seems like years ago since I wrote them, but I’m glad she found them and felt they were worthy of posting.  I hope someone finds them useful.

I also want to make sure anyone who reads this post to come back here on January 19th, Martin Luther King Day.  I will be hosting an interview on the Blog Tour for Chad Moutray’s book, My Life with Laura – A Love Story.  It is a love story which ends sadly when Chad and his wife lose their battle with breast cancer.  Chad is having a blog tour about his book and several of us have read it.  I encourage you to follow the different dates on his two week tour of many different blogs.  Here is a link to his schedule:

Today flew by for me, but I can say it was a full day of thinking, laughing, and eight glasses of water to fight my voice which is pretty weak right now.  I received an email that made me laugh.  The person asked me why I was posting “Celebrity Sightings” on my Cancer Blog!  Yes, my life is moving in a different direction.  Cancer still stares us in the face and will occasionally be on topic for the next several years as my wife faces her post-cancer trials and therapy.

In fact as I worked up some interview questions for Chad, I was thinking about the predicament that many men are put in when their wives discover they have breast cancer.  We have to be strong, silent, empathetic, and unselfish all at once.  Some of us have not even had practice at one of those things.  That does not even begin to talk about the tasks that we need to serve as cook, provider, chief information officer, Florence Nightengale, joe the plumber and many other things I can’t remember.  Let’s face it, men just don’t have a good rap as caregivers.  When I was faced with those many hours sitting in the waiting room, I hated being the only husband sitting in the room with a young wife.  Where were the other husbands?  Face it, the waiting room of a breast cancer clinic was no place for a man.  All those glamour and cooking magazines.  I was left to read last year’s ESPN Spring Training Preview where they picked the Detroit Tigers to win it all (boy were they wrong).  I started bringing  in more current magazines on business, sports, photography, and travel.  By the time my father-in-law made it to his first and only visit with his daughter to the doctor (5 months after her original diagnosis) , all he could tell me about was the marvelous skiing magazines they had. My wife and I could only smile.

In those hours of waiting, I did discover the bulletin board which was full of community groups to help with coping.   I wandered around the Clinic’s Cancer Resource Center  which was helpful and I met a few men and befriended a few sharing stories about our wife’s situation then asking if we knew the score from last night’s basketball game.

What I realize was missing when I was working on my questions for Chad was a primer on what to do.  I had gathered so many articles and written so many notes and resources that I put together a small guide.  I think it would be a great set of readings for husbands, so I’ve packaged them together as a reading list for our surgeons and oncologists to give to their patients and spouses.  Even though my wife has passed her surgery stage of chemo I just feel like we owe so much to those that will follow behind us.

So what’s the status with my wife?  Well she still has scars and is dealing with letting them heal.  There is always some mention of them every night.  I keep reminding her that time heals all wounds.  I hate those words.  Who said that anyway?  She has four visits to the clinic this week.  The first was to check on her suture which opened up.  Tomorrow she gets one of her monthly suppression shot to reduce the amount of estrogen that feeds the type of cancer they removed from her, then she meets the following day with her oncologist to go over her clinical trial.  The trial is called S0307 and is a bisphosphonate trial primarily for pre-menopausal women.  Bisphosphonates are a group of drugs that have strong effects on the bones and have been shown to strengthen the bones in many patients who take them. This study will compare three study drugs, ibandronate, clodronate, and zoledronic acid in breast cancer.   My wife is taking clodronate.  The study will take place for 3 years.  My wife will be taking Tamoxifen for 5 years.    She has seen some minimal side effects but we just say that it shows the treatment is doing something. I try not to make a too big deal about it as I want her to feel like it is a normal thing we are ready to deal with. 

I know this is a weird note to end this blog, but I had a great run tonight and at the end, my iPod had a congratulations message from Tiger Woods for running my fastest time yet.  This was a pleasant surprise and I can’t wait to run faster tomorrow.

Not A Breast Cancer Survivor – But A Survivor Nonetheless

05 Monday Jan 2009

Posted by in Route 53 - Celebrity Sightings

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In this crazy world of social media and digital technology, I’m sometimes lucky to get caught with a camera available when I run into someone who has had their 15 minutes of fame. Some more relevant than others.

One of my favorite shows is the reality TV show Survivor. I like it for the human dynamics involved. There is teamwork, strategy, ethics, and lots of luck. Much like there is in life. Many times I wonder how I’d do on a show like that. When I first watched the show, I became mortified by the decisions people made and the people that won. Finally on Survivor, they had a guy I could relate to. It wasn’t that Yul Kwon was Asian like me (or just as good looking – Note he was once one of People Magazine’s Most eligible Bachelors), but the way he played the game was great.  He was also reaised in Northern California, had an advanced professional degree and spent time in consulting.

Yul is now entering the entrepreneurial space of frozen dessert with the company Red Mango.  As I own several Ben & Jerry franchises, he and his partners came to me with a few questions and I had a business proposition to discuss as well.  Below is a photo of my wife, Yul and me (I took that photo 15 pounds ago) at his store in Palo Alto on University.  Yep, a millionaire served me some yogurt.

My wife, Yul Kwon, and some guy who needed to lose weight

My wife, Yul Kwon, and some guy who needed to lose weight

The Run of 118 Christmas Trees – Life is A Highway

05 Monday Jan 2009

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Our 2008 Christmas Tree

Our 2008 Christmas Tree

The perfect Christmas tree? All Christmas trees are perfect!”
~ Charles N. Barnard, American author, travel writer.

 

I just got back from my 2nd run of the year.  Thanks to the reader who said they’d help remind me to get out there and “Just do It”.  (Note to self – next time you write down your resolutions, tear them up and burn em).  It definitely was the weekend to start throwing out the Christmas Tree.  I counted 118 trees on the sidewalk during my run.  We could have left it up but the weekends are getting booked up already with travel, basketball games, holidays and parties!

No Christmas tree counting is not what i do when I run, but it sure helped to make tonight’s run a little different than the more than 300 other runs I will have this year.

We had a pretty active weekend.  Since I won’t be able to attend my son’s Little League Skills Assessment this year, we went out and played catch and hit a few balls.  I love sports, but I am not one of those crazy parents (I hope I’m not) who people can’t stand at the games.  My son is so focused anyway that sometimes you can scream at him and he doesn’t flinch.  Last year he ran through my stop sign at third base when I was the third base coach.  I had a good laugh with the other parents afterward and got a lot of ribbing about having more discipline at home and wondering if he would have stopped if mom had been there instead of me.    Seriously though I have a son who has decent capability to play any sport although I’m not sure where he got the talent from.  I have no visions of grandeur though as he definitely got his small stature from his parents!

We also got out as a family to spend time at the park and get some fresh air and exercise.  My daughter called it her highlight of the weekend which made me feel good.  My wife is still limited with her stitches so she and my daughter went for a little hike to a lookout point near our home overlooking the San Francisco Bay.  In fact, one of the stitches seemed to maybe have come out too soon and she might have to go back in early this week to have it fixed.  After our family meeting at dinner tonight where we talked about our schedules and highlights for the week, my wife and I had some alone time to talk about how we are doing.  She laughed at me.  She was the one in college who was going to be a bio major and I’m the one who runs at the sight of blood.  She was quite amazed at how I was able to deal with all the tubes and procedures she had to go through when she was ill.  I told her I sucked it up, and kiddingly told her to promise to never make me go through it again.  Well this little stitch is causing some fluid to run out.  Oh my…..medic! 

She did thank me for being her rock.  I had to do a lot of research for her as she was overwhelmed and frankly quite scared to read everything online and also had selective hearing when it came to what the doctors were telling her.  Depending upon her mood, she’d only hear the good things sometimes and other times only the bad things.  She’s better now and is able to even go online and meet some of the people I met online who gave me lots of advice.  I think it is great that she is now able to converse with some of these people and join the sisterhood of survivors.

Back to normal life?  Well maybe it is with the regular TV season coming back on.  We’ll be able to have our banter about Desperate Housewives, Lost and everyone’s favorite, American Idol…

Rockin' Down the Highway in 2009

04 Sunday Jan 2009

Posted by in Route 53 - Life is A Highway

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“New Year’s Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.” ~Mark Twain

Okay, I’ve been a bit delayed in putting my resolutions down.  Quite frankly I’ve been adding and subtracting them over the last few days.  Tonight I had my first run on the year so it gave me a chance to really reflect and let them come out.  I also had a chance today to watch my favorite movie “Field of Dreams”.  My friends who have been in the video business dock me for life as a film critic for enjoying any movie with Kevin Costner, but the movie hits me personally on so many levels that it helped me.  It is a movie about faith, believing, and following your passions.  Seeing it again helped me finish my list of resolutions.  During the movie they play a couple of Doobie Brother’s songs.  They don’t play the one below, but it is a favorite and I thought would set a tone for me this year.

So here go my resolutions which of course fall into some neat piles of Health, Happiness and Wealth (they are the most common according to all the news I watched this year):

Health:

1.  Get more sleep!  I’ve been averaging 6 hours or less and just need to get more this year!

2. Continue to improve my cardiovascular and running. This year I ran 1126 miles and reduced my avg. miles from the pedestrian 10 minute pace down to 6 and half minutes per mile.  I was really inspired by Dara Torres the Olympic swimmer who in her 40s was able to perform at a level she did in her teens.

3. Investigate the small personal health concerns that I have and make sure that I get the answers.

Happiness:

4. Spend more time with the children.  I think the health issues this year were a small strain on them as well.  For my daughter I want to find an activity that she and I can call our own.  For my son, I want to spend more time on his social development.  This is a hard one given that both teachers told us that we need to keep doing what we are doing, but I want our children to just know that their parents love them.

5. Rebuild my one to one relationship with my wife.  With her cancer having consumed the second half of 2008, our 50-50 relationship really became a 90-10 relationship.  It exhausted me and it changed my view of my wife as more of a patient than a partner in life.  I want to make sure that we get some one on one time and rebuild the bonds that made our relationship special even before cancer moved into our lives.

6. Continue and expand on my parenting thoughts here in this blog.  I don’t want this to seem like a “how you should do it piece” or a “what are the best tips for raising a kid” piece.  I want this to be an insight for my children to someday see the dilemmas and decisions I made as they relate to them.

7. Start blogging about my other passions like photography, sports, etc.

8. Take more time for myself.  Take those vacations!

Wealth:

9. Secure our future plans.  Develop a more secure will and documentation of our assets.

10.  Tighten up random unnecessary expenses – Magazine subscriptions, luxury items, extra coffee, etc.

11. Analyze and reconfigure personal debt as needed (Refinance, close accounts, etc.). Save $5-$10 per day.

Well that is it.  Quite a bit and I must say, I’d be very very happy to accomplish all eleven.  Writing it down does put it out there and hopefully it something I will look back to.

Rockin’ Down the Highway in 2009

04 Sunday Jan 2009

Posted by in Route 53 - Life is A Highway

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“New Year’s Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.” ~Mark Twain

Okay, I’ve been a bit delayed in putting my resolutions down.  Quite frankly I’ve been adding and subtracting them over the last few days.  Tonight I had my first run on the year so it gave me a chance to really reflect and let them come out.  I also had a chance today to watch my favorite movie “Field of Dreams”.  My friends who have been in the video business dock me for life as a film critic for enjoying any movie with Kevin Costner, but the movie hits me personally on so many levels that it helped me.  It is a movie about faith, believing, and following your passions.  Seeing it again helped me finish my list of resolutions.  During the movie they play a couple of Doobie Brother’s songs.  They don’t play the one below, but it is a favorite and I thought would set a tone for me this year.

So here go my resolutions which of course fall into some neat piles of Health, Happiness and Wealth (they are the most common according to all the news I watched this year):

Health:

1.  Get more sleep!  I’ve been averaging 6 hours or less and just need to get more this year!

2. Continue to improve my cardiovascular and running. This year I ran 1126 miles and reduced my avg. miles from the pedestrian 10 minute pace down to 6 and half minutes per mile.  I was really inspired by Dara Torres the Olympic swimmer who in her 40s was able to perform at a level she did in her teens.

3. Investigate the small personal health concerns that I have and make sure that I get the answers.

Happiness:

4. Spend more time with the children.  I think the health issues this year were a small strain on them as well.  For my daughter I want to find an activity that she and I can call our own.  For my son, I want to spend more time on his social development.  This is a hard one given that both teachers told us that we need to keep doing what we are doing, but I want our children to just know that their parents love them.

5. Rebuild my one to one relationship with my wife.  With her cancer having consumed the second half of 2008, our 50-50 relationship really became a 90-10 relationship.  It exhausted me and it changed my view of my wife as more of a patient than a partner in life.  I want to make sure that we get some one on one time and rebuild the bonds that made our relationship special even before cancer moved into our lives.

6. Continue and expand on my parenting thoughts here in this blog.  I don’t want this to seem like a “how you should do it piece” or a “what are the best tips for raising a kid” piece.  I want this to be an insight for my children to someday see the dilemmas and decisions I made as they relate to them.

7. Start blogging about my other passions like photography, sports, etc.

8. Take more time for myself.  Take those vacations!

Wealth:

9. Secure our future plans.  Develop a more secure will and documentation of our assets.

10.  Tighten up random unnecessary expenses – Magazine subscriptions, luxury items, extra coffee, etc.

11. Analyze and reconfigure personal debt as needed (Refinance, close accounts, etc.). Save $5-$10 per day.

Well that is it.  Quite a bit and I must say, I’d be very very happy to accomplish all eleven.  Writing it down does put it out there and hopefully it something I will look back to.