Why I Oughta...

Last fall, I c oached the kickers and punters at Elmhurst College - a Division III football team in our town.  I had contacted the head coach early in 2009 and interviewed for the job.  After a few rounds of chats, they gave me the role.   I inherited a senior kicker/punter and a junior kicker. I joined the team a month or two before fall camp, so we had a few workouts before the season hit.  The season team-wise was a bust.  We went 4-6 with a couple of heartbreaking last minute losses including a triple overtime loss. But in coaching, I had a ton of fun and gained a bunch of new friends - both players and fellow coaches.  There's not many people that provide more laughs than a bunch of college-aged men on a football team.  I would leave practice every time with a big smile on my face. Fortunately, my work schedule was flexible enough for me to be able to get to a few practices during the day- but not every one - and to most games.  They move their schedule around and do

Nat, the babe and I were up in Michigan for the past few days - and we were set to stay up there next week on vacation, but circumstances arose that required us to come home. My family loves the lake during the summer.  Everyone competes for weekends.  In fact...there's even a calendar and draft! But...for me?  I think I might prefer the winter.  It is calm.  Quiet.  Pretty.  We just light the fireplace (we used to read, but now with the babe...not so much) and relax.  I'm glad we got to spend a little bit of time up there, but I wanted more.  So glad we're going to be able to go up after voting for a few more days of respite.

Coming home from class two nights a week, I get to barely see the babe before she's off to **bed** for the night.  (I'm using 'bed' loosely.  It really is a bassinet at the side of our bed and she's in and out of it throughout the night for feedings and changings and what-not.) It is a wonderful feeling to come home to a family and one that makes me race home safely each night.  When I do get to spend some time trying to get her to sleep we share a little song together.  One that was pointed out to me by my good friend Neil as a good lullaby.  He was right.  It's a good daddy/daughter number.  For all those dads out there, hopefully you can share this with your babe's too!

If you know the difference between, say, a  Holtzapffel-style cabinet maker's bench and a split-top Roubo-style workbench , then this post will not impress you. (Bill Fox...I'm looking in your direction.) But...those of you guys who are cramped up in a condo somewhere on the northside and long for a little man-retreat, then you're going to be jealous! Anyway...back to the story.  Starting a few weeks back, I began to beat my cabin fever by beginning to organize our basement.  Our basement is probably like a lot of basements: unfinished, messy, damp, and quite a bit disorganized. During construction (or re-construction), the basement housed just about everything we owed that wasn't in our POD - and it was messy down there.  Once we moved in, we started to put everything that didn't have a home down there.  Over time, I bought some shelving units and began to put some of our stuff on the shelves, but in no particular order. We then inherited some of my siste

On Saturday night, Nat, the babe and I packed into the family truckster and went out into the night to find a place to grab a meal.  We headed south towards Oak Brook and began to call a few places.  Not one but 7 places we called had waits of longer than an hour.  Some had waits as long as 3 hours!  It was 6:30, so in the 'burbs, that is prime dinner time. We used to be 8 or 8:30 dinner folks, but not any more.  Now we're competing with every Chad and Michelle and their 4 kids in the western suburbs for a table at Maggiano's. After driving across town and back for an hour, we headed back to Elmhurst settling on grabbing a pie at Pizza Palace in downtown.  We called ahead and they had plenty of tables open.  But, as luck would have it, we took a different route home and passed by a place called the Silverado Grill .  I had heard "things" about the Grill, so we popped in.  When we got there, there was a couple waiting for a table, but the restaurant had open on

A few weeks back I was over at Harpo Studios talking all things Google with the production team and art department.  We have a few things moving forward - including Oprah using Google Earth for all broadcast maps now - and a few other things up in the air (fun things)! I was there with a fellow Googler and we both got a short tour of the studio.  Here's us below. The one thing that isn't in this photo - and hard not to discuss - is that each seat in the studio comes with house-supplied kleenex. So you don't have to worry that when Oprah plays with your heart-strings, they have you covered from a clean-up perspective.

At work, when you plan to take leave they invite you to a "baby shower" - it really is just a video conferenced meeting with a bunch of other dads from around the company.  The HR team walks you through the whole process and what details of the benefits are for the time you are away. After the "shower", in my inter-office mailbox was one of those yellow envelopes with all the lines on them.  I had a package from Mountain View. Inside?  Baby clothes!  Guess who's feeling lucky today?