My dad, thoughtful observant dude that he is, recently noted that all it takes to make everyone around you a doctor is for you to come down with something. Opinions and assholes are forever linked in that regard.

I guess it is a sign that I’m getting older that it is taking a bit for an ankle injury(pulled tendons above my achilles) to recover for me. Age and the fact that resting it is a little dull. The needs of my job need me to do some ambling around, making me the Dr. House of marketing. A couple folks see me coming with a “still limping, there” observation. That’s helpful as I wasn’t noticing. Powered my way through our recent benefit which I think would fry the healthy cortex of Schartzeneggarian proportions. You know you’re doddering a bit when both your mom and daughter present you with ankle braces.

It’s funny what can slow you down. My building has a set of stair cases that thankfully after five years, I don’t think much about….till now. You have to be careful when you think about how you plant your foot a bit and that nearly induced, vertigo I guess. I’m part of a great team and one of the kind souls reorganized our group to “get Mike off the stairs.” That made me feel both really great and sort of pitiful.

I’ve never been a jock of any kind to speak of, but take a degree of pride in doing my share, toting my barge, lifting my bale, doing for the team (“TEAM, TEAM”).

I made sure I wasn’t screwing anything else upIt’s going away, but three weeks off from heavy lifting events will help, but the nerves can repair sooner.

I wouldn’t mind.

Lot of milestones lately, and the latest one put me, the lovely mother of my lovely children, and the middle child of that collective in White Plains, New York at Purchase College for orientation. It was our daughter's orientation and first visit to the college of her choice. It was a pretty regular assortment of meetings, sessions, icebreaker type activities. Given it's location, about 30 minutes north of New York City so there were folks from all over.



I was relieved a bit that it looks nothing like U.B. and is a nice sized community for our daughter to start off and gain some confidence being on her own. It's right next to White Plains, but built so it is its own little world as well and I think that is kind of cool. One can ease themselves into things so it's not too much too soon. That didn't stop my amusement at some of the parents whose questions sounded more like they were sending their ten year old off to camp as opposed to their young adult off to school.



If a community can take our too cool teenager and move her from "I can tell already I'm going to hate it here" (when she saw students dancing parking directions for us) to somebody who has a schedule, two job prospects and three prospective roommates, they must be doing something right.

You never know anything for sure, but this feels like a positive start.

This might be one of the cooler work pictures I might ever get to take.

Now how this happened, but the renowned number one son graduated 8th grade this week. In a week of milestones, his older sister graduates high school on Monday, so allow me a rare moment of hey, aren't my kids cool

The stuff you have to do sometimes.

The Xbox died after a lengthy run, and a few repairs, so I've decided to trade in the peripherals and games and go gently into the goodnight for a bit, or at least treat myself to a Wii perhaps.

To do Netflix and download from their library of marked up software, I signed up for a gold membership, which means nothing really, only you can't escape it.

In calling "customer service" despite having all the financial information, the lovely people at Gates World insisted I know the security question for the Xbox Gamertag, not the Charge Card Holder. This might be the dumbest security measure I've heard in the age of paranoia. Fortunately, I picked up the Xbox used from a good soul, ((e:Terry)), and round two wrapped up tonight and they stopped billing me. I think I'll use the savings for HBO or something.

Thanks Terry and watch out on them thar internets, ya'all