Larry Nelson, a very close friend, passed away on Friday. If you don’t know Larry, he was a super positive participant in the Boulder and the Denver startup communities for many years. He and his wife Pat produced w3w3.com well before podcasts were trendy (Larry and Pat referred to it as “Internet Talk Radio.”) I always thought of Larry and Pat as the encouraging storytellers of the Boulder and the Denver startup communities. ...
It’s Monday. Again. I have 30 Zoom meetings on my calendar this week (yes – I counted). It’s a light week for Zoom meetings since I have four board meetings this week, which each takes up a big block of time, limiting the total number of Zoom meetings for the week. Did I say that it’s Monday? My Whoop recovery score is yellow again. It’s yellow almost every day. I get plenty of sleep, but it’s still yellow. Sometimes it’s red. It’s rarely green these days. ...
Brooks the Wonder Dog passed away yesterday. Somehow, a long time ago, his vet started referring to him as Brooks Batchelor. Mail came to Brooks Batchelor. His pills, which he took a lot of lately, are labelled Brooks Batchelor. Amy and I giggled everytime we saw this. Brooks was an awesome dog. He was dog number 3, following Denali and Kenai. Definitely the cuddliest of the three. Always happy. He loved bagels, salmon, and tissue boxes. We ran in Keystone together and did laps around my house at St. Vrain for years until he couldn’t run anymore. He loved chasing bunnies, even if he never caught any. When he was young he loved to swim, but decided that wasn’t for him after he walked straight into the deep end of our new pool on his introduction to our St. Vrain house (we laughed so hard it was challenging to fish him out …) ...
There was a disturbance in the Force yesterday. Our old dog, Brooks (age 13 – on the left) had a seizure mid-afternoon. He spent the night in the hospital where he had another seizure. He’s there now being inspected and detected. We are lucky to have great vet care and a Rover co-parent for Brooks who loves him as much as we do. I called it quits at 5 pm shortly after my last scheduled meeting. Amy and I watched a few more episodes of Breaking Bad and went to sleep early. I got a good night sleep, but woke up feeling sad, scared, and disoriented. ...
It’s another Monday in the time of Covid. Recently my family had an email exchange about prom and it reminded me of the following scene from Contagion. This morning, my mom (the artist ) reminded me about her email and suggested I start the week off with something joyful. So, I thought I’d write about her prom with pictures from 1959. Her email is in italics below. S – Remember when we talked about “Prom” and you said it wasn’t a big deal in Boulder and I said it was definitely a big deal in New York back in the ’50s and 60’s. ...
Earlier this evening we celebrated my dad’s 82nd birthday using the appropriate COVID-19 social distancing approach. St. Patrick’s day has always been a special day for my family because of my dad’s birthday. Ever since I was a little kid I can remember the outrageous green outfits with the green buttons and the green bangles and a bunch of other green things my dad would drag around each year on March 17th. ...
We create narratives about ourselves that become deeply entrenched in our minds and ways of being. Many of them are useless and counterproductive. One of mine is that I am bad at learning languages. This is an artifact from junior high school. I took two years of French and, while I did ok, I didn’t love it. I hated my French III teacher, fought with her, called her an inappropriate name one day, and got kicked out of class. That was the end of my French language experience. ...
I’ve always been a vivid dreamer, but I’ve been getting a lot more REM sleep due to the combination of a CPAP machine and the prostate reduction surgery I had last year (solving a “getting older” problem.) Every now and then I write out a dream after I have it just to remember it. Here are a few: Life in 2050 , Crazy Vivid Travel Anxiety Dream , and Metabolizing Stress and Anxiety . ...
“Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.“ This is a confusing time of year for me. Hanna Ingber described it well this morning in her article My Jewish Sons Have a Christmas Tree, and I Need to Deal . Fortunately, I don’t have children, my wife isn’t divorcing me, and she’s remarkably mellow about my Christmas confusion. But, when I read through Hanna’s article, I kept nodding my head up and down. ...
Simply begin again. I turned 54 today. I’ve always marked the start of a new year on my birthday rather than January 1st. As part of my birthday tradition, I write myself a letter about my upcoming year. I started posting these publicly when I was 51 and they serve as a nice reminder of where I was at v52 (focusing on what I want to do ) and v53 (exploring what I want to be). ...