Well, I promised to at least get a week in review post up every Sunday.  I wish there was more exciting stuff to include this time around.  For example, next week (which starts today), I can talk about the super cool afternoon I had with the family.  This week (which ended yesterday – damn, I’ve got myself confused) didn’t have much out of the norm.  I feel like there was something I wanted to include that happened last Sunday, but alas, I can’t recall.

This week, I got a bike seat installed that lets a little one ride along with you.  Maddie, of course, was all about it.  We rode Thursday with Keith and my nephew all around the neighborhood.  There were lots of hills, and I’ve discovered that adding at 35ish pound kiddo on the back, makes for a bit of a workout.   I especially liked the fact that she was yelling “faster, Daddy” every time we were heading up hill.

Yesterday (Saturday for everyone keeping score), we did a lot of work at Tiff’s grandparent’s.  Twice a year, here, every neighborhood has brush and bulk item pick up by the city’s waste management dept.  We were trimming trees and moving trash from a greenhouse that got rebuilt most of the day.   It was a lot of fun, but hard work.  We’ll be back next week to do the lawn.  Easter is always at that house in Tiff’s family and we have to finish getting it ready.  That weekend is a blast, though.  It’s very tiring, but very fun.  I’m sure I’ll have plenty to add here that week.

I’m still pretty worried about a lot of things out there in the world.  The meeting of the G20 this upcoming week really scares me.  It’s pretty obvious that the central bankers had a lot to do with our current mess, and yet we are letting several of them from the economically leading (were at least) countries get together and come up with “fixes”.  It doesn’t make much sense to me, but we’ll see what happens.  There’s so many layers to that problem.  I can’t cover them all here, but if I can boil anything down to useful commentary, I’ll try.

Well, it’s taken me longer to write this than I expected – especially for it not having much to say.  In fact, I’ve even cheated with the time stamp in order to get it to post as a Sunday entry.  Either way, I’ve accomplished two things:

1. It’s done
2. Reminded myself I need to get some of the drafts I have finished up

Ok, I think I’m done.  Night folks!

Morning is the best time of day to write something like this too.  Since they are reflective by design, it would be good to get them put together before mass (most weeks we go to noon) where I’ll be looking back over the previous week anyway.  That’s easier said than done.  Case in point – since starting this post, I’ve had to take a break to go camping with a very imaginative little girl.  (Her pretending is very elaborate and I’m often in trouble for missing a detail or forgetting who I am).  Anyway, let’s stop talking about the posts and get on to looking at last week.

As I mentioned earlier, this week started with my 34th birthday.  It was simple and understated, yet enjoyable.  Mom and Venu were in for the weekend and on the 15th, we had a great lunch with them and Tiff’s parents.  Her dad’s is the 14th, so the “party” was for both of us last Saturday.  Also, for my birthday, Tiff and the kids got me a bike.  It sounds corny, but I was just as excited about it as I was when I was a kid.  By Sunday afternoon, Keith had me ridding around the neighborhood with him.  It was a lot of fun.  I love how much he just enjoys spending time together.  My hiney, however, was not as big a fan of it as I was.  It seems that while you never forget how ride a bike, your posterior sure forgets what it feels like to do so.  I’m only hoping gel seats and time will solve that “situation”

The work week got off to a rough start. I was battling some stomach issues all day Monday and by that night, they caught up to me in full force. (my poor car ) I pretty much stayed hidden under a blanket all day Tues.  That threw a bunch of stuff off for me this week, but I evidently needed the rest.  So, we’ll call it a moral victory and move on, I suppose.

Work was very interesting.  Our community relations folks are getting me to sit on a board for a non-profit here in town.  (I don’t want to go into details yet since I still have to interview and all that)  One of the things they are doing for several of the Rackers who are on (or will be) boards is training/sharing sessions to know what to expect and how to be effective in the role.  This took place around lunch time every day last week.  I really enjoyed it.  I’m looking forward to helping a cause that I think does good things and to get the exposure to being on a board of an organization.  I’ll fill you folks in on more details as they come.

Also, last weekend, we announced that Robert Scoble was joining us.  If you aren’t familiar with him, he’s a well known blogger and social media celebrity.  He, and his producer Rocky Barbanica are going to be working on a new project for us called Building 43.   They are really interesting folks to visit with.  Last year they were down in San Antonio and shot a video with Graham Weston, our chairman, about our new headquarters.  Then Robert came over to do a Q and A session with folks from work.  We were broadcasting the event on our company “radio” station, so he had Rocky fire up the camera and ended up doing a short video on it.  A year later, I got to turn the tables and interview the two of them on that same “station” for Rackers to hear why he joined us and what Building 43 is all about.  Graham and some other folks visited with us too.  There were several cameras taking snap shots.  I’m hoping to get pictures soon.  Maybe I can do a post on the company blog about it with those.  We’ll see.  Anyway, it made Thursday really interesting!

Outside of work, I did my best to keep up with all the goings on in the world.  It seems like the hot topic du jour was the AIG bonuses.  I could go on and on about all the nuances, but that’s probably better served for another blog post.  The part that really concerns me is the punitive taxation.  I agree the whole situation is something akin to a fresh cow paddie on a hot summer day, but the last thing I think we want is for the Federal government to have the authority to target specific groups with a different tax rate – especially retroactively.  It’s just bad.  I’ve seen articles that the put the White House on both sides, so I’ll be watching this one.  One of my biggest frustrations with the last administration was the blatant violations of the Constitution.  I was hopping this one would correct some of them even though I don’t agree with Obama on most policy issues.  I would hate for us to see yet another President find more ways to infringe on civil liberties and work against the document he took an oath to uphold.  We’ll have to see what happens in the Senate this week and how the White House responds.

Keith’s first soccer game of this spring league was yesterday.  He still seems hesitant to get to the ball, and when there paths cross, he doesn’t do the best job of kicking it like he means it.  We’ll have to work on that.  The poor child has a father with no athletic ability and very little competitive drive when it comes to team sports. So, I can’t really fault him or anything.  He enjoys it, though, and he always seems to make friends on his teams – that seems most important.  Maddie was looking stylish for the game, though:

Maddie looking "stylish" at Keith's Game

The rest of Saturday was spent working on the garage.  We’ve had two similar sessions before where we cleared out part of it, painted and organized.  Yesterday was a huge step forward.  Not only did we get a major chunk cleaned up and painted, we can now park Tiff’s car in there.  I thank that’s a first since we’ve owned a home (about 6 years now) See:

We can now park a car in there!

There is still a bit to do, but it was great progress.  I’ll have to see if I can finish before the baby comes.  The kids had a lot of fun bouncing between helping and playing.  I got some cute pictures of all that.  I’ll try to get them put together and out on the interwebz soon.

Well, there you have it.  The first week of 34 – or at least some highlights.  And, I finally got another post up.  It seems week (kinda like me after playing soccer with Keith’s team and some of the dads at the tail end of practice on Friday – out of shape fail for me), but I’m happy to have forced my self to sit down and finish a post.  Maybe I can get in this week and get one of the drafts I’ve been dabbling with wrapped up.  We’ll see.  Either way, it will give me something to add to the list for week two.  Night all!

My robes were a pastel bedspread covered in butterflies and flowers.  Her gown was the butterfly quilt she’s had since she was born.  She did have her finest shoes on – they just didn’t match.  And, we danced to the sounds of children’s songs in German (a gift from some dear friends of ours in Braunfels, Germany).  Truth be told, it was just as magical to me in the real world as the way she envisioned it (like the above) in her mind.  It was not the only example of my important “to-dos” today.

Along with mass, Sunday for my family usually includes some amount of laundry and a bit if tidying up to get things ready for the week.  Today, we also threw in a trip to Souper Salad for some dinner and a visit from the cable installer to fix and issue and put in a new jack.  All in all, nothing unusual.  Anyone would be proud of crossing those items off their list.  I, however, feel even better about the following things I did today:

1. I drove to the grocery store.  There was some baking to do and we needed fresh ingredients.  We had to go buy them.  So, we drove there in our brown leather sofa-car.  I’m pretty sure I was in a 5 point child safety seat.
2. I baked cakes  – three of them actually.  They were made from fresh ingredients (see #1) and baked to perfection in the finest LifeStlye oven money can by.  If memory serves me correctly, they had at least 8 colors of icing.  That also contained a special touch- one I never realized would make so much difference in baked goods – plastic grapes.  The reason we had to bake three was my son kept eating them before we could put candles on them and sing happy birthday for the party my daughter was trying to throw.
3. I celebrated a birthday.  Oh, it was grand.  There was a table full of fine china (Little Pony tea sets and most of our plastic ware).  We had a glorious cake (see #2).  We sang and blew out candles with all the gusto we could muster.
4. I got tucked in by my parents.  My “dad” even returned the favor of laying down with me for a few minutes before I fell asleep – complete with a quick check of his blackberry that he pulled out of his back pocket before laying down.  (It’s funny how kids can let you know habits you have, huh )  They got me a drink of water when I called out for it “in the middle of the night” and I even got to jump in their bed and wake them up in the “morning”.  (good thing I didn’t jump too hard because they were sleeping on the concrete floor of the sun room)
5. Tonight, I hid from monsters.  They were big and scary ones.  Thankfully, they are unable to see anyone under my wife’s quilt.  It’s a miracle of science, really.  I don’t know how we would survive without it’s magical properties.  It was a close call tonight, but we avoided being eaten by the beasties.
6. I had breakfast at about 9:00pm.  It was very good.  I’m not quite sure what all I ate (I wasn’t told), but I know there was some orange juice.  I had a plate, a bowl and a tea cup full of goodies and they were all delicious.
7. I helped was and dry the dishes.  That Step 2 kitchen has a marvelous sink!  We were able to knock out all those pesky breakfast dishes, get them dried and put up in no time
8. I attended two dance parties (the first one was actual somewhere before hiding from the monsters if this where all chronological).  both were fantastic.  I haven’t had a better time dancing (with the notable exception of my first dance with my wife at our reception).

Along with all this amazing stuff, I did get a good board game in with my son and we knocked a couple electives off the list in his Tiger Cub book.  Yesterday, we had a great family outing in downtown San Antonio, but that, I think, is a whole different discussion.  For now, I’ll sip this nightcap I have, look at the pile of mail and papers I should sort through, ignore the final 10% of my taxes I could be knocking out and think about my busy day.  It was great!  Yeah, I actually did get a few loads of laundry clean, the dishes out of the sink and took out the trash today, but that didn’t keep me from getting some of the REALLY important stuff crossed of my list!

There is a unique phenomenon that occurs whenever I travel the small highways and farm roads that make up a good portion of any road trip between South Texas and the Panhandle.  Two cars will pass each other, often on a two lane road, and one driver will raise his fingers off the steering wheel in a simple gesture as they pass.  This is often reciprocated by the other.  Since the cities of San Antonio and Lubbock have been home for me for the last 15 years (dear Lord has it been that long), I’ve traveled that same stretch of blacktop many times, and fortunately, it’s always the same.

Often, people from other states that journey along Texas highways are surprised at the habit many slower drivers have of pulling to the shoulder and letting faster vehicles pass.  And, it’s true – this is a common occurrence all over the state.  There is a fair amount of courtesy on our rural highways.  This wave, however, seems to be something that I’ve experienced most when I head West.  I’ve long argued that for everything Lubbock lacked in aesthetic appeal and preferable climatic activity, it made up for in genuine friendliness and a much more relaxed way of life.  This seems to be common in the broader Western region of the State.  The steering wheel “howdy” is the best indicator that you’ve arrived there.

Plenty of transplant Texans – especially those from the North – have commented to me about having to get used to so many people smiling and saying “hello” as they walked down the street.  Evidently, this is not as common other places.  While it does point out that underlying welcoming attitude is pervasive across all of the Lone Star State, this road-born variant of the sentiment will always hold a special place in my heart.  The dusty flat lands of Lubbock and the surrounding regions of West Texas are so much of who I am today.  I went there for an education.  I left there with a life.

There are dear dear friends that I met up in the Panhandle, and they are as important to me to this day.  I learned a lot about love, heartbreak, happiness, myself, my faith and so much more during the years I lived in the land of cotton.  The Llano Estacado is also where I met the wonderful woman I married and where the blessed life we’ve built together got started.  All of this, and more, makes me thankful every day for the time I spent in West Texas.  So, to me, that simple wave is a welcome back.  A reminder that I’m close to one of the most important “homes” I’ve had in my life – regardless of how many miles are left in the drive.

This particular weekend, we went to a reunion of sorts at the church we were members of while going to Texas Tech.  I’m glad we went.  Reliving the powerful intersection of faith and friends that St. Elizabeth’s was for me was so precious.  Getting to spend time with some of those close to us was even better.  The coolest, perhaps, was the instant bond my children and those of friends made.  I know I’m sappy, but it made me smile to know that even if my kids never follow my footsteps to my alma mater, they can still have fond memories of a city that will always mean so much to me.

As we drove back to San Antonio, I was acutely aware that frequency of those friendly gestures between lanes were waining as the sun did the same.  Somewhere along a stretch of Texas highway we crossed back over that line.  We’ll be returning in the near future.  We found several reasons to make another trip – this time it won’t be years between them.  Rest assured, when we turn right off of I-10 and start to head more North than West, I’ll be watching for oncomming traffic.  I suspect, as ususal, at the first wave, I’ll know that it’s good to be back.

I could go on and on, but we have to load up and head over to his Oma’s house.
All the ladies are over there (including his mom) and he wants to surprise
them.

Way to go, Keith! You are my hero.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from vw’s posterous

For Christmas, Tiffany gave me (well really the both of us) the gift of finding
out what the baby was. And, it’s a girl! We are giving a bit of margin for
error since the sono tech was trying to look without either of us knowing, but
we are pretty certain. If, for any reason, we get to take another peek, we’ll
pass along any changes in the prediction. In the meantime, I’ve attached a
pick for your viewing pleasure.

Peace!
Matt

Posted via email from vw’s posterous

Some enterprising folks at my company set up a little underground radio station that streams music across the company network.  On Fridays, they have live DJs throughout the day.  This morning, they had me fill in for one of the other ones.  It looks like I’ll get to keep spending an hour doing so going forward.

My show is primarily Texas/Americana music.  I throw in a little old-school Country and some extra goodies like Jimmy Buffet and my good Friend D.G who’s big up in Lubbock.  I’m really excited.  I’ll keep you posted on how things go.

Peace

We close on May 30th. It looks like the owners will need it for a couple of days past that, so we’ll have it by the first Saturday in June. After that, we have a lot of work to do on paint and flooring before we move. Plus, we haven’t even listed our house yet (we meet with the realtor tonight). I’ll keep you posted, but we will probably move sometime in mid June.

Peace!

Come in the downstairs entrance from our main lobby and turn right. Once you’re in the main area, turn left and go down the wall past the tiki bar. I’ll be on your right – just before a palm tree on the wall and a poster with a bunch of baby pictures.

I love this place!. It’s just weird enough to always keep things interesting. I now return you to your regularly scheduled, and hopefully not boring, workdays.

Peace!

We had a ball on that trip. We got to see Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and the Tower of London. I think, though, if you asked either of us, we had the most fun just wandering around the city and spending time with each other (we love the kids, but MAN is time with just the two of us nice!). The second half of that trip was ok for me – with one exception. Tiff left on a Tuesday. In the wee hours of Thursday morning, they busted all those terrorists that started this whole no liquids on planes era that we are in. I was set to leave the following Monday. WEEEEE! I made it out ok – no carry-on, but ok. Coming in this time was no biggie. We’ll see how leaving is in a couple of weeks.

So, now that I’m actually back to this trip, it’s a lot different. That one was August. This one is the second half of Feb. That one, I had Tiff for a week. This one, I’m on my own for two. Being away from my whole family for this long will be rough. The longest I’ve every done that was when dad was in hospital and I was gone for about a week and a half. We’ll se how things go.

As for the title of what has now become quite rambling, this is my fourth flight across the Atlantic. I haven’t quite mastered getting to sleep in a reasonable amount of time. Thankfully, on this trip, I came straight to the office so I can power through the day and crash tonight – hopefully avoiding the jet lag somewhat. Tomorrow, I have to cook Cajun food for about 150 folks in this office. (That’s a whole different story for another time).

I will say that anyone coming from Texas to London, check out the flight from Houston Intercontinental to Gatwick on Continental. Coming out of San Antonio, it’s perfect for me because it’s one hop and then on to the big flight. They use 777s for the international leg, so it’s a great plane to be on. Also, for this time of year, it’s nice to not have to worry about weather around airports up north that a lot of the other carriers use.

OK – I think I’ve meandered enough down this path. I’m tired. I’m here. I miss my wife and kids. And, I’m giving up coffee in two days, so I’m going to hit the free Starbucks machine while I still can. I’ll try an check in tomorrow or so.

Peace!