A BABY MUST BE ON THE WAY An Explanation of the last few months Over the past few weeks (I know, it's been over two months!) I have been busy. My wife is "great with child", our house has become "great with baby-clothes", and I have become great at cutting very small pieces of woods, gluing them together, and sanding the whole thing down.
Why?
Well, I've been doing the ultimate fatherly task of making furniture! Yes. Well, sort of yes. I didn't exactly make a baby dresser, but I did "overhaul" one... Because overhaul sounds much better than "refinishing". Plus, I added quite a bit of value to the overall dresser-system (see - my MBA is still useful!) and succeeded in fulfilling a vital role as a care-provider to my wife.
But besides all that, I really enjoyed doing something tangible - with my hands - to provide for my baby. It can be frustrating at times for the husband (it's almost a cliché by now) to know what to do for 9 months. Before the dresser project I mostly just read books about birth and dealing with a newborn, but this process really, in an unexpected way, opened my eyes to the joy that comes from building a family - both literally and figuratively.
Due to the incredible amount of time I put into this project, I almost completely stopped blogging, reading the internet, watching tv, etc. and I hope to bring (some!) of that back into my life now.
For those of you who are interested, I invite you to check out the photo-gallery dedicated to this project. I added some pretty detailed commentary, explaining each step along the way, and hope that it can be some type of inspiration to you folks.
Click on this link to view all 44 photos in my dresser photo gallery. Posted July 13, 2010 COMMENTS: (1)
SETTLING INTO RICHMOND A journey into the heart of a community Preface: To see the rest of the images from this recent adventure click here
I decided that I should probably post more "normal stuff" about life in general. After all, what seems normal to one person (me) might seem interesting to someone else (you). Maybe.
In any case, I have been thinking a lot about community and the importance of "really living" somewhere. This is as opposed to the idea of simply eating and sleeping in a particular geographical spot. And the differences between the two are quite dramatic.
Just six or seven months ago, neither Megan nor myself had any deep friendships (or even hang-out-groups) in the Richmond area. Our friends were accessible with the phone - sure - but we felt like were just biding our time here until something changed... Neither one of us was sure what this would be. So we decided to "get connected".
To make a long story short, we started asking advice on everything from where to eat, to where to attend Church, and where the best hikes were. Strange things started happening as we started branching out into the city. First, we finally started finding things to do in the heart of downtown - which meant we could start avoiding the banal strip malls of suburbia. Second, we began to meet people that were actually FROM here - which gave us access to a richer pool of weekend ideas than we could possibly have thought up ourselves.
The photos above are from a barista competition that we were invited to by the bassoon player of the front-porch band I play in. As it turns out he sets up these "barista jams" (as he calls them) and had recruited the guitar playing leader of our band to be a judge in the competition and thought he would like some support.
The coffeeshop (GlobeHopper Coffeehouse) was an ideal venue for this type of thing and have us a great chance to meet people (who all seemed to know each other) while relaxing and enjoying the festivities. I met the owner/founder of Blanchard's Coffee and, through conversations started with him, heard about a series of great running trails along the James River. All in all - a great experience in the heart of a community.
In the future I will have to write more about this town, but for now I'll just leave it there.
Finally, there was a write-up of the barista event in our local paper in which the writer uses my pictures. You can see them here. Posted April 26, 2010 COMMENTS: (2)
BRINGING UP A BABY GIRL So much to think about, so little experience! (As I mentioned a few blog posts ago, please slide or click your way through the new "Slideoo" image tool above to see all the pictures)
Megan and I just got back from the doctor and, through the wonders of modern science we were able to see our baby girl, moving around, on the screen, in real time.
Well it was pretty cool.
I guess I'm just like every other dad since the dawn of time that is secretly annoyed at all the fuss surrounding babies - until he has his own - and then everything changes.
Megan sort of thought that this baby would be a girl. I wasn't sure why but we could really only imagine good girl names, she started knitting a sweater (almost done!) that would really work best for a girl, and frequently chastised me for referring to "it" as a "he".
Well, after all of our wondering and hoping, we now can begin to strange process of planning for the arrival of an actual person. There is really nothing that can totally prepare someone for this event, so I'm not worried about being unprepared, I'm just sort of... shocked.
Why? I have no idea. But if bringing a real live human being into this world isn't enough to shock you, I don't know what is.
Now it's time to think about where the little kangaroo is gonna sleep, where her clothes are gonna go, what kind of strollers you need to buy, how much money to put in her college fund...
Yeah...
Bring it on.
p.s. If the second picture above is a bit hard to figure out, just scroll to the right and, if you look carefully, you should be able to make out a slightly clearer picture of our tiny kangaroo daughter. Posted April 01, 2010 COMMENTS: (3)
DARDEN CREATES NEW INNOVATION LAB Or: How Jeanne thinks status quo thinking isn't working Over the past couple of years I have gone through a bit of a "crucible experience". Buckling down to learn the dark arts of high finance and low variance distribution sets, I discovered that, in spite of the steep learning curve for an art major entering a top B-School program, all types of learning share a similar need for creativity. Once one understands a problem (whether one is struggling with how to represent with watercolors the infinite gradient of a glowing Baja sunset, or the near-infinite noise of the stock markets in a derivative pricing model) one becomes free to step back and utilize tools that come from outside the target discipline.
Jeanne Liedtka and the other fine folks at Darden's Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship seem to have come to a similar conclusion - albeit from a completely other angle. Their theory is that B-School students, once they have cleared a certain threshold, will derive great benefit from bringing in tools from fine art, auto body, chemistry, and other disciplines into the world of business.
Jeanne has been instrumental in pushing forward an idea for creating a special type of course - the "B-School Lab" - and I saw firsthand how powerful this idea is when I took her two-quarter class - Corporate Design and Business Innovation.
A few weeks ago I was invited to come check out the newest lab before it was opened to the public and give my thoughts on camera. You can mock my performance on camera here.
Perhaps more interestingly, you can use the new image viewer above to scroll through a few pictures I quickly snapped off before I left. I hope they give a sense (even though the lab is still mostly empty) of how fun this class is going to be and encourage you to believe that at least one B-school is taking an active role in cross-disciplinary learning.
NEW PHOTO VIEWER Herewith I disclose the potentially awesome new situation Friends, family, others...
I have been looking for a slick way to display the occasional image for a long time now and only just stumbled across a potentially interesting new application.
The following images are not noteworthy in any way except a. they are my pictures, b. they are streamed directly from Flickr, and c. they are embedded directly in the message itself.
If you like them (or if you don't!) please leave me a comment as I am always trying to find new and interesting ways to make this blog more useful. Posted March 18, 2010 COMMENTS: (3)
If you look over to the left of this layout - in the gallery section - you will find a new gallery from the week of graduation. Darden is such an intense time that it almost HAS to fly by. In the midst of it all it is easy to worry about "not making it", "failing", or "getting dropped".
The truth is, almost nobody drops. Almost everyone passes. And the real worry that more students should try to avoid, is forgetting to fully appreciate the blessing that Darden is/was/will be. My time there was fast, furious, and done. By looking through these images, I remember vividly how it felt, smelled, and looked to be finally done.
I think that is one of the really good reasons to take pictures. Whether they are considered truly great by anyone else is beside the point. Their primary benefit, it seems, is in providing one the opportunity to reflect back on a point in time and recapture -if only ever so faintly- the lessons that one learned as a result of an experience.
Anyway, these few pictures (culled from almost 500) represent the best way I have to recall what I was thinking for a few moments in the middle of May - 2009. Posted March 08, 2010 COMMENTS: (0)
