The best time to keep the faith is when all seems lost. When you’re down to nothing, The Universe is up to somethin!

Well another year has passed, soon we will say good bye to 2011 and hello 2012.  What a year, looking back I have kept not one of my resolutions.  This makes me think, maybe this year I won’t make any new year resolutions this year.  OK, maybe just two.

2011 was a changing year for me.

1. I quick my job of 18 years.
2. Co-Founded a new company.

Yep, I am an Entrepreneur.  Especially the way the economy is doing, am I crazy.  It’s a very scary and exciting time.  I guess 2012 will be the year for me.  All I can say, we will succeed.

I don’t normally repost things like this but think it is something everyone should think about…. A teacher in New York was teaching her class about bullying and gave them the following exercise to perform. She had the children take out a piece of paper and told them to crumple it up, stomp on it and really mess it up, not to rip it. Then she had them unfold the paper, smooth it out and look at how scarred and dirty it was. She then told them to tell it they’re sorry. Now, even though they said they were sorry and tried to fix the paper, she pointed out all the scars they left behind. And that those scars will never go away no matter how hard they tried to fix it. That is what happens when a child bullies another child, they may say they’re sorry, but the scars are there forever. The looks on the faces of the children in the classroom told her the message hit home. Please share this if you are against bullying.

There comes a point in your life when you realize:

Who matters,
Who never did,
Who won’t anymore…
And who always will.
So, don’t worry about people from your past,
There’s a reason why they didn’t make it to your future.

A strong person knows how to keep their life in order. Even with tears in their eyes, they still manage to say “I’m ok” with a smile.

Wishing everyone a happy new year. 

1. To become a better man!
2. I will balance my checkbook
3. Lose weight, and eat healty
4. Exercise more
5. Save money, budget better
6. Update my blog more often
7. Get more involved in photography again
8. I will try to figure out why I “really” need 10 e-mail addresses
9. Stay positive, need less stress in 2011
10. Start reading my Kindle
11. Drink more water
12. <Sorry, this one is private>

So how about you, what are your new year’s resolutions.

Rest in Peace Molly, you will be missed.

‘Twas The Night Before Christmas

‘Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding the annual Yuletide celebration, and throughout our place of residence,
kinetic activity was not in evidence among the possessors of this potential, including that species of domestic rodent known as Mus
musculus. Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward edge of the wood burning caloric apparatus, pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure
regarding an imminent visitation from an eccentric philanthropist among whose folkloric appellations is the honorific title of St.  Nicholas.

The prepubescent siblings, comfortably ensconced in their respective accommodations of repose, were experiencing subconscious visual
hallucinations of variegated fruit confections moving rhythmically through their cerebrums.  My conjugal partner and I, attired in our nocturnal head
coverings, were about to take slumberous advantage of the hibernal darkness when upon the avenaceous exterior portion of the grounds there ascended
such a cacophony of dissonance that I felt compelled to arise with alacrity from my place of repose for the purpose of ascertaining the precise source
thereof.

Hastening to the casement, I forthwith opened the barriers sealing this fenestration, noting thereupon that the lunar brilliance
without, reflected as it was on the surface of a recent crystalline precipitation, might be said to rival that of the solar meridian
itself – thus permitting my incredulous optical sensory organs to behold a miniature airborne runnered conveyance drawn by eight
diminutive specimens of the genus Rangifer, piloted by a minuscule, aged chauffeur so ebullient and nimble that it became instantly
apparent to me that he was indeed our anticipated caller. With his ungulate motive power travelling at what may possibly have been more
vertiginous velocity than patriotic alar predators, he vociferated loudly, expelled breath musically through contracted labia, and
addressed each of the octet by his or her respective cognomen – “Now Dasher, now Dancer…” et al. – guiding them to the uppermost exterior
level of our abode, through which structure I could readily distinguish the concatenations of each of the 32 cloven pedal extremities.

As I retracted my cranium from its erstwhile location, and was performing a 180-degree pivot, our distinguished visitant achieved – with utmost
celerity and via a downward leap – entry by way of the smoke passage. He was clad entirely in animal pelts soiled by the ebony residue from
oxidations of carboniferous fuels which had accumulated on the walls thereof. His resemblance to a street vendor I attributed largely to the
plethora of assorted playthings which he bore dorsally in a commodious cloth receptacle.

His orbs were scintillant with reflected luminosity, while his submaxillary dermal indentations gave every evidence of engaging amiability. The
capillaries of his malar regions and nasal appurtenance were engorged with blood which suffused the subcutaneous layers, the former approximating the
coloration of Albion’s floral emblem, the latter that of the Prunus avium, or sweet cherry.  His amusing sub- and supralabials resembled nothing so
much as a common loop knot, and their ambient hirsute facial adornment appeared like small, tabular and columnar crystals of frozen water.

Clenched firmly between his incisors was a smoking piece whose grey fumes, forming a tenuous ellipse about his occiput, were suggestive
of a decorative seasonal circlet of holly. His visage was wider than it was high, and when he waxed audibly mirthful, his corpulent abdominal region
undulated in the manner of impectinated fruit syrup in a hemispherical container. He was, in short, neither more nor less than an obese, jocund,
multigenarian gnome, the optical perception of whom rendered me visibly frolicsome despite every effort to refrain from so being. By rapidly
lowering and then elevating one eyelid and rotating his head slightly to one side, he indicated that trepidation on my part was groundless.

Without utterance and with dispatch, he commenced filling the aforementioned appended hosiery with various of the aforementioned
articles of merchandise extracted from his aforementioned previously dorsally transported cloth receptacle.  Upon completion of this task,
he executed an abrupt about-face, placed a single manual digit in lateral juxtaposition to his olfactory organ, inclined his cranium
forward in a gesture of leave-taking, and forthwith effected his egress by renegotiating (in reverse) the smoke passage. He then
propelled himself in a short vector onto his conveyance, directed a musical expulsion of air through his contracted oral sphincter to the
antlered quadrupeds of burden, and proceeded to soar aloft in a movement hitherto observable chiefly among the seed-bearing portions
of a common weed. But I overheard his parting exclamation, audible immediately prior to his vehiculation beyond the limits of
visibility: “Ecstatic Yuletide to the planetary constituency, and to that self same assemblage, my sincerest wishes for a salubriously
beneficial and gratifyingly pleasurable period between sunset and dawn.”