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There are a lot of small things I've neglected blogging about and I figured I could make up for it in one post that covers a bunch of ground. 

Self employed Ledgard: The obvious one has been watching Gretchen transition from the steady paycheck comfort of Microsoft to self employment.  Our plan was for one of us to try this (my dad also runs his own dental practice) at least once and I'm glad it's been her.  Saying that running your own business is hard work is an understatement, but I think she and Zoe have done great.  I've of course blogged about this, but it's been the catalyst for other changes. 

Alternative Transportation: Without the comfort of carpooling with Gretchen to work every day I decided that I didn't like the standard 10mph crawl into work every morning.  I bought a bike and started biking into work 3 days a week.  After 600 miles travelled I'm happy to say that it seems to have stuck.  I can actually bike the 7.5 miles 4 minutes faster than I can drive it during rush hour!  Microsoft is good enough to have brought back towels and I have showers in my building so it works out great... pun intended.

Team Management: Leading a team at Microsoft is one thing, but this summer I had the opportunity to manage the baseball team I was formerly just playing on.  It involved recruiting, scouting, drafting, and generally trying to ensure that all 17 "employees" were having the fun they paid for. It's been a lot of fun, we finished in 2nd place, and I'm still learning a lot.  If you're over 27, live around Seattle, and want to play baseball feel free to send me mail. :-)

Interstate Travel: Gretchen and I completed our largest road-trip in the "family truckster" yet.  We took the kidmanals down to Sonoma for some wine tasting mixed with a side of work. Driving up the PCH is great. I was struck by how much CA uses solar engergy for road signs... Soon after we slaughtered some ghost crabs on the gulf coast in a not so clever attempt to rescue them from the pool they had fallen into. If we'd only had wikipedia on the beach we might have known that daylight + seagulls + not being buried in the sand = seagull feeding time.

LCD HDTV: I bought a 40" LCD HDTV and can now enjoy the world series (go Tigers!!!) in glorious HD. I'd recommend one for everyone if you spend more than a couple hours a week in front of a TV now that the costs have come down so much.  Of course, as is the case in the world of technology, a week after I purchased this set over a 1080p set the xbox guys decided that they would start supporting 1080p later this fall. Oh well, in a few years the wife will let me get a new TV again.

Blogging: It's truly the new world.  I have more blogs than employees on my team now!  It reminds you daily that if you manage people you should talk to them about blogging and if you blog you should talk to your management about blogging.  You never know when you are going to be mentioned in the press and you don't want that to be the first time your management hears about your blog... did I mention I'm on a corporate blogging panel at the Blog Business Summit? :-)

That's all I can remember for now. Like I said, this post was not worth reading, but at least now I feel like I covered some forgotten topics.

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