Weekend Recap

Busy busy busy

Baseball Saturday morning, with the added chaos of Picture Day. Very crazy, arrived 45 minutes early then all of the games were about 15 minutes late. Lots of standing around waiting for pictures to be taken, while Emily got tired of sitting in the stroller and had to be carried. Plus keeping the kids kind of corralled with their respective teams. I uploaded some pix from this week and last week on the Picasa site, and changed the Slide show to show all pictures from this summer's baseball games.

Then Saturday afternoon we tried to just relax some before heading over to Dennis' house for his and Dustin's combined birthday party. The party was fun, no major trauma from the dogs. I also uploaded some pictures on the Picasa sit from there as well. Played lots of Ladder ball, Kim and I got on and didn't lose a game (except for the last one played in total darkness so we won't count that). Ladder ball seems to have replaced bocce ball, at least for this summer. It's more fun that bocce to some extent, and not nearly as stressful on the wrists.

Sunday we did a family trip to the Renaissance Festival (yes more pictures as well). It had been 2 years, and James & Daniel got a little more out of it, but I think we will wait another 2 years at least before we go again. It is just a little too much still for the kids, and too expensive for us once you factor in food, tickets, and if you buy any of the expensive items for sale there. Then we came back to town, did a little shopping, then had a nightmare dinner at Perkins. Emily decided more or less as soon as we sat down that she was tired of sitting still and pretty much screamed the whole time.

But overall a good weekend, lots of fun times, some stress but mostly fun. Looking forward to a 4 day week then a 3 day weekend.

The Virtuous Life

So I came across this very interesting series of articles on one of my favorite blogs, The Art of Manliness, the articles dealt with Ben Franklin's definition of virtue and the elements of living a virtuous life. I remember reading about this when I read the Autobiography of Ben Franklin, and again the general concept of virtue and what it meant to the Founding Fathers. And how crucial that was to the support for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, that the government would only succeed as long as the citizens were virtuous.

So I am going to tag along to this and set up a spreadsheet along these lines, and just for the heck of it see how I do over the space of a week. I like to think that I live pretty close to what Franklin would have liked, but this will be an interesting exercise to see how close (or far off) I truly am.

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Temperance
Silence	xx	x				x	x
Order
Resolution		x	x	x	x
Frugality		x
Industry	x	xx	xx	xx	xxx	x	x
Sincerity
Justice
Moderation	x	xx	x	xx	xx
Cleanliness
Tranquility	xx
Chastity
Humility

So clearly my biggest weaknesses are in the area of industry, of course the very fact that I am writing this while I am at work is an example of that. But I prefer to think of that in terms of my strengths versus weaknesses. A couple of year ago I took a Strengths test and determined that my strengths do not lie in the area of focused single task work. And since I work in a call center I am available and ready for a call so it is not like I am not doing anything. My other big weakness is moderation, particularly in the area of food. That is an area I can strive to improve on. It's an interesting self study, and I think a generally worthwhile set of goals to strive for.

Random thoughts for Friday

• So we had a real tragedy occur here in the Springs Metro last weekend. A guy who was apparently embroiled in financial problems as well as domestic violence issues killed his 2 sons and then committed suicide by cop by attacking a sheriff deputy with knife. As if the general story wasn''t sad enough, apparently the guys wife, who was separated, lived across the street from my mother, she recalls watching the kids play, and their toys are still in the yard. So my mother was understandably distraught upon learning this. Well today there was a story in the paper where apparently a number of this guys friends gathered together the other night in a memorial, and all everyone could talk about was how he was such a nice guy etc. Needless to say this really set Kim off when she read it, she was pretty upset that these people could sit around and talk about how great this guy was when he killed his kids.
• The NBA draft has come and gone and I have no idea which players ended up with each teams when all was said and done. Every year it gets harder and harder to track these things.
• Another busy weekend coming up: boys baseball/t-ball tomorrow, then Dennis' birthday party tomorrow night, and possibly Dustin, if he feels like being with Dennis this weekend. Then possibly Renaissance festival on Sunday.

Happy Birthday Dennis

Happy Birthday to my Brother in Law Dennis

also from Kim, James, Daniel & Emily