Late Rochester Winter

The weather here has been so weird - the past few days it's been clear, beautifully sunny. Only a few bits of snow here & there. The grass is green. And it's been 10 degrees! SO cold.

Luckily, it was much warmer back in late December when we went skiing. I had a great time, and progressed rapidly. Did fall a lot, but nothing really bad. I'm so glad that I'm in good shape - the skiing was not too hard, but walking in the boots carrying the equipment, and repeatedly poling myself to the chair lift was exhausting. Greg & Gavin took snowboarding lessons, and Andrea tried it on her won. Nancy & I stuck with skiing. I was a rank beginner, but she kept discovering skills she'd gathered that helped out, like rollerblading and surfing.



Greg, Gavin, Andrea & Nancy.



Me and Nancy, the last day - still smiling!

It want to go again, but with no snow around here it's a bit difficult. Maybe we'll have snow in February.

Alex has asked for help

So, one of the excellent women I met in Munich is Alex Koch. She is an art historian, taught in Manhattan, and leads the ladies groups in Munich on the most amazing tours of the museums and exhibits. She studies languages (in her -ahem - spare time; she's got 3 growing, lively boys and a husband who frequently travels for work); in her French class she met a man from Burkina Faso, in West Africa. A teacher. ... Much discussion ensued over time, ALex got involved, got her husband's company to get involved and her campaign raised enough money to build and fund a school for girls in Burkina Faso. How cool is that?

Just got an email from her:

Hello all you dear friends , it’s Alex here, writing from Munich.

We are up for another competition for money for our projects in Burkina Faso. This time it will mean 50, 000 dollars to fund the lambs for school project -- a little girl receives a lamb with her first years school supplies, and that means she can husband that lamb and generate the funds for her continuing education right on into high school at our Collège Moderne de L’Amitié in Ouahigouya. If we win it means 900 more girls will start school in our region.

We need 10 dollar donations from different sources, as many as possible. Global Giving has a secure web site, so don’t fear using your credit card. And it works quickly online. 10 dollars is enough, don’t feel like you have to give more. It is really the numbers of donors that is key. Better to encourage your friends to donate another 10. The more the better. Send this on to friends who will help. Explain to them that they can get in touch with me if they want more information about our work building schools and getting children educated in Burkina.

We have won these giving challenges before with your help and it means amazing resources for us. So click and give. It won’t be a hassle I promise.

Click here to donate.

Kisses and love from me and Max and the boys,

Alex

Oh, this is too funny!

Go here and look at this comic:
from the fine folks at xkdc

Nerd Sniping! Indeed!

Goals, Intentions, Managing My Life

I have been thinking about the above a lot, with the turning of the year. And there is a flood of advice/information/books and other products coming at me, now that I'm attuned. I am sorting my way through it all, developing a system that works for me. It includes a daily written intention, weekly time for myself to think, monthly goal setting, yearly goal setting, theme and overall intention. I am starting to differentiate 'intention' from 'goals'. An intention is for me and my lovely sis-in-law Andrea to work together in a profitable business that we run. Dunno how or when. A 'goal' is to finish filing the paperwork in my office.

So my daily intentions include having success/fun in what I've planned or scheduled to do, and I'm adding in 'unexpected delights'. Saturday, I ran into Ray J from my MasterMind group and we chatted for 30 minutes in OfficeMax. Sunday, I finally went to the emofree website, got pulled in and started using the tool. Monday, Nancy from my MasterMind group invited me to come along to a personal development seminar in Toronto.

Today's first one was cool. I had gone to the gym to work out, and some musclehead put in an Ozzie Osbourne CD. Ugh, isn't this music, like, from the '50s? I worked to overcome my dislike of such dusty quaint old music. Then the 3rd track played, Ozzie doing "Pictures of Matchstick Men" - a song I love. And I liked his version. So that was fun. The next song ground into those old power chords of Born to Be Wild. Not the best version, Ozzie sounded kinda flat. And then I hear a falsetto voice making snide comments over the music - was it? ... Yes, it was - Miss Piggy. At some point Ozzie must have been on the Muppet Show. Delightful!

Whoo Hoo! 2008!

And I need to move my blog again. I thought I'd have oodles of time to get my act together and get it at my home site before the URL became outdated. Oh well, it will happen at some point. I'll link everything in when I do move it.

I've been thinking about goals, resolutions, intent for the year. Spent a quiet day home today in the company of the 3 borrowed cats, watching The Secret again and taking notes. I've evolved my theme for '08: Lavish Abundance; and my guiding principles: Be in Enlightenment, Honor myself, Love.

I just know Barb is gonna get the giggles at the seeming contradiction between my theme and principle #1. (She was very amused that I'd blogged about Being Peace and then followed that with I Love NASCAR.) But Abundance means to me
- spiritual teachers popping in to my life
- lots of time to meditate, think about what I want so I can intend it into being
- new friends (I am especially deficient in guy friends - I think they all got scrubbed off during the marrying decade and I didn't make any more)
- intellectual exercise (gotta meld Quantum Physics and Chaos Theory. (This summer a young punk of a U of R PhD Physicist sneered that they couldn't possibly meld as Chaos Theory is purely mathematical. Ummm, yeah ...)
and unexpected delights as well as increasing income. So, neener neener, they don't contradict.

I was up very late last night, Kathi's kids were wired and we were up til 2. So I'm sleep deprived and have to be at a business meeting tomorrow at 9. And it's snowing out - which means get up real early to make sure I have enough time to get where I'm going. Time to head to bed.