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This is my daughter's hamster Nibble at work on the night shift. He typically puts in a good six hours on the wheel, mostly after midnight. The cage is specially designed to amplify any rotory movements. At two in the morning, Nibbles running reminds me of the sound a bicycle wheel makes when a playing card is clothespinned to its spoke. Do they make spinner bikes for hamsters?
I previously wrote about list makers and pile makers. Now for the extreme list maker, there's the List Makers blog. This is a place to share your completed to do lists. Better yet, you can get ideas for items to add to your own lists. Or for even greater efficiency, you can just do the things on other people's list without adding them to yours. What a great idea.
In fact, I was so inspired I created a list on this whole list maker concept.
The kids and I packed the SUV and headed for Big Sky, Montana to ski this weekend. Snow conditions are perfect, a good four inches of powder on top of a groomed base. We saw the critter above just north of West Yellowstone. I'm not sure what has a smaller brain, a bison or a koala. They both look a little out of it.
I'm blogging by the hotel pool, watching my kids and a pair of 70 year old men zip down the waterslide head first. I hope I have that much bravado when I'm 70.
We will never have a Whole Foods or Wild Oats in eastern Idaho, because frankly we don’t have enough body pierced, tattooed, indie rock aficionados to staff the stores. So when I travel, I love to visit the local Whole Foods and marvel at the thirty-nine varieties of bottled water. My new favorite is a brand called MetroMint. I bought two bottles at the Whole Foods in San Diego last Tuesday and another three bottles on Wednesday at the Whole Foods in San Antonio. It tastes wonderful. 
This is a simple concept. Clean water with a hint of mint. Sold at 10 cents an ounce. 90% gross profit margins I’m sure, because transportation costs are so low⎯no need to haul it from Fiji or the Arctic. This is good old North American purified water spiked with mint from, according to the bottle, the “finest mint growing region in North America.”
Now I would have thought the finest mint growing region in North America was southern Ohio. In my childhood backyard, mint was second only to poison ivy in prolificacy. I loved to suck on a mint leaf while running around at night trapping fireflies in baby food jars. Incidentally, I just learned the other day that eating three fireflies on the same night can kill you. Now that is something I don’t ever remember being told growing up. “Son, don’t eat the lightening bugs. Their killers.”
Anyway, apparently the finest mint growing region in North America is in Yakima Valley, Washington. This is fortuitous, because I will driving through Yakima Valley the week after next on a road trip from Walla Walla to Tacoma. I plan on stopping along the highway and picking some of the finest mint in North America. Then when I get home I’ll stuff it in canning jars filled with purified Idaho water and send the kids outside to open up a tiny version of Whole Foods⎯a mint water stand. Instead of calling it MetroMint and risk being sued, we’ll call it something more apropos like RuralMint or IdaMint. I’d even be willing to sell the water for five cents an ounce.
I spent the past two days on the road after a month of not going anywhere. I am always amazed how green an arid place like San Diego looks after experiencing Idaho snow for four weeks. Georges at the Cove is my new favorite Southern California restaurant. The squash soup was the best I have tasted. Squash is sublime when prepared in a soup or a Thai coconut curry; smooth as cream, the color of a crisp autumn day. Dinner was all the more pleasant because I was with a good friend and business partner; a rare treat because I usually travel alone on business.
We had a few minutes before our reservation so we visited several of La Jolla’s art galleries. We must have had art neophytes written on our foreheads because the staff at the first gallery didn’t even rise from their desks to ask if we were interested in anything. It begs the question what does a typical art buyer look like.
We had better luck at the second gallery. The saleswoman, or should I say curator⎯what do you call an art gallery worker?⎯showed us around her shop, explaining the background of each artist, and in the case of the abstract pieces, telling us what they depicted.
She’d peer over her red reading glasses, the silver chains dangling and say, “This artist is from China and he likes bushes. Those are shrubs. You can see them better if you step back a little. Or if, you would like, I can hang this one in the other room where we have brighter lights and you can better imagine what it would look like in your home.” Perhaps she thought we illuminate our homes with floodlights.
The woman was congenial, yet still managed to ask the art world equivalent of the loaded question. Instead of used car salesmanish, “What monthly payment were you trying to stay at?” She asked, “What kind of art do you collect?”
This was clearly an attempt to size up our art world prowess. There is no way to answer that question without exposing one’s complete lack of art sophistication. Unless of course, you actually collect art⎯which I don’t, except for one small painting I bought LaPriel last year while in Australia. I answered the curator the same way I answer all questions I don’t like. I pretended I didn’t hear her. So she change tact and asked a trick question.
“Are you looking for something to match your furniture?”
We didn’t fall for it.
“No,” we said.
“Good,” she said. “Fine art matches any furniture.”
We ended up by the front door where there was a series of paintings by a Russian couple, who apparently tag team when they paint. All of the paintings were of their teenage daughter. In some, the beautiful blonde was walking on the beach. In others, she posed under a tree or strolled through a garden. I glanced at my watch, noting it was time for our dinner reservation, just as the curator went into a lengthy story about how the daughter had defaced one of her dad’s paintings right before a prestigious exhibition, and the wife, not wanting to upset her husband, had repainted it, only to see the painting win first prize.
I didn’t ask if the daughter had done this because she got tired of being painted. Or perhaps her being the subject of all her parents’ art was punishment for slapping her dad's prized canvas with a paint-soaked four-inch brush. Whatever the reason, the curator soberly informed us the painting of the girl at the beach was the artists’ favorite and if we wanted that one we would have to buy at least twelve of the Russians’ paintings.
I suppose if I had done so, next time I visited an art gallery I could then answer the question, “What kind of art do you collect?”
“I only collect paintings of bratty Russian teenagers”
I finally removed our Christmas tree from the sun room this afternoon. Unfortunately, our town had already discontinued its curb side Christmas tree pick up for the year. Seems a little early for those of us who like to get our money's worth from our $75 trees. I was resourceful and took matters into my own hands, though.
Two newspapers arrive at my doorstep; my little Idaho town’s paper, which is delivered five days a week, and the Sunday New York Times, which comes on Sunday one-third of the time, on Monday another third of the time due to bad weather, and the rest of the time it doesn’t come at all because the newspaper boy forgets to deliver it. I appear to be the only person in the entire town that subscribes to the New York Times so I suppose this forgetfulness is understandable. I’m just amazed they deliver it to me at all. I was incredulous when the NYT called to offer home delivery. I signed up, but assumed there was a misunderstanding and the paper would come by Pony Express ten days after publication. But they were right. Occasionally, the current edition of the NYT lands on my porch on Sunday mornings. Granted, it never contains late breaking news because they print it on Friday, but that’s what blogs are for.
One of my oddball pastimes is to page through magazines in order to figure out the demographic profile of their target reader. Sometimes the difference between two magazines is striking.
Compare, for example, the advertisements found in American Profile magazine, a weekly insert in our local paper, with the New York Times Sunday Magazine.
Food
American Profile: Bush's Homestyle Chile, Milk-Bone Dog Biscuits
NYT Magazine: illy Espresso Coffee
Fashion
NYT Magazine: Searle designer clothes
American Profile: The World’s First Expandable Shoe
Home Décor
NYT Magazine: rochebobois paris “les contemporains” collection
American Profile: First Ever Thomas Kinkade Illuminated Christmas Tree
Personal Fitness
NYT Magazine: Brooke Siler’s latest book, Pilates Body Challenge
American Profile: Hear What Your Missing Discreet Listening Device
Travel
NYT Magazine: Club Med, Holland America Line European Cruise
American Profile: Pay for a vacation using the $500 Grand Prize won in the Best Recipes in America contest
Alarmist Ad
NYT Magazine: Weather Channel It Could Happen Tomorrow Program, “What if a category 5 hurricane hit New York City”
American Profile: If You Go Into a Nursing Home Will Your Spouse Go Into a Poor House?
Personal Technology
NYT Magazine: Bose QuietComfort 2 Headphones
American Profile: Tracfone Prepaid Wireless Cellphone available at Walmart
Personal Escape
NYT Magazine: Porsche Caymen S
American Profile: Those Were Our Songs – Music of World World II CD Collection
Personal Investments
NYT Magazine: Northern Trust Private Bank
American Profile: Seldom Seen Silver Coins , Rarely Seen Price $9.95
I'll let you guess the obvious of who is the target reader for each.
Dorothy is a 72 year-old widow who has lived for 45 years in the same brick ranch house in Des Moines, Iowa. She sits in her robin egg blue La-Z-Boy recliner with Tizzy her poodle curled in her lap, watching eight hours of network television a day. She cries with the guests on Oprah, complains about how trashy the soaps have gotten⎯but watches them anyway⎯and writes down the 1-800 number for The Scooter Store in case the day comes when she can’t walk. She clips coupons from the local paper, eats out twice a month at Bakers Square with her friends from the senior center, and attends 9:00 AM Mass on Sunday, depositing five dollars in the collection basket. Her annual income is $27,000, made up of Social Security and her husband’s pension from the Des Moines Rubber Stamp Company. She visits her grandchildren in Chicago twice a year, and every other year takes a trip to Branson, Missouri sponsored by the senior center.
Susan is 47 year-old interior designer with two teenage sons. Her husband, Robert is a public relations executive. They live in a three bedroom Upper East Side apartment on 85th between Lexington and Park, eat out three times a week⎯usually sushi or Thai on weekdays⎯and worry about how they are going to both pay for their sons’ schooling and save for retirement. Their annual income is $350,000. The family takes an annual ski trip to Colorado over President’s Day weekend and spent three weeks touring Europe last summer. Susan has never been to Iowa. She dreams of buying a condo in Miami. They only go to church for weddings and funerals and watch less then five hours of television a week, usually The Daily Show.
Om Malik points out that Skype has been averaging $318,000 per day since they were bought by Ebay several months ago. I've been testing Skype for two weeks. On average I've noticed they have 3 to 5 million customers online at any given time. So if you assume Skype has 10 million active customers that means each customer is generating 3.2 cents per day. I on the other hand must be a superuser because I average 50 to 75 cents a day (10 cents a day for my two incoming regular phone numbers and another 40 to 65 cents a day for outgoing calls to regular phone numbers).
I suppose the main point of Skype is to talk to other Skype users for free. I haven't quite got that aspect down yet. I don't know any other Skype users⎯unless you count my son who enjoys calling my upstairs home office from the iMac in the living room. Somehow folks in the investment field haven't jumped on the Skype bandwagon. On the other hand, I estimate I'm doing 80% of my business calls via Skype, cutting my long distance bill by 75%. My partners in Ohio can now reach me in Idaho by calling a local Ohio number.
Voice clarity has been excellent. I've experienced no dropped calls when dialing out to regular phone numbers and only 2 dropped calls when others have called me. The dial in service is still in beta so I suppose they are still working out the glitches.
Of course, the best part of Skype is the potential to set up a virtual office in some warm, sunny locale with egregious phone rates, like Mexico for example. Ah, the possibilities.
There are two types of people in this world. List makers and pile makers. List makers are organizational perfectionists. They prioritize, compartmentalize and despise disorder. To them, a job is not done well until it has been scratched off a list. In fact, if it’s not worth putting on a list, it’s not worth doing. List makers keep their desks clutter free, polished and smooth like a fresh sheet of ice laid down by a Zamboni machine.
Pile makers organize by stacking. Their motto is everything in a pile and every pile in its place. They might look as if they live on the verge of chaos, but in fact, they pride themselves on their ability to find things if needed. They don’t ignore lists entirely. They just keep them in their heads, or they scatter post-it-notes around their workspaces like rose petals. And when the piles get too high and numerous, and the ridicule from self-righteous list makers becomes too intense, pile makers conduct what is known as the big dump. They roll in huge garbage bins and toss out everything that hasn’t been touched in the last six months. Then they begin to pile anew.
I’m a pile maker, but not hard core. I typically keep only three piles at once, and I no longer use post-it-notes. Instead I schedule reminders for myself on 37 Signals’ Backpack service. So now whenever I need to be reminded of something, I get an automatic email and a cell phone text message.
But just to show you I can make lists, here’s a list of this week’s favorite things (in no particular order):
Favorite new web application I discovered: Teleflip Let’s you send text messages by email.
Favorite thing I read: Brownies, a story by ZZ Packer
Favorite Internet video clip I found: “The Play” 1982 Cal-Stanford Game⎯a fantastic finish but the low point in the trombone players union's historical archives.
Favorite song I had never before heard: Reasons Why by Rachael Yamagata (I live a cloistered life)
Favorite ride: Test drove an Audi A6 Refrained from buying it.
Favorite thing that came in the mail: Black iPod Nano to replace my defunct iPod Mini. This was a free replacement, which was even better.
Favorite conversation: Discussion with kids as to why I was not in favor of getting a pet chicken.
Favorite dead thing: Our Christmas tree, which is still standing in the sunroom. It’s beginning to petrify.
Favorite meal: Oatmeal with fresh berries and Cracklin' Oat Bran. Every morning.
Favorite Phone Call: Cardiologist called to tell me I wasn’t dying.
Favorite Sale: Sold the ink from my defunct printer for $250 on Ebay.
Favorite Bank Deposit: Closing proceeds from the house LaPriel rehabbed. She’s having fun shopping today.
I previously wrote about a local hands-on mayor who when being informed a neighboring city offered curbside Christmas tree pickup said the following to appease his constituents. “There is a burn pile located by the YMCA that we have been piling a lot of brush at and they can drop their trees off there and we can burn them.”
Well being a man of his word, the mayor hosted the town's first annual Christmas tree burn last Saturday. I clipped this picture from the local paper.
As for me, I haven't managed to drag our Christmas tree to the curb yet. It's still sitting in our sun room, bereft of lights and ornaments, dry as an Idaho borrow pit in August. I paid nearly 75 dollars for that dang tree. I figure if I keep it through March, I can get my total cost to under a dollar per day.
A few days ago Apple came out with a new website program called iWeb. I'm not a web developer, but I did manage to use iWeb to create a new home page for this site. You can check it out here. I'll keep it up until everyone else that buys iWeb uses the same template and then there will be three million look alike web pages.
Yesterday I saw my heart. I went to the cardiologist for a routine echocardiogram. There I saw my heart pumping on the screen in front of me⎯this living thing that carries out its singular task without my direction. I did not watch in amazement as I did when viewing the sonogram of my first child. I did not marvel at the miracle of the heart’s complexity. I did not wonder about the technology that could broadcast the sight and sound of this organ. Instead, my hands shook and I stared fearful of a part of me in which I have no control.
We like to be in control. We tell ourselves others may suffer; others may die. We show them compassion and wipe their tears, but as for ourselves, we keep an eye out for falling airplanes, errant golf shots, and reckless drivers. We walk vigilantly, eat our vegetables, and stay out of harms way. Of course we know we will die, but death is in a distant time and place.
Yet, when I saw my heart pounding away like a blind drummer, oblivious to my worldly cares as if it wasn’t even a part of me, I knew I wasn’t in control. My hope of living until my nineties dissipated. Not because I’m ill, but because I was reminded at any minute the hand of God can silence my heart and call me home.
My office above the garage looks out on a steep hill. At times it is a winter wonderland as in the picture above. The pole and pulley were used to hoist skiers up the incline many years ago. Some days I stare too long out the window, and I begin to see things.
Does anyone else see the profile of a brooding man in the snow? Perhaps a closer shot would help.
While skiers no longer plummet down our hill. It makes for a great sled run. Especially for the uninitiated. This afternoon while I pondered what the man in the snow was telling me, two girls showed up with their sleds and climbed to the summit. I grabbed our new camera, and prepared to call the ambulance after practicing my action shots. Even my kids don't dare sled from the top of the hill.
The initial adrenaline rush
The screams of panic
Closure
Fortunately, the girls were saved by the sagebrush.