My Mind: Lifesized

Speaking of funny

This is pretty funny

I love the holidays, especially Thanksgiving and Christmas. And a Christmas tradition I've really come to enjoy since moving to Montana is the tradition of cutting my own Christmas tree. Friends of mine have property that butts up against national forest land and land owned by Plum Creek (A big timber company) and for the past 5 Christmas's I've headed up the mountain to cut down a tree. This year we opted to stay closer to home, going up into the Pattee Canyon Recreation area of the Lolo National Forest. It is an area Jen has gone to before and is literally only 4 or 5 miles from our house. I was a bit skeptical we'd find a nice tree so close to home and without the long hike into the forest, but Jen was confident and we had the Liam factor to contend with, so off we went. On the way back into the woods we passed the remains of a deer carcass hanging from a tree...either tossed there by a hunter or maybe left by a mountain lion and then when we pulled off the dirt ro

For the second year in a row, my Mom & Dad joined us for Thanksgiving in Missoula. We had a blast despite the fact I was away from most of my family again and not in Indiana. We started cooking pies on Wednesday night and got up early Thanksgiving morning to begin the rest of the cooking in earnest. Even though we were planning a meal for 5 instead of 15, we cooked up a storm. Dad and I picked out a nice Hutterite turkey, fresh from the New Rockport colony in Choteau, MT to go with all the dishes we prepared. Jen had stuffing and sweet potato dishes that are traditional in her family, and we had stuffing, dressing and pie dishes from ours. It was an awesome meal, spent with family...we even pulled out Jen's grandmother's China, the first time I've ever hosted a meal and used China. We started off with a nice relish tray and roasted nuts. Then to go with bird we had cornbread dressing, oyster stuffing, sage stuffing, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, candied yam

Hard to believe, but this Sunday marks one year since little Liam John Hays O'Connor entered the world. Liam is just a super cool, super mellow little man. He's saying the ubiquitous "uh-oh" now, along with "night-night", "thank you", "hi" and "Allie" (our dog). He sleeps through the night most of the time, gets up with a smile most of the time and plays hard until he crashes and burns. Kind of like his Dad! Happy Birthday Liam!!!!!!

By now most of my avid readers heard Missoula’s Mental Toss Flycoons competed in the 2007 UPA Club Ultimate Championships in Sarasota, Florida at the end of last month. It was the final round of competition, and MTF was one of the final 16 teams in the mixed division to make it to nationals. Ultimate continues to grow in popularity and the competition keeps getting tougher and more intense each year. Every team looked big, fast and deep. The mixed division is developing "elite" teams and our region is the best in the country, with 4 teams making the championships. I was really impressed with the talent level overall and, save for a few teams, across the board the teams were well represented in talent and ability. I’m happy to report that MTF is well on its way to establishing itself as one of the top Ultimate teams in the country; the team finished the competition with a 5-3 record, placing 9th and improving two places from last years 11th place finish. Of the 16 teams, ou

For the second year in a row, my Ultimate Frisbee team has made it to the national championships. Last year we went into the final round of 16 seeded 13th and finished 11th after a tough pre-quarter final loss to Boston's Tandem. This year we've had a pretty solid showing in tournaments and won the Big Sky sectional (Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Alberta). We then went to Burlington, Washington (about 80 miles north of Seattle) and competed in the most difficult and power stacked regional championship. We qualified by finishing 4th in the tourney (out of 16 teams) behind the last three consecutive national champions. We go into Florida next week seeded 6th, the highest we've ever been ranked in the country. The format of the tournament puts us in one of 4 pools to start and then the pools are reshuffled based upon our initial results. We are up against the third seeded team in the country, Slow White out of New York City. This team beat us last year at nationals and

Yesterday morning at 5:00 AM MST, I took Emi Hokaida, our Japanese exchange student, to the airport for her return trip home to Kumamoto. This sentence alone should alert any reader to what you might have already expected...my life has gotten even crazier since my last post. Emi (pronounced like the award...emmy) is a wonderful 16 year-old student from the city of Kumamoto, in Kumamoto Prefecture on the southern island of Kyushu. For the past 16 years, the top students from her school "audition" for a chance to come to Missoula. Big Sky High School here in Missoula hosts the students. Amazingly, they are only in the states for one week. We picked her up Saturday morning after a small ceremony during which her principal (who doesn't speak a lick of English)gave a rather long and impassioned speech of thanks. She arrived at 1:00 AM that morning, slept for a few hours and then had her first breakfast outside of Japan, consisting of scrambled eggs, pancakes, bacon and c

I seem to start all of my posts these days with some sort of disclaimer about time and me not having any of it let alone having time for blogging. A few years ago I would have claimed such a statement as heresy, but life is one big lesson now, isn't it? So I'll start this post off the same way...my life has been busier than ever (seriously) and I'm just now taking a break to try and write some of it down. Here are a few things I've failed to write up: In March I went to Denver, where I was an attendee and a speaker at a medical group management leadership conference. Besides speaking to a group of 300 peers, the only thing worth mentioning is that it took me 17 hours to get from Missoula to Denver thanks to a bad travel day with the airlines. The conference was very good and I've been invited to submit my name to the organizations speakers bureau to speak at future conferences; I guess that is sort of a big deal. A week later I hopped into my car and drove to Pa

This was an article that appeared last week in our local Independent newspaper. Spirit of the Game Ultimate Frisbee has become one of Missoula’s most popular organized sports. Jason Wiener sprints into action—mostly singing and drinking—to find out why. By: Jason Wiener Posted: 04/26/2007 On the opening night of Missoula ultimate Frisbee spring league, it’s maybe 45 degrees and definitely drizzling, but spirits are high. Most competitors are wearing an informal uniform of longjohns with shorts and either a light or a dark shirt to differentiate one team from the other; almost everyone wears cleats. Before the matches, some teams discuss strategy. Others appear to be trading information about a weekend party. Others go around circles formed by their team, reconnecting with old friends and learning new teammates’ names. Everywhere, Frisbees fly. Almost 200 people turned out for opening night, nearly triple the number who started the league six years ago. The crowd makes up 10 teams, th

I am so far behind on posting it is ridiculous. I wrote this and stuck it in my drafts folder two weeks ago. Saturday Jen and I had big plans to workout together…they were thrown for a loop when the Purdue University men's basketball team managed to get into the Big 10 semifinals against #1 Ohio State and the game was aired nationally. Since I hadn’t gotten to see my beloved Boilermakers play all year I decided to alter my plans and fit the game in. So my friend Rick Simmons came up to my chateau on the hill to watch the game. Jen went for a run and Liam stayed with the men. It was a very good basketball game for 35 minutes until Ohio State pulled away at the end. Jen slipped off a sidewalk coming down from a neighborhood higher up the mountain and sprained her ankle so I went and picked her up and decided to head off to the gym on my own, leaving her with her ankle elevated and Liam feeding…what a woman! So I hopped on my bike and rode the whopping 2.7 miles downhill to the

Catchy title, don’t you think? After last week I needed to find some humor somewhere, so as I was driving away from the airport Friday morning from a canceled flight, I thought I could write a book entitled Losing Weight the Rotavirus way. I was on cloud nine Sunday night after the Colts completed their unexpected run in the playoffs with a nice Super Bowl win and was looking forward to exchanging barbs with my Chicago friends on Monday as I lay down to sleep. Unfortunately I woke up at 5:00 AM with a rumble in my tummy that indicated I needed to make a quick dash to the toilet. Thinking I must’ve gotten hold of some bad food, I proceeded to get ready for work since I was already awake. After 4 more trips to the bathroom in less than an hour I knew I was headed for a miserable day in the least. I’ve got a bathroom right next to my office so it didn’t seem to bad at first, but by Noon I’d worn a nice path in the carpet between my desk and the loo. I decided to stick out the day (m

Vote for the Colts It is very strange to me that the Colts are actually in the Super Bowl. Indianapolis is never center stage. Except for the old days when the ABA Indiana Pacers were tops and the Indianapolis 500 was THE sporting event in the world, Indianapolis one claim to fame from a sporting perspective was the Pacers vs. Lakers blowout NBA finals. Although Butler University is enjoying great success (Hinkle Fieldhouse is still one of the best places to see a basketball game), Indianapolis has always been the red-headed step child to the sporting mecca of Chicago. So now here we are, against Chicago. I really hope Indianapolis wins. Why? Well, they aren't a flashy team with star players (except for Manning) and they don't make headlines. No players are adting movie stars, no one is getting arrested (at least lately), nobody makes the headlines. On the whole, they are a humble lot and they aren't like many of the other players of this generation who are all about

Recently I started my workout routine again. It has been slow going but I am determined to start the Ultimate Frisbee training season in better shape physically and mentally this year. I'm hardly an impact player on our team, and admittedly last year I was hardly a role player either but I am hoping to keep this pipe dream alive and hope to try for one more year of playing mixed club before moving along to the pastures of the masters division. So I began doing the Crossfit warm up and workouts about three weeks ago. After a week of slow going, things started to pick up and I am now feeling like I'm getting back in shape a little. I need to work on the cardio big time and I also need to concentrate more on what I am putting into my body. I'm a big fan of protein and love the Zone bars. Last week I made a sideways remark about the price to Jen and said I should try to make my own...she called me on it and so I spent a little time surfing the net looking for homemade p

Each year I make a "Best of" compilation of the best new music I've come across issued that year. This annual tradition dates back a couple of decades to the days of cassette tapes when I'd trade my best of tapes with Pat Gallagher, a fellow Purdue student and the first person I knew who listened to The Replacements. Pat always seemed to be the man when it came to new music and I miss getting his compilations. In the past three or four years, I've been exchanging compilation CD's with Mark "Weed" Need, who happens to be the hippest law professor I've ever known and surely the hippest Indiana University has ever employed. Although Weed's compilations tend to lean heavily towards the alt.country genre, they are still fabulous gifts and lead me to broaden my musical horizons each year. Alas, 2006 was not a banner year for me in the realm of discovering music. Not only did my spending priorities change from those of my single-man lifestyle,

We know a couple of things already about Liam; he loves to take a bath and he loves to snuggle after a bath. He also loves to hear sounds like clucks and whistles and tongue blows. He is fascinated by his aqua mobile sent by Aunt Nancy. Of course everyone thinks their baby is perfect and we're no exception. About a week ago, Liam decided to answer my repeated clucks with one of his own. Now he waits to hear a cluck and then will smile and cluck back. He is tracking and holding his head steady by himself. We think he's awfully advanced and suspect he will start talking any day now...or at least making sounds that I can pretend are words.

This morning it was -8 degrees (-22 Celsius) here in Missoula, which was nothing compared to the -30 in Butte and the -47 in West Yellowstone; in short Montana has been hit by a deep winter freeze. Despite the fact that it is too cold to enjoy many things outdoors, the sun is shining brightly into my kitchen window and I am enjoying looking out and over the house behind us into the Sapphire Mountains looming nearby. I converted my old blog to the new Blogger platform yesterday, changing the layout in the process. during the conversion I was looking at some statistics and saw just how sharply the number of posts I make has dropped off, from almost daily to not even monthly anymore...so I'll add that to my list of resolutions for the new year...that I will once again start posting regularly. I thought I'd start by posting some of the highlights of my crazy 2006: In 2006 I got almost 35 days of snowboarding in, including my first out of bounds experience. I enjoyed another seaso