My Mind: Lifesized

Our last day in DC was a blast. We ate breakfast inside Union Station and then made our way to the offices of Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) where we had an early morning appointment for a private tour of the Capitol! Although a stunning (and extremely expensive) new visitor's center recently opened, I'd opted for contacting the Senator's office to see about the private tour. It was fantastic. Our guide was a young staffer from Wisconsin and he was excellent. Getting to bypass all the lines, and the crowds was really amazing and Brian 9our guide) did a great job filling us in on all the trivia and historical events. After the tour we decided to unwind from our hectic schedule and made our way over to the National Botanical Gardens...simply amazing and beautiful and like everything else, FREE. Just the smell of the place helped relax us and ease tension. I know we experienced the nice side of our nation's capitol, even so we both loved our trip. I'll come back and fil...

There is no way it has been almost a month since I posted my last post...oh, I guess there is a way. Anyhow, Washington, DC continued. Sunday, our big day and what an amazing day it was. I'll write more later and edit this post. Highlights: Breakfast in Georgetown at Le Pain Quotidien Three hours at the Holocaust Museum The War Memorials on the Mall, WW II, Korean, Vietnam The Lincoln Memorial Seeing a pickup game of Ultimate being played on the Mall The National Archives - Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence, Constitution The National Gallery of Art and the Robert Franks exhibit, The Americans Hopping the subway to Shady Grove and then a car ride to ED & Cathy O'Rourke's home for a great dinner Riding the subway back to Foggy Bottom at 11:30 PM Collapsing into bed at midnight

Friday night was a blast but it made the 6:15 AM wake up call come too early. My Government Affairs Committee meeting began promptly at 7:30 AM, and since they paid the bill I was obliged to be on time. The association's Washington offices are two blocks from the White House so I was anxious to see if there was a good view. At least that is what I was thinking as I said hello to the Indian man who passed me walking briskly. He hesitated at the corner and asked if I was heading to 1717 North Pennsylvania and we were happy to discover we were both headed to the same meeting and so we shared good conversation along the rest of the walk. I soon discovered that he emigrated to the US a decade ago but decided not to jump through the hoops that were necessary in order to continue practicing medicine and had instead gone back into health care administration. His son is a 4 th year medical student in Washington so he visits regularly. I got some good recommendations for authentic Ind...

Friday morning I was nervous as all get out...I had two meetings scheduled on the hill, one with a senior Senate Finance Committee staff member and the other with a staff person from Senator Max Baucus's office. Even though I kept telling myself the meetings would be a breeze, my stomach and nerves weren't so convinced. I took the Metro from the Foggy Bottom station (1/2 block from our hotel), switched at the Metro Center and popped out at Union Station. The sun was shining and I suddenly felt some confidence in my bones. I arrived about 4 minutes late to my first meeting but managed to smooth over the receptionist and front staff. I was supposed to have 15 minutes to share my thoughts on health reform, as luck would have it, I got 40 minutes. We had alively discussion and I left feeling quite good. I navigated my way to the Russell Senate building and was pleasantly surprised at how welcoming Senator Baucus's staff were and how friendly the atmosphere was...there is ...

In November I was notified I'd been selected to be a member of the Government Affairs Committee of my industry association. Pretty cool for me from both a business perspective and personal interest angle. Later that month I was told that duie to the impending change in administrations, they had decided to move the meeting from May to January and from Chicago to the Washington DC offices! Woo hoo. Unfortunately, plane fares and the meeting schedule prohibited me from combining it with witnessing the inauguration, nonetheless I was quite excited. To make matters even better, Jen had never been to DC so we decided to make a small vacation out of it and she came along. My Mom & Dad agreed to come visit and watch Liam for us, giving us our very first opportunity to ever spend this much time together alone as a couple...but that is another story all in itself. So here we are, enjoying the wonder, splendor, bustle and hustle (and incredibly cold winds) of our nations Capitol. We ar...

Jen's sister is visiting us with her two kids Jack(4) and Evan (3). Last night we had Jen and our three (9, 6, 2), Nancy (her sister) and her two, their friend Vicki and her two (6, 4), Jen & Nancy's Mom and their niece all over at the house. It was chaos in grand proportion. Luckily for me, I'm sick. And sick enough to justify saying I needed to get the h-e-double sticks out of the house. So I did something I haven't done in about three years...I went to a movie. It was between Defiance and Gran Torino so I asked the cute girl at the ticket counter for her advice. Without hesitation she said Gran Torino and I am glad I took her advice. I dropped 8 bones on the movie (what the hell is that all about?) so opted to skip on the small bag of popcorn for $5.75. I now understand how Jen spent $55 last month taking 5 kids to the movies! Clint Eastwood is a bad ass who happens to make great movies. i've always been a fan...I even like the flick where had the pet orangut...

This is a hilarious spoof on Bush, McCain, and Palin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdRVQ4xwwmQ

If you look to the right of this post you'll notice I added a fund raising widget. A couple of weeks ago I did not know what a widget was but now that I do I am quite certain I will become a widget king. Yep, it's RATPOD time again, that super cool, super challenging one-day ride through the big hole valley and up and over the Pioneer mountain range of Montana to support Camp Mak-A-Dream. Camp Mak-A-Dream is a magical place in Gold Creek, Montana that is an all-expense paid camp for kids and young adults with cancer. You can visit my fund raising web page to learn all about the camp and to hear my full story about why I think this is such an incredible cause. I'm shooting big this year...$10,000.00 US dollars big. Wanna help me get there?

As part of my effort to be a more responsible adult, I decided it was time for me to establish medical care with a primary care doctor and to get the various spots and blotches and tingles checked by a dermatologist. Today was my appointment with the dermatologist and it went like this... Arrive 10 minutes early (I work in a doctor's office after all and know how this new patient stuff can be time consuming) and begin to fill out the paperwork. The receptionist actually gave me two sets of paperwork but was unimpressed at my sarcasm, "do you need me to fill out two sets of paperwork...do I get a discount for that?" I filled out the paperwork and began the waiting process. Their office set up is kind of weird, with the doctor's actual office in plain view of the waiting area and the billing and reception area all open and in earshot, as in I could hear every conversation. Anyhow, I waited just long enough that I was considering a snooze by the time the medical assi...

This morning we headed down to the University of Montana to try and get into the Adams Center for Barack Obama's free Missoula rally. The Obama campaign announced the event on Wednesday night and decided to give away 8,000 tickets...all were gone by Thursday morning. So they added an additional 2,000 tickets, which were gone in another 2 hours! Yesterday they announced that after the Adams Center was full(first come first served), anyone wanting to could sit outdoors in the University football stadium. I would estimate there were 12-15,000 people there by 9:00 AM. We stood in line with a group of friends (Nate, Markie, Daphne, Sarah, Alex, Russ, Julie) and wound our way across campus hoping to get in to the event. Suddenly a reporter asked Jen and I if we would mind answering some questions; I guess I talked for about two minutes. He asked me about why I came to the event, why I was excited, what it meant to Montana and things like that. Afterwards he mentioned he was with...

I'll put up my best of 2007 music soon, but in the meantime, this was just too good to pass up.

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...