On the momentus occasion of my 100th blog.

     It's hard to believe it, but this is my 100th posted blog since I started this project almost 2 years ago.  I've been faithful and posted each Tuesday, without fail, during this time and I thank each and every one of you who make the time to check it out each week or just when the title interests you.  

     I was tempted to do a "clip show" and talk about my favorite blogs over the last 2 years, but it was a helluva week, and I don't want the events to pass without comment, so I'll save the "clip show" for another column. Like I said, it was a helluva week.  In the last 7 days, I celebrated my 25th wedding anniversary, my 47th birthday, had one of my best annual check-ups, held our 15th successful golf tournament, and oh yeah, wrote my 100th blog.  Weeks like this kind of make me wonder what I do all those other weeks.  I'll break down these events one at a time.....

     So 25 years ago I tied the knot with the most beautiful person that I have ever known.  I was only 22 at the time, and admittedly that's a little early to commit to someone for the rest of your life, but you don't pick when people like this come into your life, but if you are smart, you don't let them out of it when they do come

 in.  She took a chance on a guy slinging pizzas and going to school for computer science and currently she's married to a guy who sells tortillas for a living.  I wonder how she thinks she made out.  There is no question in my mind, that on that day, I got the better half of the deal.  I was a win/lose negotiator back then, and this could have been my best negotiation ever.  My sister, She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, told me once, that the best marriages are made up of two people who are convinced that they each got the better part of the deal. Maybe there is something to that.  I'll not pontificate long on being married 25 years, but I will mention a few things that I think have helped ours.  We had some counseling sessions a few years into the marriage, and we learned to be better communicators, better, not perfect.  It was interesting because it took until the 2nd session to convince the counselor to change her focus from preventing us from divorcing and to help us to communicate, and that's point 2, when we committed for life, we meant it.  I think it's important to keep lust in your marriage too.  I'll leave the sappy love talk to others, who will undoubtedly talk about how love changes from something purely physical, to deeper understanding and something even spiritual.  Me, I'll just say, that if my wife is changing clothes in the house, and I am home, everyone who knows me, knows what  room that I will be in.  The last point I'll share is that on the worst day of my marriage, whenever that was, I respected the person that I married, and no short term conflict or situation ever took that away from me or my wife, long. 

We've held up pretty well

     I'll combine my check up and birthday because they do fit hand in hand.  I feel very good about being 47, no second childhood seems to loom (it helps if you've never left your first one), and every morning and evening I am able to thank God for the many blessings in my life.  My health is not perfect, but it's pretty
workable. I aspire each day to be a better person, and some days I am, and some days I lose my focus.  I'm surrounded each day by inspirational people including my children sometimes, and that's a head-scratcher.  A few weeks ago, I sat with my daughter Molly and she told me, that if she passed away tomorrow, all she would want her headstone to read was that she was kind. It made me embarrassed for what I may have said to that same question had it been posed to me first.  A week later, my son Nolan, after having a rough day in school and subsequently finding out he was unexpectedly going alone to a Scouting camp-out, came home with a "Most Cheerful" award  that he earned over 160 others.  At 12, he reminded me that some days all you have control of, is your attitude.  I can't leave Dan out, so I'll just comment on how I've gotten prune-like in our hot tub listening to him and his views on a plethora of topics.  That is one thing I'm better at, at 47, than I was before, appreciating that wisdom can come from a variety of people. I used to think there was only one right way to do things, and now I know there are a myriad of ways to get to the same goal.  I'm not saying that I'm not stubborn on some things, my family would spit out their morning coffee if I tried to say it, but I am saying that I'm more open to other ideas now than in any other time in my life.  As to my recent check up, I'll summarize it by saying that never before have my parting instructions been, "Keep doing what you are doing", but this time, they were. 

My 2012 team

     Lastly on how I feel about my 100th blog, I don't know how long I am going to keep it up, but I think it's had a good run thus far.  Readership builds as people settle in to their patterns of viewing it.  I'm really excited about some blogs that I have written, and others  feel like I've phoned them in.  The site has had 54,000 visits since I started it, and I suspect of the 500-600 hits that it gets each week, less than a third are regulars that came to the site on purpose.  That's not to say that the "accidental" hitters don't appreciate the site sometimes, because I've had a comment or two that tells me that they do.  I've kept this blog pure in the sense that I have not taken advantage of any money making mechanism that I could with it and I've let no one influence what I post.  I did get a note the other day that set a dollar value on my blog at $900.  By my calculations that means that I'm making about $3.00 an hour for my efforts.  It will be nice when I get that to the minimum wage threshold.  As always, if you like a post, please share it, and this week pick an old one and read it too, you've now got 100 to choose from.  Which is your favorite?