lunch with a friend

Yesterday I ate lunch with my good friend Scott. And while Scott and I are about the same age I consider him a person I look up to simply because of the fact he has experienced so many different things in life already, and he has the uncanny ability to speak about anything and everything with a degree of wisdom.

Over the last year Scott sold his car among other things and moved from Nashville to the Czech Republic to pursue a lifelong passion to learn more about that culture and the people. He has spent the year touring Europe, getting ingrained in the Prague lifestyle and taking up a personal street ministry in his spare time. In a lot of ways he personifies the Tim Ferriss "4 Hour Work Week" lifestyle - at least he's the only person I know personally that is coming close to doing that.

What it really comes down to is that he's pursuing that which he's really passionate about in his youth... I respect that, and I want to find a way to do that myself.

Keep tabs on Scott's travels through the Czech Republic at youtube.com/czechscottout.

this is elephant art

What you see here is elephant art. It was painted by an African elephant named Hadari who lives down at the Nashville Zoo. Steph and I saw a gallery of elephant art at the mall around Christmas time and thought they were so neat, so I got her one for Christmas.

Since the winter-time forces the elephants inside for several months, they give the elephants projects to do, like painting. Basically they put an easel in front of them with a bunch of paint cans w/ brushes to choose from. The elephant picks up brush and paints on the canvas, and there you have it... elephant art!

And you ask, why did it take me three months to post about this? I have no idea. I'm sorry.

But it is neat isn't it?

id theft protection

I've had it on my unofficial to-do list to get ID Theft Protection for over a year now, and I finally did it. Two things promoted it this week:

Over Christmas it was reported that laptops had been stolen from the Davidson County Election Commission containing voter data of over 337,000 Nashville residents including Social Security numbers.
My brother-in-law got a call from his bank while we were driving to Minneapolis last week because of "suspicious activity", which did indeed end up being a whole laundry list of fraudulent charges indicating that his credit card info had been stolen.

So I went on over to Zander Insurance and signed up for Identify Theft Protection. Zander was certain to underscore that it was not ID Theft Insurance, but Protection, as what their program provides is a recovery service in the event that you are the victim of identity theft.

It's really no surprise that our personal information is more susceptible to theft than ever, as demonstrated by the Davidson County Election Commission - actually just received my letter in the mail today indicating that I should go ahead and assume that my information had been stolen. And knowing my luck, if my credit card information was somehow stolen, I know that if I called up VISA, they would give me the run-around for weeks as they try to prove that I'm the incompetent dead-beat who actually ran up all fraudulent charges.

I don't have time for that, nor the patience... hence Identity Theft Protection.

paid off the computer

We have a goal to be debt free including all consumer debt, school loans, and 20% of our house within the 1001 day period. We knocked a lot out within our first couple years of marriage, but the last 8 months have been slow going with various other expenses eating away at the monthly paycheck.

Anyways, I had to get a new computer last summer and (somewhat) foolishly opened a credit account for that. I'm happy to say I paid off the last penny of it today, which makes us completely consumer debt free!

On to school and the house....

thanksgiving recipes

It's my personal tradition to cook a new sweet potato recipe every Thanksgiving... this year's was definitely a winner. It included mashed sweet potatoes and a healthy concoction of butter, sugar, and cream. I then topped it off with a brown sugar / crushed pecan crust and baked it in the oven.

I've also been searching for good cornbread recipe (one that wasn't so boringly dry). Thanksgiving was a good time for that as well, and I was quite pleased with my results. Made some cornbread muffins and found that a combination of 2/3 flour and 1/3 corn meal actually made them much less dry. That in addition to some whole kernels of corn made for some very traditional muffins that went over quite well.


2 Recipes of 10 Complete

jack

This post is a good two months overdue, but we finished watching all of the 24 seasons (to date). Here's a recap...

Favorite Season
Day 3

Favorite Character
Tony Almeida

Least Favorite Character
Sherry Palmer (yeah, typical)

Best "I'm Gonna Jack Bauer All Up In Your Face" Moment
As bad as Day 6 was, what with a bad storyline, a poor President and way too much drama, I have to say that the episode where Jack apprehended Abu Fayed (9-10PM) was pretty memorable. Check out this video to relive this fine moment of acute strangulation.

lunch with tony p

I have tasked myself to "Eat lunch with 10 people I look up to". 1 down as of last week. Had lunch with my good buddy Tony Patoto, who I truly believe is one of the most brilliant, compassionate, caring, and encouraging individuals I know.

Tony is a Canadian, but lived most of his life in the UK, hence really cool accent. Got his start in the music industry starting a distribution company over in the UK, and then happened upon a young band called Delirious. Tony managed Delirious for about 10 years or so, crafting them into the worldwide success that they are today. About a year and a half ago Tony moved to Nashville to take part in a project EMI was working on, which has since gone south, but it's music - can't win all of them.

So I met up with Tony last Friday, had ourselves some good Italian food, and talked about life. He had some good encouragement regarding the business ventures I'm throwing myself into, and was particularly excited about what I'm doing with music:nuvo. We talked about Steph and the fact that she's applying to vet school, so a lot of long term stuff is up in the air considering we could be leaving town in 12 months if she gets accepted:

He said, "Most people look at a time constraint like that as a negative thing. You should look at it as a postive and an incredible motivator to really focus on getting music:nuvo and your management career to a place where it is sustainable... because you can do those things from anywhere in the country. You don't have to be in Nashville to do that. Use those time constraints as a motivation!"

Good thoughts Tony, and thanks for lunch!!


1 Lunch of 10 Complete

keeping up on the blog

One of my goals is to blog on my personal blog at least once a week, and I'm happy to report that so far I am doing that... in fact, I'm over achieving. I probably need to spend less time blogging and more time doing other things on my list. We are a third of the way done with the second season of 24 though. This is what success looks like.

24 hours down, 96 to go

It's such a superficial item on my "in progress" 101 list, but yet so much fun. As of last night we finished watching the first full season of 24 on DVD. I'm almost ashamed to say we accomplished this in a mere five days, with significant portions of Saturday and Sunday dedicated to this shallow goal.

Oh well. It was fun, and this is a list about things I want to do, right?

And Jack Bauer is just really awesome. And I think Steph has a crush on him. Crap... this can't end well.