Short post today. Mostly because I’ve had to resort to typing on my iPhone which blows goats, in not so many words. I’m at CONvergence right now and loving the energy here. However, it turns out that Internet connections come at a cost. I’m not motivated to shell out $10 a day to stay sort of connected. That being the case, the blog will likely stay dark for a couple of days although my Twitter feed should be fairly active. Monday I’ll have a CON recap of the high points. Till then, enjoy the weekend.

Yesterday, I wrote about the varied process I take in writing a story.  Today, dealing with it going “out there”.

There’s really just one thing you need to do, although it can be tough as hell.  Let it go.  Don’t forget about it, but let it go.

Here’s where I’m coming from.  I’ve been working on that little story for awhile now, took a couple of weeks to let the idea bubble in my brain for a bit, wrote down some bits and pieces and then finally put it together into something cogent and hopefully enjoyable to read.  Then the tweaking began.

Does this word fit?  Am I clear enough in this transition?  Am I using these words too often?  Am I being specific enough?  How is the style of the work and can I adjust it here or there?  So many questions that I can ask and honestly, given the time I’d find more and more for the rest of eternity.  Things like this can happen in any discipline or love;  a beloved car can be worked on and restored until you are too old to enjoy it, you can practice a piece of music to get it “perfect” but what does it mean if it’s not performed for anyone, even yourself.

After softball last night, I fired up my laptop again and stared at the story, read it through again, hoping that I didn’t put in a typo or have an error in my grammar, wishing that the transitions that seemed a touch clunky to me sounded better when I revisited it, all of these things happening at close to midnight last night.

I asked Melanie just before she went to bed on whether the ending seemed too sudden to her and if I should have a better build up to it.  And through her tiredness and with a touch of exasperation, she said it was fine.  That’s it, those three words–it was fine.  And over the next two hours, I balked, studied the story again, read through it again, checked the spelling again, and worried about the ending…one more time.  I was dead tired last night and should’ve gone to bed as soon as my daughter was down for sleep, but I knew that until I resolved this, I would have problems.  At 1:15 A.M., I put the story into an email, put on my name and word count, then sent it off.  It was done and there was nothing more that could be done.  I had released it to its fate.

If I had put it off until today, I’m not sure it would have gotten sent at all.  I would have kept fiddling with the damn thing until the deadline had passed and then all my work would be for naught.  At least now they have my story and can decide if it makes the cut for the published chapbook they’re putting together.  I’m a little proud of the story.  I’m sure it’s up against some very good competition from some very talented writers and I hope that it makes the cut.  If not, I hope it makes someone laugh or smile, that it entertains whomever gets to read it on the deciding jury.  Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll ever know if the person who reads it enjoyed it unless it gets published, but I’m okay with it.

I’ve let it go and people will either like it or not.  There’s nothing more I should do with it because what it needs most right now is to stand on its own.

Hey, look!  It’s my 200th post.  Ah, what would we do without nice, big, round numbers to celebrate things.  In honor of this auspicious number, I thought I’d write about the process I use to write stuff besides blog posts.  The timing is good as well as I just finished revising a story I’m doing for a contest on behalf of the Lupus Alliance of America.  And, lucky you will see the fruits of my labor in a day or two.  But first, take a look at the contest, if nothing else to see what cool things they are doing and then drink in that picture.  That’s what the story is based on.

Before I really get rolling here, I want to mention that this is basically the process for me and me alone.  Other writers likely have far different ideas and methods they use.  It’s really the nature of writing itself, that there are techniques you can learn but to put something actually on paper or screen, it’s going to be different for everyone.  Different strokes, as they say.  With that said, here it is:

With all writers, every story starts with a kernel of an idea.  It could be something visual or a snippet of conversation overheard.  It’s difficult to say because even for me it varies.  For years I have carried around a number of small notebooks which have little ideas and thoughts scribbled down, either from dreams or someone or something I saw.  Most of the time, those little ideas sprout from anywhere to a few days to years.  Some will never make it into any piece of writing but serve as compost for the seeds of stories that do.

In the case of the story I wrote for the contest, it was that picture.  It did compelled me to write a story about it.  The ideas came quickly, but apart from jotting down a thought or two, I didn’t start writing the story until later.  I needed that time for the idea to grow.  In fact, for this particular story, I was torn on which way I could go with it.  On one hand, I had a valid idea which revolved around a chunk of what I thought brilliant dialogue in my head.  The other was based on some old gaming experiences I had, parlayed into a humorous confrontation.  The dialogue won out this time as it germinated into a stronger story for me.  I’ll likely write the other story though, just as a fun exercise.

With the idea in place, this is where I would usually work on either theme or character.  This is dependent upon what I came up with in the previous idea phase.  If I had a good character I wanted to write around, I’d work up some themes or conflicts to build the story.  If the theme came first, I’d see if I could draw up a good character to fit.  However, it is infinitely easier for me to have a character first and then put them into a situation rather than the other way around.  It’s far simpler for me to find character motivation rather than a nicely rounded character to fit my chosen theme.  For this story, Scalzi and Wheaton were the characters and getting a sense of them was a step I didn’t have to fake too badly.  Finding a fun story for them wasn’t too bad, although I’ll get into the difficulties shortly.

At this point, I’ll usually write what’s foremost on my mind about the story.  My motivation is to get stuff on paper, even if it’s utter shit.  Shitty writing can be fixed in revision but it’s infinitely difficult to revise a blank page.  For this story, I worked on the second paragraph which was the character describing the background.

This particular time, writing a descriptive passage first was a shift for me as I feel that description is not the easiest thing for me.  It takes time and concentration.  In fact, it took me nearly three hours to work on this one paragraph consisting of only seven sentences.  Two good things that worked this time about this paragraph: the first is that I got a tough piece of writing out of the way.  Secondly, by working so hard at it, I didn’t have to do much revision to that particular piece in the end.

With a good descriptive piece done, I wrote what came into my head, no matter if it made sense or not.  With this free writing, it would consist of the bulk of the story and pushed my word count to around 1200 words.  I had to be careful of the word count as the stories could only be between 400-2000 words.  With the way the writing was going and a rough guess from my first paragraph, I had thought the final product would be right around 1200.  With this done, all I needed now was a beginning and an end.

Yes, you read that correctly.  When I write short stories, I write the middle first with occasionally an ending.  Beginnings are often the last part I write.  This particular time, I labored on where to stop the piece and settled for a vague ending.  The beginning was actually pieced together from bits of the middle moved around and then almost completely rewrote in the final.  I had this roughshod work, no where near ready for reading by others.  I showed it to my wife for a little feedback.  She caught some things I missed and pointed out some errors.

I also asked about what to do about the beginning and this is where feedback gets funny.  I ask for these things, but more often that not, the people who I ask about structural parts of the story and their advice, I almost never take that advice.  But the feedback serves me well as it gets my mind moving in different ways and once my mind is in that different gear, the problems become easier to solve.

With all of this done, it’s time for revision.  I check the dialogue, make sure that it has a certain flow to it, make sure I didn’t forget a crucial part of it or actually give away too much, too early.  I tighten up the description, adjust the pacing of the action and really, really work over the beginning and ending so they work seamlessly with the main piece.

There comes a point though where you could work it over and over and over, and if you do that, it will never see the light of day.  Once I feel like it is ready, I let it go.  You have to eventually let go of your works and let them do whatever they are meant to do.  It’s a lot like a plant in the forest; they all start small and might grow into mighty oaks, or they may twist into an unrecognizable, gnarled elm you barely recognize, or they might just be another of the thousand ferns on the ground…or it might not do anything at all.  Once you put them out though, they have their own destiny, much of which you have no control over.  And that’s how it should be.

So that’s it, in a nutshell.  In a couple of days, I’ll post the story and I hope you’ll enjoy it, or not.  Whatever, if you do take the time to read it, feel free to comment.

Last week was pretty slow here at the blog, but things are in the pipeline.  More Audrey pictures are coming up and should be available in the next couple of days.  Got a geeky blog coming up over the next day or two as well.

However, this week might be a bit hit or miss.  I’m hammering away on finishing up a story that I’m doing for a contest John Scalzi and Wil Wheaton are running to benefit the Lupus Alliance of America.  Look forward to that because as of July 1st, I’m going to post the story here on the website.  It will also be the first story of a new section on the website dedicated to stories.  AND you, dear reader, will be able to comment upon those works.  Neato!

Beyond finishing up that story, this is the week of CONvergence in Bloomington, MN.  I’m saying that because it may mean that there are updates and blog posts aplenty or it could mean that the blog goes dark for half the week.  I have no idea.  I do know that the one thing that we will attend is the panel we happen to be hosting with Annie and Josh Lynsen called “Men are from Tatooine, Women are from Naboo” where we talk about the geek relationship.  There are a bunch of other panels that look very interesting (including one that is scheduled during our panel called Writing for the Theater of the Mind–blast it!) and fun.  At the very least, there will be tweets bandied about the entire time.

By the way, our panel is Friday morning at 11 A.M.  It will be fun, there will be laughs.

Like I said, I am on a deadline right now so I have to cut this short.  Big stuff, happening soon!

After two dismal attempts at a blog post today, well–sometimes it’s just better to admit you tried and start fresh the next day.

Instead, here’s a video from Devo for you to enjoy.

Y’know how you mean to blog about something over the course of a couple of days but the universe conspires against you? Yeah, that happened. More about this later, but not much today. Lying low a bit after passing through a tornado warning not too long ago. More tomorrow.

Or for those of you on the other side of the pond, the more appropriate designation of football.  World Cup time is here and although I have not seen a match yet, I’ve been keeping tabs on how the tournament is going.  I found this post from io9 which talks about “the impossible goal”.  Maybe not impossible, but dang…highly improbable.  Try to overlook the hyperbole the presenter uses.  The goal is impressive enough and doesn’t need an over the top presentation, although I did like the physics explanations.

Enjoy!

Today my parents celebrate their 44th anniversary.  I am really bad at getting them a card each year, but I always think about them.  But they set a good example for me and having a solid relationship like theirs has been the gold standard for me.  Luckily, I’m married to a wonderful woman and have a healthy, beautiful daughter as well–all of that starts with a good example, an ideal to live up to.

My parents and daughter

Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad!

It’s been a week since the super awesome fun time that I had at w00tstock 2.3 at the Guthrie Theater.  I could write about the five incredible geek filled hours and what happened at the show, but there are likely better accounts of it.  Not only that, I’d posit it’s actually hard to encapsulate the night sufficiently enough so that someone who wasn’t there would understand.  They won’t and the best you can hope for is mild empathy.

But circumstances being what they were, w00tstock ended up being for me more than just a geeky good time, but a reaffirmation of being a geek and being comfortable with that.  None of this may have happened without a couple of unfortunate things to happen before w00tstock even started.  On the day of the show, Melanie was ill and couldn’t go with me.  The unseen side-effect of this is that I drove by myself to the event and had the time to get my poster signed by the performers (this last bit might not have happened as Melanie is not a night person and may have wanted to go home immediately after the show).  Driving home after the event for an hour and a half with no company to blather my geeky squee gave me time to reflect, not just reminisce fondly.  Most of what I thought about was the sign-line.

When I got in line to get my poster signed by the show participants, I felt really nervous.  What would I say?  With the exceptions of Tim Bedore, a very funny comedian whom I had not seen before that night and Dr. Kakalios, who gave an absolute hilarious physics presentation, I knew the work of everyone else at w00tstock and held their work in deep admiration.  And as I drew closer to them, they all seemed pretty much like me…which was weird but wonderful at the same time.

As I actually started to get things signed by these people, I started to babble a bit.  It starts with John Scalzi at the first spot.  I enjoy his books greatly, his blog more and wanted to let him know.  But I didn’t…I said something incoherent about how I wished I could’ve brought an actual book for him to sign.

Shortly after, Trace Beaulieu signed my poster and SHOOK MY HAND.  He was classy and also noticed the t-shirt I wore.  Being a huge MST3K fan, this was fun to meet someone who really shaped my appreciation for quipping and obscure humor.  Same could be said for Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbet, and all three were fun guys, really enjoying the moment.  Paul and Storm were two guys I had not seen live but love their work.  It was a lot of fun meeting them.

The last two were Wil Wheaton and Adam Savage.  Both had very funny bits and I was surprised at Adam’s way of energetic story-telling.  It was here I really froze up and just thanked them for doing w00tstock in general.  I really didn’t know what to say.  I did get to shake their hands as well, but it seemed awkward to me.

After finding Molly Lewis to get her to sign my poster (her song about Stephen Fry is classic), I left the Guthrie and finally figured out how to get into the parking ramp to get my car.  I started the long drive home, thinking about the night and how damn happy I was.  Driving for an hour lets your mind wander a bit and eventually my mind drifted to thinking about the actual participants.  Here were a fine group of people who were really enjoying themselves and got to do something fun with other people they admire.  I’ll admit; I was a bit jealous.

Then it struck me.  All of the w00tstock performers embraced being geeky and weren’t trying to be someone they weren’t, but they were just being themselves.  Their fan base is easy to understand as people naturally gravitate towards genuine people.  My thoughts then took a good left turn and how I was writing recently.  My writing was more of imitation, of wanting to be like other writers and not just writing like me…for me.

And just like that, the fog lifted.  My writing issues over the last years seems less daunting and more fun.  I remembered the times in college where I wrote uninhibited and free from my internal editor.  The only way I would be able to regain that freedom would be to fully embrace who I am.  I am still in many ways that geeky kid in college who wrote crazy newsletters with a running plotline for his college theater group, the same one who wrote quirky vampire stories fueled by coffee at 2 A.M. at the local 24 hour restaurant, the person who regularly bounced comic book ideas off his friends, the guy who made weird, strangely funny movies about Kung-Fu, Santa Claus, bitter men and movie producers…all of this was a part of my past, a past I had forgotten or stashed away since graduating and trying to “grow-up”, whatever that means.  All the nights spent playing AD&D, all the times strumming a guitar and making up blues songs, all of the notebooks we scribbled stories about a rogue cheese terrorizing the town, all of the stuff I tucked away when I got a real job came back to me.

w00tstock made me remember.

Since that night, the writing has been easier.  I’ve never completely shed my geek label, but in the past years it has been muted, dimmed by just trying to get through the day rather than trying to make the day something to remember, kept alive by being a tech geek, a gamer and my love for obscure trivia.

At the end of w00tstock, I felt strange about that general thank you, but I was right.  I thanked Wil, Adam, Paul and Storm, though at the time I didn’t know exactly what for.  That voice was just my inner geek giving thanks for being renewed.

If you don’t want to read about what it took to get the Family page to it’s current glory, skip the next two paragraphs.  The tl;dr version is getting various technologies to work with one another when you don’t fully understand them is hard.

If you have seen the family page, you should notice a couple of things.  First of all…a lot of pictures.  Right now there are 88 of them.  I’m using Picasa for web storage so I don’t necessarily have to rely on the rather clumsy WordPress backend for photos.  Don’t get me wrong, WP is fantastic in most respects and when you only have a photo or two, works really well.  Gallery options though are limited and frankly undesirable.  To fix this, they have a plugins which are tiny “programs” written by users to give your blog more flexibility.

Still more unfortunate is that no one has written an all encompassing plugin which covers most options for displaying photos in various ways.  To get it to work the way I wanted I needed a photo gallery plugin which would work with the Picasa web albums and a plugin to display the photos themselves with the captions I used.  It was a mix and match operation which I was about ready to give up on until I tried a combination I had tried before and it just worked.  Mind you, this is going through about twenty five different plugins and tweaking those settings to see if they can work.  Point is, it works and I’m not messing with it right now.

Other than that, the blog has suffered a bit as I’ve spent my spare time trying to get it to work.  I’ve missed writing on some cool stories but I’m okay with that.  I mean, nothing has happened recently that doesn’t need my special brand of commentary or that isn’t being talked about somewhere else.

I do have some things coming up that will be pretty cool.  I’m working on a story for a contest run by John Scalzi and Wil Wheaton which I’ll dedicate a separate post, and oh boy it’s fun.  Also, CONvergence is coming up in a couple of weeks where our friends Annie and Josh Lynsen will be participating in a panel with us about the geek relationship.

With the photos in an acceptable state right now, hopefully this will lead to more blog posts…but you never know.

Well, you asked for it.  For those of you interested in new and old Audrey pictures, hop right on over there and enjoy the fruits of my labor.  Don’t ask how long it took to get it to work…you really don’t want to know.

It is a dicey setup and not one I’m am convinced will work for everyone.  If you have problems, please let me know and I’ll do my best.  However, I should point out that I am not a programmer of any stripe and what would take a normal programming person a few minutes to fix might take me the better part of two weeks.  Just sayin’.

Odd topic for me, but let’s talk baseball.  Specifically, let’s talk about the blown call last night in the Tigers/Tribe tilt last night which cost a young pitcher a perfect game.

I’ve seen the clip and the first base umpire blew the call which should have been the very last out of the game.  You watch the clip and it’s not even close.  The last batter was out by a full step and it should have been a perfect game for this pitcher.  But he was called safe.

The crowd reacts predictably and even though I have no love for the Tigers, I have to admit I felt bad for this pitcher.  A perfect game is a rare thing and to have it taken away on the last out on a blown call is unbelievable.  It’s then that something remarkable happens, the first of two remarkable things.

The pitcher, his perfect game now gone, looks at the ump with an incredulous look.  But that’s it.  No storming the ump and getting in his face, no tantrums, just a look of “you’ve got to be kidding me” before he went back to the mound.  Given the amount of competitiveness bred into today’s professional players, it’s a wonder he didn’t completely lose it, but he kept his class and composure in the face of his mark on history disappearing.

After the game, the ump looked at the replay, realized he wasn’t just wrong but unbelievably wrong.  He lamented over it, paced and worried over what his call just cost this young pitcher.  He found the player and apologized over the call, something that you rarely hear of or see.

If you have a chance, read this short piece about the ump.  For me though, it places a bit of faith that two grown men getting paid for playing a game can still exemplify class and humility.

A couple years ago, I didn’t see much point in websites like MySpace or Facebook.  MySpace’s user demographics seemed to skew much, much younger than I was willing to accept and just my cursory glances at people’s pages made my head hurt.  To me, it was more than just an eyesore and it sealed my decision not to partake in the site.  At the time, Facebook didn’t look that much better.

However, on a holiday where my brother and I were home at the same time, he got his laptop out and showed me a bunch of friends that were using Facebook, posting old pictures with comments asking where I was and what I was doing, I truly felt compelled.  It roped me in and I created a profile.  I was greeted by a number of old friends almost instantly, both from college and high school (mostly college) and it felt good to be in touch with all these people that I hadn’t interacted with for many years.

But good things don’t always last and such is the way with Facebook.  I could link a bunch of articles about Facebook’s ongoing issues with privacy, but there’s been so many I feel I really don’t even have to do so.  The breaking point for me was when the email address I have linked to Facebook got busted into and someone started sending spam emails to everyone on my contact list.  Fortunately, I only have about ten contacts on that particular email account as it is not my main, so the damage was minimal.  It did cause about four hours of login/password changes (what can I say, I get paranoid) and make me seriously reevaluate Facebook.

That single breach moved Facebook from the feel-good, I-can-stay-in-touch-with-old-friends website to one that I noticed constantly annoyed me with Farmville/Mafia Wars updates and invites as well as their ever shifting privacy policy.  Speaking of, every time they’ve adjusted their policy, I’ve had to go deep into the settings and opt out.  Having to opt out is bad enough, but to have to do so multiple times borders on crazy.

Not only are there the personal concerns, but I just don’t like the guy who started Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg.  Maybe if I started a web page in my twenties and all the sudden people started throwing millions of dollars at me I would have become an insufferable douche-bag as well.  But I’ll never know.  In a certain way, it seems he just got lucky with Facebook hitting it big as it doesn’t seem like he’s much of a visionary.  And of course, who doesn’t appreciate a guy who calls his users some nasty words.  Incidentally, that last link was highlighting some early privacy concerns with Facebook and Zuckerberg specifically.

The culmination of this is that I’m not going to Facebook very much any more.  In fact, I think I check it about once every two or three weeks now, find that much of what’s going on is rather drab and boring, clear the mass invites I get and then log off again.  I find that most of my quick-hit internet fix needs are actually met by Twitter (believe it or not).  With Twitter, you do get regular sandwich updates (I find them funny), but I’ve gotten heads up on nearby concerts, fun and informative tidbits, links to causes worth my time and at least a couple of good belly laughs a day.  Conceptually, I didn’t get Twitter until I started using it…then it made sense.

Facebook, however, does not make sense for me right now.  I’m not going to go out and delete my account, as that would be just silly.  It would be nice to know what some old friends of mine are doing and I’ll check it from time to time, but my presence on the site will be minimal.  I am waiting for Diaspora to come out for my social networking needs as are a number of other geeks.  Till then, I’d rather devote more time to this website where I am in complete control.

This is nearly a week late but Pac-Man overshadowed much of the week with an awesome tribute from Google.  We almost forgot that the very best of the Star Wars movies had a monumental birthday last week as well.  Yes, the Empire Strikes Back turned thirty.

A little history for you…I watched Empire probably more than any other movie ever.  EVER.  Oh sure, I watched it in the theater a couple of times, but when I really started to pile up repeated viewings was years later when we would get our satellite dish.  This was back in the time when a satellite dish wasn’t some little twelve inch disk you attached to the south side of your house with two wood screws.  Oh no.  This was the real deal.  The “dish” was eight feet in diameter and had it’s own mechanical servos which would point it towards the various satellites in orbit.  Each satellite had twenty four channels and it’s own fun designation.  G1, G3, S1, F4–G was for Galaxy, S was for Satcom and unfortunately I cannot remember what F stood for.

We got the dish just before everyone started scrambling their signal and charging you for access.  HBO and Cinemax were already scrambled, but everything else was wide open including premium channels like Showtime and The Movie Channel.  That summer, they showed Star Wars, Empire and Return of the Jedi on their regular movie rotation.  I mostly like Star Wars (sorry for those of you too young to understand that we never referred to it as “A New Hope”…sheesh) and RotJ, but it didn’t have the same impact on me as did Empire.

That summer, my brother and I watched Empire many, many times.  At first we would catch it on the East coast feed and enjoy it thoroughly.  Then there was an hour break until the West coast feed would start up and we’d watch it again.  Sometimes it was on that night as well and we’d watch it on both feeds once more.  This continued all summer.  It was all Empire, all the time at our house.  We loved that movie.

Empire was special.  It was such a downer of an ending which really set up the last film nicely.  It had the best dialogue, the best interplay between characters and some truly tense moments.  Ars had a very nice write up on the movie last week and makes a great point about how some of the speeches were fantastic.  Yoda’s speech to Luke about the Force made it special…magical.  You forget these things over time and remember the whole of the Empire chasing the Millennium Falcon.

It was also the film which Lucas had the least direct control.  Lucas is a wonderful idea man, a man to frame the big picture.  But when he’s in control of everything, you get the awful prequels, stilted dialogue and CGI loaded remasters of the originals.  The original Empire has grand ideas from Lucas, executed sublimely by his writers, actors and director.

Empire is a good example of a second act done well.  The heroes are at their lowest point, beaten and wounded, but not completely defeated.  The challenges ahead seem daunting and dangerous.  One wonders what will happen next.  Whether or not Return of the Jedi fulfilled the questions set in Empire is a matter for debate, but the trilogy could not have asked for a better setup.

I have a memory of the first day of 1st grade in elementary school of my brother and I.  In it, one of my parents told me to look after my brother and make sure that we find each other so we could all go home together when the school day finished.  As a big brother, I took that responsibility seriously and when the day came almost to an end, I wandered off from my class to find my brother in his first day at Kindergarten.  He was just down the hall and it was not long before I found my brother and told him that we needed to find each other so we could go home.  I felt proud fulfilling my brotherly duties and was pleased I found him so quickly.

Then Wayne, looked at me with narrowed eyes and said that he knew already what needed to happen and that simply wasn’t time to go yet.  Plus, the look in his eyes conveyed he was perfectly fine without my help.  It wasn’t arrogance, but just a self-confidence that he was okay without me.

Being only five years old, I didn’t know what to do with this development.  He was fine and he didn’t need me.  I wandered back to my class and promptly got in trouble from my teacher for wandering off.

The rest of our childhood is as you would expect for young brothers who were only a year apart in age.  Much of it was spent in competition with each other in one way or the next,  punctuated with periods of dislike, highlighted with those moments where we were each other’s best friend, cooperating and happy.  As we got older and our paths diverged more, there was less of the competition and more friendship.  When we finally got to college, we took our own paths.

Many years have passed since those days and I have to admit I wonder in awe of what my brother has accomplished since leaving high school.  He habitually sets goals for himself, achieves them, then sets the bar even higher.  It was a trait that served him well in college and even better out of it.  An admirable quality he has is that if he has an opportunity, he will weigh the pros and cons; if he takes that opportunity, he will not waste it but makes the most of it.  He does this with grace, humility and humor.

On Saturday, Wayne hit another milestone when he received his MBA.  If I’m not mistaken, he is one of the first persons in the Boerger family to receive an advanced degree.  To celebrate this grand achievement, Wayne and Gretchen invited friends and family to their own house for brunch.  Unfortunately, we couldn’t make it down there that day although I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make it work.  I desperately wanted to be there, but couldn’t.

I know Wayne reads the blog occasionally, so I want to direct this next part to him:

If it had been possible to see you this weekend, I would have given you a hug and told you congratulations.  At times, that can be enough and you hope it is and that it captures your happiness for them.  But all I have is words and I hope I can be eloquent enough to let you know how proud I am of you and that I’m absolutely thrilled that you were able to earn your MBA.  I know how much time and energy it took and how much both you and your family sacrificed for this.  I know that you consistently set a good example for your kids…and for all of us, really.  I may not have been there this weekend, but we were there in spirit and were sending you all our good wishes from afar.  I think it’s fantastic that you’ve completed this long road and wish that I could convey the joy I feel for you.  Congratulations again, Wayne!