Can I go for a picnic today?
A rain/retirement parable Question: It’s fall. Can I go for a picnic today? The forecast is great! Thought process: The forecast is great. There’s a 0% chance of rain. Sure, I can go for a picnic. Reality: It didn’t rain today, but it had rained yesterday and the ground was…
Trust and Learning vs Shame and Ignorance
We just talked about how people in the United States would rather talk with their friends about sex than about money. Let’s carry the link between sex and money a little further today. Remember back to sex ed in elementary school, in junior high, with your parents, and possibly also…
Would You Rather Discuss Sex Or Money?
During a mentoring session last week, one of the panel said that in our country people would rather talk about sex than money, because that’s how much emotional baggage there is around money in our country. I thought this was surprising. My groups of friends have discussed money many times…
Start With Why
It’s inevitable, all parents will run into this at some point, today was just my day. The day you catch your kids lying, deliberately, at an age old enough to know both the difference between truth and lie, and old enough to know better. In fact, actually both yesterday and…
One stuffie too far
My whole family, like many others across America today, sat down together to watch the second attempt of the Demo-2 NASA/SpaceX collaboration rocket take astronauts Bob and Doug safely and successfully into space. My children, being young, had many questions. Mama, why are they going into space? Mama, what’s it…
Successful space launch
Today Americans watched with bated breath as astronauts Bob and Doug were successfully and safely launched into space. After having had the American space program effectively disassembled after the most recent launch, that of the Atlantis in 2011, it seems like an unlikely place to be. At the same time,…
Worrying about Grandma, aka the value (and limitations) of secondary data
My nonagenarian Grandma lives in Midland, MI. Home of the current floods that are making the news. I didn’t find out about the floods until too late at night to be making phone calls. And I love my Grandma, I would have a really hard time going to sleep if…
Ears Off
I was having a conversation a couple days ago with some other people in the profession, and we were talking about the challenges of working from home. Several had been working from home since long before COVID19 hit, but they were talking about how working with others was changing with…
The drain of staying isolated
Some feel it more than others. The drain of staying isolated, as we get further into Stay At Home orders. Depending on your home situation, and how much of an introvert vs extrovert you are, and whether you’ve got an essential business position that you have to report to in…
Good example, or horrible warning?
There’s a quote that goes something like “If you can’t be a good example, you’ll just have to serve as a horrible warning.” Many people are afraid to learn something new. They’re comfortable in their current expertise, their current friend circle, their current situation. Trying something new requires us to…