Happy New Year. Before Christmas I was practicing for an important technical presentation the night before I was going to present, and my wife volunteered to be the practice audience. My wife is a gifted piano teacher, but has only just

recently been introduced to the internet. She listened to my highly technical presentation and upon its conclusion with a smile commented softly that it was better than a bed time story. I was encouraged, thinking I had done a good job communicating the complex topic in a clear way… Then I thought strange choice of words. I asked. “ Why was it better than a bedtime story?” Her response, “Because now I’m really sleepy… goodnight.”

I wear glasses to read my computer screen, but don’t generally wear them for daily living. I left them on one day and drove home. My daughter greeted me at the door and said, “Hi dad. You look smart (long pause)…well smarter.” I guess I will have to believe that during the pause she was considering that she may have inadvertently implied I didn’t always look smart, or perhaps I wasn’t really smart at all, and was compelled to add to her initial comment.

With my wife being a piano teacher with lots of thankful students, and being surrounded by many friendly baking neighbors we amassed quite and impressive quantity of Christmas treats as gifts these last few weeks. We have a young single neighbor who I thought might like to benefit from some of our excess. I asked him, how do you feel about apple pie? His completely straight faced soul searching response, “Well… I feel pretty good about it.”

Thanks for all of your encouraging comments you’ve shared with me regarding this blog over the last year. I hope to keep supplying useful content that you can feel good about. I hope to continue to add to its value. Don’t forget to visit this blog’s archives and share it with coworkers as a growing reference resource. I will continue to update and improve the indexing.