Update, Ears, Stability, Business

Most of my cold/flu symptoms have slowly gone away. I still have congestion in the morning. And my right ear hasn't cleared yet. It pops a lot. But it won't clear. It's like I have a tin can over that ear. The sound is muffled and there's a bit of an echo. It's disorienting and makes it difficult to follow conversations. I often hear myself talking... just like that annoying cell phone thing where your voice is delayed a half second and then played back to you.

What a pain in the butt.

I'm still not back into the working out. I have to get generally healthy first. I don't yet miss it much. But I am starting to feel the itch to get some low end aerobic work under my belt.

On Saturday we went to Matt's birthday bowling bash at Midtown Bowl. Incidentally there was a colon awareness event happening at the same time. Ava and Emme enjoyed rolling the ball a few times. I struggled with the ear thing and all the background noise.

On Sunday we had dinner with Beep, Ball, Frec and Dylan to celebrate birthdays for me, Frec and Ball. Lots of birthdays these days.

On March 20th I'll be 35. Luckily I don't have much time to think about it. I'm busy on a number of fronts. Alex, Michael and I have a number of projects rolling. We've got your garden variety marketing stuff to pay some bills (well, once we get our work done and the checks arrive.) But we've also got some more strategic and bigger projects happening. Which is really exciting. Longer term projects allow us to get our heads into it and do some truly great work.

We're working through our process. It's interesting and a process in and of itself. Who's on first? All of us right now. And that's not a bad thing. We have a sense of what we want to build but we're not sure about how it's expressed. So we're working on expressing it. In how we build stuff and how we present ourselves.

And since life has a sense of humor, dNeero and pingFit also both have stuff happening. It looks like my father and I have got a dNeero client ready to roll. We'll be installing dNeero technology behind a firewall and running intranet-based social surveys. Pretty cool and builds up the portfolio of what's possible with dNeero. One of the IdeasDefine (Alex/Michael) concepts is dNeero-based too. And Dave Williams is in from NYC today to talk about a dNeero thing for a London company.

I've been working quietly behind the scenes on nights and weekends to rebuild some key elements of dNeero so that it's ready for the next level. I'll sleep when I die.

Have I mentioned that I spend a good portion of my life in meetings?

pingFit is talking with Josh Shields and a physical therapist about entering that space. It's exciting because chiros and pts are tasked with helping people improve their health. pingFit can provide a link in the therapy chain... namely getting people to do their exercises at home in a trackable manner. We've got a photo shoot this weekend with Keith and Danielle to add a bunch of exercises to the system. Truly appreciate their help and involvement. Just hope that some day we can repay them for their kindness.

Still working on that new home thing. Have had an offer in on a new place for two months. It's a short sell property so we're stuck in the bureaucracy of the bank. I keep hoping that they'll accept the offer... Ava's (and Emme's) schooling is a big source of stress for me and I'd really like that part of our lives (and my parental responsibility) to settle down a bit. There's a lot of hurry up and wait right now.

In the evenings Ava and I (and often Emme) watch science programs. I LOVE it! Ava asks a ton of questions! Why is the planet like that? How did dinosaurs die? Why did that animal eat the other one? Why is that star blue? Having her interested in science is just plain amazing for me!

We're not yet stable by any means. Our living situation, ability to pay our bills, business prospects and cold/flu health all fluctuate wildly. But we've been on this boat for many years and it looks like our high level strategies are starting to bear some fruit. While I saw nothing but despair and disaster last year at this time I now see some light over the horizon. It's a nice thing to see but it doesn't yet relieve any of the pressure. Now's the time more than ever to double down and invest in the future.