15MB of fame

Small step

I found one of the online sites that lets you send a note to a commander in country, who can then decide if they want to distribute the note to a soldier. I was glad to at least send along a note. It’s wild how connected soldiers can now be to home, and how disconected we can be from our military. It makes me fear for our republic when I think about the way we insulate ourselves from war.

See more progress on: write to a soldier in iraq

Date 4: Marjorie

Our neighbor Donna runs a restaurant downtown called Marjorie. She had encouraged Anne and I to come out to eat, and on date #4 last week, we made it down even though we were both nursing colds and neither of us really were feeling up for it. I felt like it was important to push on, and really get in the habit of seeing each other. It was nice. Donna sat us next to each other so we could share plates and hold hands through the meal. She also told us a story about how date nights can help teach your kids about what is important to you – and that might be working. Anne was saying that Sophia was asking her about date night and saying “Are you excited for your date?” That is fun.

We are also getting use to the pattern of queuing up important things to discuss over a meal, which is nice and useful. This night we discussed ohow to survive the remodel without losing our souls or sanity.

See more progress on: go out on “date nights” with my spouse on a regular basis

Any ideas what the secrets are to this one?

Remember when you were growing up, and you went to your friends house and it seemed like your friend was actually nice to their brothers and sisters and maybe even their parents? Or maybe you met someone in college who loved talking to their parents about what was going on in their life and looked forward to seeing them at the holidays. How does that work?

See more progress on: Remain close to my children

Thanks for all the help

We’ll be doing more with putting the press and people in contact – if you still want to play – just keep adding your name to the comments.

See more progress on: Find 43 Things users willing to be interviewed by the press

Date 3: More of a good thing

We had such a great meal at Monsoon that on our 3rd date in 6 weeks (hey, a habit is forming) we went back for more. We got a little more adventurous with the menu, ordering a tumeric crusted rockfish and some sort of “young chicken” special, with mustard greens and more of those crab rolls. I think we overdid it – and our order got lost which led to the waitress avoiding eye contact for 45 minutes before she brought us our entrees.

Who cares. It left us more time to talk. Before dinner we went to our new house and checked in on the progress of the remodel. It was cool to see Anne strolling through the construction zone in her “dress up clothes” – it was a romantic start to our date – and made me really think about what really counts regarding the house we are re-building. It’s not really about the architecture—it is really a design for how we want to live and love each other, and how we want to stay close to our kids.

The meal wasn’t as great as two weeks before – which will be a good reminder to keep trying new places – but the realizations that came with the dinner date were worthy.

See more progress on: go out on “date nights” with my spouse on a regular basis

Date 2: Monsoon

So we’ve had good luck keeping up the date nights – I’ve just done a bad job writing entries. A couple weeks ago Anne & I went out on our second date night of the year and this one was even more comfortable and nice than the first. We went to Monsoon on 19th Ave for a really delicious, mostly Vietnamese, meal. Catfish claypot, shrimp, asparagus soup, crap spring rolls and wu wei tea. All was super yummy – and it was a good time catching up with Anne regarding upcoming birthday parties, plans for a little vacation, and assorted details that fall through the cracks.

Getting a regular date night established was one of the smarter things we’ve done. I truly can’t believe it took us 4 years to figure out how to do it, but I’m glad we did.

See more progress on: go out on “date nights” with my spouse on a regular basis

Fan boys and fan clubs

Doesn't the whole silly idea of an "open media 100" pretty much illustrate that folks who think in terms of insider clubs and short lists of influential people don't seem to really understand what is fundamentally important about a read/write web and the new age of the amateur.

Could we please have the "long tail" meme back? Open media, whatever it is, will not be a hits business. This idea of paying extra notice to a small clique of A lister friends is a waste of all of our attention.

Anyone who plays this game pretty much declares which side they are on.

43 Things just won a Webby Award

Over here at the Robot Co-op, we aren’t sure if we should laugh or cry, but we won a Webby. Of course we want to thank the Academy, as well as the folks at 37 Signals, not that they care about awards

And thanks most of all to you 43 Things users – you literally make the site what it is. This Webby is yours as much as ours.

See more progress on: win a webby