Howefitz Blog

I am at work as I write this, and I am not wearing green.

Over the years it seems that I’ve become a bit of a St. Patrick Humbug. It’s not that I particularly have anything against the Irish people, or the celebration of St. Patrick. It’s just that St. Patrick’s Day serves to remind me of our current state of affairs as a nation and world.

Let me explain by trudging up my St. Patrick’s Day post from MySpace last year:

The other day I was reading a blog post over at johnchow.com entitled, ‘You Are Already Rich‘. It got me to counting my blessings and really thinking about the good in my life.

In posts such as last Friday’s ‘Fatherhood Friday‘ post that I called ‘…And They All Lived Happily Ever After…‘, I’ve talked of my family and all the blessings that they bring to my life.

Then I thought of other blessings:

As I tweeted earlier today, my wife had her 13th week sonogram today, Friday the 13th. Our appointment was at 1:00PM., or for those of you keeping score: 1300 hours! Eek!

When I told friends about this appointment, a lot of them told me that they would change the appointment. Why? If I got three numbers aligned on a slot machine…

Well, as you can see in my opening photo, there was nothing unlucky about today. In fact, it was just about perfect.

As some of you who follow my twitter updates and Facebook status updates know, I’ve been using my AT&T cell phone as my modem. I had what was advertised as an unlimited tethering package. So when I recently moved, I didn’t worry about setting up cable TV, because I could stream my favorite shows online! I’d hook up the laptop to my TV, and we’d catch up with Heroes, Pushing Daisies, Daily Show, etc.

            Incidentally, Hulu is my current favorite site to stream television shows, though Joost has a lot of good stuff too.

Don't look for zebras, they can run away with you...

My wife woke up yesterday in a panic. Something could be wrong with the baby.

Last week she went through several tests. Saturday they drew blood to look for HCG hormones. These hormones are found in a woman’s body when she is pregnant, and should double every 48 hours during the first trimester. So Saturday they drew the first sample, and the HCG count was 14000. Monday, the count was 24000, not quite double but we were told it was nothing to worry about. Wednesday they drew more blood, but we didn’t hear from them.

As we look to a bright new year, many of us are looking back at the year we just had. Then we look forward to the year ahead. I am doing the latter with a vengeance. This does not come without the required retrospective, however.

The past year has been very busy for me. I moved twice, continued to try to sell my home in Missouri, worked overnight and days, considered a second job, started several blogs, discovered Facebook and Twitter while growing increasingly impatient with MySpace, and somewhere in there tried to figure out how to get family and ‘me’ time.

This economy's hitting everyone pretty hard... This cartoon is © Aislin, inc. See more of Terry Mosher's work at aislin.com

This Christmas season is seeing a lot of folks either out of work or pinching pennies so hard their fingers hurt. Up here in the Vail Valley, it’s no different. With continuing news of layoffs and cutbacks, sales are down at Wal-Mart and elsewhere. If you just stand at the front of Wal-Mart and watch the carts go by, one thing is immediately apparent: they are full of groceries.

Hello friends, and welcome to what I hope will become an extremely interesting experiment.

I will be using this blog as well as howefitz.com to explore ideas and concepts that are important to me and I hope you as well.

These topics will include: sustainable liveing, lifestyle design, making money with the internet, music, movies, comic books, yak shaving, the list goes on and on.

I will not only be babbling myself, but I will share links when others say it so much better. I’ll also feature guest bloggers and possibly drag my lovely wife and daughters into the mess as well.