An Icon

I went to a memorial tonight for an acquaintance, Ben, who passed last weekend. Our relationship or the circumstances of his death probably are not that important. He is gone and the tragedy can't be unwound.

But tonight they had a table set up at the memorial with different tributes printed out as most memorials do. It was a collection of pictures and different memories of him. One thing stood out to me over everything else and it was not until we all got to talking that it was clear that this same thing stood out to everyone. It was his sun glasses. Ben always wore these sunglasses held by a fabric sun glass tether. They were really nothing special and I can't say that he was ever known for those glasses, he just wore them.

It's interesting the things that we are known for and the things that represent who we are without us ever making an effort towards that. The glasses - they were Ben.

8 Tags

Hmmm so this comes from Ella. You were the one that could get me to do this.

Eight things I am looking forward to:

1. TSR this weekend and jumping my face off! Golden Knights, 160 ways, Casa, Helicopter.
2. Going home to see mom some time this summer
3. Hopefully a vacation over the next few months if I can find time and money to do it right
4. The day when (hopefully) I have a have a full time role offered to me at one of the portfolio companies
5. Continuing to make some rock solid investing choices and executing on a long term strategy
6. Some near term clarity on my contract role for the balance of the year
7. Bourbon vanilla porter
8. Going to Chicago for my Kellogg ten year reunion

Eight things I did yesterday:

1. Left the garage, went into the building at work, up the elevator only to find I did not have my card key
2. Went back downstairs, back to my car in the garage, got the card key, back in the building, back up the elevator, only to find out I got the wrong card key
3. Again back downstairs, back to my car in the garage, got the card key, back in the building, back up the elevator, with the right card key
4. Had dinner with a key member at DOE that is central to a loan guarantee program for one of my projects
5. Found myself thinking about a couple of friends that I have not seen in a long, long time. I need to pick up the phone
6. Purchased Caprica from iTunes to hopefully watch soon
7. Wished that I had made plans to go to Jazzfest this year
8. Stuck to my schedule

Eight things I wish that I could do

1. SCUBA dive
2. Play guitar as I promised myself that I would do when I stopped drumming
3. Go home to see mom more often
4. Travel and just get away without guilt
5. Wring more out of each day to really make each one count
6. Come home to hear another voice waiting for me
7. Figure out what it takes to wind down at night and quiet my voices
8. Right the one wrong that I can't make right
   

Stories To Tell

Well my Kellogg ten year is in two weeks back in Chicago. I wonder what other stories I might hear. This is pretty much mine.

DC

Made a quick trip to DC last week with one of the teams that I am working with. The purpose of the trip was to meet the staff of a couple senators of influence and others key in federal agencies to introduce our project, and seek new roads towards funding. I suppose the ultimate measure of success would have been us walking away with a big fat check......well I suppose that is totally unrealistic. But all said, we had a good trip and the meetings went well. On the flight in, we flew directly over the Potomac and had a killer view of the District. Below you will see the National Cathedral, Watergate, the Mall/Lincoln/Washington/Capital Hill/Jefferson.

Ten

Coach Rating

Well I have finally completed one of my goals in skydiving which is getting my Coach Rating. I finished the classroom part of the training a couple of weeks ago but due to weather, I just finished the in air evaluations this past weekend at my DZ. Over all, I have to say that I was mentally ready and prepared and it went as well as I could have desired.

So before you ask, no, this does not mean that I can take you skydiving. The coach rating is a step on the way to being an AFF instructor for me which is a totally different progression/equipment than taking people for tandems. The coach rating allows me to teach the majority of the first jump classroom lecture, jump with skydivers released from their student program but not yet licensed, and lastly complete recurency jumps for skydivers that are not current with their license requirements and ensure they are ready to be released again solo. It really allows for some cool interaction with new skydivers and students in my opinion.

Both of the eval jumps went just fine. I had Val as my "student"/"evaluator" and she threw some good things at me. The first jump we had a very good exit followed by her just wandering off which required me to go get her. We completed some of our objectives but she did not leave at the right time to track away - I responded correctly by leaving her. The second jump freaked me a bit in that she misrouted her chest strap so that it was really barely being held in place. I caught this on the ground. Over all it went well. During both jumps it was kinda cool to look over and see her deploy and get line stretch looking over at me. You don't see that too often in free fall.

Sure enought I had not competed my debrief for literally five minutes, one of the staff came up to me and asked me to do a recurrency jump. My ink was not even dry so off I went. My jump with my student went well and he did ok when we were done. It was fun. As an unexpected bonus, I even got paid to skydive for once after all this time doing that jump. Hows about that one, cool right?