I just turned the big FOUR OH (my goodness!) and I thought I'd just give a bulleted list of random things that I am thinking about ... for posterity's sake ... Like a diary, it'd be great to open this file twenty years from now (as I approach retirement) to find out what was on my mind .... so here it is:

* Being a father has been mostly about being exactly who I was before my kids were born ... only trying harder to be even better. After the oohing and aahing about how cute the baby is finally dies down, you're right in the middle of what you were doing before the babies were born. Only now, you also have to carry their weight, as well as your own, in this world.

* The best thing that I ever did for myself was cultivate my sense of curiosity. It has been the most personally rewarding characteristic in my life. Because of my curiosity, I have learned enough about so many things, as to never find a moment in my life hijacked by ennui or simple boredom.  

* My own personal quest to find, understand and come to terms with GOD has effectively ended with the conclusion that there is none. That is not to say that I don't appreciate the majesty and "divinity" that I sense with my conscious being. I am daily in awe being alive (always have been) and do not look forward to the inevitable end of the grand show. The truths revealed to me by science, however, blow away the primitive, masochistic, fearful insights of even the most holy. God is not real AND that does not make our lives meaningless.

* I still have dreams of doing things I dreamed of doing 10, 20 years ago. Sure, that dream of playing first base for the Dodgers has been scratched off, but I still aspire to do great things with myself (40 don't feel that old yet!)

* Over the last few years, I have tried to let those people that really affected my life know how much they influenced everything I've done. No, not the bad decisions (those are my own), but all those internal mechanisms that were implanted by love (or repetition) in me. I really (all of us) owe the players in life the credit for who we became.