Been away for a while. Not that I’ve vanished, but somehow stopped blogging for a bit.

I was looking for something interesting on the internet the other day. This is kind of like my digital version of wandering around the library when studying in college. I’d love to pick a random shelf of books & start perusing. It’s often seemed different on the internet, while there’s ton’s of interesting stuff, there’s an overwhelming amount of dribble (perhaps this blog is in that bucket!?!?!). Anyways, one of my favorite sites is www.ted.com, with a steady stream of pretty thoughtful stuff. While on that, I stumbled across Neil Pasricha’s talk on TED about the “Three A’s of Awesome”.  Thought provoking stuff & definitely resonates.

Pasricha has a great story of growing up, having some big ups and even bigger downs & how he responded. Clever guy who thought to start writing a blog about all of the amazing things in life. For him, focusing on the positive was a great tonic for some really sad events (death of a close friend, divorce). It also turned into a career path. He’s gone on to publishing a series of books & is amassing quite a following. Great stuff!

So, my own observation of awesome, at least for today is the silicon tape that somebody invented to seal plumbing leaks. My very not awesome start to the day occurred when woken (extremely early) by my wife calling me from the kitchen. Turns out that our 20+ year old refrigerator’s ice maker hose feed sprung a pin-hole leak. Its amazing the amount of water that can spew all over the kitchen in a not very long period of time.

So, there were actually two (at least) awesome things that occurred to us this morning:

• Someone was around to notice that there was water being pumped all over our kitchen floor (and with gravity’s help, into our basement).
• I was able to figure out what was happening, cut the water & get out to the hardware store to purchase some of that tape.

We’re now back & running. I’m dreading the repair bill to replace the home (err, I mean hose… which really needs to go). When I looked at the way it was installed, it appears to be snaked through the wall from some mysterious place in the basement ceiling. That will be next week’s adventure.

But back to the original impetus for my post… I was very taken by the author’s outlook on life and enthusiasm. When I think of some of the happier people I’ve been around (and enjoy being around), they somehow manage to capture some of the same enthusiasm for life and the world around us. There are almost always good and bad things to focus on. Somehow, the focus on the positive seems ever so much more appealing.

Imagine surrounding yourself with people who are able to see the world in this way. Assuming that they’re not completely nuts (which is a possibility!), what an awesome way to spend one’s days…

Oh, one other amazing thing, we just checked out some new kittens. We’d lost our 19 year old siamese-cat, rosie earlier this year. This one is going to be joining us in about a month’s time….

our new cat