This is Summer

What best defines Summer? Independence Day. Boating. A beer or two.  Grilled food. No wonder we look so damn happy!

-end-

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Nike and Lance Armstrong

Seven-time Tour de France winner, Lance Armstrong, doesn’t have to ride a bike. He chooses to because he knows what people facing cancer go through each day. He understands the struggle and the fear. He wants to make a difference.
So no matter what you may think of Armstrong’s comeback this year, this ad from Nike [...]

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Soccer Player Revived by Defibrillator Implant

Here is evidence of the life-saving abilities provided by implanted cardioverter defibrillators (ICD).
In the video (taken at a soccer match in Europe in early June), a player drops to the field with a heart arrhythmia. Watch closely as his body jolts when his implanted defibrillator shocks his heart back into a normal rhythm.
[...]

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The Graduate

It’s official: My oldest child has graduated from high school. Her commencement address was remarkable (see short clip below). I’ve included a couple photos of her as seen on the Target Center jumbotron talking to 600 of her peers and an audience of 3,000 parents, siblings, grandparents, and friends.
Here’s the introduction and first couple minutes [...]

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E tan e epi tas

My 18-year-old daughter, a senior at Maple Grove Senior High School, graduates on June 7. In a few weeks, wings will spread and she’ll transition from a child student to an adult preparing for the start of her college experience. Wow. Where did THAT time go?
Several years ago, in her Freshman year, she spoke to [...]

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Best Dad Memory

My Dad marched to the beat of his own drum. He set his own standards, and while they changed through my childhood years, the bar and his expectations were always higher than I was tall.
Dad was a product of a rough and tumble father and a mother who only knew how to love and care [...]

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Bail Out

I’m not a fan of government bailouts. Unless the government is writing a check directly to me, that is.
But the billions our government is opting to spend in order to keep companies like AIG afloat seem like a monsterous waste of money. I’ve written about why these companies should be allowed to go bankrupt before. [...]

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Update on Bold Initiative

When 2009 began, a lot of positive mojo filled my world. Enough so that I made this commitment to be more bold in how I lived my own life. Nearly eight weeks later, my general drive to amp boldness each day has become a habit.
Satisfaction in who we are and what we do only descends [...]

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Hopeless Emptiness

Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.” – Revolutionary Road
I paid for 30 minutes with my imaginary therapist, Monique, recently. The topic: Hope.  Here’s a partial transcript from my “session…”
Monique: Talk about your last relationship and how you’re feeling about its…demise.
Me: I’ve got this history of [...]

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“Silver Lining” – David Gray

As I recently shared with someone who means a great deal to me, if there were one singer/songwriter’s CD that I was allowed to have on my iPod, I’d select David Gray’s, “White Ladder” record. So many good tracks on that effort.
There’s a silver lining on all aspects of our lives, no matter how hard [...]

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