Ben's Blog

This one comes courtesy of Eric’s blog – I thought my family would get a laugh out if it too.

Each Friday night after work, Bubba would fire up his outdoor grill and cook
a venison steak. But, all of Bubba’s neighbors were Catholic. And since it
was Lent, they were forbidden from eating meat on Friday. The delicious
aroma from the grilled venison steaks was causing such a problem for the
Catholic faithful that they finally talked to their priest.

The Priest came to visit Bubba, and suggested that he become a Catholic.
After several classes and much study, Bubba attended Mass…and as the
priest sprinkled holy water over him, he said, “You were born a Baptist, and
raised a Baptist, but now you are a Catholic”.

Bubba’s neighbors were greatly relieved, until Friday night arrived, and the
wonderful aroma of grilled venison filled the neighborhood. The Priest was
called immediately by the neighbors, and, as he rushed into Bubba’s yard,
clutching a rosary and prepared to scold him, he stopped and watched in
amazement. There stood Bubba, clutching a small bottle of holy water which
he carefully sprinkled over the grilling meat and chanted:

“You wuz born a deer, you wuz raised a deer, but now you is a catfish”.

I head to San Francisco on Monday for the 2009 Web 2.0 conference – I’m expecting this conference to be great from what I have heard. This is the second conference in San Francisco I’ve been to in the past couple years so I am not as excited to tour the city after the conference ends each day, but this may have more to do with the fact that I am out there by myself this time. I hate eating out by myself and drinking alone is even worse so my first goal is to meet people that I can hang out with while I am there. I’m staying at the W Hotel which should be great, I know I’m the picture of the trendy traveler they are angling for…

I’ve shifted topic areas/conferences over the years so I’ve yet to find a group that goes to the same conference as me every year like others in the office. Maybe this will be the one that I want to attend every year…but I am already more interested in SXSW next year based on the topics and excitement my coworkers returned with a couple weeks ago.

Holly’s spring break starts on Thursday so she is flying out to SFO that night to meet me there – so far our plan is for me to pick her up after I pick up a rental car so that we can head to the second half of our trip once my conference ends on Friday. We are heading from San Francisco to South Lake Tahoe where from what I’ve seen will be equivalent weather to Michigan or colder. We’ll stay there for 2-3 days before heading to Yosemite to take in a bit of nature and a lot of scenery. This is the first year in some time that we haven’t traveled to Key West with friends over Spring Break – I will really miss the warm weather and cold Coronas by the pool… Don’t get me wrong…I am excited about this trip too, it will just be different. I’m honestly looking forward to seeing new parts of the country, and seeing amazing scenery that I’ve only seen in photos before. Sadly, I won’t be able to visit the Ponderosa Ranch from hit TV show Bonanza, in Lake Tahoe, as it was closed and sold several years ago…bummer. No matter what, I am ready for a break!

In other news…I was able to pull together a trip to Key West in October with some of my friends – sort of an extended guys weekend. This will be my first time in Key West during Fantasy Fest and from what I’ve been told it is a crazy party, like Mardi Gras on steroids.

I am going down there with a unique group and our diversity is something only rivaled by MTV’s The Real World. We have a police officer, an IT guy, an MBA/sales guru, a City Administrator and a University Student Affairs specialist – all with more degrees and masters degrees than we know what to do with. The chances of this trip coming together were slim to none (which may explain why our wives said we could try to plan it) but everything fell in place last week. We found a house with a private pool and 5 beds in our price range, which was nothing short of amazing. Airfare has been booked and now all that is left is for everyone to start working out again before we head south.

Holly and I still want to plan one more trip around July/August for our anniversary but we haven’t made any plans yet. Let me know if you have any suggestions! The idea of going back to Middle Island was thrown around but I wouldn’t mind camping a bit more this summer. Hopefully we’ll have plenty of time to spend at the cabin as well – I have a long list of projects I’d like to start on up there!

People poke fun at me for my use of twitter, and more so for my constant facebook updates.  In my defense…I don’t update Facebook that often, I just update Twitter which automatically updates Facebook (reading that, however, makes me sound pretty nerdy).  Anyways…Twitter is fun, and sometimes it even helps me find new info and helps keep me productive.  That being said, here is a funny cartoon about Twitter.

A coworker posted this on Facebook and I had to share…  Bailey often runs around, barks, sniffs when he dreams but we’ve never seen anything like this!

If you can’t find me for a couple days I very may well have quit my job and moved to Key West…  Seriously.  I own the how-to book and secretly read it after Holly falls asleep every night.

Watch the video here: http://www.quityourjobandmoveto.com/

Buy the how-to book here.