Catching Up Again

Here are some pictures from Stephens most recent birthday party:


Stephen and Ashley T.


Courtney and Greggo


Tony and Leslie


Landy and Chris


Michael and Erika (spelling?)


Richie and Ashley


Justin and Ashley F.


Miranda and me.

I finally have an office of my own. For the past 3 years, I have operated in a cubicle, and there is nothing wrong with that, and now our firm has moved offices, just down the hall, and I have an office of my own. I know that I am very lucky to be in the situation that I'm in and to be completely honest, I'm very thankful for the opportunity.

Given the time of year, and as cliche as it is, I should shout from the rooftops that I am very thankful for my wife. She means so stinking much to me that it's a little ridiculous, but it's always important to tell people how much you appreciate them. Thank you Miranda. So as not to rub anyone the wrong way I have a couple of more thank-yous to pass out:

• I am thankful for my families, my parents, my in-laws, my siblings, my sibling in-laws, my extended family, etc. I am thankful for all of you.
• I am thankful for my friends, as dysfunctional as we can be at times, I appreciate every one of you.
• I am thankful for my puppy dogs.
  
• I am thankful for the opportunity to write about something that I love.
  

For those of you who are regular readers, I have been a little obsessed with personal finance recently, and thankfully for you, the trend continues. I found an enlightening article from Get Rich Slowly about young people and money (yes, I still consider myself young). Let's take this quote from the article:

"Mindy Fetterman and Barbara Hansen of USA Today have written a piece exploring the debt problems facing young adults. This article is the first in a six-part series exploring these issues. Despite some alarmist reporting, there’s interesting stuff here. For example, the authors report that:

* Nearly two-thirds of twentysomethings carry debt. Those who do have debt have taken on more in the past five years.
* Nearly half of twentysomethings have stopped paying on a debt. (This stat shocks me — when did this become acceptable?)
* Sixty percent of twentysomethings believe they face tougher financial pressures than previous generations."

How many of you fit into these categories, and I hope that none of you fit into the second point. It's a really good article, I hope you all enjoy.

I also ran across an article from Techcrunch about whether or not Yahoo can save local papers. Which got me thinking, how many of you actually have a newspaper delivered to your home? I think that of my friends, only Stephen/Ashley and Tony/Leslie have a paper delivered to their home, but I know of few young people who do have the paper delivered. Don't get me wrong, if I see a paper, I'll read it, but it is no longer a necessity.

Gordon Keith, linked the fake Drew Bledsoe's website, Tony Homo. It's actually well written and very funny.

Miranda and I watch too much television, but we have discovered two new television shows. Bear Grylls has a show called Man v. Wild on the Discovery Channel. The premise of the show is that he's dropped out in the middle of nowhere with a canteen and a knife. Bear then has to find his way out of whatever wilderness he is located. Along the way, you begin to realize that the guy will literally eat anything. The second show is called Rob and Big on MTV. Both of these guys are really funny, it's not your typical MTV show, there's something to this.