Rest in peace, my friend

Even though I knew her days were few – and definitely hastened, I think, by Simon’s passing just 74 days ago- nothing could ever prepare me for the exact moment I had to say goodbye to my sweet Rooster friend. I wished so much that her passing could be like a breeze—that she’d be blessed to just fall asleep and never wake up but alas, she had greatly deteriorated and I found her this morning suffering, barely functioning and in terrible pain. I had to make the HARD choice to end her suffering but I knew it was the right thing for her. Squeeks passed away wrapped in a soft blanket and was held like a little baby in my arms. She was peaceful and quiet. I think she knew she was loved-- it was the best thing I could do for her and the last way I knew to show her how much I loved her. 15 years, 1 month and 3 days old. She taught me so much about life and love and patience and growing up. I got her when I was just 23 years old. She has been the one constant in my life since that happy July day. I hope she is somewhere right now running light and feeling free and happy- hopefully with Simon. 


I know she did have a great life here and I am glad to have been the one who got to give it to her. I felt robbed when I lost Simon and felt lucky to have had her as long as I did...it balances. I'll still miss them both and will always feel fortunate they were my hysterical companions for as long as they were. I'm also real thankful we had the means to take care of them both through their many trials. We're all lucky. The tears are bittersweet. :)


I will always miss you, Rooster-roo!

Simon

It has been years since I have felt as lost and sad as I do now. I never knew that losing Simon would hurt so bad. I guess I really never let myself fully consider the reality that one day he wouldn't be here though I did know that he was growing older. I thought he'd live to be as old as his sister who is nearly 15. (No, they were not blood relation).

I am just stunned. It is day three and I've cried like a child so many times over the last several days. I feel numb and sad. I feel like my heart is actually broken. I have always known that death is hard for me- but it has been so many years since I have faced a loss that I forgot just how hard. This is HARD. I miss that dog and his sweet, soulful eyes. How he never once did a bad thing. The morning I found him rooting through the compost bin for a snack, coffee grounds on his nose. How he used to love to sleep on any used item of clothing that might find its way to the floor. How he would lay out and bake himself in the sun on a summer day. How he barked and ran around me if I were to dance to music. How he tried to perk his long, curtain-like ears and would sometimes get just the teeniest of a lift. How he'd sigh out, a biiiiiiig sigh, of contented relief. How he loved popcorn. 1 for me, 3 for you...1 for me, 3 for you...

I miss you, Simon! I miss you so bad it hurts. I am thankful for every year and every good memory and I am even thankful that you died with your beautiful head resting on my lap but dammit, I miss you, buddy. I miss you real bad.

My dogs

My first dog was born two weeks before me in early September 1976. I grew up with her and have no childhood memory that exists without Nicki. She was my soul mate in dog form. If I was sick, she stayed by my side for days, only leaving to go outside to the bathroom. When I was away during the school year, I'd call home and we'd "talk"  on the phone. I sat a place for her at the table on the front porch where Tani and I played and had our own private kid suppers of Tony's Pizza and DQ.

The litter of puppies that Nicki was from, oddly enough, all stayed together their whole lives, too. The whole dog family and my human family-- my grandparents, well, we all lived together. How strange to think of it now. Nicki, Brownie, Charlie- the offspring of Cookie and damn...I can't believe I can't remember the dad's name.

I was 14 when Nicki was ailing and in her last days. I watched her degrade and am haunted to this day of how she suffered from dehydration, how her skin was so papery and loose. The day she died, I could only watch as my grandfather carried her from the house. In hindsight, it seems she was young for so long and old only for a few moments and then gone. My heart was broken. I was convinced that I no longer even liked dogs my heart hurt so badly.

Nicki age 10

Squeekers came into my life when I was 23. I was living in Portland and in love with hound dogs- Basset Hounds- and came across her on the internet in a rescue in southern Oregon. I'll never forget how long and pretty she was-- a beautiful white and red that matched my hair color perfectly. She was beaten up, used up and unwanted. I vowed to take care of her forever. I have. She is now two months away from her 15th birthday, so here we are, 11 years later. She is nearly pure white, weighs next to nothing to the point every bone shows and has advanced glaucoma in one eye and has lost sight in the other. She is still somehow the busiest dog ever -- always investigating and checking on me. I used to joke she was aging in reverse until she came down with acute glaucoma back last summer. I have watched her age and slow down considerably ever since. Her old age has become very real in the last many months-- from being fecal incontinent, to running into things, to being unsure at times of her surroundings. For instance, she hears a sound and looks the opposite direction of where it came from. Bizarre things like this have been hard to watch and hard to manage. In many ways, I have prepared myself emotionally for her exit from this world...knowing she has had a long and wonderful life post-rescue from a terrible situation. Know too, that her being changed me, too. I was just a kid myself when I found her and she was my impetus to grow up. I bought a home for her-- as no one would rent to me with a dog back in those days. It was she and I-- lone crusaders-- who took residence in this home in NoPo-- all alone and scared back in those years. I was her savior and in many ways, she was mine. I often joke that in her, I adopted myself...but that is another tale.

Squeakers (I kept her name pre-adoption) age 3

Squeakers now. No- that is not the flash whiting her out. 

Simon, my sweet boy, Simon came almost half a decade later. I was at work one day when I received a call saying: "Oh my god, there is a dog tied to the front porch with a note!" To paraphrase, the note said: "You are such a nice lady and you take such nice care of your Basset- we hope you can take in Simon." Now, I knew Simon. He used to live with a fellow in the corner apartments. The guy was not a "dog guy" and came across Simon in a house moving job where at the end of the job, the couple said: "Do you know anyone who would want this dog?  We don't want him anymore."  Of course, the guy felt awful for the sweet Basset soul and brought him home. But, he had no clue how to take care of him and didn't have the means to. It was summer 2005 and Simon had fleas and the guy washed him weekly with human shampoo to the point the poor dog was bald in spots. He also left him out and unleashed when he was gone. I used to pick him up and put him in my fenced backyard and lavish treats on him. I would also drop off food and flea meds, always acting like I had extra I had to get rid of. Eventually, with finding Simon in the street so often, I grew bold and told the guy first that I would babysit whenever needed and eventually, that if he couldn't care for Simon, I would. One day, they were gone. Many months passed and I put Simon out of my mind and heart. Yet here he was-- all these months later.

Of course I took him in. It was 18 degrees and Simon had been living in a back of an open pickup since the man had moved to a place where dogs were not allowed. He was so thin and so hungry, poor Simon. I lit a fire that night and made a bed for him right by the fireplace. I fixed him a bowl of food and set it in front of him. I will never forget-- he did not pounce on it as I thought he would-- he first looked to me as if to say, "This is for me?"  What a sweet, sweet soul.

Today, Simon died and my heart is broken. His loss is so sudden and so painful that we are in shock. Three nights ago, Simon was shaking and threw up. He was rigid and would or could not lay down and get comfortable. No matter the time I checked on him, he was standing-- so strange. I took him to the vet the next day and x-rays and bloodtests were taken. The xrays showed a mass that bore no definition or explanation without an ultrasound and the bloodwork showed a seriously high white blood cell count, indicating pancreatitus or potentially cancer. I moved him to Dove Lewis after another restless night and day at home. This morning, they called and told me that he was in agony due to confirmed cancerous lesions on his organs- his kidneys- and was close to renal failure. There was no treatment that would make him feel better and asked how long he had- she said: days. Excruciating....painful...days.

My heart truly broke- again and again and again today. We went to Dove Lewis and I held Simon on my lap and massaged his ears. He was in such brutal agony that every moment felt like a selfish, cruel act. His passing was quick, quiet and peaceful. He is so missed. So missed. He was the perfect dog in every single way. If I could always have my Simon, I would.

Simon age 8

Simon this last summer

On feeling awesome

I hate to say it, but this limiting alcohol deal has made me feel a lot better-- physically and mentally. I'm drinking about a glass of wine, twice a week. That is a big reduction for me. Pairing that with 6 days a week on the elliptical (love this thing!!) and I have lost about 7lbs so far. Sweet...

Side note: I look forward to my workouts because I watch a new billiards match via YouTube. It's a great way to improve my game by watching pro's and to make my workout time pass by quickly.

I am also continuing the daily smoothies and have found/created an awesome recipe. This is, by far, my favorite recipe and the smoothie makes me feel incredible-- total healthy buzz. Here it is:

Veggies:
Half cucumber, half carrot, 1/4 avocado, 1.5 cups Lacinato kale, small chunk (quarter size) of fresh ginger

Liquids:
1 cup coconut milk, 1 cup mango juice, 1/2 cup water, tsp honey

Fruits:
2 cups of frozen berry mix (raspberries, blueberries, cranberries), 1 kiwi

Other:
1 tbs chia seeds, 1 tbs flax

Blend-- first set to chop and then puree. Boom!

Quotes

I love quotes. I am charmed by the potency of a few perfectly placed words in a compact little package. My favorite since I was a very young girl, 17 maybe, is "Living well is the best revenge." (anon)

This translated to me as "Move on. Pull yourself up from your bootstraps and make the best of your life. Who cares if anyone who hurt you sees how well you're doing later- but if they do- let them see that I did amazing things with myself and my life."

On learning & Unlearning

Today I am thinking about my second formal training session and how fantastic it is to be taught by someone who really understands the game and actually knows how to teach. I feel like I learned more in my last session than in all my other sessions with other trainers combined.

There is a big difference between being a good player and a good teacher. I think you can be excellent at the former and so-so or even awful at the latter. Additionally, it is incredible to me how you much you learn from others that is wrong or half learned or misapplied-- and how much you "intuit" that is wrong and still, despite these things, you can manage to be a 'good' player. It makes good sense that truly studying the game produces consistently excellent players and one can move from being a good pocketer but inconsistent winner to a great player and consistent winner.

The last session was an eye opener. I learned that I was incorrectly working the Wagon Wheel System (WWS) and that I didn't understand 1) how to use the tangent system 2) how to really measure the tangent.  I have only worked the WWS a few times and each time, did so with english -and sometimes a lot of it- to hit the intended diamond. Imagine my surprise when I was able to navigate the cue ball perfectly with a punchier stroke, even speed and knowledge of where to actually hit the center vertical line on the cue ball. Aaaaaah--- wow. Talk about making something so simple so hard. Someday, I'll look back at my naivete and laugh. Right? (Ok, I already did).

I learned how to navigate the diamonds-- technically-- having never known how to before-- just using my memory of previous shot outcomes. This did not net consistent outcomes which is obviously frustrating. Who doesn't want to put the cue ball exactly where they need it for the next shot or for a great safe?

I learned that it is difficult for me to successfully apply left english due to my severe right eye dominance. I always wondered why I seemed to miss these shots and therefore usually avoid them. There are sighting techniques to overcome this. 

I am approaching training sessions totally arms-open, with no ego and as a chance to really learn. The more I learn, the more I am amazed at how, despite real technical knowledge, myself and so many others can win so often. Just imagine where one can take the game when they have the necessary skills in their arsenal- moving from a good eye and raw talent to an educated player and competitor. 2012 is about being a focused student of the game.

Tiger tour stop- Sam's Billiards 2012

I hadn't planned to enter the event largely due to taking about a month "off" from playing regularly and was feeling out of stroke as a result. No one likes to do something poorly, not up to their own ability-- so I had ruled it out and just planned to spectate. The night before however, the thought struck me-- how do you get back into stroke? Play. Duh. Spectating would have driven me insane. Thus, I entered.

I played pretty well in warm ups. Not awesome but well. My first match was a shut out. I felt good-- position play was a little off but I made some very good shots and plays. Second match was a battle of me against me-- a mental struggle to stay focused as little things were distracting me and position play was off. Again, I made some great shots but ended up losing the set. I made some interesting errors and chalk them up to lack of concentration or just being distracted and not resetting.

My third match (b side, double elimination) was baaaad rolls and a few just bad shots and again, over thinking my game. I was three in the whole off the cuff-- two breaks with the 9 hanging in the pocket for my opponent. The next game provided a straight on 9ball combo. It was hard to get traction after that.

All in all though, its all good experience and practice. Lessons learned from this one? Practice more. Study the physics of game re: position play. Find a way to quiet the mind and to not be so easily distracted by movement around you. Learn to always reset when you know you have lost your focus in stroke. Play loose and confident. Learn to jump better and more consistently. Enter more tournaments.

On IT & Common Sense

I guess you could say I grew up in IT and it was a very accidental meeting. I'll thank my good buddy, Brad Pierce for that-- definitely a story unto itself, but for now lets just say that ever since the tender age of 18, I have been slogging away at something IT related and usually totally loving it. From troubleshooting broken this's and that's over the phone back in my Gateway days, to setting up rich folk, local companies and schools with "The Internet" waaaaaay back before anyone even know what the hell to do once they got "on" it during my Pionet/MCI days (hysterical really: "well, here you are! the internet!" "ok, now what do I do?" "uh, connect to your favorite BBS?" "huh?" "yeah") to some fun and some heartbreaking consulting in the late 90's, to my dream team in the latest of the 90s/early 2000's, to teaching technical classes all through the 2000's-- I could go on and on because, well-- I just could-- but let me tell you...there was one job that was not fun but it definitely taught me a lot. I used to always tell this story to my students and urged them to listen and not be the dumb yet somehow smart techno-weenie that hides in the corner doing more harm for his business than good.

It is Day Three and I am at a new job. I was hired as an architect to oversee a migration of 500 hospitals to a new point of sale application which also required a major OS rev.  The current and very old POS was limping along and did not have anywhere near the functionality they needed to process financials, offer new benefits, etc. These hospitals were franchised and the vets paid IT fees and they were peeved to be on such an archaic POS- it's not what they bought into.

It is important to note that they had already tried to upgrade the POS and failed two years before. Many heads rolled, all the way up to CIO and Sr. VP's and those who were left behind were deeply traumatized and many of them were angry at IT. The business felt it was an IT failure and they hated IT.

My new management and technical team assured me they had it dialed as we discussed the project in my interviews and in the first few days on the job. Something just felt off and I couldn't put my finger on it. One afternoon I was sitting in the Executive Steering Committee meeting for the project and they were discussing migration plans as the first migration of one test (yet 100% live) hospital was in two weeks. The VP on the business POS side, now a good friend, started off with her questions to my counterparts:

So, walk me through it. When does the migration begin?   Ok, well, immediately after the hospital closes, a team will come onsite--

A team? What? We don't have budget for a team to go to 500 sites! We've discussed this!

Oh, we don't? Um, ok. Well, we can connect remotely via (insert technobabble here) and uh, do the upgrades and uh-- Ok, how long will that take?  Uhhh....  You don't know?

The conversation continued and I was shocked. The business clenched up in an angry fist of questions and IT dodged and red-faced their way through it. Abysmal! The infrastructure group supporting server & desktop engineering had been working on this project for well over a year in earnest and they did not know the answers to any of these very cogent- very important questions. They didn't even know when the hospitals closed for the night and were unaware of the finance interfaces that had to run for ~thirty minutes updating the Mother Ship with its daily financials. Lordy. What a mess I was in.

I went home and immediately poured a glass of wine and thus dubbed a new and now well used saying: "It's a wine with shoes on day!" hence me clacking through the house direct upon my arrival with a mission only to find the wine bottle and pour a glass the size of my head. Tomorrow was a new day.

The first thing I did was pull them all into a room. I'd been there three whole days, mind you. I start out nice, asking questions and get poo poo'd by everyone in the place. It's fine...so-and-so is a dramatist...we've got a good solid plan. 

Ok. Show me.

I had them set up a test lab identical to a remote hospital. I brought in a stopwatch and had them conduct an end to end POS migration. 7 hours. Impossible! Actually, inconceivable! If the hospital closed at 10pm and had an hour set aside for financial processing, there just aren't enough hours in a day. What the hell where these guys thinking? Well, I guess they'll just have to close early one day. Yeah right. These hospitals were franchised and there was no way that was gonna fly especially with such little notice.

I was baffled. I couldn't understand why it would take so long to deploy the operating system + POS. A new server would be shipped to every hospital and the client side POS on the hard drive. The transfer would be local. Why the heck would it take so long? I then asked what would be a game changer of a question. "Are all of these hospitals on 10MB switches?" Yeah, they are. Why? Ok, well, we need to configure them to 100MB. What will that do for us? Um, carry the image ten times faster...AKA solve this problem. Sure enough, a 100MB switch took the entire transfer down to just over an hour. Sadly, my elation was soon shattered by the fact that none of the switches at the hospitals supported 100MB even under brute force config. They had bought super cheap. Barrier #1 discovered, averted and Barrier #2 now presented itself with six weeks to fix and a half million dollar price tag. It was 4 days into my new job and I had already booked my first meeting with the CIO and CFO to discuss this little "oversight".

I wish I could say it got easier from here. The switches were ordered and I now had to address a few other discoveries: none of the hardware at the hospitals was consistent. They had no inventory, didn't know what models were deployed and some of them were beyond ancient. They guessed at what was out there. I wrote a quick and dirty little inventory and threw it in the login script and within a day, started compiling a list of the crappiest hardware known to man. The upshot was this: the hardware itself would not support Windows XP and a new POS. They were screwed. Back to the CFO I went-- this time requesting another $1M for workstations and servers -- having discovered that the servers that were currently on purchase were the cheapest of the cheap and had ZERO redundancy. Sigh. Check in hand, literally, and another forest fire is being tended to and I am flying the helicopter and putting gas into it at the same time.

There is more- I could definitely go on and on with more examples but I won't. Every single issue that nearly prevented -- note I said nearly!-- this project from going live and being successful could have been avoided if this team had been better at planning, employed common sense and actually knew the business they worked for. They thought that just because they worked on the infrastructure side of the house that they didn't even need to understand the business. Man, they were so wrong and many of them lost their jobs as a result. It all boils down to common sense, folks. It is very rarely about being brilliant.

This company is not normal by far in that they are a huge growth story. Once a ma and pa veterinary company, they grew from 5 hospitals to 400 in a day after a serendipitous big-box retail partnership. Their problem was that IT did not scale along with the business. The business landscape had changed- big time- but IT was stuck in the past, never stopping to assess whether old processes fit the way the company was growing or how they needed to change to support what was now an enterprise. An example is buying the cheapest of the cheap of hardware thinking they would please their customer by not spending a lot of money when in fact all they were doing was hurting their customer.

This was not my last firefight at the vet behemoth. There would be many more. Eventually, the engineering team and much of IT reported to me and I was able to bring in a lot of new blood and build a really solid team. I was the first IT person to ever win the esteemed "Flying Pig" award for the greatest accomplishment of the year. A real pig with wings made of cast iron. Imagine my surprise ;-)

To this day, I enjoy a random happy hour with my old boss and still the CIO. Poor guy had only been on the job himself for about six months and went through a hell of a ride himself. So sometimes, we get a beer, laugh about the madness of that project and more...but we never say we miss those times.

One last word on this: I could not have survived this insane time without the help and aid of my friend and colleague at that time. Lorri Ely. Cheers to you!! We kicked some ass!

On Being Proud

Let me take a moment to share a thought: if you have a dream, you chase that tiger by it's tail if indeed it is your dream. Otherwise, it will  haunt you- the 'could it have been?'.  I like the way that kind of rhymes a little, heh. But I am dead serious here.

I am thinking about my husband and a morning we shared at Muddy's Coffee Shop on Mississippi Avenue back in 2008. Matt was telling me how much he wanted to roast coffee and how, try as he might, he could not find the right company to roast for here in Portland. He said he wanted to try to do it himself but everyone told him it was such a bad idea- a stupid idea even. "Just go and get a job" they said. Well, he had a job and it wasn't his dream.

I'll never forget sitting across the table from him and staring deep into his serious, somewhat sad eyes.

"So what would it take?"  I asked.

Money. 

"Well how much?"

I don't know- super grassroots, super small, ummm...Well, I did find a great machine for like $6K but I have no money for this. That's like all the money I have saved. It's too crazy to even think about. 

"Is it?  Do you think you'd lose money on it if you were to sell it? I mean, what if you tried it and gave it your best and despite all efforts it didn't work out and then you had to sell the roaster. Would you recoup your investment?"

Well, yeah. They don't lose their value- they are highly sought after. 

"Well then, what are you waiting for? It's like chasing a dream for free!"

Read this story about my husband's journey. I am very proud of this man. He has worked harder than any other person I have ever known.

Billiards 101

Know the shot you are taking before you get down on it. Don't change your mind during the shot execution. Envision yourself making the shot- not missing the shot. Quiet your mind as you are shooting.

Always follow through. Do not move until the shot is complete which is normally right around when the cue ball stops rolling. We have all seen players pop up at the end or even during the final stroke- this is deadly.

Do not move anything except your eyes and your shooting arm during execution.

Play everyone the same regardless of your relationship with them.

Make defense part of your game- it is not always about making the ball. A good defense is better than a poor offense any day. That is to say, do not take a high risk or low payout shot if you can avoid it.

High risk = next position is exceptionally challenged or requires a miracle to get position.

Sometimes, defense is about making your shot and placing the cue ball or your opponents next ball in a place where 1) they are hard pressed to make their next shot or 2) you are placing their balls such that a run out is unlikely due to positional challenges.

Though you need to play for position, sometimes you need to level with yourself and take what the table gives you. Don't force a new position when you already have position. This is to say, sometimes you just take the more difficult shot. Sure, you could follow two rails for pinpoint position but...you don't have to.

Walk around the table and SEE all the angles and the options. Never take a shot without actually eye the contact point and visualizing where you need to be for your next (two) shot(s).  I can't tell you how often I see people just shoot and end up wonky. An easy out can be be ruined by a bad angle.

Never give up in a match. It is never over until the match point ball is pocketed.

Always play the table- I tend to never speak to my opponent or even make eye contact during a match.

Practice and never stop learning. Glenn Atwell is a great example of continued growth and continued learning. Every time I talk to him, he is sharing new things he has learned or is in the process of learning. This is one of the reasons why he is a champion.

W(h)ining, dining & an update on NYR's

I'm bummed to admit that I am only five days into my "No Alcohol for January" new years resolution and finding it really difficult to *not* have that glass -or two- of wine in the evening after work or around dinner.

Oh, alcohol and how I love thee. Or shall we say, damn mental crutches and how I have become accustomed to thee...It truly is so nice to unwind with a glass of wine in the evening. My experiment here is to see if I can 1) actually do it and if 2) the removal of alcohol reduces the belly fat that makes me feel like:

So, in lieu of alcohol, I am drinking tea and mineral water. I'm choosing decaf teas like rooibus which has a nice flavor and is supposedly great for you. I feel slimmer already but that could be a result of the new exercise regime of 45 minutes a day, six days a week on my home elliptical machine. At any rate, I think I am seeing progress faster in terms of shaping up and losing fat. I'll measure the progress on a weekly basis.

Other resolutions are:

1 super smoothie a day:  I was recently inspired by a friend who was making kale smoothies. I used to make them all the time several years ago but fell out of the routine. I'm happy to announce that I am back on the smoothie wagon!

Many people have asked me about my 'recipe'. Well, I always make it off the cuff but here is an example: a handful of both lacinato kale and spinach- always fresh, ~half a cup of OJ, ~half a cup of coconut milk or coconut water, something frozen such as mango, peaches, raspberries, etc. I might add a touch of milk or a touch of water to help make it creamier than chunky and will usually add protein powder and/or chia seeds or flax. It's only been a few weeks and I have really noticed a difference in my skin and feel great, too. You are what you eat, right? If so, I will soon resemble a martian given all these greens!

The aforementioned new workout plan-  This one is simple. I youtube a 45-50 minute billiards match, set it to full screen on my laptop and hop on my elliptical and do a pre-set workout such as the "performance hill climb". The program manages everything: resistance changes for me and it tells me when to speed up or slow down (and dings at me when I am not going fast or slow enough) which is awesome. As I am burning off a reported 800 calories, I am watching professional pool and learnin' a thing or two. Pretty cool.

More music- I need to find a way to play music more. How is it possible I always forget to play music? I am so much happier when I hear music. This mission not yet accomplished.

Practice pool daily- I have a pool table in the basement. It's nothing special really- just a 7' foot bar box but it does have nice new Simonis 860 cloth and some pretty ok rails. My mission is to keep my arm loose and to practice speed, position play and various other shots to keep me sharp.

Focusing on healthy foods for me and Matt - This one is pretty simple since we eat really healthy as a rule anyway. Less meats and more vegetables. Super colorful, excellent-for-you, high in antioxidant veggies like...kale!

Reducing annoying things like clutter and disorganization- I just want to simplify things.

Quality, real quality, time with my husband every day. So, what does that mean? No phone, no distractions - totally there. More positive, less negative. Daydreaming together, bitching less. Being thankful together and enjoying the simple life.

This blog-  An online thought stream is always fun to look back on and gives stalkers something to do. Kidding! ;-)  Writing is very therapeutic for me - I have always enjoyed working out problems in my head.

Working up a yearly calendar for planning purposes-  This also gives me something to look forward to and helps me visualize whether or not I have balance across pool, work, Matt, me and so forth.

Billiards in 2012

Goal 1: Play tournaments. It should go without saying that this is paired with: play well, place high and win.

2012 is going to be my tournament year. I plan on playing one tournament a month and actively competing in the NWPA, ACS and BCA regional and national tournaments. That said, my focus will be on NWPA and BCA tournaments, largely 9-ball. I have a busy year penned in the calendar already with an 8-ball team in March and a 9-ball team in October. I am most excited for the 9-ball tournament (my favorite format) and I am also really excited to have been asked to play on a team with the newly crowned US Amateur Champion, Suzanne Smith. 

Goal 2:  Work with a coach on a regular basis.  Outcomes expected: Improve upon my knowledge, mechanical/fundamental skills and strengthen my mental game. On the latter, mental toughness is all about confidence. The more you play- both in practice and in competition- is key to the confidence you need to have the much desired quiet and confident mind. 

Excelling in higher level play is not possible without continued education and practice. I have been working with a coach who is somewhat of a local legend and known as one of the best bar table players in the world. I can vouch for his intensity and prowess, indeed. Glenn Atwell and I have worked on and off for the last six months and a few years before that.  Each time I discover something new about myself, the game, the theory, you name it.

I enjoy regular coaching once or twice a month and find my game improves (as one would expect) considerably. I find that feedback and instruction is so important in a game which is played in a physical sense such that you cannot see yourself in action and cannot see issues such as poor stance, poor follow-through, etc. Coaching and dedicated practice has greatly improved my game and for so long that I compete, will be a regular part of my work. Glenn is on the road a lot- last week he called from Kansas. He is playing a ton on the road and will continue for the next many months.  This gives me an opportunity to work with another local Grandmaster player, Steve Lingelbach starting in a few weeks. Everyone has a unique perspective and I have heard encouraging things about Steve's style and approach.

2012

2012 is nearly upon us and I find myself wondering what new years resolutions I might settle on. I tend to do things with vigor- basically totally OCD- or...not at all. I'm quite binary like that, I suppose. It's all or nothing and I know real quick if its not gonna light my fire for more than a moment. Here are a few things that do:

Billiards - I've loved the game in different ways for more than 20 years now. As a kid, I just loved to play. I had no understanding of fundamentals or theory-- nada- I just played and had fun. As an adult, I still love the game and have been playing regularly for years but am now on the verge of competing more, at higher levels and with a new focus.

IT - After an 18 year career in Information Technology and many, many interesting and challenging roles, I cannot imagine a career in any other space. I have seen the industry evolve so much in such a short amount of time that I truly believe there is no more potent skill-set than a combination of technology expertise and a deep knowledge of the business you are supporting.

Education- I am largely self-taught and consider myself a lifelong student. I've even spent 10 years on the other side of the classroom, too. From 2000 until my recent hiatus, I was adjunct faculty at Portland Community College where I taught technology courses such as the Microsoft MCSE tracks and the CompTIA A+ and Network+ certification tracks. I am always learning and always in the pursuit of knowledge.

Marriage- My marriage is the most important part of my life and Matt is the most important person in my life. To me, marriage is the backbone of all the other things I do and love and provides a lot of the courage and inspiration that drives me forward. Life is busy, work is busy, the weeks fly by and turn into years and sometimes your marriage wears the battle scars of all of these seemingly ancillary things. It is my goal to have the best marriage I can and to be the best wife and human I can be. It is always a work- and important work- in progress.

Healthy living- The underpinning of all of the above is mental, physical and emotional well being. I try to find this balance through exercise, healthy foods & home cooked meals and mentally enjoyable things such as: billiards, gardening, long walks, music and funny movies or books.

I will be ruminating on these topics and hopefully settling on some meaningful personal goals for 2012. Thoughts so far include:

• What do I want to achieve personally professionally?
• What are the stress points or negatives in my life that I need to reduce?
• As a woman in her mid-thirties, what are my health goals? Should I be losing weight (my BMI is in the high range), getting more or less exercise (is 45 minutes of cardio 5 times a week what I need?), drinking less, or eating less (or different kinds of) meat?
• What kinds of ways can I volunteer and help my community? One of the areas I am exploring is conducting free technology and business classes for men and women in the local area Portland shelters. Years ago, I did work for the homeless "transition projects" and that was when the idea first sparked: surely I could do more than just serve food...

More to come-- perhaps my next post will be on Jan 1, 2012 where I'll unveil my 2012 Aspirations.