The weeds.

I've finally made it out of the weeds....

I was a waiter and bartender for a good period of my 20's and early 30's. I worked at crappy Bar and Grill's to Five Star resorts. In all paces there comes a period of time when your demand for time out measures your ability to give it.

A waiter can react in two different ways to getting in the weeds.

1) Get buried.
2) Focus.

I'm not gonna lie, I've been buried before. It is usually not tied to a problem with my abilities to cope, but correlates to situations beyond my control. (slow kitchen, too many tables at the same time, demanding customers....)

As I learned to be a waiter, I learned tricks to getting myself out of the weeds. The best formula is to focus. Draw a map in your head and get there, don't let anything get in your way. If something trips you up you just push a little harder.

So the last three weeks I had a few projects converge upon me, hectic family schedule, travel, and the inevitable crowbar thrown in for good measure.

Without going in to too many boring details, I have emerged unscathed. I just had to put my head down and keep plugging away. Ticking off the bullet points, testing, fixing, breaking, fixing, testing..... you get the picture.

So this is a long intro to say, in case you have missed my witty banter over the past 4-5 weeks, sorry I've been away and I will try to be a better blogger.

Since you've last seen your hero he's gone through several challenging work and non work related episodes, including:

• Traveling all over mid-Georgia with my All-Star Baseball playing son. This team won't be going to the world series, but it has been a good experience for him.
• Working till 4AM one morning I fall asleep at the wheel driving home. I miraculously only hurt my car. 4 New wheels: $600, Tie Rods, tires, and misc broken stuff: $1800; My health: priceless.
• Flamed out in the BBT3 TOC. I got too many marginal cards and tried to play them.
• The wife has once again joined the workforce. She got a great offer to work for the gubment until she finishes off her Law degree. This complicates day to day stuff as the kids will go to 'summer camp' during the day until school starts, but they seem pretty keen on the idea of doing stuff rather than going to the pool everyday.
• Took a 3 day trip to NY and got to see nary a blogger :(. I had precious little time on this trip, so it was probably for the best.

Thats about covers the major stuff. I'll be taking a short day today and I'll get a day off tomorrow to drive to south Georgia and attend my family reunion. My family reunion is akin to a blogger weekend with less cards and more food and booze.

I'm heading out to NY again 6/30-7/2 and hopefully can meet up with a representative or two from the NY crew then. I'll send you guys an email soon since I got such a raucous response last time.

You guys be careful out there.