August Photos

379 total. Here's a sampling of the public ones. See the full set here.

www.flickr.com

The Lamb Family's August 2013 photoset

Endurance Test (Life with #Autism)

So Lori and Rachel left for errands and it was just me and Ben at the breakfast table. I thought about the day... if we stayed around here, I'd play with him and I'd also do a lot of chores. I thought "Why?" and realized that if I went somewhere with Ben I'd be focused on Ben.

But where? Wanted to see if I could still do some other stuff while spending my time on Ben. I looked to see if there were any stores around here that sold Autism-training related supplies. I thought I had heard of one, but I didn't find any.

Scram, August!

Hard to believe another month is coming to a close. I think August went pretty quickly. If keeping it around could mean more of the same, I'd probably keep it around, I think August was a good month.

Today was a great day. I need to write a blog post just to cover it.

The Big Elements

Worth Repeating: Rory Sutherland (@rorysutherland)

Video:


Perspective is everything -- The circumstances of our lives may matter less than how we see them, says Rory Sutherland. At TEDxAthens, he makes a compelling case for how reframing is the key to happiness. More on TED.com...

Print Sift

Here's some stuff I've read recently in magazines that I thought was worth passing along...

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The Secrets of Generation Flux - A great article at some of the challenges of leading today, from startups to large companies to war. A quote I liked

McChrystal invested in technology to spur communication and decentralize decision making; his organizational structure made sure that it was used by the troops in more efficient ways. "My command team and I guided our values, strategy, and priorities," he explains. "The leaders lower in the organization made tactical and operational decisions in line with those principles." (Fast Company, March 2012)

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10 Weird Reasons You're Being Bitten by Mosquitoes (Reader's Digest, July 2013)

Canceled Shows

So we've really gotten addicted to watching shows as sets. Letting them pile up on the DVR and then watching the lot as a whole. It offers us continuity and escapism. There are certain shows, like Vampire Diaries and Breaking Bad that don't build up, but for the most part, we'll let 5 or more episodes of a show build up before we watch them.

The downside to this is that the warts are more apparent as well. Things that might be annoying in small doses become unwatchable en masse. And it also makes it more of a snap judgement on new shows.

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

We've been watching this since the beginning. Lori gave up part-way through the whole Laurence Fishburne/Nate Haskell thing. I stuck around. Lori came back for Ted Danson and we were really impressed. He brought new life and new sensibilities to the show, but the show began to take back over in the creepy, annoying way it does to where by the end of last season we were only sort of caring and we suffered through this season to reach the end where once again, a cliffhanger with people shot and people in jeopardy Gil and Sara probably having marital problems and us just not caring at all.

Paying It Forward

Mom and Dad gave me one of these as a gift. You can jumpstart a car, inflate tires and stuff and charge a cell phone with it. I'd used it plenty of times to inflate tires and other things around the house, worked quite well.

Once a week Lori has lunch with me at work. If they're out of school, it's all of us having a nice family meal in the work cafeteria. Recently we decided at the last minute to meet some place for lunch instead of coming to the office. The kids were having a slightly rough time of it and Lori wasn't feeling like preparing lunches or trying to stop somewhere with them and pick up something. So we met at Wendy's instead.

While we were eating, we watched someone messing with a dead car two over from Lori's. After awhile, another car came. The dead car was a newer model Toyota sedan of decent size. The helper car was a tiny mid-80's I dunno... maybe a small Yugo or something. It was a tiny car. I just imagined them hooking up jumper cables, cranking over the Toyota and seeing the little car explode. After a while the small car left and the couple was still there with their dead car.

So when we came out, we were loading up the children and they asked if we had cables. We started to pull them out and then I thought that maybe I should bring my car around instead. No sense in having the little ones sit in the hot car. So said goodbye to the family, they left, I jogged a few rows over to my car. By the time I had gotten back around, the space next to them was now open. (They had pushed it out some to try to get the cables to stretch to the little car.)