Today I was having lunch at a Chinese fast food restaurant that is very good.  I was eating a dish that included zucchini.  My Dad had a garden and always had many zucchini plants.  Our meals often included zucchini cooked every which way you can cook it, boiled, fried, baked, pickled, etc…

As I was eating my meal, I all of a sudden closed my eyes and I was transformed back to 1971 sitting the kitchen in our house back in Houston.  It was the weirdest thing I have ever experienced.  I was savoring the taste and experiencing everything as if I was actually back in my childhood home 35 years.  I could clearly see everything that was going on in my life at that moment.  The feeling of total peace permutated through my entire being.  I could see events that were happening as if they were happening in the present tense.  I was basking in the moment enjoying every single event of joy as if I was 14 years old again.  I could see the impact I was having on everyone around me in a way that I could not see back then.  It was pretty amazing! 

I then remembered I was in a fast food restaurant eating lunch with my eyes closed but at the same time, I could recall events that were happening around me as if I was actually there again.  Somewhere in the experience I realized that I probably looked pretty silly sitting there with my eyes closed and thought to myself that I needed to open my eyes so that no one would come up to me and ask if I was ok.  As I was thinking about this, I thought, “I have more zucchini on my plate so I can open my eyes to see who might be watching and then go back by eating more of this delicious vegetable and be transformed back to the place I was experiencing”.  I opened my eyes to see that I was not being watched and no one was aware that I had left the building for a moment.

I got another mouth full of zucchini only to find that the moment was gone.  Funny thing is that there was no remorse for the loss of the transformation and the glow of the moment still lingered.  My fortune cookie said “Ask your Mother” which was strange since I had just had the journey in my head.

Later in the day my kid sister called to tell me about something that had happened with her 2 boys that morning.  She said that they were discussing how each of us has stuff that we must do and that if we do what we are supposed to that it effects others and adds to the stuff that they may have to do.  Becky then told her boys that it was just like Memaw (our mother) used to say, “Sometimes, you just gotta take care of your stuff!”.  Her boys argued with her that Memaw never said that.  They went on an on until the boys finally reminded her that Memaw always said “Sometimes you just gotta take care of your s**t!”  Becky laughed and conceded that this was the phrase that Mom often used.

All of this would not be so awesome if I left out the part where I got to use that phrase on someone that needed to hear it.  I have attempted to help this someone out but to no avail.  That someone still hasn’t figured out that they will someday have to take charge of their life but at least I told them what they needed to hear.

Sugar coating what we say is appropriate most of the time but sometimes it takes a baseball bat to make a point.

Full speed ahead!!  So today we had our first manager’s meeting with our new CEO under the new structure.  This meeting included everyone that is considered management all the way down 3 levels from the top.  There were 18 managers, directors and VPs in our Houston office with around 12 on the phone from Dallas.  The new guy really knows what he is doing.  He has everyone go around and say what they plan on doing this week and let the entire group know their schedule.

Then when everyone was done, he broke into his direct report meeting.  It was really cool when he said, “David, you stay for this part”.  I am one of his direct reports but I no longer have anything to do with the part of our business that is growing.  I still have valid input into how things should or could be in our server business so he wanted me included in everything they were discussing.

I am working on measures to stop the attrition we have experienced over the last 2 years of our dial up internet business.  There is really no way for us to offer high speed service at the going rate so I have devised a plan to make our current customers more “sticky”.  More to come.

More water under the bridge.  I was out riding my motorcycle this morning after grocery shopping and an early morning men’s breakfast meeting at a local church and I stopped over to see my step-mother.  I am getting ok with calling her that even though I have never really thought of her as a mother to me.  She was actually my Dad’s wife and when he died, I promised to make sure she was taken care of so it just makes it easier to call her my step-mom and leave it at that.

So, the more water under the bridge thing came up when I was sitting in Linda’s recliner drinking a Dr. Pepper that she put on ice for me.  She mentioned that the weeks just seem to be going by faster and faster.  I had to agree because they really are.  I go to see her something like once a week when possible to pick up her bills.  She has no concept of money and a dollar bill has no more or less value to her than a hundred dollar bill.  I take care of her finances while my sister takes care of her medical needs.  Becky gets to take her to the doctor and emergency room and I pay the bills.

I actually have Linda to thank for the project I am paving ground on to make affordable living available to retirees.  Linda lives on a fixed income of almost $1500 per month.  Because of the great medical insurance she inherited from the company that my Dad retired from, it pretty much pays the bills.  There are multiple medical institutes that send her bills in the thousands that I just pay as much as she can afford but by and by, she makes ends meet on this penance from my Dad.

I can say that our family has done an awesome job of providing for those who get older such that they are not a real burden to anyone else.  My Grandmother in Lufkin on my Dad’s side was left with a house that was paid for that she lived in by herself until my Uncle and Aunt deemed it necessary move her into a retirement home and they did not have to pay anything out of their own pocket for her to live out her life there.

My Grandfather and Grandmother on my Mother’s side lived for almost 15 years after retirement on their own and when my Grandfather died, he left enough money for my Grandmother to live out her life in a home as well.  My Mom did not want to put her in a home but my Grandmother insisted on smoking and the risk of her burning herself to death was too great so into the home she went.  My Mom died almost 4 years ago and my Step-Father Elbie is still working every day.  He loads and unloads a back-hoe onto a trailer every day and digs up broken phone lines.  He has stopped smoking and drinking within the last few years and has made it a quest to help out my half-sister and her kids financially.

Anyhow, a retirement community down in Honduras will be a reality for people that are on a fixed income within the next 5 years.  13 million dollars and a little work and 600 retirees will be living in 1100 square foot patio homes in Central America.  I have found that the more people that I tell, the more ideas I get on how to succeed in this endeavor.  I will be going over to Olanchito when I am in LeCeiba in September.  This small town has approximately 25,000 people in it and is located in a valley that is protected by mountains from the sea.  Since Hurricanes are a regular thing in the Caribbean, this is a definite asset.  From the views on Google Earth, it appears that there are substantial parcels of land that are not yet populated.  I am wanting to find at least 1000 acres for the first community.

On the work front, I was made the General Manager of Everyones Internet.  The new CEO has separated the dial up Internet service from the server business and put me in charge of stopping the erosion of customers in the dial up business.  We still have over 100,000 customers that are paying us “Just 10 Bucks” so the revenue is substantial enough to try to do something to keep people leaving us entirely when they move into the world of high speed Internet service.  I have taken the challenge on as a full court press.  I have already rallied the troops and energized them with the possibilities we have in front of us.

Viva Las Vegas!!

I have been in Las Vegas since Sunday night attending HostingCon which is the big convention in my industry.  The sessions have been informative.  I have made some great contacts that should lead to substantial business in the near future.

On the retirement community front, I booked my travel plans for the trip to Honduras today.  This is one step further than being “scheduled” to go.  There is skin in the game now.

I got an email today on a group list I subscribe to that relates to Honduras stuff.  There is a lady that was asking if anyone knew anything about doing business in La Ceiba because she is planning on moving there within the next 3 years and opening up a tourist business.  The Internet really makes the world smaller by bringing people with similar interests together in a timely manner.  I sent her the link to the International Conference that I am attending and she responded within an hour with her thanks for the information.  For anyone interested, here is the link to the seminar.

I have to define the market that is going to be willing to move to Honduras to retire in my community.  Most everyone I talk to agrees that it is an awesome idea and that they would live there and some of them are only in their 30′s.  All of the baby boomers I have talked to love the idea and have supported me with encouragement to get it done.

There was an article in the Houston Chronicle Sunday regarding an army base that the US government is helping Honduras build in the northeastern corner of the country to curb the flow of South American drugs that flow through the country.  They are building a 50 mile road right through the area that I have been considering for the first parcel of land.  Most of the land in that area is heavily wooded and virtually untouched.  What a coincidence that the US government is building a road right where I want to build!

The business plan is the next major step in the process.  So I am committing to having it done by the end of July.  There, I wrote it down so it has to get done.  I will be soliciting some help on making this happen because details like this are not my forte.  I can dream the dream but putting it on paper will require some serious help from someone more detail oriented than this attention deficit man that is quickly approaching middle age.

Well I am off to a dinner with one of our vendors and then heading to KA Cirque Du Soleil.  I had to put that line in here for the better half that is sitting at home.

The Honduras thing is flowing faster then ever.  I am scheduled to attend a conference in September on doing business in Honduras.  I go to Roatan September 23 rd and then on to LaCeiba for the conference.  5 days in LaCeiba and then another 2 back in Roatan and then back home.  I already have one person coming who is a giant in my life.  He is a successful business man who asked if he could go with me to the conference.  Talk about whoa!!!

As it stands right now, the retirement community for gringos in Honduras is becoming more of a reality than it has since conception.  Retirees are already flocking to foreign countries to reap the rewards of inexpensive living and opportunities that mirror those that were available to the pioneers of America.  People are already living in Honduras for under $1000 per month on the mainland and $2000 per month on the Carribean island of Roatan.  The new frontier is calling those who want to leave the rat race we have accepted in the states.

On the job front things are shaping up fast.  The new CEO will have the structure of our company finalized by the end of the week.  I am lobbying for the VP of Sales position.  I head off to Las Vegas on Sunday for a major convention that will provide opportunities to show what I can do.  Everyone in my office are positioning themselves for the new structure and consulting with me every inch of the way.

It seems like it should be life in the fast lane but everything seems to be going by in slow motion for me.  A commitment to being present is making this possible.  It is becoming easier to do this and at times feels like a ride on the front car of a roller coaster.  That is my favorite place to be, seeing the highs and lows that are around every corner.  I am ready to let go of the safety bar and raise my hands to get the full effect of the ride but fear continues to tug at my inner being.

Here goes, hands in the air!!!  The next level of joy has arrived.

M I Ceee K E Yeee  M O U S E  Mickey Mouse, Mickey Mouse, da da da da da da da !!!!!!

We are off to Kissimmee tomorrow for a week.  The in laws are going with us so Father’s Day will be complete for all of us.  I will be surrounded by all of my boys and Cyndie will have her Dad there with us on Sunday.  We rented a house 15 minutes from Jason and Valerie’s apartment for the week.  It has a private pool and 4 bedrooms.  Valerie has acted as our tour guide by planning the whole week for us.  She has arranged tickets to Disney World, Circle del Soleil, and Busch Gardens.  Our plane leaves at 4 PM tomorrow and we will be in Hurricane Alley for an entire week.

I am so not going to think about work for a single minute.

Cyndie pulled out our video from the last trip we made to Disney World in 1992 and brought back some awesome memories.  Our youngest was only 3 years old and he is now 17.  She said that I must have video taped every second of that trip.  I actually video taped Cyndie driving down our street when she was bringing the boys home from school the afternoon we headed out on the road trip to Florida.  When we got home, she dropped me off at the house and then staged them driving home from the trip so I could video tape it.  That is just way cool.

I will be doing the best I can to capture as much as I can this time as well.  The awesome thing about this time around is that I can give the camera to any one of the boys during the trip so that I will actually appear in the tape from time to time.  The only bad thing about video taping is that you don’t really get to see everything the way everyone else does.  I figure that I will get to look at the tapes someday when I am old and let my grandchildren have a blast watching their parents on the screen.

What fun we have in store this week.

Aged things.

I accompanied the better half to one of the procedures that those of our age get to go through to make sure the exit pipes are working right.  She got to take the stuff that cleans out the pipes yesterday and that was the worst part of the adventure.

While she was in the recovery room with others that had gone through the same procedure, everyone was releasing the air that was pumped into their body cavity.  The whole room was making music as the gas was being released.  It was like a musical interlude of the gross kind.  Cyndie’s release was silent enough that only I could hear it.  The lady in the adjacent area was very loud in her release.  It was very comical.  I finally decided to start making noises with my mouth and hand which started a competition with the lady.  She started laughing when the noises I was making started coming from our area.  Cyndie and I were laughing our heads off because the noises coming from us were fabricated.  When the lady next to us heard my mouth noises she started laughing and commenting on the noises coming from our side of the screen.  I finally confessed that the noises were not what they thought they were and everyone including the nurses were laughing profusely.

Note to self, when I get to have said procedure in 2 years, do not talk when coming out of the sedation.  People are very uninhibited after having a scope poked where the sun doesn’t shine and the drugs make you talk louder than you think.  The doctor told me that he hoped that he hoped his prognosis was as good as hers when he is our age.  She gets to wait another 5 years before another procedure like this.  There were others that did not get as good a prognosis.

Awesome Sundays

Sundays have been just plain awesome for the past 6 months.  Today was a prime example of such.  Youngest J and I go to Whataburger for breakfast and play “football” with the little number tent that they give you with your order.  It is played much the same as the little triangle football that we used when I was a kid.  We bat it back and forth across the table making touchdowns when we get the tent to pause with a portion of it poised at the edge of the table.  The only difference is that we do not kick field goals with the little tent number like we did with the paper footballs.

We get in at least 5 minutes of football before our meal arrives because I usually get pancakes which take a little longer than everything else.  From time to time we only get a couple of minutes of football in because the cook sees us drive in and starts pancakes for me knowing that I will order them.  I am such a creature of habit in some things.

I had a meeting with a mentor yesterday about the idea I have had about building a retirement community in the country of Honduras.  This man is in his late 70′s or early 80′s and has been very successful in many ventures throughout his life.  He was very excited about the idea I have about providing an alternative option for the multitude of Baby Boomers that are approaching retirement.  He gave me some advice on what to do next and I will be taking said advice and continuing the journey toward a goal that has to be achieved.

I told him that I was hesitant to “let the cat out of the bag” about the idea and he said that competition in an endeavor is actually a good thing especially in something as cutting edge as shipping retirees to 3rd world countries to enjoy their golden years in luxury on limited incomes.  He said that he had embraced competition in every endeavor he had peruse because competition often provides the exposure he needed to succeed knowing that he could do anything anyone else did better.

So with that, I will be telling everyone and their brother about my dream of providing comfortable retirement options to “gringos” in communities that I build down in Honduras.  He even told me that the market is not limited to gringos and that there would be a market for people of other nationalities to take advantage of the inexpensive dwellings I build as well.  I had not even thought of that market.

The first thing I am to do is define the target market.  Knowing who to market this new way of retiring is critical to getting investors to buy into the idea.  He actually said that the 70′s hippy group would be the first that came to his mind.  This segment of the population has lived just outside the traditional model of their parents and would be the most likely group to target first.  I just missed that generation but have seen firsthand the different lifestyle many of them have embraced.  There are others that fit the profile and I will be spending some substantial time in the coming weeks identifying who would be likely to take advantage of the opportunities I will be offering.

Another important piece of advice he gave me was to take extreme care in choosing the team of people that will help me accomplish this goal.  I know the wisdom in this piece of advice.

My ultimate goal in this endeavor is to create an affordable alternative to retirement for the masses that have not prepared beyond what the government has promised.  Beyond this ultimate goal is the added benefit that will occur in the towns in Honduras surrounding the retirement communities.  Jobs will be created and lives will be affected by the influx of revenue that the retirees bring.

I created retireinhonduras.com to begin the journey and will be updating it as time goes on.  I will be populating the site with search words soon so that Google searches will lead people there.

This is so far outside my comfort zone and I am feeling it to my bones.  Scared and excited are the only words I know of to describe my feelings.  There is also the nagging doubt that says that I will not follow through with this idea because it is so much bigger than I am.  Only time will tell if this dream will end up as an unfulfilled wish or as reality.

I am banking on reality revealed that is destined to occur through the vision that I was given.

Rain Adventures

I was inspired to recall my favorite experience of rain.  I was in my early 20′s on a backpacking trip with a church youth group to Colorado.  We had broken camp early in the morning to make the trek to high camp and early in the afternoon while walking a ridge, it started raining.  It was obvious that we were going to get drenched and we had around another hour hike until we would get to the area designated large enough for us to camp. 

When we saw that the storm included lightning, the leader had us spread out 50 feet apart so that if someone got hit, they would be the only one down.  I was pulling up the rear and had the stakes for the tent I was sharing with a friend who was at the front of the pack.  This meant that our tent would not be set up until I made it into camp.  Around 30 minutes into the downpour the lightning started hitting all around us every 10 or 15 seconds and then the hail started.  Here I was in the middle of the Rocky Mountain peaks with my house on my back at the rear of a trek of 40 people with lighting hitting all around, heavy rain pouring down and marble size hail pelting my rain parka having a blast.  I didn’t have a care in the world and was encouraging the stragglers to keep on putting one foot in front of the other and telling them we were going to be ok. 

When I got to camp, my tent mate was sitting in a tent eating cheese and crackers with some of the kids.  He had been in camp for almost 45 minutes and was rested so he traded places with me and set up our tent while I watched.  It rained another 3 hours so we got to cook supper under a dining fly and went to sleep to a gentle rain pelting on the tent.  That night we drove each other out of the tent with the natural bodily function that occurs from eating large quantities of cheese and freeze dried food.  We could have powered a small community with the gas we produced that night.

Funny how my favorite memory of rain was out in the middle of no where in a situation that could have been called dangerous.  I can’t remember a time where I felt closer to God.  Cool thing is that I am feeling pretty close to Him right now by just recalling that fun time.

Rant. Rant. Rant. Rant.

Good, now that I have that out of my system maybe I can get on to more productive things.

The better half and I went and saw “The Break Up” last Friday.  Aside from the language and inappropriate situations, there were some pretty good lessons to be learned.  There is a scene where Jennifer Aniston is wanting Vince Vaughn to help her with the dishes after an entertaining their friends in their apartment.  Jennifer had cooked dinner, cleaned up the apartment and served everyone the entire night and just wanted a little help cleaning up.  Vince flopped his shoes off in the floor and proceed to watch TV while she went back to work on the apartment.  She asks him to help her with the dishes and after a banter back and forth, he relents and concedes to help her out.  She then states that she does not want his help.  He is puzzled because he has conceded to help her out and now she doesn’t want his help.  Here is where the lesson comes in, she says, “I want you to want to help me!”.  He cannot understand how anyone could want to help with the dishes and is clueless why she gets upset when he says he really does not want to help but has consented to do so because she asked.

That line is what made the movie, “I want you to want to help”.  This makes her reflect on how she has catered to his every whim since they got together.

Later in the movie one of Vince’s friends tells him that he only does what he wants and expects everyone else to do the same.  The friend is a Red Sox fan and Vince is a Cubs fan.  The friend asks him if they have ever gone to a Sox game when they weren’t playing the Cubs.  He is convicted by the words from his friend and that is all I will say about that so if you haven’t seen the movie you can still enjoy it.

How is it that someone can live their life oblivious to the fact that they get everything the way they want and only the way they want it without ever thinking of what others may want?  The sad thing about the movie is that there are “Vinces” all around us and we don’t have the guts to tell them so.

Maybe I wasn’t actually through with the ranting.