Ryminate

.....

Yes, I am still alive after the bar exam--barely.  That's quite a test.  I should receive my results in two months so for now I can concentrate on everything else I let slide for the past few months.

Immediately after the bar, Kristen and I jumped in the car and drove to Utah to visit family and friends, ski, and otherwise relax.  It was a much needed break.  Kristen and I went cross country skiing for the second time near Sundance and again really enjoyed it. 

Parenthood

Tonight I think I officially crossed over that line into the realm of bona fide parenthood--dadhood to be more specific (this despite the fact that we have two little girls, the oldest being three years old). 

Tonight our oldest threw up all over me---twice.  And when I say all over me, I mean all over me. 

I think this is a rite of passage for all parents, in fact, I vaguely remember doing the same to my folks.  I am happy to say that like my great parents, rather than recoiling in horror at both the sight and smell, I held our sick little girl and felt awful for her. 

Zillow

Check out this cool real estate tool: Zillow. I'd explain what it is, but rather than make such an attempt, just go check it out.  Mark my words, the services provided by Zillow are the beginning of the end for realtors (or at least the standard 6% for commissions). 

Empty email inbox?

Is your email inbox empty right now?  If not, when is the last time it was empty?  If you're anything like me, it's been over a month.  Part of my problem is that my inbox also serves as a to do list and sometimes file folder.  Such an approach is highly inefficient, and can be depressing once there are 20 even 50 emails just sitting there.

Terry Gold has an excellent post on keeping your inbox empty.  Here is a taste of what he suggests:

Follow the age-old advice of “touch it once.” Before email, people were overwhelmed by paper mail, memos and little pink message slips. Try to avoid cycling back through the email in your inbox over and over again. When I sit down to read email in the morning, for every email, I will:

• Read it and delete it
• Read it, reply or forward it and delete it (maybe file it)
• Read it and file it for future reference
• Or if I just can’t or won’t deal with it right then, I read it and then drag it onto my task list.

In Outlook, you can drag an email over to the task list icon and it will create a new task with the body of the email in the notes. During the day I do sometimes quickly read an email and leave it in my inbox, but I try not to, and I ALWAYS start every day with an empty inbox. No matter what, I take the time to clean it out first thing in the morning. At the end of the session, which usually only lasts a few minutes because I’m not starting with hundreds of emails, I have an empty inbox and a task list with a few more items on it. I also try to end the evening with an empty inbox and a completed task list of the day’s tasks.

Best business books of 2005

Forbes has recently named the 5 best business books of 2005.  See below:

To determine the very best of the crop, we polled a dozen writers, editors and publishers from Forbes. Thirty-three books were nominated, which we then winnowed down to the five very best, with the help of the editors of Forbes magazine and Forbes.com. We did not attempt rank the top five--all of them are excellent in completely different ways. Try these tomes, and you'll be all caught up on your 2005 business reading.

Their selections are:

• The Battle For The Soul of Capitalism by Jon Bogle
• Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
• Disneywar by James Stewart
• The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth by Benjamin Friedman
• The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman

I haven't read any of these, although a few of them are on my wishlist.  I imagine I'll read them after the bar exam.

Medical clinics in retail locations

The SmartCare concept is now simmering across U.S. media channnels.  A few more months, maybe a year, and I am predicting it will come to full boil.  Check out this article from MSNBC.

Included in the article is the below picture, which is a good depiction of the concept.  They say a picture is worth a thousand words: