2009 in Review

Boy a lot has happened over the past year.  I know you the reader sees a lot of these this time of year.  I’m going to give my spin on what I’ve seen over the past year.  It’ll end up being mediocre but then again I’m not the greatest writer (probably could tell by reading this).

Family

This year was really great for my family.  My oldest started 1st grade this year.  He and I are beginning to hold conversations now versus me ordering him around.  He is an interesting cat.  I love his take on things.  It keeps me young.

His younger brother is 3 going on 15 now.  He has such an advanced view on life because of his older brother.  They will be partners in crime when they get older.

My wife and I continue our journey together and it continues to be great.  I could write a whole lot more here but it wouldn’t do us justice.

Me

Lots of things happened this year.  I ran a half marathon in San Antonio.  It was as grueling as expected.  I went into it kind of hap-hazardly.  A friend of mine told me to run with him in it and I agreed for some reason.  The thought of running 13.1 miles continuously scared me to death especially since I’d never run more than a 6 mile distance in my life.  I found a Hal Higdon training program and stuck to it.  This experience taught me how to rely preparation.  John Wooden is famous for saying ‘Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.’  This became my rallying cry for this race.  I’ve applied this experience to all of the other aspects of my life.  Preparing for something only helps and never hurts.

Goals for 2010

I’ve made only one resolution for this upcoming year.  It is to write a blog article at least once a week about ‘whatever strikes a chord.’  I think I’ve figured out where ORaN fits in with my Facebook and Twitter pages.  Spent most of 09 trying to find it’s place and we’ll see how it transpires.  I hope you like it.

Vacuums make me do weird things

Okay so at the beginning of this month we gave into the hype and bought a dyson.  We ended up getting the DC18 because there was a good deal on Amazon.  When our Eureka crapped out after a year, I started an extensive web search for reviews on this model after I saw it on Amazon.  What I found was a lot of reviews after a few weeks or a month.  These didn’t help me.  It’s my opinion that most vacuums do well in the short term.  I have formed this after burning through $99 vacuums at a rate of one per year.  These Bissells, Eurekas, Hoovers, etc. get the job done in the first three months but fade shortly thereafter.  So long story short, I am going to post reviews on how this dyson performs over the long haul good or bad.

The maiden voyage…

We were amazed at how much dirt it picked up.  Quite frankly it was scary to see how much dirt it picked up.  We were really impressed with the features.  The ball made it very maneuverable.  It was very easy to push around.  I was really impressed with the extension hose.  I liked that I didn’t have to disconnect a hose and then fumble around with some extensions to vacuum the crevices and edges.  All I had to do is stand it up and pull the extension from the handle.  Very intuitive.  The dirt cup trap door was a great feature.  I didn’t have to touch the dirt to clean it out.  Overall I was impressed.  We will see how I feel as time goes by…