If taking this time off from exercise was resulting in less aches and pains, I might be tempted to think it was worthwhile.

Unfortunately …

I wake up sore every single day, whether I worked out or not.

In otherwords, I’ve gotten absolutely no benefit from my “lazy” year.

And in fact …

I just can’t get the thought out of my head that since I’m now weaker in my core than I was before I got hurt (for example I can’t do anywhere near as many sit-ups as I used to .. even though they don’t really hurt my back), I might just be making my back worse.

So as of 3 days ago, I’ve DECIDED to change.

I started doing P90X, and I fully intend to stick with it.

I retire from the Air Force in about a year and half. Oddly, one of my biggest fears about not being in the military was that once I’m out there’d be nobody to tell me that I have to exercise (even the low stress stuff I’d been doing). I don’t want to be a fat, old retired guy.

I’m 43 years old right now. When I turn 44 next year, I WILL be in the best shape of my life.

… and who knows, maybe my back won’t even hurt any more.

Keep havin FuN!

Todd's Great Life - Father, Husband, Entrepreneur

This unhappy toddler picture is from back when Jaiden was about 2. She doesn’t appear to be a happy camper .. I wonder why?

I didn’t do it … It wasn’t me.

Todd's Great Life - Father, Husband, Entrepreneur

Like I said, most end up moving on to bigger and better places, after their temporary pit stop at the Morris house. However, it just struck me as odd that new dogs (especially puppies) only seem to show up on our doorstep when I’m away.

So I asked my wife about it …

Well apparently, even when I’m not gone, she has friends begging her to dog sit. But she almost always turns them down, because:

I already have something hairy at home that can get on my nerves:-)

I suppose that’s what I get for asking.

Keep havin FuN!

Todd's Great Life - Father, Husband, Entrepreneur

In 2 weeks or so, I’ll be about halfway through my current deployment to Afghanistan. (.. and the crowd Cheers!)

After over 22 years in the Air Force, this will be my last “vacation” or “camping trip” .. depending on whether you want to use my wife Ana’s or 3-year old daughter Jaiden’s euphemism. I’m not retiring just yet. But once I get back to Fort Hood in May, I’ll definitely be on the downward glidepath.

In the mean-time, I really don’t have much to complain about …

• For some reason I keep getting sent to relatively “quiet” locations for these “vacations”. Seriously, the next time I expect to wear my body armor or helmet is on the plane ride home.
• This time I’ve got a rather nice view … the picture above was taken right outside my tent door. That’s part of the Hindu Kush mountain range.
• I live in a tent … but I have a sleeping bag, several warm blankets, and the whole thing has a “climate control system” .. ok, so it’s just big tube that runs down the center of the tent’s ceiling, which blows out warm (or cold) air. But still, probably better than I would have on a civilian “camping trip”.
• The food is pretty good. A Captain on my last deployment described these deployed DFACs (Dinning Facilities) as pretty much the equivalent of “eating 3 meals a day at Golden Corral .. for 6 straight months”. That about sums it up. The only dangerous part is, just like at an all you can eat buffet, the dessert bar, and the temptation to actually put “all you can eat” on your plate every meal, can easily catch up with you if you’re not careful.
• We’ve got a nice USO tent. They have video games, movie rooms, ping-pong & pool tables, and even free wi-fi (veryslow, but still free!). I usually try to get over there at least a couple of times a week, to download books onto my Kindle, or catch a movie.
  
• Although I work 12 hour shifts, as we’re getting more used to the job, things have been slowing down a bit, so I actually have time to keep up with my email, and talk to friends and family on Facebook. Don’t get me wrong, the goverment is definitely getting their money’s worth out of this trip … but I find that coming to work is actually the part of my day I most look forward to!
• Maybe it’s just because we were here over the Holidays, but we seems to get a lot of care packages here. Most contain some sort of yummy treats. Not terribly easy on the old waistline .. but then again, who wouldn’t want to have a box full of snickers in their office?
  

Now obviously there are a least a few things I don’t like about this place. But really, there’s nothing useful to be accomplished by recording them here. Other than …

If I had a choice, I’d definitely prefer to be home with these guys:

Til next time ..

Todd's Great Life - Father, Husband, Entrepreneur

1. Critical Thinking – How to process information, objectively sort and weigh value, then apply it to given situations.
2. How to most effectively Search Google – Now-a-days, you really don’t have to memorize much … if you know how to get the most out of modern technology. Google (and other search engines) contain a vast wealth of information. But they’re also filled with an ever increasing load of distracting garbage. Being able to quickly find what you’re really looking for is becoming a skill unto itself. The infographic below contains some good tips for improving that skillset …

infographic source: http://www.hackcollege.com/

Todd's Great Life - Father, Husband, Entrepreneur

For a number of years now, I’ve been saying that I’d “kind of like” to be able to do my home business full-time (as in it provides a significant portion of our income) after I retire from the military. But if you asked me to name a specific reason, the best I could usually come up with is that I’d like to avoid the stress of looking for another job.

Woops … I’ve had a negative “why”.

As you can probably guess, although having a continuously profitable home business for over 10 years now could certainly be considered successful in relative terms; if I had to retire from the Air Force tomorrow, I wouldn’t yet have enough of a regular income to avoid a job search.

Clearly I need a stronger motivation to build my home business income. I retire from the military at the end of 2013, so I’ve only got two years to figure this out.

Last Friday, the girl’s school had a military dad’s lunch, in honor of Veteran’s day. I got to go eat lunch with both Jasmine and Jaiden … which was a lot of fun. We laughed, and smiled, and just generally had a pretty happy lunch hour. As I was walking home, and reflecting on what a good time I’d had, something hit me …

When I retire from the military, Jaiden will only be in Kindergarten, and Joey will just be starting pre-school. They’re going to have a lot of years of school ahead of them … which will mean a lot of lunches, and field trips.

I think I just found my WHY.

Starting in January of 2014, I WILL be at EVERY one of these parents lunches. And I WILL volunteer to accompany my girls on EVERY field trip. And I will be there for EVERY soccer game, or gymnastics meet, or just to play in the yard. In short, my goal is to be a Stay at Home Dad … with an income that allows me to enjoy it!

This is a much more clear cut goal … I can close my eyes, and easily picture it.

But …

Just so I don’t fall into the trap of trying to justify the minimum amount I can do to somehow just “get by” while still nominally achieving this goal, I want to add in something with a financial cost.

Turns out this is relatively easy to come up with too. You see, we just bought a new house, and it turns out that the back yard is pretty big. Big enough, in fact, that there’s more than enough room for a pool.

So, the second part of my goal is …

By the summer of 2014, we will have an in-ground pool in our back yard. Due to the hard ground here in central Texas, I’ve been told that this could easily represent a $40-$50K investment. No matter, I can see myself floating in that pool, not caring in the least that it’s 105 degrees.

Ok, that all sounds well and good. But what am I going to do to make these goals come to fruition?

I could smile and think positive thoughts.

Actually, I intend to do a whole lot of that.

But, I also need some sort of measurable action, that I can track over time.

So here’s what I’m going to do …

Between now and December of 2013, I will get 1000 No’s

Huh? What the heck does 1000 No’s mean?

Simple. I will invite people to look at my home business plan. I’ll ask them to partner with me. And I will do this enough times that at least 1000 people tell me “No, thank you”

Here’s the cool part though …

Along the way to getting those 1000 no’s, a certain percentage of people are going to say Yes!

And the even cooler part, I have no excuse to be scared of inviting people to look, and asking them to partner with me … since my purpose is simply to get an answer … doesn’t even matter what they say.

If it’s a Yes, I have a new partner.

And if it’s a No, I can count it towards my 1000.

It’s pure win/win.

.. and it’s a bright, shining path towards my getting to enjoy a whole lot of lunches with my girls.

Update (29 April 2012): I recently took a change of direction in my home business endeavors. I joined a new company, and I’m starting over from scratch. I still think my goals above are 100% acheiveable though. And in fact, I expect that getting 1000s “no’s” is now going to be even harder (but in a good way). You see, pretty much everybody could benefit from what I now have to offer (whether they’ve admitted it to themseveles yet or not). Plus for my active duty military friends, becoming a coach, and doing this as a business is pretty much a “no brainer”

Keep havin FuN!

Todd's Great Life - Father, Husband, Entrepreneur

I’ll most likely finish packing the night before I leave … that’s just how I roll. But at least I was able to start getting things ready while I was home today. And even better, my 3 year old daughter Jaiden spent about 25 minutes helping me .. and that’s not even “help” in quotations … she actually did help me.

One of the 1st lessons I learned about Army support 6 or 7 years ago, is that when you go to the field, you should pack your clothes in gallon sized ziplock bags before putting it into your rucksack. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way, back in 2007, that this rule also applies when preparing for a regular deployment to a fixed base. When I went to Iraq the first time, for some reason I just stuffed all my clothes into my rucksack, and big “body bag”. When we got to Al Udeid, Qatar, I took my little backpack with a couple of sets of PT gear with me through customs, so I’d have something to wear while we waited for our flight to Iraq. The rest of our bags were loaded into big bins near the flight line … uncovered bins … and of course it rained for two of the three days we were there. You can probably guess the rest of this story. When it was time to leave, I dug through my bag for an ACU uniform, only to discover that they were all wet. So, I wore a wet uniform on the plane. Then had to turn in pretty much all of my clothes to the laundry the 1st day I was in Iraq … fortunately, there was a very quick turn around. But still, that flight was no fun.

This time, I’m applying some of the lessons I learned back then.

Jaiden and I sat down with a box of ziplock storage bags, and a couple of piles of clothes. She would grab a bag, open it up, and we would both repeat:

1. First a T-Shirt
2. Then some Underwear
3. And finally, don’t forget the Socks!

We made 7 bags, that all look something like this:

Then we did the same thing with PT gear:

1. One Shirt
2. One Shorts
3. One pair of Socks

7 more baggies:

I also got some of those bigger 4-gallon bags, in which I was able to get 3 uniforms, and most of my long underwear.

My 72 hour backpack has 2 sock/t-shirt/underwear bags, 2 Pt gear bags, one bagged PT sweatshirt, one bagged PT sweatpants, and a pair of tennis shoes tied to the outside. There’s still plenty of room in the pockets for my phone, netbook, and Kindle. I’ll be wearing one uniform, and will put my gortex jacket, and shaving kit at the top of my rucksack, so I can easily take it out when I get to Manas.

The rest of my uniforms, extra boots, jackets, etc., will all be in either ziplock or other waterproof bags, in my rucksack, waiting to be unpacked, nice and dry, when I arrive in Afghanistan. And I think I’ve actually packed efficiently enough this time, that the only thing I’ll need to put in my other big rolling “body bag”, is my flack vest, helmet, and gas mask. Heck, I’m almost tempted to just pick those up at Manas, and go with just the ruck sack … but I’m sure I’ll be able to find a few other useful things to stuff in there.

I’m looking forward to a relatively easy trip.

And if you’ve got any military “vacations” in your future, I hope you found this helpful … don’t forget the ziplocks!

Todd's Great Life - Father, Husband, Entrepreneur

I guess you could say that her question asking style is a bit “leading”. With mommy’s help though, she did eventually manage to get around the entire room and ask ummm, tell each of us whether we like Pizza or Hamburgers better.

It was entertaining to say the least.

And I have to say, even beyond the food query, the one question that was going through my mind during this interview was …

Since when do pre-schoolers get homework?

Keep havin FuN!

Todd's Great Life - Father, Husband, Entrepreneur

It’s hardly shocking that the number of people who visit this blog is on a downward trend. And the number of people who interact (ie, comment) here is a tiny fraction of what it used to be. After all, who wants to spend their valuable time contributing to a site that is rarely updated?

So here’s my question:

What do I find it easier to write posts, share pictures, and respond to other people on Facebook, than here on my own blog?

The last couple of mornings have been a perfect example. I snapped pictures of my girls, wrote quick descriptions, and uploaded it to Facebook … all from my phone. The thing is, I also have a wordpress app on my phone. Would it really have been that much more difficult to turn those pictures into a blog post .. then share them on both FB and Google + ?

I’d like to say that’s what I’m going to try to do in the future …

But I’ve made promises like that in the past.

So I ask again, why is it so much harder to contribute to your own site, than it is to give free content to social media?

Any thought or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Todd's Great Life - Father, Husband, Entrepreneur

I had intended to take a few more pictures, but if you’ve ever tried to keep an 18 month old quiet and still for a whole hour, in an auditorium full of people, you’ll understand why I didn’t use my camera more.

Here are a few of my favorites from the pictures I did take:

Todd's Great Life - Father, Husband, Entrepreneur