My brother Daniel is competing this weekend in the Texas Relays Decathlon against some of the best in the country.  Go Daniel!!  You can see the live results here.

Happy New Year!  I hope you are leaping into 2008 with eager expectation.  For the new year I’d like to carve out three 45 minute slots per week for swimming and possibly swim the 5 Kilometer race across lake Balaton in the summer.  Never thought I would enjoy swimming for exercise, but it has really grown on me while living in the water polo capital of the world.   

I’m also adding a couple new components to my journaling this year.  Journaling has been so helpful for me over the years with the inward, outward, and upward journey.  I’m also really glad moleskin notebooks are back in business!!

Thirdly, I’d like to create more integration between this blog and our present communities, our work with Nexus, and our spiritual and family journey here in Budapest.  I’ve mapped out a plan for this, and I’m going to give it a try for a month and see if the plan needs adjusting. 

Fourthly, we of course still have some concrete goals for working hard on the Hungarian language. 

I’ve heard that 46% of us are still keeping our resolutions after six months.  That sounds conservative to me.  So here is a helpful acronym for goal planning from the project management world- S.M.A.R.T.:

• Specific - goals should be specific and clear as opposed to general.
• Measurable - goals need to be capable of being measured in some fashion.
• Adjustable - there needs to be a way to adjust your goals according to your rate of progress…if it is faster or slower than originally anticipated. 
• Realistic - goals can be set beyond you present ability but are attainable over the present length of time.  Research says that difficult goals usually lead to improved performance as long as those goals do not exceed your ability to attain them. 
• Time-based - there should be a clear time-frame (short-term, intermediate-term, long-term.)  There should be clear target dates set from the beginning.  

And you know, thinking of goals in positive terms instead of negative terms is always more effective.  And process goals are usually better than outcome goals (improving effort or performance vs. winning a competition).  And finally, most goals deserve a good strategy.

With our minds we plan our ways,
But God directs our steps.
-Proverbs 16:9

On Friday December 28th, this blog turned two years old.  Happy Birthday utazni.com!  A few adjustments are coming for the new year!

According to Technorati’s April 2007 state of the blogosphere report:

• there are 70 million weblogs
• About 120,000 new weblogs are created each day
• 1.4 new blogs are created every second
• 1.5 million posts per day
• 17 posts per second
• Japanese is the #1 blogging language at 37%
• English second at 33%
• Chinese third at 8%
• Italian fourth at 3%
• 1% of blog posts are in Farsi

History is being made today as the Virginia Tech men’s soccer team plays in their first ever semi-final game against Wake Forest in the College Cup.  Tech came entered the bracket ranked 8th in the nation.  Go Hokies!  http://soccernet.espn.go.com/section?id=ncaa&cc=5739

Virginia Tech beat Virginia 17-0 today.  You can read about it here.  And just in case you are interested, Virginia Tech came into this game ranked 1st in the nation for scoring defense.  :)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fw1CcxCUgg]
This is Jason McElwain’s story.

A couple weeks ago, Laura’s sister came for a ten day visit, and we had a great time.  She brought a box of fun surprises which included this children’s educational game, Mighty Mind.  As you can see it, “makes kids smarter and keeps them busy for hours!”  Whoa.  Whoever did the marketing and cover design for this should get a raise. 

I went running around Margaret Island tonight.  I had a good pace for the first 4 kilometers, and I picked up my speed for the final 1.5 kilometers.  The last 1 km is really dark.  There are no lights and lots of big trees.  I could hardly see, so I decided to close my eyes while I was running.  My goal was to close my eyes until I got really nervous about running into a tree or something.  Don’t worry, there were no collisions.  Of course, I could only keep my eyes closed for 4-5 seconds.  But hey, that’s a long time when your running.  And somehow I stayed in the middle of the track.  It was so cool.  But don’t try this at home. 

I’ve seen this a couple times recently on some friend’s blogs, and I just had to post a link myself.  This is awesome.  Click here to watch these guys dancing on treadmills.  And be sure to adjust your volume.

Tonight I went to hear my friend Marci’s band at the Fészek Klub.  The band is called “Memoria Mortis” (”Remember Death” in Latin).  They’ve got a great sound and some really creative composition and lyrics.  It’s a blend of grundgy rock and jazz rythm and overtones (I think).  A few songs took me back to my Pink Floyd days and my Metallica days all at the same time.  Check out their blog.

I just read a story about a guy who traded a red paperclip for something else, and then he traded that thing for something else…again and again until he got a house.  Here’s the story.

Today is July 4th, the 230th anniversary of America’s independence as a nation.  Wow, I wish I could sit on the lawn in D.C. and watch the fireworks tonight.