Friday News Update

This has been a rather unproductive week and I’m going to end it mercifully here today. On Sunday afternoon I left Dallas after three Curbside Chats and a weekend visiting relatives and headed to Lafayette, Louisiana. I had a fantastic time in Lafayette, taking part in six different talks in just one day. For someone who speaking is work and writing is therapy, that was utterly exhausting.

I flew home early Tuesday and, after 12 hours of travel, made it home. A light-headedness that had been dogging me since Sunday caught up to me and – despite really needing to spend some time with my family (for my health more than theirs) – I went to bed really early and slept over ten hours. 

So thankfully Nate Hood came through with a great post on Wednesday or Strong Towns would have had radio silence until Thursday.

Speaking of Thursday, after getting my mojo back on Wednesday and having a really awesome member event – thank you to everyone who was part of that – I was looking forward to a day of catching up on Thursday. I had nothing on my calendar, a rare occurrence these days (thanks Jim). Then Justin Burslie reminded me that I had agreed to take part in a mediation session Thursday for a local city we are helping out.

Thursday morning we set the over/under at four hours. I optimistically took the under. Had we bet money, I would have lost big time as the session took nearly ten hours. That’s ten hours of my life I’ll never get back, and I’m not sure we accomplished a lot. To top things off, as we were winding down I received word from home that our basement was flooded (turned out to be a broken sump pump – not as bad as other things it could have been) and so I spent last night cleaning up the basement (before doing some light baking for my three special Valentines.

Today my oldest daughter and I are headed to Denver to take part in Saturday’s session of the New Partners for Smart Growth gathering. I will be speaking with Joe Minicozzi and some others on Saturday and then trying to break away to spend some time with a very special Valentine.

All of this is my rather pathetic way of apologizing for not having much for you this week, despite the best intentions. I’ll do what I can to make it up to you next week. In the meantime, stay warm, be safe and enjoy your weekend.