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Hey there Birthday Boy:

I guess what I have to wish you is the knowledge that you are on the right path, the faith that the actions you take are the right ones, even when they turn out to be the wrong ones.

May your curiosity take you to better and better places. May you find there the things you never knew you were looking for but you were glad you found.

May you continue to grow wiser, and may you find more reasons to laugh every day.

May people read your thoughts and be lifted, carried to new worlds. May they respond, and laugh, and cry, and think, and put a smile on your face.

May you find friendship and never be lacking for people to share your journey. And may you find the one, in her time, to laugh, and cry, and make new human beings, and grow old with.

And may the world be a better place for you having visited it. And may that visit be a good long, wealthy, healthy, joy of a ride.

Summer, while it's still hot outside, seems a long way in the past. The kids are back in school, some actually doing their homework. Yakov came back to visit last weekend and is off to Yeshiva again. Uri is still enjoying school, and taking care of getting himself there and back more and more.

The last two weeks have been good relative to connections. I met with one internet marketer, and we might have what to do together. I should figure out exactly what it is I would like to propose, if anything, and communicate with her.

I also met with my friend Yehoram. We are looking at how we can support each other, which is pretty neat. He is more interested in the small business. I am more interested in the marketing side of really large ones, particularly in the advisory and consulting space. But I like him and like working with him, so I think I'll work with him on tuning his site, which is undergoing renovations, and could raise both his and my visibility.

Now visibility is not the same as money in the bank, but I'd love a good test case that I can show to the big boys, and this could very well be it. But that's not the plan for money in the bank. The plan now is to pick a company (I don't know why I'm stuck on PWC) and start rewriting C-suite bios to show the difference I could make on a company level.

I listened to a part of the testimoney of Wells Fargo's John Stumpf in front of Senator Warren. While I can't stand her grand-standing, I agree with her characterization of him as gutless. So where I'd like to be is really getting into the worlds of the people of a few big advisory organizations. I want to be the connector that actually brings good corporate governance back to the fore, in concert with people like Warren, whom I really don't like.

Oh, and then there's the coaching. I've set a new date for a course for guys, and made a new promise for the e-book (next Friday), and have to work on marketing that. I've past 120 thousand views of my answers on Quora. I'm copying them all to a text file these days. I think I'll get someone to sort them by themes, and put them up on my blog, or a sub thereof, at least once a day.

So that's the immediate future I see. I will have a network of connections with people who are up to making a difference in the world, and to inspire those I come across to take a step beyond where they are now.

I've also been doing some legal research, this time on imputed income. It feels nice to be able to pay the rent again.

And I've been told that my office will not be my office any more come November 1. I can have a seat in the open space instead. I don't know if I'm interested. Apparently no one wants to share office space, which I can understand, but you'd think the people who built this space had done a little more investigation into what their business model should look like before they launched it.

And I've been spending a lot of time at Landmark. I have a goal there as well, to be certified as an Introduction Leader by October 9. It's a big deal and I've got some work to do, but I think it's entirely possible.

And Sharleen hurt her knee. I bought her a jump rope, which she enjoyed, until she tried to get too fancy about it, when we heard her wailing from the yard. She had gone from jumping to skipping rope, apparently landed on a stone, which threw her bad knee out. She's seen the doctor, and it looks okay, but she's still in pain.

And apparently I'm pretty intelligent,
IQ Test, but not so much so that I don't still get stuck in front of a screen for simply too much time. We're Jonesing on Game of Thrones at the moment.

It's been almost two weeks since the last update. We went to the pool one more time, and Uri sun burnt his lip so badly it hurt him for a week. I'm already peeling off the little color that I got. Very Sad.

School has started. Sharleen and I took Yakov off to Yeshiva on Sunday. We met Manu's new teacher, and love him. Uri is on to a new school at Ravid. It has all of 32 students in the whole school, and he seems to be adaypting well. He's welcome to keep his hair. He brings his skateboard. It's good. Manu too has a new teacher, whom we very much like.<

Today we met with Ilan's teacher. That was a waste of time. He's got a new one. She doesn't know him, and I think she just doesn't get this crowd yet. But then she's young, but it seems everyone seems young these days.

With the new school year, I've found myself inspired to exercise more. I had lost some weight and stalled, and am happy to be back, but quite disappointed with my performance. I've also slipped a bit with the diet - damned chocolate - but I'll lick that too soon enough.

We sat with the architect last week and finally nailed down the roof sufficiently to get the plans in. Our impression is that we spent a lot of time going around in circles to come back to something we already knew two months ago. We're still out on the Windows. Andersen came in about the same price as the cheaper Marvin, so we're leaning toward the Marvin again.

I got a bit further in my book. At the rate I'm going, it shouldn't take more than another week or two. Quora views passed a hundred thousand last week. New people have been moving in to Open Valley, and I certainly have something to offer them, and have started some of those conversations as well.

I had the Serena to the shop and have finally decided to part with it. Now I just want it out of my hands ASAP. I put a for sale sign on the Green Honda as well. It's just time.

I don't know exactly where the week went, but I have a good idea. No business got done, unfortunately.

Monday night we assisted at the evening session of a Landmark Forum, and we made the difference I promised. I was really tickled to enroll a sixteen and a half year old, going into 11th grade with big dreams.

Sharleen and I just played. We made new friends and had a really splendid evening. This is our date night, and we really enjoy getting out together to play with these friends to shift the conversation in the world.

Monday, we visited the Andersen Window guy. We're waiting to hear from him, but I think we're leaning in his direction, as much as we love the Marvin product.

We spent the rest of the day at Landmark again. I'm working on being certified as an Introduction leader, and have moved forward. I completed a mock Introduction to the Forum well enough to not to have to do another, though I've certainly more work to do.

Wednesday and Thursday found us in Jerusalem. We enjoyed Shakespeare in the Rough, MacBeth this year. Then, we spent hours getting home, between liquor tasting, beer drinking, Gaya (a smart game store), Aldo (an ice cream place), and the many new friends we met on the way, we didn't make it home before 11:00.

Thursday we took our time getting out, visited Sacher Park. Apparently the skate park there is pretty lame, and then I broke Uri's skateboard, so we had to go back into town to replace the deck before we headed for lunch with Chana and Rose. Getting home took longer as usual as we were competing with the end-of-summer holiday maker traffic.

I wasn't so confident about the tires on the Serena, so I took the bus while Sharleen drove.

I made a new friend on the bus, and we made it home in time to watch a completely inappropriate movie and have a bit of barbecue before getting to bed.

Friday I got my rowing machine working again, and rowed. It seems my shoulder is tolerating the rowing alright; so I am happy about that.

Shabbat found Meir with us. We all had a good time.

Sunday, I started the book (working title Just Ask) that will be the lead magnet for my e-mail list sign-up. The problem is that I have 1199 Quora posts that I thought I'd pull from to write the book, but they are not as easy to extract as I thought they might be. Now I have almost 1200 over-coded files that I can look at, but all lacking descriptive names.

I also contacted the local authority and Uri's new school to make sure he's set up for the next year.

The architect's computer is finally back on-line, so our house should be moving again soon.

Today, I tried the kettlebell and my shoulder is okay with it. The goblet squats, as was to be expected, were also fine. I reviewed, reformatted, and revised my introduction format, then printed it.

Now I'm on my home to be with my kids for a few hours before Sharleen and I run off to make a difference in people's lives.