I’m up early and in one of those writing moods and I just had a little thought this morning. I was browsing through tweets this morning when I came across one from an old colleague who now lives in Cali, and formerly lived in Michigan:

It may sound crazy but I really miss the fall weather of Michigan. via

I was not born and raised in Michigan. Being an out of towner (more or less), there are a ton of things to hate about Michigan. For the sake of staying positive, I won’t name them. But also, after being here for many years, there are many things to love about Michigan too, and one of those things is the fall.

I’ve thought this since day one of being here, and I can’t imagine many other places having a better looking fall. The weather is great for sleeping (with no a/c) and well as great for being outside during the day. Shorts/t-shirt, or blazer and jeans….. the weather seems to adjust to what you feel like wearing. Seeing the colors of the trees is the best part. There are some great pictures doing a Flickr search for “Michigan Fall“…

One of the keys that I’ve found to living in Michigan (if you’ve come from another state) is finding the positives. It seems obvious, but it’s really not if you constantly watch local news here or read about the local economy. I can honestly say that I don’t hate it here like I used to. I actually……. kinda like it.

The summers previous to this one have seemed like they went by at a fairly decent pace, and I feel like I had time to enjoy them. Not this summer. This one flew by so fast to the point where I feel like I should break out my sweaters, coats and boots. I don’t like that feeling one bit, but such is life when you’re living in the midwest.

All in all, the summer was good though. I had a very nice balance of my work, in not having too much or too little, so that was good. I definitely got out much more too, and I’m very satisfied with the amount of golf that I played this year. I said at the beginning of summer that I wanted to play more golf, and I did just that. I also drifted into the summer playing flag football, so that was another good opportunity to be outside enjoying the weather, even if it did leave me worn out, tired, and laying on the couch the rest of the day. It was all worth it.

At least I love the fall, not only because the weather is excellent (not too hot, definitely not cold), but I like fall fashion, as well as football which I’ve been dying to watch. I can’t take anymore baseball, though the Olympics was a great two weeks of every sport damn near possible. I highly enjoyed that. Football is where it’s at though. I’m sure it will be an emotional roller coaster of good and bad games, more than likely all chronicled via my twitter (the more or less, real-time me). But there are many great Saturdays to be had sitting on the couch, all day, watching football, and of course the highlights.

There is also the new season of Entourage starting shortly, and to say I’m hella excited would be an understatement. That is one of the best shows of the past few years in my opinion, and based on the previews, this new season is going to be very hot. And of course Mad Men continues on with a great season 2.

So I’m looking forward to having a great fall, and hopefully I write here before I check it for the official winter announcement. I’m now going to go find something football related on tv. Clearly the fall is not the season for major productivity.

I feel like it’s rare that I come across a good tv show these days, which is pretty much why I don’t even watch much tv. 90% of the stuff on tv is crap, and filled with worthless reality shows, minus in the fall when there’s football on. But that’s a different story. But this past week I’ve gotten hooked on a new show, Mad Men.

If you’ve communicated with me at all in the past week, then I’ve more than likely mentioned it to you. That’s how good I think it is. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s basically a show about ad agency execs in the 60’s, and how things were back then. It’s very interesting to watch though, and seems fairly accurate, but then again I wasn’t alive back then.

Couple things really stand out, and one being the office culture. Every 5 minutes, you are bound to see either someone smoking a cigarette, or someone having a cocktail. That is insane to me, and I often wonder, while watching, how these guys aren’t piss drunk by the end of the work day. Second thing being, that it seems like everyone cheats on their wives with their (or someone elses) assistant. Every episode I watch, I really wonder if things were that crazy back then. I may also be more intrigued than most because I work at an agency.

But the show is great, and worth watching. Season 2 starts tonight, and I can’t wait.

I’m pretty geeked for this weekend. Why? Because I’m doing nothing… for the most part. The past three weekends have been awesome, though they were very busy and exhausting.

The first of three weekends, I was in East Lansing with the Tridea team for one of our last in person meet-ups for a while, since Andrew has moved to the Big Apple. It was an important meeting because I revealed my master plan for Tridea. I don’t think they were expecting it, but they were pleased, and everything that I’ve been trying to teach the team for the past few months now makes sense to them, and they dig the plan. That makes me happy. Now we move on and keep cranking.

The next weekend was Startup Weekend Ann Arbor, which was one of the coolest experiences I’ve ever had. So many talented people there, so much creativity, and so much to get done in a short amount of time:

Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated group of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more to a 54 hour event that builds communities, companies and projects.

The result was much more than I ever expected. I don’t want to explain it all over again for the billionth time, so read about it yourself. So I highly enjoyed that and I’d definitely do it again.

Then, last weekend I was in the Big Apple myself visiting some buddies. I think with writing a Part 1 and Part 2 of my last trip there, I covered everything, so I don’t need to go into much more detail about that trip other than it was a great time. But if you’ve ever been to New York, you know it’s not a relaxing trip. No laying on the beach, no. More like walking around a big ass city with millions of people around 24 hours a day. The place really doesn’t sleep, but that’s what I love about it, and that’s exactly what I wanted to experience again.

So this is my weekend to chill out. It’s my weekend to enjoy some nice weather, play some golf, and hang out at a few BBQ’s. It’s my weekend to take a minor breather from Tridea work (maybe not Sunday night). It’s my weekend to disconnect from the web a little bit because I’ve had a hard time doing that lately. It is definitely my weekend to relax. And I will enjoy it.

This is the opening week of flag football. I’ll be playing on a team with other people from work and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t really excited. At this point, I’ll take any bit of football I can get, seeing as though we’re nearing the time a year where there’s only baseball on, which I passionately hate unless I’m going to a game.

So how have I prepared? Well, I haven’t, which sucks and could bite me in the ass week after week. I suck at cardio, and I hate running so therefore I haven’t gotten myself in shape at the gym. It also sucks because we can only have 8 people on the field at once, and of course we only have 8 people for our team this week. So I will be playing the whole time. But I do have the ability to tough it out, so I think I will be fine. I also bought myself some cleats because I refuse to play ball without them.

Only time will tell how well I’ll do, but since my confidence level is top notch in what I can do on the football field, I have no worries…..as long as my lungs cooperate.