Smithdm3.com

The newspaper/journalism industry is in an upheaval with the ongoing steady erosion of advertising revenues (some of which are moving to the Internet) and the destruction of classified revenues which have all moved online (eBay, Craiglist, Kijiji, you name your own online classifieds provider).

Man, painting sucks. Meg and I spent our four day Easter weekend putting a "refresher" coat of paint on the rooms in our house. It is of course a tragic use of four days off in the row, but it will help our social lives this summer.

Those who attended our wedding in the fall will probably remember that I promised Meg in our wedding vows that I would take Salsa with her. Well, we're almost done our first class, one lesson to go next Wednesday. It's gone pretty well, and I almost feel coordinated doing some of the steps.

I wrote my GMAT today. You see, I'm planning on going back to school in the fall to do my MBA. I'd like to do it part-time, but am applying for full-time admission just in case the job goes completely south, I can't find something else and therefor find myself 'underemployed'.

Continuing on the theme of enjoying the winter a little more, last weekend Meg, some of her friends and I ventured out for the evening to the Blacksheep Inn (worst website ever). The Blacksheep is located in Wakefield, QC, a little less than a half hour drive north of Ottawa.

Wow, it's nearly the middle of February already, the year is an eighth over. Winter has been passing by a little faster since Christmas as I've taken up a new activity. Well, I suppose I've done it before, back when I was in high school I think, and I did it a couple of times in 2006 with rentals.

I donated blood on Friday, the 31st time I've done so. That means that the next time I go (my next appointment is sometime in April) I'll actually equal my age, something kind of neat.

Just wanted to leave you all a "Happy New Year" message. 2008, while not the greatest of year's for the economy, or the world in general was a good year for myself and Meg. I welcomed Meg back to Ottawa after her volunteering experience with UNICEF in Boliva for most of calendar year 2007.

Well, in an effort to close off the year right, I took part in the local Running Room "Resolution Run" 5km this evening. Grant picked me up at a quarter to 6 and off we went to await the beginning of the challenge. Grant is a great runner, and so he moved up to the front, with the hopes of running a sub 22 minute 5k (this is with only maintenance running in the last little while, no specific training for this race). I hung back and awaited the gun.

As Meg has detailed in two posts, we recently went to Cuba for our honeymoon. She does a great job of detailing what we did and saw, but I thought I'd do a quick post just to lay out some of my thoughts about the country.