Driving to USC to pick my daughter up last night, it was just the most beautiful sunset. It was late so there was no traffic, just the sun going down behind the skyscrapers, all lit up with the lights on in every window still. (You don’t get an office in the 20th floor downtown if you only work 40 hours a week.) The weather was perfect, it was just a lovely evening.
In this economy, people are always saying you are lucky if you have a job. Not only do I have a job, but I have a really interesting job. At this very minute there about six different things, all of which I want to do.
Write pages on statistics with SAS Enterprise Guide for my USC website I am creating
Update the presentation for my Introduction to SAS class I am teaching on Thursday
Write my talk on data preparation and data management – how to not make yourself crazy
Finish a book on SPSS programming
Run a logistic regression in Stata
Finish reading two books on Enterprise Guide
Read a book on JMP sitting on my desk
About eight other things I just thought of right now.
I think I am doing pretty well on this goal. Often, when I go to sleep at night, the last thought that goes through my mind is, “I have a great life.”
When I wake up in the morning, as I drink my coffee and read the LA Times before I go to work, usually once or twice, the thought crosses my mind, “I have a great life.”
I have great kids, I’ve been able to travel all around the world, I have an interesting job, and then I just have all of the daily good things, good coffee, good newspaper.
Yes, life is definitely pretty good.
I am making more progress, I think, on some of my other goals. I want to learn to focus on the positive more. One positive is the number of friends I do have who will watch my back, tell me the truth and lend a helping hand.
My friend, Jake Flores, said to me recently,
“I will always be there for anything you need, not anything you want, but if you need me, I will always be there for you.”
I know that is true. Anything Jake says, I can trust completely.
My friend, Serge, said to me today that if a person has five true friends in life, that’s one lucky son of a b-- .
I was adding it up and I have nine people who I could count on no matter what, to pick me up at the airport at midnight, listen to me on the phone for an hour if I needed a sympathetic ear or lend me their last dollar. One of those nine people is my husband and three others are my children.
I am a really lucky person. I have four spares. Hurrah!
I live in sunny southern California, and I love it. Every now and then, the weatherman/ woman will say, “It’s another beautiful day in paradise.”
That never gets old. I lived in North Dakota for seven years, I tell people it was for penance for my sins as a child. The weather in southern Cal is beautiful. No driving on ice. No snow to shovel. No putting on long underwear, hats, gloves, parkas and scarves just to go outside to turn the car on to warm up for 30 minutes so that you can drive to the store for a gallon of milk.
The ocean is – well, what can you say, it is the Pacific Ocean and it is right down the hill from my house. It is full of tourists at this time of day on the weekend but I am super-grateful that I live here because when I get back from mass, it will be around 7:30 and they will have all gone home so Dennis, Julia and I can walk down to the beach and watch the sunset over the ocean.
I am grateful that Julia is home from camp. We missed her. She seems to be trying to get in as much TV time as possible to make up for what she missed. I am going to drag her into the bathtub and then take her to the Getty Art Museum.
I am amazingly grateful that I live so close to places like the Getty that it will only take me a few minutes to get there.
My husband complains about everything – walking the few blocks to the beach, driving on the 405 to the Getty, but at least he goes with me, and he is a nice guy. If he was perfect, he would have married someone better than me.
I am grateful I have the most awesome computer that the university bought for me. I am going to do a little work on that while Julia and Dennis get ready to go.
My grandmother said we should remember every day all of the great gifts we have been given. Here are just a few:
My children are healthy, intelligent and beautiful.
Two of my kids have graduated from college already.
I like the work that I do.
I like my boss. He is a nice person, technically competent and when I ask him a question he never takes it as a challenge to his authority but as an honest request for information (which it always is) and he always tries to give me an answer or find one.
I work with a lot of really smart people who are good at their jobs.
I live in an absolutely beautiful place where the weather is perfect almost every day.
Every day, as I leave the house for work, I can look down the hill and see the Pacific Ocean
My husband is a nice guy who is really smart, good to the children and has a lot of genuinely interesting things to say.
There are a ton of great restaurants within walking distance and I have eaten at most of them!
You can eat Japanese, Mexican, Argentine, Peruvian, Chinese, Italian, seafood, deli, Thai and mom’s home cooking diner food all within a ten minute walk or less.
