Matt Holthe's Fleeting Thoughts

This year has certainly been a lot slower for me with the travel. On one hand, that is goodness, because I didn't want to be on the road a lot around the birth of our daughter. But even factoring that out of the equation, 2009 has been slow. From January 1, 2008, through July 31, 2008, I had flown 40,118 miles. April, May, June, and July were all over 6,000 miles each month. From January 1, 2009, through July 31, 2009, I have flown 19,859 miles. March I flew over 7,000 miles, but my second busiest month this year has been 3,826 miles. The mileage is way down this year. Last year I was able to fly enough to get the lowest level status on three different airlines (Ascent on Frontier, Premier on United, and Gold on American). This year, I'm hoping to keep my Premier on United and "let's see" about Frontier - I'm not even trying American. I do have some trips coming up - Washington, DC, next week; Los Angeles the week after that; St. Louis over Labor Day, Peoria, ...

Tiger Woods missed the cut at the Open Championship (aka the British Open). It's his second missed cut as a professional. The first was after a string of 37 straight cuts made in majors. That was short of Jack Nicklaus' record 39 straight made cuts. Now I don't know if Tiger will break that record or not. I'm not implying in the least that Tiger is past his prime. But he has to make every cut, starting with the PGA Championship, for 10 more years. Jack's string was from major #29 as a profession until major #67 - Tiger is already at major #49 in his professional career.

I am back to work more than two weeks after the birth of our first child, Sabrina. We knew it would be a life-changing event, and it certainly is. I made the analogy that being in the hospital was a bit like being in a Vegas casino - time didn't matter. If it was 3 AM and she needed feeding or changing, that's what needed to happen. And when we were in the hospital we were in the one room and there was only the one window, so there wasn't much in terms of daylight or anything. Now that we're back at home and trying to get into a routine, we have run into all kinds of challenges. The biggest is when Sabrina doesn't fall asleep. After a while, she gets over-tired and there's not much we can do to help her. That becomes frustrating. That happens about once or twice a day lately. Besides that, she does pretty well. She is eating enough and is progressing along with trying to lift her head and all that. She is great at taking baths, and is pretty easy-going when she...