Matt Holthe's Fleeting Thoughts

Next week is the end of another decade. My, how time flies and things change. Late in 2009 I was moving back to Illinois after becoming a father a few months earlier. I've now lived in Illinois for 10 years and my daughter is in fifth grade. I'm still doing the same job, but travel has gone down significantly. People are way more willing to let me help them remotely instead of requiring me to be on site. So I'm able to get the work done without having to be physically on site. I turned a half a century old this year and I'm realizing that I'm going to have to make a lot of changes to live another 50 years. Here's to the next decade!

As a dual birthday celebration for myself and a friend who has a birthday the day after mine, 5 of us went to Tunica, MS for the weekend last weekend. It was a pretty nice weekend, although the 7 hour drive is a bit long. We chose Tunica because it is a more centralized location for the people who came and they have sports betting. We watched and bet on the college football championship games. If Ohio State had gotten a touchdown at the end of the game instead of a field goal (they were second and goal from the 1 yard line) then things would have turned out a little better than they did. I did all right gambling - didn't win, but also didn't lose as much as I budgeted. I really liked the Gold Strike casino where we stayed. The sports bar was great with a wall of TV's and the betting window just outside the sports bar. We also played Top Golf right next to the sports bar and that was a lot of fun. It was all virtual golf but it was pretty realistic and a nice way to spend a ...