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Okay first things first: my brother didn't win the $100,000 - someone else did. But, he did get a free vacation out of the deal and $500. So did my mom. Not $500, but a vacation.

Second: The Dears rocked it. The drummer...So my new favorite place to see a show? The Troubador. For Austin folk, it's smaller than the Parish and no one's smoking in your face even though there's a law against it. I was wondering if Murray is black (I would say African-American but he's Canadian) or Indian-like-from-India-Indian? I know I've asked this question before but I can't remember the answer. Anyway I finally went to a good show - the best one I've been to since March. Renee enjoyed herself too. What's cool is that we can both see shows by ourselves. Meaning we walked in together and for half the show we were in our own individual little area.

Risk taking Part 3: Taking risks creates opportunities where you don't know they exist. So it's like this: you take a risk and your hope or expectation of the outcome is based on what it is that you risked. Ex: Say you're in an insufferable job but the salary is pretty good. Your fears are that you can't leave because you'll never get another one that pays as well or that you can't afford to take a step back. So you finally leave (that's the risk part) and if you expect to reap some kinda reward from taking a risk, your expectation is around getting another job because you had the balls to do something about a bad situation. Right? Well maybe. It's very possible that the next job is everything you'd hoped for, though it's also possible that it may take a few hops in between to finally get the dream gig. I hear those are called "mulligans" or something. So maybe it's not obvious, but then other parts of your life sort of fall into place auspiciously. Things that you could have never guessed or could have thought of open up as a result of one decision that you didn't see as connected. It's not magic or bullshit, it's simply karma. That's how it works - cause and effect - but the thing w/ karma is that you don't know *how* it'll hook you up. So play big and you get rewarded big.

I was going to save this for tomorrow b/c I'm a little tired of writing but I just can't b/c I'm a dork. I've done a fair amount of intention exploration -- so, reading about intentions, experimenting w/ setting them, etc. Again, for you less new-agey sorts, intentions = goals. So today I started to see something develop that never occurred to me and is way cooler than what I was thinking. And it got me thinking that maybe life delivers more when I don't ask for specific things which are just limited by my admittedly limited vision anyway. What if I left it open but did my part which is the acting on intuition stuff (btw, that's not the same thing as being indecisive)? What would happen then?