A View from the Now-Retired Principal's Seat

"David, what happened?" "I don't know, Doc. I was doing a few chores in our garage and then snap...I buckled over in pain.   My back just went out…bad." "It says here you had to go to the ER for muscle spasms.   I don't recall you ever complaining about back issues." "No. My back has never been a problem for me." "Well David, you know you're not 25 any longer?" "What do you mean?" "Well...I've been commenting to you the last several years that you could afford to lose a little weight and exercise a bit more." "What do you mean?" "David, I'm your doctor. We've known each other for almost 20 years now, but you don't pay me to say what you want to hear. Rather, my job is to tell you want you need to hear." You can guess how the conversation from last summer ended. I walked out of my doctor’s office with several pages of "lower

"Dad, you don't usually eat with us in the morning." My experiment was a success! Regular readers of this blog will remember my previous post was about balance and finding that balance with our jobs and our personal lives.  Specifically, I wrote about being over-connected to cell phones, email, texts, etc.   You can read that post here . I committed to an experiment a little over a week ago: No school email/Twitter/Facebook once I'm home. No cell phone at church. No email or texting...during dinner or other family activities. No iPad near our bedroom. I knew I was on the right track when on the very first morning of the experiment our two middle school-aged daughters commented that I didn't usually eat breakfast with them.  My normal habit had been to check email while I was getting ready for the day and then eat a granola bar while I was driving to work.  My daughters immediately noticed that I had time to eat with them!  What a gift... What ot