I sat outside on my balconey this morning having some coffee and reading some of John Maxwell’s Winning With People. This is an incredible book for anyone looking to improve relationships in their life. This morning I was reading the High Road Principle, which states that “We go to a higher level when we treat others better than they treat us.” It also talks about forgiveness as a big part of that and emphasizes that we should not focus on the faults of others.

One example that stuck out to me was a grandmother who shared the secret of her successful marriage at her golden wedding anniversary. She said that on her wedding day she decided to make a list of ten of her husband’s faults that, for the sake of their marriage, she would overlook.

At the end of the celebration, one young wife came up and asked her what some of the things on the list were. The woman replied that she never got around to making the list, but anytime her husband did something that really upset her, she would just say to herself, “Lucky for him that’s on the list!”

What a great attitude that we could all use in our relationships! It is very easy to focus on things that someone has done to upset or anger us. However, when we take the high road and decide to treat that person better than they have treated us, in the end we are better off.

People who embrace the high road make excellence their goal. That’s something that can be accomplished if we . . .

        care more than others think is wise
        risk more than others think is safe
        dream more than others think is practical
        expect more than others think is possible
        work more than others think is necessary

John Maxwell

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I started playing poker with some friends of mine about eight months ago. Before then I was working on school and other pursuits too much to play, although I had been invited a few times. Since then, I’ve definitely developed a poker bug. As usual, with something that I like I tend to pour myself in and want to get good at it. So, I bought the poker books and DVDs, subscribed to Card Player magazine and, of course, started watching the World Poker Tour on the Travel Channel. What the WPT has to do with travel other than that the tournaments are held in different cities around the world, I am not sure.

Another thing that I decided that I would start doing lately is investing in the stock market. I’m just going to take some money every month or so and invest in a company, leave it there for a while, and see what happens. It’s important to invest in companies with growth potential, etc. – but within that group of companies I want to invest in companies that I like and believe in. So, for me that means companies like Dell, Amazon, TiVo, and the WPT.

So, I signed up for an Ameritrade account earlier this week and funded it enough to make my first investment – in the World Poker Tour. I chose WPT over Amazon because the WPT has the potential to make a nice jump in coming months. The 4th season will start airing in May and, more importantly, they are working to launch their own online poker site. I did read that they are not going to allow US based players to play on their site because of US gambling laws. At first that made be a little leery, but there are millions of worldwide viewers of the program who will undoubtedly play on the WPT site (and I’m sure that some US players will find a way on as well ). Further, they have about two hours of free advertising every time that that highly successful TV show is aired.

We’ll see what happens, but hopefully the stock will go up along with the growing popularity of poker. And perhaps you’ll see me battling it out with John Flores for some huge prize money one day in the future!

Filed under: Poker, Personal
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In just a little over a week Carrie and I will be heading to Villa Rolandi in Isla Mujeres! We are definitely excited about the trip – and I think that after seeing this photo I am going to call and reserve a couple of those chairs by the pool!

It should be a great week – and thanks to enough miles on Continental we are going first class! Woohoo!

Only 9 days and counting!

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We were fortunate to spend Friday afternoon with our family at the somewhat-annual McCarthy crawfish boil. Patrick and Paula never fail to go all out, which is why there was a huge bouncy-castle for the kids, a margarita machine, and somewhere around 3 tons of crawfish (ok, that is an exaggeration, but not by much!)

It was a gorgeous afternoon – perfect weather for an outdoor gathering, and for taking pictures of course. I took quite a few and was even called the paparazzi a few times! HA! But it’s always fun to have pictures and Carrie can always use a few more to scrap

Below are some of the better photos from the afternoon. Click here to view the rest!

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Some of my officiating “firsts”:

• First game: November 7th, 1995 (Freshman Boys @ Cy-Fair HS)
• First varsity game: December 4th, 1997 (Actually worked two games this day in the Spring Branch tournament, thanks to my friend and co-official Tom Kilgore)
• First college game: January 4, 1999 at Southwestern (Thanks to my friend and co-official Steve Oakes who called me to work this cancellation – my only college game of the season!)
• First Division I game: November 8, 2004 at Texas-Pan American
• First tech on a head coach: February 6, 1996 on the JV coach at Cy-Creek (can’t remember who it was exactly, but I have an idea! ). And I didn’t need to refer to my notes on this one — I remembered it!

I do remember some other things about the last ten years, such as the coach who I have given the most technical fouls. However, I will allow them to enjoy their anonymity — you know who you are! I have definitely become more tolerant or perhaps better at coach-official communication or something because I rarely pull out the “T” on coaches nowadays — I only had one this entire season (which he complained he didn’t deserve, of course).

The photo is me working the Nike Tournament (officially called the Academy National Invitational) in it’s inaugural year – 2001.

Anybody can be successful at officiating if they’re willing to put in the time and effort.

NFL Official Ed Hochuli

Filed under: Officiating
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