People often ask me if it's better to be an early bird or a procrastinator. An early bird aims to do things well in advance -- whether it's pay bills before they're due, book flights, complete a project weeks before the deadline, and so forth. A procrastinator , on the other hand, habitually leaves everything for the last minute. Many might say the answer is obvious -- that being an early bird is more favorable in that you get things done early.  My answer to them is that either extreme is bad. All the way through high school, I was the king of procrastination, sometimes waiting until the day before a paper was due to write it. Once I got to college, I did a 180 degree turn and aimed to finish projects days, if not weeks, ahead of time. This seeped into my personal life as well; for example, it became the norm to pay bills the very day I received them in the mail. The problem with being too much of an early bird -- much like being a procrastinator -- is that it t...

About a month ago, my wife had to have gallbladder surgery. Thankfully, it was caught early and she has since recovered nicely. I remember saying something at the hospital along the lines of ..."well, I've never had to be hospitalized for anything myself." It looks like I forgot to knock on that wood. Just three weeks later, I found myself getting checked out in the hospital for what turned out to be a gas/constipation issue that nagged me for over a week. I've always had a strong stomach, seldom complaining of any digestive problems over the years. I can only assume that eating meat for five consecutive days, coupled with stress I'd been under lately, were the likely culprits. Isn't it bizarre how we can jinx ourselves in this way? We say that something hasn't happened for a long time -- say, we haven't gotten a cold, been summoned for jury duty, or broken an ankle -- and bam, it happens. It's as if someone out in the ether hears us ...