We drove down to Eugene to see mom for mother's day. It was pretty nice weather so she took us and the dogs to a large pond outside Springfield. It was a relaxing 1.5 mile walk around with the trail to ourselves. Afterwards we had lunch at the Outback. Mom had steak and Naomi and I shared some baby back ribs. I was happy that she didn't break out a smoke during the walk - in fact I think she only had one the whole time we were there. Naomi thinks she had lost weight, but I think she has been pretty thin ever since I came back from Japan in 2003. She was happy about her recent outpatient surgery to remove a basal cell lesion on her eyebrow - although I find it amusing that she is so concerned about how she looks after the surgery (it was pretty minor in my view) but continues to trash her lungs and voice. Over lunch we talked about Alan Jr., my cousin, and his unorthodox views religious views. Mom and I last saw Alan and his family at Ty's wedding a few years ago.

Friday I took the day off and went mt biking in post canyon Hood River with Jon and Cam. I had a pretty nasty fall - nothing spectacular, but ended up with a painful goose egg bruise on my left thigh. Cam also fell a few times - once off one of the narrow bridges - and was a little shaken.

I rode my bike to Powell's on Hawthorne to browse some books - one on Lance Armstrong and Malcom Gladwell's Blink before Jon and Cam picked my up to go to Sinju in the very So-Cal Bridgeport mall. Pete tried to put Jon in a headlock and spilled a cocktail in Cam's lap. Cam then threw a glass of water into Peter's lap. Classy guys, but good carousing fun. We headed back into town after that for beers at Life 'o Reilly's where we meet a group of girls working for in the pharma industry. For some reason Peter took an extra toilet paper spindle from Shinju. Being a married doctor with bike shoes, in turns out, makes you a chick magnet in this city (haha).


From what I could gather about Blink - snap decisions based on intuition can be effective and efficient or disastrous. One way to stack the odds in our favor is to place ourselves in situations - created environments, that is - where our intuition can work uninhibited by prejudice and noise. For instance, in evaluating a musician we should blind ourselves to the person. Studies show that what we know about a person affects the way we hear, thus potentially misleading our intuitive sense of their quality.