Couplehood:  My wife Liz and I go out on dates two to three times per week and try to talk a lot.  Her work keeps her extremely busy – she rarely gets home before 7:00 pm, then has to immediately get on the computer after dinner several days a week to communicate by email or Skype (both “chat” typed messages and voice phone communications) to China, Singapore, or Japan… thus, we really value our time together. 

Family:  We see Lianne, our daughter here in Reno, regularly and visit our other daughter Kelly and her family over in California (or have them here) about once every two to three months.  About three or four times a year, we’ll meet Kelly halfway between (about a 45 minute drive for each of us) and she’ll deliver one or two of her four kids for a long weekend.  We also take one of the kids on a special trip (i.e., Disney World in Orlando) every few years.  Last year, we took Kelly, Rob, her four kids, Lianne, and her fiancé Matt to southern California for a cruise and a big day at Disneyland.  We don’t see the Texas kids (by my first marriage) often, although we’ve visited with Stace, my son in Houston several times in the last few years.

Exercise:  Unlike many people I was never into sports, golf, fishing, or many outdoor activities.  When I lived out in the country in northern California, I used to walk four to six miles every morning, but those days are long past.  Liz and I still walk some – sometimes to a restaurant or a store about a mile to 1 ½ miles away – but an ankle I shattered in 1960 has started acting up giving me a lot of pain if I walk long distances - I've recently been fitted with an ankle brace and am struggling to resume walking.

Ethnic Food:  Liz and I truly enjoy ethnic restaurants (Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, Greek, Indian, Mediterranean, Turkish, Carribean, African, Chinese, Korean, Mexican, and more).  Liz and I eat out several times a week and I usually take my daughter Lianne out to lunch about once a week (or two, depending on her schedule).  Also, I try to eat out by myself about once a week, taking along a good book to while away the time.

Music & Entertainment: Loving music.  Liz and I go to lots of live entertainment events.  We've gone to a great Celtic music festival up near the top of Mount Rose (held at an altitude of 8,950’, it was billed as “the second highest Celtic festival in the world – I can’t imagine where the highest one is!).  Reno has lots of free or nearly-free musical events.  The Council of the Arts sponsors a free musical event for every night during the entire month of July – most are held at our beautiful Wingfield Park alongside the Truckee River in downtown Reno.  We have other venues for free concerts, as well.  We also recently went to the two day Reno Blues Festival.  We are also members of “House Seats,” which gives away free seats to shows at the casinos, the university, and other locales here when there’s not a full house.  We’ve seen some great plays, shows, and name entertainers with it - recent shows have included Diana Krall, Chris Isaac, a two-day Blues festival, and many others.  We enjoy Singers & Standards, Blues, Bluegrass, Celtic, Jazz, New Age / Soundscapes, World Music, and many other genres.

Movies:  We are very eclectic in our taste.  We particularly enjoy foreign language movies, particularly those from France, Spain, Africa, and China.  We REALLY like British movies, in particular the serial made-for-telly shows such as Doc Martin, As Time Goes By, and William and Mary.  Two good Irish ones are Ballykissangel and Falling for a Dancer.  Despite how much we like movies, we don’t like going to the movie theatre, preferring to rent them on Netflix and see them on our big-screen and surround sound at home.

Travel:  Vacations are the thing we truly enjoy and look forward to.  For several years when Liz had her own business, we routinely traveled for anywhere from six to 12 weeks of the year.  Even now since she’s gone back to work for a “regular” company, we still manage to get out a lot.  Recent vacations have included the following:

In 2004, we went to:  Orlando for a week; Ko’olina & Honolulu, Oahu for a week; Kona on the Big Island for a week; numerous locations in England for two weeks; Scotland for four days; Santorini island in the Aegean for a week; Athens & the Peloponnesus for a week; Ruidoso, New Mexico for a week; the Texas Hill Country for a week; and Palm Springs for a week.

In 2005, we went to:  Easton, Maryland for a few days; Lake Conroe, Texas for a week; Avon/Vail, Colorado for a week; a week-long Caribbean cruise (Cozumel, Mexico; Roatan, Honduras; Belize City, Belize); Houston, Texas for several days; and Sonoma, California for Christmas week.

In 2006, we went to:  Lake Tahoe for a week; Niagara Falls, Ontario for a day; Lake Placid, New York for a day; Quebec City for three days; Montreal, Quebec for three days; and elsewhere in Quebec for three days; Ireland for two weeks; and Frankfurt, Germany for two days.

In 2007, a relatively light year, we went to:  Austin, Waxahachie, and Houston, Texas for a week; Orlando, Florida for a week; southern California for several days; and my high school reunion in Bossier City, LA for several days.

In 2008, we went to:  Hong Kong for five days; Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Hua Hin, and Pran Brury, Thailand for two weeks; North Carolina for 10 days; southern California and Disneyland for four days; a cruise to Avalon and Ensenada for four days; Lake Tahoe for five days surrounding Thanksgiving; and a week in Berkeley, California after Christmas. 

So far in 2009, we’ve gone to:  Orlando for a week; Tallahassee to visit my long-time friends Bob and Drin (I was Best Man at their wedding in 1967) for two days; Lake Tahoe for the July 4^th weekend; the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico for the Barnes Family Reunion for four days; San Diego for a week for a reunion with my three best friends from high school and for Liz to attend the international convention for PEO (a women's philanthropic and educational organization; and the Los Angeles area for Liz' college sorority reunion and a small reunion for some members of her family. 

By 2009 year’s end, we will have gone for three days in Sydney, Australia; and two and one-half weeks exploring New Zealand.  We really love to travel and see the nation and the world.

Collectibles:  Collectibles have always intrigued me.  I have many car & airplane models, several model trains, automobilia, license plates, 50’s & 60’s memorabilia and retro items, antique cameras, old radios, miniature animals, small lamps, barn pictures, British transportation pictures, automobile pictures, Indian items, books, and other things.

MGB Sports Cars:  As I’ve also mentioned many times, I truly enjoy my two MGB’s.  I love envisioning improvements for them, working on them (although it is a bit backbreaking and sometimes gets tedious), and driving them.  I tend to procrastinate horribly on doing the work, but when I finally get down to it, it’s fun with a great sense of accomplishment.

Other Classic Cars:  The Reno area is home to many car shows, including the famed Hot August Nights, the world’s largest one – in which around 5,000 registered and another 50,000 unregistered classics show up for an eight-10 day car fest with concurrent activities and shows at dozens of venues around the city.  I love looking at Classic Cars and pretty much go to every show I can find.  Liz likes for us to take a drive together in one of the MGB’s about once a week – it’s a lot of fun with the top down, particularly late in the day as it cools off.  I used to also own three 1950 Fords and a 1968 Mustang... but six Classic Cars was way too much and I wasn't driving them - something that's hard on older automobiles.

Landscaping:  At our last home in rural northern California, landscaping was my big interest.  I planted dozens of trees (in addition to the 30 huge Ponderosa Pines we already had – each of which exceeded three feet in diameter and some of which were six feet across and 150’ tall!  Additionally, I planted hundreds of shrubs, flowers, ground covers, and bushes.  Loving water, I installed three ponds, each of which stair-step waterfalled into the next.  In the lowest one, I had a submerged pump that took the water through underground pipes up to a waterfall high on a hill where it then coursed through a rock-lined stream about 50’ in length back to the top pond.  Over the margin between the top and the middle pond, I built an arched bridge that led to a walkway alongside the stream on the highest part of our property.  Recently at our townhome here in Reno, I've planted about a couple dozen evergreen trees, dozens of shrubs, several kinds of groundcovers, and decorated our patio with several large planter boxes, perennials, cacti, evergreens, and many other plants.  Additionally, I've created a water feature with a vertigreed copper boy about 18" tall playing a flute - water comes out of the holes in the flute and arcs into a large ceramic bowl that has water plants in it and is surrounded by large flat stones.

Home Decor:  When we first moved to Reno in late 2004, we were planning on keeping our home in California as we thought we’d eventually be moving back.  Thus, we saved our furniture for it there, as the town home here in Reno is much smaller.  We went out every evening for weeks on end buying new furniture and every weekend was spent doing some sort of interior decorating project:  New light fixtures to replace “contractor cheapies,” drapery shopping and hanging, wall painting, special effects on some walls, additional fixtures all around the house, replacing cheapie bathroom and kitchen towel racks, etc., and so on.  However, I haven’t done that much since then.  I did screen in our “kitchen patio” turning it into a screen room - later I'm going to put double French doors on it so I can close them off in the winter and still have an outdoors-feeling room. 

Garage/Shop:  I’ve done a lot out in the garage (three workbenches, three large roll-around toolboxes, three large roll-around tool carts, extra lighting, lots of wall shelving, extra wiring, etc.), but it doesn’t improve the appearance – only helps me in working on my MGB’s.

Woodworking & DIY’ing:  I am also a "do-it-yourselfer" and have done numerous projects in my town home – moving from a country home has cut down on big projects, though.  I still have a table saw, compound mitre saw, 16” band saw, drill press, and a large variety of hand and electric tools for woodworking and auto mechanics.  I still do some woodworking and home projects.  I’ve got a solid cherry triple dresser LONG in process that I’d like to finish one of these days.

Website Building:  I also enjoy the Internet and working on my own websites.  I’ve got four sites now, each with anywhere from about 20 up to over 100 pages.

I’m also bringing a couple of income-making (I hope) websites online right now:

One, British-Car-Parts, which will sell used and new British car parts, wood grained dash kits, retro & nostalgia items (from the 50’s & 60’s), and British apparel and paraphernalia – except for the used car parts, I will just place orders and the manufacturers will drop ship the products.

The other, Scale Model Diecast, features diecast scale model cars, pickups, trucks, buses, fire trucks, airplanes, and ships from the late 1800’s through now – I don’t make or ship the products; they’re supplied by other manufactures who will ship them directly, then pay me a commission in an arrangement know as being an “affiliate.”  Additionally, I’m signing up for Google AdSense which posts “upper right side” one-two-liner ads based on my keywords and then pays me a commission each time someone clicks through to the advertised website.  It’s a well-used method that can bring several hundred to several thousand dollars per month based on how “hot” one’s websites are and how many click-through hits it generates. 

None of the business-related activities are that important to me.  They’re really just something to do in areas that are reminiscent of my business days.  It’s kind of fun to keep old activities.  The last thing I want, however, is for them to become time-consuming and stressful.  I had enough of that between 1964 when I started my first business until 1991 when I retired.

iPhone:  Having recently bought an Apple iPhone, I’ve become, like many others, somewhat addicted to playing with the many apps available on it.  I’ve downloaded over 125 and find them fascinating.  Technology has certainly changed life!

Learning:  I guess one of the things I enjoy doing most of all is to continue my lifelong quest of and love for learning.  My kids grew up telling me I was one of the "world’s greatest repositories of useless information."  Nevertheless, I enjoy it.  I like researching just for the hell of it.  I get on a subject (i.e., archeology, U-2’s and SR-71’s, Classic Cars, history, etc.) and, must for the fun of it, keep going.  I’m doing a research study right now on America’s wars.  It turns out we’ve started more wars than virtually any country in all of history and have very seldom had a period of more than a few years when we weren’t at war… yet we continue to see ourselves as – and ARE, in fact – a peaceful people with a comparatively stable culture.  I like obscure information and will pursue a course of study regardless of its pragmatic usefulness.  I guess I spent enough time in business being practical for the rest of my life.

Writing:  Needless to say, I have always enjoyed writing.  During my early career with public school districts, I wrote many proposals that were funded in large amounts.  Mid-point in my career, I owned a magazine publishing company and was editor-in-chief; I was also editor of a monthly consulting report; and I wrote advertising copy for the Southwestern promoter of Tanya Tucker, Tom Jones, and Seals & Crofts, as well as writing copy for high-tech manufacturers and manufacturing repsl I had ads in Billboard Magazine.  During my later business career, I wrote a few books that were adopted as “bibles” for How To purposes in the software industry.  Since retiring, I have used my writing interests in building numerous websites and in staying in touch with old friends. 

Staying in Touch:  Staying in touch with old friends is very important to me.  I’ve attended most my high school reunions, including the 10^th, 15^th, 20^th, 25^th, 30^th, 35^th, and the 45^th one in 2007.  Several high school buddies and I keep in touch, having visited each other’s homes (we live in Tallahassee, Florida, near Detroit, Michigan, Honolulu, Hawaii, and Reno, Nevada!) - in 2009, we had a five-day reunion in San Diego, CA.  Another close friend lives in Waxahachie, Texas and we visit every two to three years; we exchange emails regularly, sometimes several times a day.  Various members of my family live in Alamogordo, New Mexico, Houston, Texas, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and near Grass Valley, California.

Good Health &  Well Wishes:  I hope this list inspires you to analyze what makes you feel healthy… and to DO it!  Best wishes,

Barry