The holidays have a way of turning an ordinary household budget into an expensive exercise in improvisation. Gifts, travel, entertaining and year-end bills arrive together, often before the last credit card statement has cleared. This year, the pressure comes with a revealing contradiction: Americans intend to spend more, even as many remain uneasy about what everyday life costs.
A slick kitchen floor from cooking splatter or spills, a dog startled by visiting children, a loose step that everyone in the family knows to avoid. At Thanksgiving, familiar household flaws can become serious hazards for people who have never set foot in the home. If someone gets hurt, the legal question is rarely as simple as who owns the property.
The scale of seasonal risk is substantial. In a November 2025 advisory, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reported an average of 1,400 cooking fires on Thanksgiving Day, more than three times the daily average. That number describes fires, not lawsuits, but it shows how quickly a busy holiday kitchen can turn dangerous.
The economic stakes of America’s data center backlash are no longer theoretical. An October 2026 analysis by Heatmap Pro estimated that at least $260 billion in planned data center investment was canceled in 2026 after sustained local opposition. The research also found roughly $1 trillion in proposed investment facing some form of sustained or meaningful local opposition, with about $130 billion of the cancellations coming in the third quarter alone. Heatmap built the figures from a continuing survey of public officials, regulatory filings and local media, and says they are likely an undercount because only about 60% of projects disclose their planned investment.
As I begin this blog post with a bourbon on the rocks beside me, I notice it has been four months since my last entry. That feels surprising because I am recently retired and one would expect I have more time to write my stories. Yet time does not expand in a day, whether we work, raise a family, or leave the daily job behind. Retirement does not grant extra hours; it offers a chance to reorder what matters within the time available.
Every business owner eventually leaves the company they built. It might happen through a sale, a transition to family, an acquisition or retirement. Most owners spend years growing the business but only a few weeks thinking about how they’ll leave it.
Exit planning is integral in shaping how a business is run and financed for years before an owner decides to sell. The earlier it starts, the more control an owner can keep over terms and timing. A handful of signals tend to appear in the business or market before the right moment arrives.
For Mother's Day weekend, my wife Karen wanted to go camping for the first time with our new Jayco travel trailer. We had purchased a new 2025 Jay Flight SLX 175FQ at an end-of-season sale, but it didn't leave the lot until this spring. Given this was a new, untested camper where anything can go wrong, we decided to stick close to Sioux Falls and reserved camping spots at Palisades State Park.
Yesterday, I wrote in my personal blog that I voluntarily retired from the National Weather Service, departing with full benefits including a pension and my retirement investments. After spending a decade as a meteorologist and more than two decades as their information technology officer, I had done all that I had set out to do in my career as a federal employee. It was simply time for me to move on and accept new challenges.
Internal promotions represent a critical inflection point for organizations. When handled well, they fuel growth and retention. However, mishandled advancements often lead to favoritism, resentment and dysfunction. For information technology (IT) leaders navigating rapid technological change, the stakes are particularly high, as promoting from the inside can validate talent or fracture team dynamics.
Ethical promotion processes begin long before a position opens. Organizations must establish transparent systems that remove subjective decision-making and create equitable pathways for growth.
