So something new and wonderful happened prior to Christmas dinner in Nebraska. With the arrival of Eli this year, our little nuclear family – Steph, Eli and myself – have been upgraded. Growing up, as Grandpa and Grandma determined appropriate seating assignments for Christmas dinner, I was rolled into the collective bunch of “the kids”. As in, “let’s have the kids sit down here at this table”, and all five grandkids would crowd around a square little table set off to the side of the big dining room table. You think this post is about big table versus little table don’t you? It’s not.

Then when I got married I graduated from “the kids” to Matt & Steph. We were our own unit now. Not quite adult yet, but slightly separate from “the kids”; not better than “the kids”, and really still one of them, but somehow worthy of a different title. But now, with the arrival of a child, we have been upgraded with the official stamp of adulthood.

On my mom’s side of the family, the bloodline relative and their collective kin are referred to in the possessive plural. For instance, my mom, dad and their children are “Linda’s”. When asking when my uncle Dennis, his wife, and their children are going to arrive, you would inquire, “When will Dennis’s be here?”

And now we too, under executive order of Grandma Zimmerman herself, are now henceforth no longer “Matt & Steph”, but officially and irrevocably, “Matt’s”. I would like to take this moment to welcome myself to my family.

Since January I haven’t taken photos of hardly anything except a baby’s face, so it was nice spending some time capturing some other scenes yesterday. I was particularly fond of how this one turned out.

Thanks to Mark for the link. If you can’t see the video you can watch it here.

No, I did not run it.

But I had two rockin’ friends that DID run it and ran it in style. Congrats to Josh and Dave (first marathon props!!) for taking on the hills of Music City! And to everyone else who braved the pavement, you’re awesome.

Me? I worked the water table. Steph, Jess, Kristen and a handful of others from Grace Community manned the Servpro Hydration Station at mile 3. Mile 3 is far enough in to a marathon where people are starting to get thirsty, but not so far in that those who ultimately don’t make it have given up yet. Plus it’s also close enough to the start line that people are still pretty well grouped together and come at you en masse – 35,000 people en masse. Basically this means in the course of a 30 minute period you witness the entire range of human emotions, from energized enthusiasm to homicidal desperation.

It was our job to serve all these people – both the enthused and the desperate – water and Cytomax, a drink commonly known amongst seasoned runners as foul-tasting rip-off Gatorade. This was a difficult job.

Things started off with a bang. The Kenyans blew by us, sprinting through the water station hardly batting an eye. The rest of the leaders followed closely behind, and we got into the rhythm of grabbing handfuls of Cytomax cups from our beautifully stacked hydration table. Let’s pause a moment and recognize the architectural wonder that was our hydration table. They said it couldn’t be done, but we successfully stacked tiny cups of Cytomax four levels high on a folding table, giving us about 750 pre-filled cups at the start of the race. Pretty sure everyone else topped out at three levels.

Things started to get interesting about 20 minutes in when it was clear our slow pace at resupplying the table was drastically under-performing our ability to quickly give out Cytomax cups. As we cleared the last layer of pre-filled cups we decided to cut our losses and redirect energy towards re-filling.

As a side note, runners of Nashville, I’m not sure if you knew this or not, but Cytomax is created by mixing measured portions of Cytomax powder in giant coolers of water. The water is sourced via garden hose from nearby fire hydrants. The resulting Cytomax solution is dumped into a 45 gallon garbage barrel lined with two heavy-duty black garbage bags and secured with a hefty portion of duct tape. I cannot comment as to whether this is a sterile process or not.

At 40 minutes into the race we were at a complete loss. A long-lost lecture in macroeconomics came to mind, recalling that some professor somewhere told us that supply equals demand. Except this was false, as our supply had reached zero and demand had skyrocketed through the roof. I’m sure the professor had addressed this situation as well, but it was simply impossible to keep up.

The efforts of our team changed dramatically at that point. At the beginning of the race we had three people giving out Cytomax and one person refilling. A little later we switched to two people refilling and two handing out cups. But now we had three people refilling and one person frantically waving their arms in front of our table yelling, “We’re empty! We’re empty! Keep going up! Keep going up!”

“Keep going up” is the last thing a homicidal desperate person wants to hear after they’ve run a mile uphill and can see that the incline only continues in front of them for the foreseeable future.

We all took turns at delivering the depressing news to the runners, but Steph’s performance was the most interesting. It went something like this:

“We’re empty! We’re empty! Keep going up!”

The runners keep coming at her.

“We don’t have anything! We’re completely out! Keep moving!

They keep coming. At this point she tries to have a logical discussion.

“I PROMISE they have more up ahead of you!! Don’t stop. Our cups are empty!”

They keep coming.

“DON’T TOUCH THE TABLE!!!!!! THERE’S NOTHING IN THERE STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT!!!!!”

We call this an exercise in futility. This continued for about an hour and a half. She may have been hitting runners, I’m not sure.

And they never did listen. They would grab empty cups off our table and then give us a scowling, disgusted look as they threw the cup at the curb. We had considered shouting demeaning insults at them. Things like, “Well if you had run a little faster you wouldn’t be in this predicament would you?” Or, “Maybe you should have thought about the fact you were thirsty before you took off sprinting down the street!”  But let’s face it, they were the ones actually out there running the race, and that’s something in itself.

At one point a wide-eyed middle-aged lady came up to us speaking in a panicked British accent, “Can you tell me where the bathrooms are?” And I think Steph responded, “They’re just up the hill a little bit, about half a block more.” And she said, “I can’t wait that long.” And Steph said, “You’re almost there – it’s literally just a few feet more.” And she said, “I can’t do it. I have already got the poop in my pants.” And, well, the conversation went downhill from there. What do you do with that? I’m sorry ma’am but all we’ve got here are empty cups and a fire hydrant. We can hose you down if you want.

Thankfully, the crazed and peculiar encounters were the minority. We had a blast, and all in all successfully served at least 80 gallons of Cytomax and water to runners on Saturday. And most everyone was very grateful for the volunteers and it was a lot of fun cheering everyone along. So, with the exception of the few of you that scowled and threw empty cups in our faces, congrats to everyone who ran the race!

It’s bittersweet. I came to Nashville to work in music, and I had a great time. I learned a lot, got to work with some fantastic people, met some cool artists, went to some awesome shows, was part of the birth of the digital music industry, and traveled to some of my favorite cities.

But life changes, and priorities do with it.

For the last several years I’ve had the opportunity to be on the front lines of an online startup my good friend Brian founded with his brother, Mark. As the company has grown, so has my role with them, and we’re at a point now where I am finally able to join the team full time.

What does this mean? Well, I get to work from home, for one – amazing, especially considering Eli is just two months old now! It also means I’ll be handling marketing for the company, helping us grow our brand and find new clients. It also means I have a ton of work to do. It also means I need to learn a thing or two about marketing.

Last week was a nice ending to my music days. Went out to eat with my friends and then they gave me a guitar signed by everyone in the company. Pretty awesome, and I’m glad to know I have friends that will last beyond the 9-5 framework of corporate life.

So, here’s to new beginnings and to hoping we don’t see a repeat of the 90′s dot-com bubble bust.

To the man in the black leather jacket on Sidco Dr. who was standing up in the door of your Cadiallac CTS, with your right foot on the accelerator spinning your tires and using your left foot to push your car up a hill while talking on the cell phone: this was not smart. You could have died. Please don’t do things like that. You might have slipped under your car and it could have rolled over your leg. I was in no position to catch you.

To the young girl in the green BMW 3-Series stuck in the middle of an intersection at Thompson Lane on a 45-degree incline. Please don’t take your parent’s car out in the middle of an ice storm. You had no idea what you were doing and you made life miserable for hundreds of commuters. Also, you should not have coaxed all your guy friends to try and push you up a hill while you took to wearing your $400 tires down to the wire mesh. Put the car in park, walk over to Wendy’s and grab a chocolate frosty, and wait out the storm so the rest of us can get home.

Nashville. In the middle of a snow storm, don’t call Domino’s and order pizza for your family. You can make it through one evening cooking for yourself. The poor delivery boy that face planted his car in a ditch on Blackman Road was your fault. He shouldn’t have been out in that stuff.  And good grief, Domino’s? Really? Anyone in their right mind knows Papa John’s is the better pie. I hope when you got your pizza it had road salt on it.

Thank you for your time.

• The dramatic story of Eli’s birth
• A selection of cute pictures documenting his first week
• And a video highlighting his ability to squirm like a fish out of water

And that is all. Happy day to you.

But it reminded me of the fact that I actually applied for a job at this particular Outback my first couple months out of college. I was desperate and in dire need of money. And since they say everyone in the music industry gets their start working at a restaurant, I figured why not give it a shot? So I filled out my application (man it was spectacular) and I went in for my meeting with the manager.

He glanced at my app and we made pleasant conversation for about 37 seconds, after which he told me  that I – a double-major, recent graduate with honors from business school – was unqualified for a position at Outback Steakhouse.

…. sigh…

It’s alright. I’d rather eat their steak than serve their steak.

To be honest, most of my year was consumed with albums #1 and #2, and both came out at the beginning of the year. We saw Mumford & Sons twice which was incredible. And the Jónsi show has to be seen to be believed. Sadly (but not that sadly because they’re great) whenever I was needing something to listen to I defaulted to these two nine times out of ten.

That being said, I’m not the one to ask on 2010 music, so don’t even bother looking at this.

1. Mumford & Sons – Sigh No More
2. Jónsi – Go
3. Brandon Flowers – Flamingo
4. Beach House – Teen Dream
5. She & Him – Volume 2
6. Two Door Cinema Club – Tourist History
7. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
8. Vampire Weekend – Contra
9. Gungor – Beautiful Things
10. and of course Jónsi – Go Live

jónsi: Concert Timelapse at The Wiltern Theatre from Henry Jun Wah Lee on Vimeo.
Timelapse film of jónsi’s concert at The Wiltern in Los Angeles on Oct. 17, 2010.
Music: Sinking Friendships by Jónsi. Recorded live at The Wiltern.