Hello there. My name is Edwin Romero and this is the Out of Office Chat where I talk about life outside the office. And today I’d like to chat about a postponed family trip, a tearful book reading American Gangster, and readjusting my nighttime routine. Alright, so it’s been about a month since we chatted and that seems to be around the standard time it’s taken me to record these podcast episodes, so so bear with me.
Thank you for your patience and thank you for tuning in. I really appreciate it. So what’s been up with me? First, actually, let me just call out the fact that I adjusted my Blue Yeti mic volume so it might sound a little bit different. Hopefully it’s louder and hopefully it works with the software to compress properly.
So hopefully you get better quality. We shall see. But it’s been about a month. Like I mentioned, I don’t know if last time we chatted, I believe it was around, I think the 21st or something like that. I don’t know. In any case, it was towards the end of May, I think it was the second to last week of May.
Postponed Family Trip
We were supposed to go to Disney World. I don’t know if y’all recall that we’re supposed to go to Disney World the last Friday, the second to last Friday of May. But prior to the second to last Friday of May, what ended up happening is our little one did not feel good. He was very lethargic. He had a fever, he was very cranky. And we took him to the doctor. Let me just pull up some numbers here so I can have some reference points. Bear with me. So I believe it was I think like the 19th or something like that, or the 18th, his doctor, and they give him a really quick check.
They observed him, he had some irritation on his hands. And then the doctor or the nurse practitioner was like and then she’s like, let me see the back of his mouth. And she’s like, yes, okay. He has hand, foot and mouth disease, which, if you all do not know, hand, foot and mouth disease is essentially where you get a lot of bumps. I don’t know the scientific name for the disease, but it’s very common among children that go to daycare. And their little one does go to daycare. He had it on his hands.
We noticed it. I think my wife noticed it. The Tuesday leading up, tuesday or Wednesday leading up. And we didn’t think much of it. We thought it was the sun as it’s been getting nicer out, but the fever and the kind of not tantrums, but kind of him being in a foul mood really urged us to go to the doctor.
And my poor boy, we go and and we find out he is a hand, foot and mouth disease.
And. Not been feeling well. So granted, this was a Thursday. This was a Thursday. We’re supposed to go out Friday. We’re supposed to go out. And that Thursday was when we went to his doctor.
And with that, we weren’t sure what to do. We were still going to go, we were still going to head off onto this family trip. We thought we can kind of just like maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. And so we thought he was out, out of the worst of it.
He was coming out of it as per. Kind of like the nurse just told us he might be actually at the height. And we thought, why not? He might actually be pretty good. His spirits might be lifted through a weekend at Disney World. But that Thursday, into Friday, my little one, he had woken up in the middle of the night and he’s sleeping in our bed. And so he woke up, it must have been like 02:00 a.m. 03:00 a.m., and he was crying. And I kind of got up to console him and he was just crying.
And at that point we were like, we shouldn’t be going. He’s not good. And granted, it’s contagious. So we shouldn’t have been going anyway. We shouldn’t have been entertaining it, I will say that.
But that Friday, we spent the better part of that morning, early afternoon, just canceling everything,
Canceling the Disney, kind of calling up the airline, the hotel, and then talking to Disney World as well, trying to figure out whether or not we can get credit or refund on know, it was a little stressful, stress inducing. Just because on top of having to coordinate that, granted, our flights were like at noon, we had to fly out at noon or I think noon or one or something.
So we had to get up early and kind of cancel all those reservations.
And you know what? It was for the best. It was for the best. He wouldn’t have been happy.
In all honesty, I would not have been happy either because I ended up getting hand, foot and mouth disease later that weekend. Yeah, so if you’re watching this on YouTube,
I’m going to hold up my hand to the camera. You can see these little bumps like these little markings right there on my hand. It’s gotten way better. But you know what? I didn’t realize how much it hurt. And I felt so bad because my son was going through it and they were a pain.
So it’s all dried up now. So it’s not contagious. It’s not being contagious. A few weeks ago,
I was walking around the apartment with gloves on and everything and a mask just to be safe. I don’t know. My wife, I didn’t want to get her sick either.
She’s a school teacher and she’s just got on vacation as well. So that was a little bit of a rough start, I think. For her summer break. But you know what? I ended up getting it. But as soon as my son was coming off of it, he was off the worst of it.
I guess it started with me. I started getting a tickle in my throat that Saturday, and then I don’t know if you all ever had it, but it’s almost like a tingling sensation on my hands. It started tingling a little bit, and I was like, my wife. I was like, Baby, I got it. I know this is it. And she’s like, don’t put it in your head. It’s on my hands, though. It’s not in my head. It’s not in my head.
So, yeah, I ended up getting it. My hands. It sucks. It really sucks on my feet as well. It actually isn’t too bad on my feet. My hands hurt like crazy. Just kind of going like this, kind of squeezing your hands, flexing them. That hurt like crazy. My brother, who used to work with kids, a few years ago, he ended up getting it from one of the students at his daycare.
One of the kids from his daycare. And he’s a musician, so he had to go play a show while he had hand, foot, and mouth disease. I can only imagine how that was. You plowed through it. He’s a professional, folks. He’s a professional. He plowed through that.
So it stuck with me for about I want to say I had it maybe as far as I know, like five, six days is how much it bothered me. I don’t know how long I was contagious for, but it was for the best. We canceled the trip. It was for the best.
Everyone was actually very pretty darn accommodating, if I’m being honest. Expedia. We got a really good customer support representative. Two, actually. One for, I think, the hotel, and I think one for the airlines. The airline folks were really nice as well. We didn’t get a refund because we didn’t get travel insurance.
And you know what?
We were kicking ourselves in the head, and we were like, should we get it? Should we not? And sometimes
we’ve thought about before, and we’ve never gotten it. So this time around, we decided, you know what, why would we need it? And we didn’t. So now I really do think I’m going to get travel insurance going forward, especially. It makes sense with the little one. You really never know.
Everyone was pretty accommodating, thankfully, and the folks we talked to were pretty darn understanding.
So we got through that.
We’ll reschedule it.
Who knows, right? It could have been that the trip entirely would have tired both my son and myself out, that we may not have enjoyed it. So that’s why I call it a postponed family trip, because we really, really do want to go to Disney World. Our son is just getting into cars, and we want to have a good time.
We really do do. And we want to expose them to more Disney films, particularly Pixar Toy. Story we talked about Wally, so we’ll see.
It was unfortunate, but what can you have done? We’re here, we’re healthy, we’re good. So it’s called the postponed family trip. But you know what? That actually was a pretty cool segue
A Tearful Book Reading
Into the second part of this or the second item on the agenda, which was a tearful book reading. Now, I’m going to take a sip of my water here because I’m thirsty and I got to prepare myself. So while that was happening, I actually went to the library. And if you haven’t been to the library, I recommend it. Get yourself a book. It’s really cool, it’s free. And I wanted a really good book. I wanted one that would make me think.
And then I got this book called “A Heart that Works”. Now, if you’re watching me through YouTube, I’m going to hold up the camera. It’s this bad boy right here. So A Heart That Works, written by Rob Delaney, who is, I believe, a writer and maybe creator of a show called Catastrophe. I’ve never watched it, but you know what?
I forget his name. He was Bob or Bill from Deadpool Two. He was kind of like the average looking dude who was part of the superhero group.
That’s the only place I know him from. So the book basically starts know, I’m not even going to sugarcoat it. It’s a book written by Rob kind of cataloging the time period in his life where his two year old son, Henry, he had a cancer, he had a brain tumor. And it just chronicles kind of his ordeal, rob’s ordeal, his wife’s ordeal, and Henry’s ordeal. They’re family as they kind of navigate what it’s like to have a son with a brain tumor and ultimately pass away.
As you can imagine, the somber topic, it was too much. It was too much. I would read every night, and I would just be tearing up like, oh, my gosh, what am I reading right now?
And the pace of this book, it isn’t necessarily linear, meaning it’s not like Henry was born in 2000 something, or rather. And then it kind of chronicles, like, each month. It actually just deep dives into the entire ordeal. And it’s not meant to make light. I don’t even know.
Ordeal is a proper phrase, but it just kind of deep dives into what they all went through, and it was very, very tragic. They had recently moved from La Over. To London. And at that point during the move, not Henry. Rob, who’s the author and the actor, his wife was a few months pregnant with Henry, and at that point, they both already had two children. I believe they were at the time three and one.
So by the time Henry was born, they kind of, like, grew older and was born they must have been four and two or so. So they ended up having Henry’s first birthday and all the issues and ailments didn’t start happening until after his first birthday. Rob recounts that Henry started throwing up and profusely. Every time he ate something, he would just throw it back up. And at first they didn’t think too much of it.
They went to a doctor, and the doctor gave them medicine and they traveled to the States, and thankfully, nothing had happened at that point. But by the time they got back to the UK, henry kept throwing up. So a friend advised Rob to go see another doctor who’s much older, and so he may have seen much more diverse cases of, I guess, what they’ve been experiencing. And right off the bat, the doctor recommends that, hey, you know what?
Let’s get an MRI on his head. Rob and his wife just started going hysterical. They kept it together at the doctor’s office, and on the ride home, they ended up crying. And as you like, you are told that there’s a possibility that something might be wrong with your little one’s head. How can you not think the worst possible situation? The worst possible scenario? So they’re in the UK, which I guess they have free health insurance out there or the health system. It’s a little bit more I guess it’s better than the, you know so they were able to expedite a lot of what he was going through.
They were able to get Henry situated at a children’s hospital, I think the top tier children’s hospital in the UK, performed an MRI, and sure enough, the little one had a mass on the back of his head. And they announced that we’re going to have to go ahead and operate to remove you know, it happened so darn fast.
Rob recounts. I think it all happened in a span of a week where they not only had to remove the tumor, but prior to the tumor, henry’s situation was getting worse, where he was vomiting, and they speculated that the tumor was putting pressure on, I believe, the brain stem.
So they had to go in there and put in a stint and aren’t familiar with a stent. My mother has a stent for another reason, but. From what I understand, it’s like a tubing of sorts to kind of drain out what’s happening in the head through other parts of his body or something to that effect.
But essentially, Henry had to undergo an operation to put in a stent. And this is a few days prior to the actual big operation of actually removing the tumor. And Rob recounts, he’s like, after the first know, henry wasn’t the one year old. You already develop a know, and I understand this through my son.
And that’s another reason why I just couldn’t keep reading this. It was hitting far too close to home. Oh, my God,
I’m getting emotional just thinking about it. So you can imagine you’re reading this before bed. I had to stop, but I’ll keep explaining it just up until where I stopped. But what ended up happening is, after the operation, rob recounts that Henry was no longer the same in the fact that he was no longer in a healthy state, because after the first operation, he had to heal up going into the massive operation going, the tumor removal a few days after.
And even when they removed the tumor, he was in such weak condition that he would just start getting sick, and then they would have to do something to relieve his ailments, which left him more sick and left him susceptible to infection, this, that, or whatever. So it sounded like a pretty horrific detail or horrific ordeal.
And then ultimately, I’ll be honest, I think I got maybe a third of the way through or a third or a half of the way through before I really had to stop. I think it was just messing up my mood.
It’s pretty darn sad. I think, though, I was telling my wife about this book. The one beautiful part throughout the entire thing, at least from what I’ve read, was that unfortunately, I’ll begin the beautiful part with unfortunately, during the operation, what ended up happening was one of the nerves I don’t want to say severed, but one of the nerves got impacted during Henry’s operation where it left half his face numb. So if you’re watching the video, I imagine it’s like right here, this side right here wouldn’t be moved or couldn’t move anymore, but the other side was totally functional.
I say that because Rob actually recommends something for those that have sick children. If you ever have the opportunity to have I forget what they’re called service animals, therapy dogs. Visit your children. He implores that. Do it, do it. Because he recounts that when Henry ended up getting a visit by a therapy dog, he.
He knew that he was elated, that he was so happy because half his face was numb, but the other half just emitted such happiness that his smile was completely off the charts, completely know. And Rob recounts how beautiful that actually was to see his son that happy. To see a dog, to see a doggie.
I can’t tell you how the rest of that went because I think the chapter after that I had to stop. It was a little bit too much for me.
He and my son, henry and my son aren’t too different in age. And it was just a little too much. It was a good book, I’m not going to lie. It was a really easy read and I enjoyed it. And Rob is actually pretty I mean, he puts himself in a very vulnerable spot, which is very admirable. But just for my sanity, I just couldn’t do it. But if you’re interested in it, A Heart That Works, which was really great read, it was kind of sad.
Now I’m reading another book. It’s called Our Migrant Souls a Meditation on Race and the Meanings of Myths of Latino by Tubar. Oh, stepping back a little bit. Just a heart that works. Rob Delaney, just the author that wrote it, in case you’re interested, but Our Migrant Souls by Hector Tubar.
So far, so good. I’m enjoying it. I picked it up because
I think they’re going to talk about kind of like the philosophical aspect of being Latino, of being of Latino origin. I’m Ecuadorian. My wife is Mexican. So something like I think for the last couple of years, I’ve been embracing my culture. I’m trying to embrace it much more. I can leave my son with it as well, have my son embrace it as well.
I think it’s really important. So I’ve been going through that. So far. It’s been talking about kind of like the treatment of Latinos from various aspects, from their mass migration from South America, Latin America, as well as to kind of how they’ve woven themselves into various American cities.
So it’s pretty good. In some cases. It gets me a little bit riled up, but I’m just trying to enjoy it as much as I can. I’ll let you know. Hopefully the next time we talk in about a month, I’ll be done with it. But it’s not too bad after this.
“American Gangster”
We’ll see. So that is a tearful book reading, as well as a sneak peek to my other book here, American Gangster, the third item on our agenda.
As the last item, I’m going to take a sip here. All it’s good stuff, guys. It’s good stuff. I don’t know where you’re all at. But it’s gotten really warm here in Chicago. It’s actually beautiful out. So after I record this, I’m probably going to go ahead and maybe take a walk.
Maybe wait for my family to get home and we’ll go walk together. All right. So American Gangster a coming of age story. I’m just kidding. It’s not coming of age. Maybe it is. Depending on how you look at it. It’s a gangster film. So gangster film starring Denzel Washington.
Yes. The Mr. Denzel as well as what is his name? Rob Crow. Russell Crowe. Russell Crowe, the gladiatory guy.
After I watched What We did in the Shadows, which was a comedy, I wanted to watch something new. And I was browsing through Netflix and I saw American Gangster was actually being pulled from Netflix on June 30. So I was like, I got to get on that. I don’t want to wait until after the fact because I’ve been wanting to watch it for a while.
Folks, I don’t know if you know about this. Know this about me. I think you might actually. I love watching gangster films. I think it’s so cool. Not because I want to be a gangster, because I already am one. No, but I like it because it gives a different perspective on society. Something that’s not really talked about. And that’s the CD underbelly of society.
Like anything lawful. There’s strategy behind it. There’s a lot of thought about being a career criminal on what to do and how to be lucrative and how to be smart about this, that or whatever. So that’s why I really got into gangster films. And my favorite being I’d say goodfellas.
So American Gangster has been on my list to watch for some time now. And so I decided to watch it. I watched it over a span of a week or so. And I know some of you are thinking like, I’ll take a week. I think two weeks. So you may have been thinking like, why did it take so long?
And that segues into my fourth item. And I’ll talk about that in a moment. Just readjusting my nighttime routine. But it took so long because I kind of spread out. I didn’t want to feel pressured about watching it all in one sitting. I had other stuff to do. But as I watched it, I got to admit it was a good movie.
I really liked it. I thought it was not my favorite gangster movie. But I can see why folks really, really like it a lot. A different take on the gangster genre, particularly for African Americans. It was predominantly African American. Cast. Or I mean, it was a huge African American component.
Most of the gangster films I watched are Italian Americans. So like, um, this here, they, they have Denzel Washington, who is Frank Lucas. And he basically begins to his mentor and I forget his name. His mentor ended up passing away. So he kind of takes up the mantle of. Being, I guess, crime boss in Harlem. And one of the first things he tries to do is establish a direct connection with, I believe it’s Vietnam to go ahead and import poppy or what is it?
Heroin. Heroin. So it kind of chronicles that and then ultimately it pairs it with Russell Crowe’s storyline, who is kind of like an honest cop who’s trying to do right, or at least right in his eyes. And then it kind of weaves his tale between those two and ultimately that kind of struggles they have to go through, one being a career criminal, the other one being a detective of sorts.
And overall, I think they did a really phenomenal job after a while. Honestly, I don’t think both, given that Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe were technically costars two big names in a film, they didn’t appear on screen till probably 1520 minutes prior to the film’s conclusion. So a lot of it was like storybuilding and stuff.
They did a pretty good job. I really enjoyed it and I can he’s a pretty darn good actor. Russell Crowe, I think, is a good actor, but I’ve never really watched him, like all his films.
So in any case, you know what I like to do when I’m done watching movie? And I won’t spoil it for you folks, I mean, Frank Lucas is based on Frank Lucas, who is Denzel Washington’s character. He’s actually based on a real individual. So go ahead and look him up.
Granted, from what I’ve read, it’s a little bit sensationalized, but take a look. So what I ended up doing after I watched that film, and I love to do with films that I do like watching, is I read up. It’s Wiki. So I go on Wikipedia and look up kind of stuff I may know about it.
And you know what I didn’t know about it? American Gangster was produced by was it Scott? Ridley. Ridley Scott. What’s his name? Let me look it up. American gangster director. Let me just tell you right now, ridley Scott, mr. Ridley Scott. And you know, you know, that name, it popped out at me because this guy, Ridley Scott, he ended up making the Alien movies. You know, the the with the tummy and the popping know, if you haven’t seen it, it’s not bad.
It’s pretty cool. So I was pretty impressed with that, like how we can go from a franchise like Aliens to American Gangster. So I ended up deep diving. I went through a rabbit hole, y’all, honestly, I went through a rabbit hole to figure to understand kind of the production behind American Gangster.
And apparently it was one of those films that it was canceled at first by the studio. And I forget what the studio is. It was canceled. It the movie studio because it was becoming more expensive. Then it was revived. A year or two later, it had, like, three directors attached to it.
A couple of them quit. And then Mr. Scott, Mr. Ridley, he came on board as a director and I think maybe writer as well. So he kind of took it straight through know, he took it through to the final filming of the film or the final filming of the film, to filming it.
And after reading up about it, it sounded pretty impressive. It sounded like they all wanted to really keep it in. The movie is based in the 70s, so what ended up happening was they were scoured for Harlem, for areas that were kind of untouched by modern developers.
It was hard because in the early 2000s, gentrification, I believe, started happening in Harlem. So they really had to dig in deep to find areas that didn’t look like it was modernized. And it even has, I think, award for the most scenes or most onset locations for any film.
I think it was up at 180, maybe 170. But you think about it, right? My apartment is a setting, no? And then outside my front yard is a setting right? Now. Think about that 180 times. That’s freaking nuts.
So you can imagine looking for areas and then ultimately 180 set locations. It was definitely going to push the budget. And what I heard, though, I think the time it got canceled, they spent about, I want to say $30 million at that point. And you know what’s wild is 20,000,020 to 25 million went to Denzel Washington as well as what’s his name, benicio del Toro, who is another actor who’s supposed to play Russell Crowe’s character.
$5 million? That dude got $5 million. They didn’t film. They were casted on board, and I guess in their contract said that if it got canceled, they were still going to get, like, a little chunk of change. It’s not bad at all.
But they revived it and they finished it, and it was a success. From what I’ve read, it had pretty high, know, positive accolades. Did it win awards? I don’t even know. And I dug into the little characters and whatnot. Frank Lucas was an actually individual who had served time, and I won’t ruin it for you, but he did not serve his entire time. So take a look at the movie. It’s pretty darn cool. It leaves Netflix June 30. What did I think overall? It was a good watch. It was a good watch. I really enjoyed it.
So that’s American gangster. That’s what I’ve been up to in the last month. Just finishing that movie up.
Re-Adjusting My Night Time Routine
Now, the last bit, why it took me a week and a half, I think, two weeks to finish American Gangster is readjusting my nighttime routine, folks. So one of the things I’m just trying. To get a handle on if you’ve been listening to this episode or this podcast or even following me through LinkedIn.
I’m just trying to make sure that mentally I’m in the right space. And I felt like, you know what, I need discipline. I need discipline. So I try to readjust my well, I started listening to an audiobook around discipline, if I’m being honest, and that helped a lot in terms of trying to figure out what ways I can get disciplined.
But you may be asking, why may I be disciplined? Why should I be disciplined? Because I want to be a little bit more productive in my roles.
That includes being my own SEO or having my own SEO practice, helping our family business, but also being a father, being a family man, being a husband, all of that. Those are the various roles that I take on. And I want to be as productive, in good standing, in a good state for all of them.
And I think in order to do that, you balance and you juggle. It all requires discipline. So I was like, I need a little bit more discipline in my life. Not to say I was undisciplined, not to say that I kind of let work slide, but
I felt like I could always be a little bit better. So one of the areas I felt I couldn’t be a little bit more disciplined is my nighttime routine. And that meant getting to bed really early. Not super early, but early enough to get the day started really nice the next morning.
So I’m talking about being lights out in bed, close my eyes by ten. Now, I’m not going to be angry at myself if it goes over a little bit, but at the very least I want to be in bed by 10:00. And actually it’s working out pretty well. So last week was a really good example, I think the first time I tried it, I’m trying to be in bed at least by 10:00, if not sooner, definitely sooner, and read. And I just want to make sure I’m finishing books and enjoying them, getting my mind ready for the next morning.
And you know what? It’s funny, going back to the audiobook I’m reading, I forget what it’s called. Let me pull it up. I’m enjoying it, like, halfway through, actually. Let me see what’s called
no excuses. The power of self discipline. No Excuses by Brian Tracy. So far, so good. I’m enjoying it. I really do want to make sure that I cut off things that I really don’t need to
know. One of the things is like, TV, which is one of the reasons why it took so long to finish american Kings try to finish it this weekend, is because I cut out TV last week in the evenings, and it helped a ton. What that ended up doing for me is allowed me to get up around 536 every morning kind of get a head start on the day.
Not necessarily rest out and jump right into work, but mostly kind of get the mindset. It to tackle the day. And that includes kind of writing your priority list. And if you’re again looking at my YouTube video, this is it right here. I’ve been writing it all down in here.
Also being not funny, but being thankful, showing gratitude for everything that is in my life. I’m healthy. My wife and my son were know, we have a roof overhead, so stuff like that. Having that kind of positive mindset going into the evening and then revisiting it in the morning, and then doing stretches to tackle those pain points, those sore spots. Because I firmly do believe that if you’re stressed out, then I feel like the physical manifestation of that is having tense muscles.
So stretching out and trying to ID where those stress points are, and stretching them out. Stretching them out. So that’s been going pretty darn well. Just kind of trying to readjust my nighttime routine. Hopefully the summer I get and get it in a really good spot. So that carries me through the rest of the year trying to think what else I do.
That’s it. We’ll see how it goes. Hopefully I can continue it. It’s going pretty well. Thankfully it’s going pretty well. But yeah, I’m going to keep at it like anything else.
Well, folks, thank you for tuning in. I really do appreciate it. At the rate I’m going, we’re probably not going to chat till next month, and that’s okay. And hopefully I have cool, new and exciting stuff coming up. As far as my professional life that I’m kind of pretty excited about is trying to kick off projects that impact or make sure that my brand is doing pretty well, get situated in our family business further, understand the business further.
Oh, and you know what? I’m going to San Diego in the fall, which should be pretty exciting. It’s going to be my one, two, three fourth conference. My fourth conference of the year. You believe that? That’s freaking nuts. Yeah, I had a conference a few weeks ago. The salesforce connection.
Conference connections. Conference? It was awesome. It was great. I got to meet folks that I worked with in the past, a client of mine. It was much needed.
I’m an independent consultant, so that means me working from home. Here you can see home, which is great. Don’t get me wrong, it’s awesome, but I do miss that FaceTime. So it was great to see former coworkers and folks in my network. But in the fall, I’m actually going to
Brighton SEO out in San Diego. That is the first of its conference, the first US conference for Brighton SEO. And I’m so psyched, I really am. And I haven’t been to San Diego in years, so it should be fun. Kind of revisiting it, but yeah, I mean, that’s kind of what it’s been up to.
I think hopefully in the next hopefully I’m. Talking to somebody this week about a contract position, and hopefully I get additional support, and, yeah, it’s going to be good.
It’s going to be a good summer. In any case, thank you for listening. Really appreciate it. Feel free to reach out, and if anything, we’ll chat on the next one in about a month or so. All right. One. Take care.
