I am not one to suggest that the strain and stress of business forges a man’s character like molten steel. But it’s nice to come out on the other side.

The past three weeks have seen my son break his thumb, my father hospitalized for a week (after I caught him as he almost fainted), my mother spend the week at our house (I was going to faint), and an utterly exhausting workload. Late Wednesday night I got home from a four-day trip to Denver and Detroit (I travel to cities alphabetically) and came home to the other side of it all.

My father was out of the hospital. My mother was out of our house. My daughter showed me photos from the senior prom (she’s a sophomore and looked stunning). My daughter also showed me some beautiful photos she took — she’s interested in my hobby, photography. My youngest son heard that more college lacrosse coaches are keeping an eye on him (by rules, he can’t be recruited until next year). My oldest son, who is graduating from college this year, shared with me really solid thinking about his future. And clients reported back to me that they were thrilled with our delivery on some important projects.

Nothing molten about me — though I keep telling my wife I am hot. Just happy to be where I’m at.

This week’s recommended reading from your friends at Blogenberg…

• Five years ago last Friday, the first YouTube video was uploaded.
• Christoper Beam wonders how historians will use the Twitter archives being built at the Library of Congress.
• Barbara French had a good discussion with Katie Payne about measuring social media’s return on investment.
• AdAge takes a look at the growth in use of outsourced, freelance journalism.
• Business Insider provides some ways of figuring out why you’re social media campaign is sucking.
• Rob Walker ponders the reasons for cassette nostalgia.

I realize that, from a business perspective, I’ve been knee deep in muck for several weeks. I’m getting out of it.

I have never separated business and personal life into two distinct boxes. It’s why, over the past several years, I’ve turned down some big jobs because I refused to miss too much of my children growing up. But sometimes, and before you know it, the stresses of family life and the stresses of business life mix together and form a muck that you can get stuck in. The demands of family — sometimes reasonable, sometimes not — and the demands of clients — sometimes reasonable, sometimes not — converge and you become knee deep in muck.

And when you are knee deep in muck it’s hard to move forward, hard to do the big things that need to be done to build a business. I’m done with muck.

It’s easy to get angry. It’s easy to get frustrated. But that’s easy. I’m not wasting energy on that. I’m out of the muck and I’m moving forward. Aggressively.

This week’s recommended reading from your friends at Blogenberg…

• NPR reported this week on the eBay founder’s new venture: reshaping Hawaii’s news industry.
• The Birmingham News refused to print a column that discussed the impact of buyouts and downsizing was having on its reporting.
• BNet Intercom discusses the five essentials of effective leadership.
• Ever wonder what typeface to choose when trying to make a good impression? This student offers a simple flowchart to solve that problem.
• Remember that Blendtec guy? He’s back and he’s blending up his iPad!
• The Boston Globe posted some unbelievable pictures of the Iceland volcano eruption.

This week’s recommended reading from your friends at Blogenberg…

• This week, Twitter launched a best practices blog for media interested in building a presence on the update site.
• Dutch design studio, Studio Smack, produced this video to demonstrate how the shear volume of commercial, visual information we take in each day may make branding and advertising ineffective.
• The Johnny Cash project allows fans to create their own versions - or add their own flair - to a music video for Cash’s song, “Ain’t No Grave.”
• At Harvard Business Review, Umair Hague observes how the increasing connectivity offered by new technology allows companies to understand and reap the rewards of socially-beneficial business practicies.
• BusinessWeek reports on one of the new socially-conscious business forms, the “B-Corp.” and a new Maryland law about it.
• The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on how consumers are more likely to trust men with beards who endorse products.

My 16-year-old daughter, a sophomore in high school, is going to the senior prom. Her mom took her prom dress shopping (while I was at the ER with her twin brother — see below). As I’ve mentioned before, my daughter is model-beautiful. The dress she brought home is “holy cow.” Let’s just say there won’t be a boy at that senior prom who doesn’t take at least a minute to stare.

My wife said okay to the dress because we trust our daughter. She’s independent, a leader and not a follower. She doesn’t need a boy to validate her sense of self.

The dress is something. The girl wearing it is more than something. When she heads off to the prom, I’ll be proud not worried.

(Plus I sewed a GPS-device into the hem.)

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Sorry, Blogenberg legion, for missing posting yesterday. My 16-year-old son fractured his thumb in a lacrosse game and I was doing the doctor thing with him yesterday. Star lacrosse goalie plus fractured thumb, not good. Add real good orthopedist, a good hard cast, and a glove re-sized to fit — we’ll see, he might be back out there playing.

So let me get this straight: the head of Augusta National, a golf club that won’t accept women as members, that for ever and ever, would not accept black members, is now lecturing Tiger Woods about his behavior.

So let me get this straight, thanks to old-Southern-white-guy Billy Payne, chairman at Augusta, we are able to reflect back to the days when white men denigrated black men for supposedly out-of-control sexuality.

I’m glad the Masters golf tournament is keeping tradition alive.
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I’m finding it fun to call business establishments that do something well and tell them I appreciate them doing something well. Invariably, whoever answers the phone doesn’t know what to do with a compliment — they are too used to only hearing from customers who have complaints.

This week’s recommended reading from your friends at Blogenberg…

• Nissan’s brand language embraces the weird.
• Jeff Jarvis asks whether there is such thing as an influencer.
• PR Newswire’s survey shows that 52 percent of bloggers view themselves as journalists.
• The BNET podcast discusses the types of external rewards that really motivate employees.
• What can Jack Donaghy teach us about business innovation and complacency?

Andy Pollin is a sports talk radio guy here in Washington, DC. On his show yesterday they were talking about McDonald’s All-Americans — high school basketball. Pollin said that a couple years ago he walked into the room where his son was watching the game on TV. Pollin noted that there was white guy on the court. His son simply said, “Duke.”

There’s a joke going around in certain circles as Duke heads to the final four in men’s college basketball: “The state’s attorney in North Carolina has opened an investigation into Duke basketball. Seems that coach Mike Krzyzewski actually put two black guys on the court at the same time.”

And this one: “The national weather service thought they had detected a sudden hurricane in North Carolina this past Sunday. Turns out it was just every resident of the state gasping when they saw that Coach K had put two black guys on the court at the same time.”

The story has it that, a few years ago at a basketball camp here in Washington, DC, a local high school player asked Coach K the media darling why he doesn’t recruit “urban kids.” What I was told by somebody who witnessed the encounter is that Krzyewski gave a mealy-mouthed non-answer.

Mike Greenberg, a national radio figure at ESPN, was kind of talking about this Monday, except he used code. He commented that Baylor, the team Duke played on Sunday, looked so much “more athletic.”

Andy Pollin appears to be the only honest guy on sports talk radio.