The insanity continues

Since the last update...
1) I had a long week in Tacoma. I had meetings on Tues AM and Wed PM, which meant I had to fly in Monday and out Thursday, so it was a little longer than I was hoping for. On the plus side, I had a massive brainstorm and was able to completely design a full solution on Monday night, after many moons of not really seeing a way to solve their problems. As I had meetings throughout Tuesday, my vision refined, and my presentation on Wed PM was a real firecracker.

The only problem is that most of the people who needed to see the solution blew off the meeting, which led my sponsor to grim pronouncements of "we'll just have to see"... Now that I've laid their strategy out, it's up to them to act. And if they do act, we need to find someone other than me to DO it, because I can't do that job along with my "real" one. Also, I don't want to do these three night trips - it's very hard on the family.

So perhaps closure on Tacoma, perhaps not. I also got to see Paul in Kirkland, where we again enjoyed very good sushi at Izumi, and I got to catch up with an old colleague who is now at my client site, learning all about everyone we both worked with. Good networking, in a part of Tacoma I hadn't yet seen!

Another positive: I have the feeling that the solution I came up with might just be a very unique concept and could be a very very marketable idea. I am going to spend some time on the next level of design....

2) This weekend was our 9th annual posthumous birthday for Grandma R: She would have been 97 this month. As always, our cousins from Madison (Fort Atkinson really) drove up with their three sons (Seeger - 7, Liam - 5, and Julian - 3). So the house was full of laughter and kids playing pretty much from morning to night - all 5 got along wonderfully. We had the extended family over for a long brunch that started with donuts and finished with chili... and then the grownups took off to the Lexington in St Paul for the traditional dinner.

Last year, my reputation as a scotch snob was known, and the two other scotch drinkers/toleraters took my lead and ordered Taliskers, which were a little to peppery for their tastes. So this year I scoped the shelf and came up with recommendations for them should they ask, while ordering myself a Lagavulin. Well those sneaks went ahead and ordered "What he's having", and again, they were a bit disappointed (their tastes are a bit more... mainstream).

My uncle Bill just looked despondent and admitted he's rather have his regular Dewars. I took his dram from him, to let him get his own. Only problem - he had ordered ICE: So for the first and last time EVER, I enjoyed a Lagavulin 16 on the Rocks.

The kids are traditionally looked after by 2-3 young women, but our babysitting gaggle fell through entirely. So we had a neighbor mom take on all 6 kids (adding in Tiffany and Scott's kid Trent) for a reasonable fee and a bottle of wine, and she did a great job. When we got home, we got a full report on each kid for the whole evening. I think the job is hers next year if she wants it.

3) Today was the traditional light brunch post-Lexington gathering at cousin Heather's house, and this year we added in a surprise baby shower for my dear sister Carrie, who is expecting a little dude in May. Like me, Carrie has a short torso and skinny hips, so even at less than 6 months, she's protruding like she's about to DROP, so it was great fun. Of course, as a "surprise shower", we hadn't told her, nor her fiancee Scott, so Scott was taking the opportunity to sleep in a bit and read the paper, believing his family obligations to be done. HA! We had to call him and get him to drive in....

As always, after 3 days of intense play, the kids were getting a bit frayed around the edges and there was a lot of crying, which I'm sure was quite comforting to the mother and father to be at their shower... ;->

Once we got home, Isaac passed out for a good long nap, Bella vegged out with cartoons (she needed some down time), Pamela fell asleep, and I conquered the Sudoku and NYT Crossword. And I had coffee with my local Paul (whose wedding I performed last year) to talk through work and the world at large... I love having him as a sounding board, and we both felt good about life.

4) One thing I'm working through: When I re-joined up with my company last year, they had been acquired but not assimilated. Well, 15 months into the process, we're firmly into the digestive tract, and a lot of big changes are happening that are causing me to reflect on whether this is the job for me... and it's not just the travel. The management structure seems to be moving a lot more to a "rear view mirror" method of managing, looking backward at performance and ignoring opportunities in the near term. As a person who sells consulting services, I think it's important to keep resources available on the bench and hire prospectively, but the new philosophy is keep the bench lean and hire only to open gigs...

So things are definitely changing. And my days at the sales conference in Dallas didn't do much to really jazz me up for the company either. So I'm keeping my options open. I swore I'd give this at least a year, and I'm at that anniversary. I'm not giving up yet, but I'm officially keeping my eyes open, assessing whether this is the right thing or not.

I've enjoyed my travels, to be sure, but missed my family terribly during those trips. It's not even as though I get "caught up on sleep" while I'm away, since both Isaac and Bella do sleep through then night now. The travels also make it tough for me to teach as many fitness classes as I might like to... and sometime in the past 6 months I've really fallen FAR off of my language lessons, so I need to really refocus my efforts.

Yes, we'll be keeping our eyes and ears open. As we always do.

And that's what I've been up to in the past week. Tomorrow I'm off to a short east coast jaunt: NYC Mon-Tues and Boston Tues-Wed. Plus I should hear about some new opportunities in San Fran, and London too... Cheerio!!!!