Monthly Archives: June 2012

Vacation, Day One

The vacation has officially begun. We made it from Syracuse to Buffalo, picked up my brother-in-law and family at the airport, and crossed into beautiful Canada. After about 4 hours of play in Great Wolf Lodge’s water park everyone is thoroughly exhausted.

My boys- all 3 of them- are rip roaring and ready to go. How is it that everytime I think, “This will really wear them out!” they end up tucking me into bed. Youth, despite the cliche, is not wasted on the young. It is my experience that they use every bit of it…

Assuming I survive the night, look for my next dispatch tomorrow. Good night, sleep tight. That’s for me. I’ll be asleep before 9!

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The Uncle They Call “Uncle”

My boys are really lucky. I’ve written before about how lucky they are that my father lives with us. Their lives are also richer because of their wonderful uncles and aunts.

Based on marital status, they’ve got 4 uncles (my three brothers and my wife’s brother) and one aunt (my brother Matt’s wife). But- if you use the criteria of people with substantial connections to those uncles you also add in my brother-in-law’s longtime girlfriend and the partners of my two other brothers. The expanded definition is more apt because I don’t think marital status defines family. All in, uncles and aunts, I count 8. And they are all wonderful people.

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To the Graduating Class of Fowler High School…

My brother Chris and I were very honored to deliver a commencement speech to Fowler High School’s graduating class this morning. (Check out these posts about it- here and here.) As I’ve been writing about the event here, I thought it would be nice to share our speech. Unlike everything else I’ve posted to my blog, this work is not my solely my creation. This was written by my brother and me. As you read this, you should remember that both Chris and I are very funny. Really.  😉

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A Little Planning

Alright- vacation!

Today was my last day of work before a week of vacation. We’re going to a water park resort next week and I’m thinking about my 30 Days of Write challenge. I traveled for work last week and found that it was harder than I thought to produce any writing from the road. When I think about throwing my responsibilities as husband and father into the mix while we’re on vacation next week I’m a little concerned.

One of the main frustrations last week was my lack of a PC for writing. I swapped my laptop for a Nook Tablet earlier in the year as I still use a desktop PC most of the time and the laptop was just not something I needed. I actually posted some of the pieces from the Nook Tablet using WordPress’s app but the writing process wasn’t the same. It felt clunky. The app seems to be more suited to posting pictures, video, or short pieces of writing. For this coming week, I see myself going analog- I’ll grab a notebook and sit with my cup of coffee in the morning while writing longhand. I can always enter and upload the finished piece later using the Nook.

Tomorrow’s the big day- my brother Chris is in town and we’re speaking at our high school’s commencement ceremony. Our speech is written, reviewed, and edited. Nothing left but to deliver it!

That’s all for tonight- I hope to post our speech tomorrow.

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The Invisible Man Never Led Anyone…

So if you caught any of my stuff last week (like this) then you know that I was traveling for work. I’ve been on the road plenty so far this year and expect to keep traveling throughout the rest of the year. Last week, I was in one of the larger organization’s field offices visiting a small team within my group. We have recently changed some of the reporting relationships in my group and so this team now reports in to me. I’ve been a part of this group for about a year and have not been to this office in this role so, based on the new reporting structure, it was the perfect time to visit them.

Out there for most of the week, I had a lot of time to think about a favorite topic of mine. As these thoughts have now been brewing for about a week, I’m ready to put them down on (virtual) paper. So our topic for this evening is- leadership!

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