It's getting colder!

So, I thought I would post a random picture from our trip to the FL keys earlier this year! BRR today seemed like the first day that I could picture it snowing.  We are very excited for Thanksgiving at the Schenks! The girls were just there today and reported having an AWESOME time. Kevin is excited to see the TV again :)

It will be nice to have a day off since things have been really busy lately around here. Nothing really exciting to report about - Roxy is doing well with her house training and is growing but is still a "small dog" for sure! Scruffy is enjoying playing with her but does get a bit irritated at times! All other animals are fine (Frogs, Rabbit and Hamster).

Kevin is still also really busy but at least he is able to take Thursday off!

I could go into more details on work related issues but you'd be nodding off for sure. Matt, your birthday sounded like fun! Can't wait to see you guys soon.

xoxo

Whew! we did it!

Hey, folks, just checking in after the "big week" last week when dad had so many duties with the kick-off of the SSW 90th, which went very well. I went to the big all-day Friday presentations, which were so remarkable...the "Youth Mosaic Theater of Detroit" did a very powerful presentation on dialogues/stereotypes/issues among and between races, and it was fabulous...all the actors are ages 14-17 or so, and they get the material from workshops held with kids from all over Detroit - all of different races. It was so amazing. Then there were several other mind-expanding programs as well...at the end of the day we had the alumni board of governors here for dinner, about 25 folks...and that went very well too. On Sat. a.m., we had the keynote speaker and his wife over for breakfast. Both of them were students here and we know/knew them pretty well but have not seen for some time, so it was great to catch up. After that we watched the UM go down in blazes again...so sad, looks like no bowl game again this year, not that I care, but I know some folks do. Oh well...later today Sarah & family are dropping by for a bite of dinner.
Next week is the countdown to Thanksgiving, of course, but we do not have to deal with "the bird" this year...Jessie & family want to do the hosting, so the rest of us are going in there, bringing some sides. Wish Matt & Molly could join too, I always remember Matt saying Thanksgiving is his favorite holiday...hope you guys have a great one! Not too long now till we can all be together, I am psyched for that...meanwhile, sending lots of love to everybody, mom/P

One day older!

Hi all,

Feels good to be "one day older" and actually this was the funnest birthday I can remember (and of course it IS getting harder and harder to remember things).

Molly had been telling me for weeks she had something secret planned, and usually when this happens I can guess what it is right away. But not this time, and actually all the secrecy made me nervous. I became convinced Molly had bought us a brand new house overlooking the Pacific (ocean, not university) with a new Mini Cooper Clubman (the "stretch version of the Mini - perfect tubamobile) in the driveway and a helicopter in the back complete with full-time pilot to take us where we need to go. She said it really wasn't quite that elaborate so I guess I got a bit carried away.

But as it turned out she had gotten tickets to the Pistons/Sacramento Kings game which was yesterday afternoon at 3 pm. For those of you on east coast time, that means the game actually occurred in 1985. But seriously, we hadn't been to an NBA game together before, and I hadn't seen one since the Pistons played Golden State in the mid 1990s when Chris Webber played there. It was a GREAT game, a Pistons victory of course, and the surprise was well and truly ... surprising.

In other news we found out there will likely be some jobs here in the Stockton area opening for next year that Molly may apply for. I'm still chipping away on my alleged career and will keep you all posted if anything of interest happens.

December will be here before we know it, and we can't wait to see you all then!

Matt

SUNDAY LETTER

Goof Morning

Well, I am finally making it on Sunday.  If this progress keeps up I will be writing the SL the Friday BEFORE Sunday!


Last week was a heavy week.  I had to give a talk in Indianapolis to the board of the national assn that certifies Physician Assts..Mom and I drove over together and it was a beautiful trip, - 200 miles straight down I69.  But what traffic.  So different from driving up north.  And of course the mapquest was off by one block, so we went around the block in downtown I. for a while and then called the hotel.

It went very well but it was very weird.  I had spent time preparing a presentation, including a meting (phone) with the  CEO and we had it all worked out.  They had it loaded, with copies for all.  It was on meetings, and Slide 4  was the slide where I ask people for any pet peeves.   I am on at 11, and am having bkfstat 8 when the Chair of the organization - and the man who set this up for me  (The Senior Asso. Dean of the Medical School at MSU)  says that he would like me to stop at alide 4 and just have a conversation with the group. Needless to say I was somewhat nonplussed, but I did that, and we had a great time.

Then, Sat., I had an all day class in Executive Leadership.  that went well too.

But the week coming up is really tight - it is the kickoff of our 90th anniversary at the SSW.  I have been more or less in charge of the planning for this event, and it is a big deal - we have banners on the llamposts  outside the school (we had to get permission from the banner committee) and Friday is a big, all day event with talks receptions, the Mosaic Youth theater from Detroit, and on and on.  Then Friday night we have a party for alumni at our house.  also dinners Th and Wed.. and a bkfst on Sat.  Yikes!


What WAS I thinking?  But we are all ready and it looks "good to go."

And a little surprise for me - I  was looking at Amazon this an and discovered that twop of my books are on the recommended Holiday list in the "More Items to Consider " Category , though briefly - I think they rotate the titles and pictures.

Also, this am I cut a lot of wood - only a little left to cut now, and then the splitting begins.

I think that about wraps it up .. so I will say by and hugs -

love

Dad/John

Happy Birthday to Matt!!

Hi All - just finally getting ready to post something as I've been gone for awhile (though reading all the hilarious posts!) - but first wanted to wish Matt a very happy birthday!! I hope you are doing something fun, Matt! We are sure looking forward to seeing you and Molly in  December.

Otherwise things are really busy around here, as usual. Unfortunately I have nothing really funny to report. Unless you want to hear about the "Great I want a pet in my room that I can actually PET" event. But I won't go into into all the details :)

Work is very busy as I'm contributing to a very large grant which is due in January (lovely timing, isn't it?). That plus all my 'regular' work is making things semi-crazy. Kevin is keeping busy, especially with his extra long communite now. The girls are keeping up with all their various activities. Charlotte had her first "Turducken" yesterday (I had to google this - it is a chicken, inside a duck, inside a turkey!) Grandma Diana had a Turducken party that Kevin and Charlotte went to, as Evelyn had some other stuff going on at dance. Charlotte reported it was excellent (or maybe that was the 10 pieces of Brick Oven Pizza she had BEFORE the Turducken!).  Jess you'll be pleased to hear that Charlotte is trying Synchro today! There is a beginner class at Mack pool and she's been wanting to do it. I'll let you know if she likes it!

That's about it for now. Matt, again, I hope you have a great day!

Sunday Letter

Good Morning All
I am getting a little better& closer to Sunday - but I am not giving up the name.Sunday Letter. It is an aspirational thing.; I will get on track soon and actually get it done on Sunday.. Lots going on.; Last week I had my annual physical - I am in excellent shape; - except I need to lose 7 lbs! My main activity - aside from the course I teach on Thursday AM - is planning for the School's 90th Anniversary; That is a yearlong event and the opening day, as it were, is Friday 11/19.; There are many details; and while I have a great staff it mostly comes down to me getting things going.; I also have a two-Saturday class on Executive Leadership. One was 10/30, and the second one is this coming Sat, the day after Mom and I get back from Indianapolis.; Speaking of Executive Leadership, I am attaching a link to  a clever piece by Scott Adams. In it he makes a case for "bad management" as an essential stimulus for entrepreneurship. It is sort of like the Peter Principle, except, for Peter, people were promoted for competence, until competence ran out.; The Dilbert Principle (Adams version) is that incompetents are proactively promoted into middle management to limit the harm they can actually do.





http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704353504575596372042140924.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

love

Dad

The great oven cleaning event!

I have just had such a good time reading the hilarious blogs from Jessie and Matt that I have to take time out of my battle with the oven, which we discovered had not been cleaned in quite some time, and in fact, we did not even have any oven cleaner among our extensive cleaning supplies. So the clean is now in process, what an exciting bit of news, eh? Glad you got your dryer fixed, Jess, and Matt, your weather-updating telephone sounds "interesting." Good thing you are getting some rain, though, I gather you don't get much as a rule.
Well dad & I "enjoyed" the UM-Illinois game too - I liked the comment from a sportscaster who said it seemed more like a basketball game, given the scoring! We had a great time on Sunday too when we were invited by Kevin's dad & Diana to go with them and Sarah & Kevin and the girls to see Mary Poppins at the Wharton Center, with brunch before that at the MSU Club...a lovely facility with one of those over-the-top brunches, everything you could want to eat and more...it was interesting in that Diana thought the play started at 2p.m. but we all discovered it actually began at 1 o'clock at about 12:40! Needless to say, we hustled to make the opening curtain...at least for once we did no have to sit around waiting for the play to start, and fortunately,it began as most plays do at 10 past...whew. It was totally incredible, though, with such amazing stage effects the likes of which we have not seen, including in one scene Bert "walks" up the side of the stage, upside down on the ceiling (where he pauses in the middle to do a bit of tap dancing) and then down the other side...at the very end, Mary P. "flies" off from the stage across the entire audience up to the nether reaches of the balcony (on a wire which is mostly invisible)...just amazing.
So now we are enjoying a beautiful start to what is going to be a warmish Nov. week here...very nice...fyi, dad has a gig in Indianapolis on Fri. so I'm going along to help drive each way...back Friday afternoon. Okay, all, wish I had your knacks for hilarity, but this will have to do, sending lots of love to everybody.

The 'Thermal Event'

Happy Monday, everyone! It was another busy weekend here--with Matt and Daniel attending both the UM/Illinois game, and Matt and Jared going to the Lions/Jets games. Crazy games, both--as Matt has already mentioned below! It was Daniel''s first UM game experience and he had a great time. They stayed until the bitter end to see who would finally win. Jared was thrilled to get to the Lions/Jets game as he is a big Jets fan--and it was a good outcome from his perspective, anyway!

We also had some major appliance news--we got a notice that our washer was recalled do to the risk of a possible 'thermal event'! Fortunately, we were able to get the washer fixed right away, and avoided any such 'events'! I think what they meant to say was, 'your washer could unexpectedly burst into flame,' but perhaps that sounded a bit inflammatory ;-) We wondered how many GE employees sat around a meeting table deciding what to call this particular 'problem'?! Jared felt that a fireball convention could also be considered a 'thermal event'. (feel free to chime in with your own ideas!!) For now, we are enjoying our thermal events where they belong--in the fireplace!

In other news, it was Brady's birthday yesterday--he is now 2 years old and still as excitable as ever! He was given a couple of toys which he promptly destroyed. He sure is cute, though!

Now I'm off to tackle my in-box (all those pre-holiday sales emails are really piling up...)! Have a great day, everyone.

Hola!

Good morning all,

Well this is no “Sunday Letter” but more of just a “Sunday Update”.

It’s supposed to rain most of the day here today so of course everyone in Stockton already stocked up on canned goods, batteries and toilet paper – perfect day to stay in! Molly put a weather channel “widget” on our phones so any kind of weather advisory comes through as an alert like a text message or email. This one was a “SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT” and warned us about impending rain possibly to include wind. The “Special weather statement” is a few notches down from the plain old “storm warning”, which is followed by storm watch, then weather advisory, and THEN weather statement. After than you get the even weaker alerts like the special weather hypothesis, the special weather conjecture, the special weather musing, and so forth. What’s weird about this region is the variety of weather in a pretty small space. In the summer, it could be 105 in Stockton/Sacramento but only 75 an hour and a half west in San Francisco. Today, we’re receiving the “special weather statements” about rain but an hour and a half east up by Lake Tahoe they will get a foot of snow (there has never, ever been measurable snow in Stockton). The Michigan adage of “if you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes” could be amended here to “if you don’t like the weather, drive an hour”.

Yesterday I had Orchestra Day at Pacific – got to do an hour masterclass on breathing techniques, then play a short solo on the faculty recital and then another masterclass for the brass students (which turned out to be 2 parents, 3 Pacific students, and one Orchestra Day participant who hadn’t brought her instrument). But it was fun and I’m getting a chance to have the other faculty observe me “doing my thing” and so far they all seem to like it. However, Orchestra Day caused me to miss the Michigan-Illinois game so we DVRd it. By the time I got home Molly had already watched it but then had to be careful not to give anything away while we watched it again, which must have been pure torture. The default time setting to record a football game is three hours, and I had added a one-hour extension just to be on the safe side, and we ended up with only 5 minutes to spare! It was a great game to watch on DVR since we were able to mediate the stress level by fast-forwarding through commercials. In a couple of hours the Lions game comes on, and I foolishly insisted that we purchase NFL DirecTicket on DirecTV so that I could see all the Lions games, and we must be the only household in California watching. But I have to say that we both like the DirectTicket. It has a channel called “NFL GAME MIX” which shows all eight games simultaneously. It’s interesting to see not only the on the field action but other elements as well such as which commercials air in which regions.

We’ve been enjoying reading all of the blog updates – thanks for keeping us up to date!

Matt

SUNDAY LETTER

Good Morning

This is my Sunday Letter, written on Wednesday. Well, the election is over and California has (re) elected the youngest Governor (and now the oldest Governor in CA history.)

Jessie and Matt - Congratulations on wrapping up your student loans.  That is  a fantastic achievement. 

I loved the pics -Mom and I were handing out candy in Dexter - the crowd was thin there this year - but I understand huge in GP.

While all of this has been going on I have been working away on several writing projects.  One of them is an OP Ed on income disparities in the US.  there has been a immense transfer of wealth to the most wealthy.  there have been many comments on this process and  I am adding one more.  I will  post it when I am done.

Additionally, I am working on a book on Calamity in the Corner Office (What happens when the CEO "goes bad" and takes the organization with him or her) and  rewriting a book on Successful Community Organization and  Leadership which was published in the middle 90s by the National Association of Social Workers.

Finally, I am working on an article on Customer Focused Companies with Ari W., one of the co founders of Zingermans.

On the home front, Mom and I spent most of  Sunday "winterizing" our home - putting chairs away, etc.   Winter is coming.  It is cold today and there is  snow predicted for Sunday.  The NOAA winter forecast
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39813625
predicts a "wetter" winter for the MI region... that means more snow!

WEll, I am off for my morning walk

Love to all


Dad/John

Happy Halloween!

Hi everyone! I'm loving the pictures and updates!

I am glad to say we are done with halloween at last--though the boys each have several pounds of candy now. They had a blast trick-or-treating with their friends while the dads followed along trying to keep up. I handed out large quantities of candy, including to a few cell phone talking teenagers who couldn't be bothered to hang up to say 'trick-or-treat'. Good times :-)

Our big news update is that we finally paid off our student loans--woo hoo! Matt and I both though there was some problem when we got the notice in the mail--it didn't seem possible. Needless to say we are thrilled. They boys were super confused as to why we were talking about paying for our college (well, grad school) instead of theirs! Perhaps they won't have to go to clown college after all.

More updates soon...!