Drop In

A welcome addition to the week’s routine was my son’s availability to reassume our weekly hump day lunch yesterday.  He was full of piss and vinegar about our impending weekend fantasy football match.  He seems to think he’ll be able to win over my resurgent bunch; I’ll have to keep a close eye on him since he’s also the league commissioner.  He would count the season a success if this was the only game he wins. 

Son and I Yesterday

He’s also learning about marital responsibilities in providing a shoulder for the ABFA to cry on as her fantasy football team implodes.  She had four of her front line starters go down with game ending injuries in the first quarter last week. At least she’s lucky in love.  They’re both going through the machinations of house hunting which was ample fodder for lunch time dissection.

My winning streak continued at home where my wife and I executed a day late date night.  We journeyed into Worcester again to see The Drop which is billed as James Gandolfini’s last movie.  In reality this is Tom Hardy’s movie and it is powerful.  It’s not an action packed thriller but a look at the gritty underside of organized crime in Brooklyn.  The plot jumps around a lot but in doing so provides the necessary clues for a fantastic climatic confrontation. 

Hardy is completely believable as a seemingly inept, but sweet hearted bar tender for the devious Gandolfini.  They’re under pressure from Chechen mobsters to recover money stolen in a late night stick up while Hardy adopts a pit bull puppy and Noomi Rapace.  I can’t say too much because it would ruin the fantastic scene between Hardy and Rapace following the super bowl.  The movie ends with maybe the best line in cinema this year, “No one ever sees you coming, do they?”.  If you love character driven drama and great acting –go see The Drop.  I can’t wait to talk about this with my daughter.

Better than Expected

There were times yesterday when I was looking for a window to throw myself out of but overall I could not be more pleased with the results.  I spent the entire day at a leadership retreat with union leaders and the union supervisors who’ve been a target for improvement for the last three years.  We won the right from the union to remove incompetent supervisors earlier this year and the results were tangible and obvious yesterday.

My View Out the Window All Day - Beautiful Downtown Worcester

While earlier retreats were spent dealing with the incompetents and the inevitable personality clashes their lack of ability created, yesterday was spent on improving.  We had the same facilitator back and even he noted the marked difference in the professionalism in the ranks.  There was actually some time spent laughing together which would have been unheard of a few years ago. The biggest change is in the attitude of the union and especially the union leadership.   While we still have our “moments” they have become trustworthy partners in making the organization better.  I never thought I would be able to say that.

The Facilitator Facilitating

The facilitator is a smooth operator and I marveled at his ability to identify and draw out the introverts that didn’t want to participate.  This kept the “spring butts” mostly in their seats so we weren’t beat into submission by their need to share.  The facilitator is also a corporate recruiter who offered me a job in Atlanta during one of the breaks.  I’ve seen the traffic in Hotlanta and experienced the summer in Georgia so I told him an emphatic no.  I’ll have to be careful mentioning this to the wife as it gets progressively colder around here.

Since the movie company has taken over the hotel we normally use for the retreat we were forced to use a downtown hotel with a fairly small conference room.  My knees took a beating from the small table but I was again surprised at how well the whole day went.  We finished on time and decided to forego the singing of Kumbaya.

The Maintenance Manager Hugging the Union Business Agent - Scary

My excellent boss took the entire group out for dinner at Joey’s which was more fun than I was prepared for.  The food and service at Joey’s was up to their usual lofty standard.  I’ve said this before but anyone looking for a superb dinner in Worcester should check out Joey’s.  I don’t think we stopped laughing the entire time as we re-lived some of the more poignant faux pas of the day.  We’re still trying to figure out what the word “Fatillitate” means. 

Dinner at Joey's

Even though I sat on my ass for pretty much the entire day I was exhausted by the end.  I felt bad for my wife who was her energetic self when I arrived home.  There’s just something soul sapping about spending an entire day in the touchy feely realm of self-improvement.  I didn’t even want to watch a movie, which is telling.  

Retreat Hell

An early post today because I’m going to spend the entire day in a leadership retreat with the union leaders and employees in leadership positions.  This is the third year in a row that I’ve done one of these things and while there have been tangible benefits they are a dull, soul sucking drain.  They are needed to get the subordinate leaders to actually do their jobs in a professional manner.  It’s just an entire day of contemplating one’s navel is not a recipe for morale enhancement.

The focus today will be decision making.  All too often we have employees who have the authority and experience to fix problems but try pushing the issue up the chain so someone else will decide.  This has the inevitable result of making a simple problem worse since it’s been allowed to marinate.  An old Army saying that still rings very true, “Bad news does not get better with time”.

The union leaders invariably say these employees are afraid to make these type decisions because they don’t want to lose their leadership positions by making mistakes.  I’m going to have to convince them that not making a decision is in fact a worse “mistake” than an honest effort to do their jobs.  I will underwrite authentic mistakes but not indecision.

A lively source of discussion in the military is always whether leadership can be taught or whether certain people are born to it.  While I certainly think some people are born with more innate capability, simple low level leadership can be taught and the military is a great example of this.  Take care of your people before yourself, focus on the end result, and be fair with subordinates will serve most people as good starting points. 

This is going to be painful.

Rebounds

Keene Friend Late On Saturday - He Did Eventually Make it All the Way Upstairs

Yesterday arrived a tad early based on our Saturday night exertions.  Buddy demanded and received an early morning walk through Keene with our host while the wife continued to relive her sobriety test courtesy of the New Hampshire state police.  She was texting all day with the PanaGals reliving her experience and by the evening the story (as is the case in most type situations) had grown in the telling.  She was revered for her bravery at overcoming the impediment of squiring two such imbeciles as me and Keene Friend around.  I think the part where we cheered her successful completion of the test played extremely well down south, with appropriate embellishment, of course.  One of the PanaGals even created a couple cartoon characters to memorialize the event (see below – my wife made out better than we imbeciles).

My Wife

Keene Friend and I

Prior to leaving Keene we eased over to a local diner for breakfast. Diners always serve the best breakfast food and carry the added benefit of making you feel young. I say this because we had to have been twenty years younger than any of the other patrons.  I don’t think the youth of Keene arose at the same hour we did. I experienced my usual separation anxiety as we pulled out of town but the red zone and couch potato position 1 beckoned for an ambitionless Sunday afternoon.

Youthful Diner Recovery Operations

I fully expected to have my ass handed to me again this week in fantasy football because I was up against Wing Man who is an established master of the sport.  I now have two theories.  The first is that he, as any gallant wing man would, took pity on me after his wife’s merciless drubbing of me last week.  The second is that he was so busy with a big concert in Chicago that he wasn’t paying close attention to this non-paying league.  It didn‘t help that his #1 draft pick was Adrian Peterson (enough said).  If I can read the tea leaves correctly I am going to win since I’m ahead with all of his players done and one of mine still to play.  I’m sure this is nothing he’s going to brag about.  Me, not so much.

Wing Man (on the Right) at Work in Chicago Yesterday

The Patriots decided to start their regular season yesterday which was welcome even if a game late.  It started out horribly as the Vikings marched down the field resembling nothing if not the week 1 Dolphins.  All silliness was then put aside as the Pats defense stepped up and ended the mythic one game run towards Canton by their former backup quarterback Matt Cassell.    Brady still hasn’t rounded into form yet but this team will be a handful if he can figure out how to throw to anyone other than Gronk and Edleman.

Group Hug for Old Friend Matty

The Cantankerous Friend finally surfaced on Facebook late yesterday to accuse us of ditching him on Saturday despite his failure to answer messages combined with his well-known lack of Saturday availability.  I luckily was able to produce the time stamped call we made to his parent’s house trying to recruit him.  I didn’t have the heart to tell him we were actually headed towards his house when my wife met up with the state police.  She refused to drive any further than Keene Friend’s house after that. 

Hometown Birthday

I got exactly what I needed yesterday after the scary Friday – a day in my hometown with Keene Friend solving the world’s problems while sampling beer as autumn started to descend.  Keene Friend’s birthday was Friday so we had some celebrating to accomplish.  My wife and I arrived at his house mid-afternoon but there was no answer when we knocked at the door.  Buddy was especially upset that his dedicated walker was not responding to his mental summons.

Birthday Boy at Elm City - Yet Another Bar Shot

We eventually woke him up to discover he’d gotten off his third shift on Saturday morning a couple hours late so he was operating on three hours sleep.  In a veteran move he didn’t let that dissuade him or us from moving directly to the Elm City Brewery where my wife dropped us off before making a bee line for her good friend – TJ Maxx.  We were fortunate that our favorite bar tendress was holding court at the Brewery and greeted us like long lost friends.  Keene Friend and I settled in for the long haul while meaningless college football games swirled around. 

It turned out to be a great afternoon as the steady rain picked up and we abandoned a planned move to the nearby sports bar and remained under the care of our favorite bar tendress.  It turned out she’s the daughter of a guy that graduated high school the same year we did so our egos took a bit of a hit but she was great sport.  We entertained phone calls and texts all afternoon from friends who couldn’t make the birthday celebration.  The Cantankerous Friend was the only spot not heard from.  He was apparently too busy trading barbs with conservatives to answer our messages.

The Two of US With Our Bar Tendress

The College Roommate was heard from and he offered his gynecological observations on 1970’s basketball movies.  We’re still trying to figure that out but we assumed beer was involved in Pittsburgh.  My wife eventually showed up to squire us to dinner at Margarita’s.  She checked with the bar tendress and we received passing grades – apparently we are now considered harmless.

The Robin Williams Memorial In Front of a Prop from the Movie

On our way to Margarita’s we passed by the center of Keene where a heartbreaking monument to Robin Williams has arisen around the last remaining vestige of the movie Jumanji which was shot there. 

Margarita’s was a lot of fun but the main event was awaiting for our ride home.  Shortly after pulling out from our parking space a state police car pulled us over to ask why we didn’t have our headlights on.  We’d had the car serviced earlier in the day and the mechanic had apparently turned off the automatic headlights. Since we were in the middle of downtown we hadn’t noticed it but the police had.  For some reason they came to my window on the passenger side.  They said they smelled alcohol and I proudly proclaimed that would be me and that my wife was our designated driver.  They said they still had to test her which she passed with flying colors although she did direct some fairly dirty looks in our direction.

Birthday Cake!

We returned to Keene Friend’s home where we were joined by Keene Friend 2 and his girlfriend for some birthday cake.  The days events started to catch up with Keene Friend who started to fade with only his three hours of sleep and facing the day’s onslaught of beer.  He was banished upstairs for some well-earned rest while we caught up on the day’s college football carnage and relived my wife’s sobriety test repeatedly.  Another in a long line of great Saturday’s spent in my hometown.

After posting yesterday I found a couple news photo of the accident that caused so much fun for me yesterday.  You can see where the guard rail was taken out that I had to dodge below.

Debris Field

Any dedicated reader of this blog will tell you that Friday is by far my favorite day of the week which is what made yesterday so troublesome.  It was the first day of the week that I didn’t have any meetings scheduled at work which is reason enough to celebrate and count the hours down to the weekly ritual of First Friday celebrations.  I decided to use my lunch hour to sneak out and get a quick oil change on the car since that pesky Toyota warning light was castigating me every time I turned the car on.  That is when my adventure began.

I was travelling on Interstate 290 doing about 70 MPH and approaching the underpass below the Mass Pike. Since my exit was coming up I was in the right lane.  Just as I entered the underpass I noticed what I thought was trash falling from the Mass Pike.  Milliseconds later I realized it was not trash but some pretty hefty debris including guard rails and large pieces of some sort of vehicle.  I didn’t have time to do anything other than try and dodge through the debris as it rained down.  I thought I made it until I heard a fairly good thump and my driver’s side tire immediately went flat. 

Where I ended Up - Accident on the Overpass in the Distance
You can Barely Make out the Overturned Truck to the Left of the White Truck

I was past the impact area by this time so I pulled over and looked back.  An 18 wheeler was overturned and still careening along the overpass.  I got out to look at the damage and while I didn’t have any major damage, the tire was toast.  My heart was going a little faster at this point when I realized how lucky I’d truly been since some of the bigger pieces of debris could have crushed my car.   The car was also coated with oil that had rained down with the debris.  My plan wasn’t to change my engine oil through osmosis so this was unwelcome. 

Car Covered in Oil Spots

I knew I had to get the car into a safer spot to change the tire so I nursed it about a quarter mile up the road where I could get farther away from the highway traffic.  I then had to figure out where all the tire changing equipment had been ingeniously compartmentalized.  I solved that puzzle with traffic buzzing by and got the car jacked up and the deceased tire off.  A state police car pulled up fresh from moving the debris as I was preparing to put the spare tire on.  Just as he pulled up another 18 wheeler rumbled by in the right lane and the rumble was enough to cause the asphalt below my jack to fail. My car unceremoniously fell to the ground.

Car Resting on Chassis with My Understating Statie

The statie and I were equally dumbfounded.  He said, “Well it looked like you had everything under control up until that point.” Obviously a master at the art of understatement, he was a good guy and called a tow truck which came in about ten minutes.  He also added my car to the accident report so if anything serious develops I’d be covered.  The tow truck lifted the car and I finished changing the tire which allowed me to get off the highway.  Strangely all this took place and I was off the highway in less than thirty minutes.

I went straight to a car wash which got the oil off the car before it dried and then since I was already in the neighborhood I got the oil changed in the car, my original mission.  I stopped by the tire place where I bought the tires less than two months ago.  It turned out I bought some sort of protection plan when I did that and it only cost me $40 to replace the dead tire.

By the time I was finished with the insurance company we were rapidly approaching First Friday celebration time and you could describe me as desperately in need of liquid refreshment.  I took care of that requirement in so short order while explaining my highway adventures to my co-workers.  While I was doing this television news in the bar showed the major accident on the Pike with the truck overturned and traffic backed up for miles.  The damage was fairly impressive and we all agreed Someone must have been watching over me.  It was at that point it come home to me just how lucky I had been.

I had dutifully reported all these events to my wife who was typically over-concerned.  Once she ascertained I was in fact whole in body and mind she observed that I had carelessly gotten some drops of oil on my pants while changing the tire on the interstate; probably the only reason I got a reprieve.

Our Two Newest Neighbors

When I came home she was nowhere to be found until I remembered the next door neighbor had just returned from the hospital after giving birth to twins.  Babies are born with the ability to attract my wife from a great distance.  I was halfway across the driveway when I heard the neighbor comment that I’d found her.

So Glad I Was Able to End the Night with This young Lady

She was happily squiring one of the young fellows around.  They were beautiful babies and my wife reluctantly parted with her new charge so she could escort me to dinner.  We ended the night at Zorba’s – huge surprise!  The medicinal effects of pizza and products of the brewer’s art went a long way towards assuaging the turmoil of earlier day’s events.  Needless to say the second half of the day was significantly better than the first.  I am a lucky man on so many levels.

Autumnal Randominity

(I know it’s not a real world – get over yourself) 

Bit of a catch up day here as I paused to remember 9-11 yesterday.  The weather has definitely turned towards autumn which is a Godsend.  I think the word I’m looking for is “crisp”.  I don’t think there’s a better place in the world to be than New England in the fall.  My wife and I have agreed to disagree about this sicne she considers temperatures below 70 as hardship living.  I love having the windows open and having to burrow deeper under the quilt as the nighttime temps head south.  I don’t think I’ve slept sounder in my life than in the past week, semi-intoxicating (and the leaves haven’t even turned yet!).

Birthday Boy at One of His recent Public Speaking Appearances

Today is also the Keene Friend’s birthday.  I don’t think I’ve ever met a better or more genuine person.  His first thought is always on what he can do to help those close to him.  I consider myself blessed to call him friend and knowing he’s had my back since the 7^th grade.  My wife and I are heading up to Keene tomorrow to hang out and celebrate his day with him.

Mother In Law's Birthday

It’s kind of a birthday laden week around here as a number of other people at work are also marking their day (January is very cold).  No such excuse down in tropical Panama but one of my favorite people in the world celebrated her 82d birthday on Wednesday.  My mother in law was subjected to a joint chorus of Happy Birthday with me singing.  I’m glad she withstood that auditory horror enough to allow her “kids” to take her out to dinner along with my father in law.  One of the PanaGals sent some pictures and both my wife and I wished we could have been part of what looked like a fun night.

Hump Day Luncheon Partners

On that same day I had one of my hump day lunches with my favorite son where we commiserated about our fantasy football fortunes.  Since he’s the league commissioner he had to take a higher road than I did as I wallowed in recrimination at my ineptitude.  I’m facing the Wing Man and certain defeat this weekend.  My son is continuing his house hunting with the ABFA now that the wedding hullabaloo has subsided.

My Wife Poring Last Night

My wife spent the better part of two hours poring over 900 official wedding photos which she accessed electronically last night.  The photographer did a great job capturing the emotion, excitement, fun, and love that permeated the day.  My wife selected nearly 200 that she wanted to get printed and thought she saved the selection in the web site’s “my favorites” section.  When she summoned me to review there were only two photos there so something wasn’t done right.  I was immediately assessed as the culprit.

Sample of the Artist's Work

Culprits were the name of the game in finishing my latest foray into the world of Vince Flynn and his uber-hero Mitch Rapp, Memorial Day.  Mitch is back to doing what he does best which is thwarting terrorist attacks which brings the attendant body count.  As with all of Flynn’s books the pace was relentless and the tension peaks in the second half to the point I literally could not put the book down.  The last quarter of the book was the best action I’ve read in this series of books which is saying a whole hell of a lot. 

Mitch deflects one nuclear bomb attack only to learn his work is not done.  He has to battle terrorists as well as holier than thou progressive Washington politicians.  One aspect of Flynn’s books than I enjoy is the set up for the next one.  He always introduces some secondary characters, usually villains, who aren’t definitively dealt with in the current book.  In other words they survive, but have exposed themselves to Rapp’s radar, never a healthy course of action.  This wets the appetite to continue to the next book expeditiously which I did five minutes after finishing Memorial Day.