My Random Thoughts

I leave the house, all ready for the showing. They cancelled. I certainly hope we have another this week. I still need to get my 1 per week average going.

Wow - cleaning as soon as you get it up is NOT fun, not fun at all. But for my 5th showing, I”ll turn handsprings if I could.

wish me luck

The house will show for the 5th time tomorrow. Getting our a week. Maybe we’ll have 2 this week, since we’re getting the first one so early!

Here’s my fantasy - they are the same people who came on Thursday and want to see it one more time before they give us an offer. How nice that would be.

I’ll be hanging out at Borders tomorrow, trying to get some work done. Luckily I don’t have a meeting until noon and that one is listen only. 1:30 is my talkie meeting. I’ll probably leave Borders at 1 and see if I can get home in time. Krista is coming to hang with me. It will be nice to have some company.

So wish us luck - we need to sell!

Maybe not - I still haven’t heard from the first painter dude, so I called and left a message telling him, don’t bother, left you numerous messages, get out of my face.

The other one called first thing this morning. That’s what I expect.

When I feel like I have a lot to say to myself and some days when I don’t. Today is one of those days I feel like talking to myself more. I’m on a conference call. It’s a good call about testing. Sometimes when I sit back I am amazed at what we (collective) manage to accomplish. I tend to minimize my accomplishments and any accomplishments that I’m involved with, but this call is bringing to light just the scope of what I’m involved with right now. No, I’m discovering the cure for cancer or saving anyones life - singularly, or collectively, and while those are worthy and lofty accomplishments, mine are as well!

I’m involved in a system outsourcing. That means my company is taking the processes and systems for HR from one company and we’re going to be doing them. This is multiple systems. This is amazing. There are 5 different solutions involved for 5 different HR areas. This is all coming together around the same time. Each project is fairly major in itself. I’m on a call where we’re discussing testing and deployment of the whole solution. This is stunning. It will all come together.

Can anyone do this? I don’t think so. Some people would be completely overwhelmed by looking at something like this. This is something that not just anyone can do. And this is something that I couldn’t have done 10 years ago. Experience has allowed me to get to this position. I can look back over my career and realize that it was the experience that has led me to where I am today. Yes, I’m having a deep moment.

Just looking at life makes me realize what an incredible thing I’m involved in. Life is huge, everyone I touch, the interactions I have, the people I talk to. All of it has such far reaching implications. I’m pretty proud of what i’m doing and where I’m going. Life is pretty good.

Just Mondays

Jeff didn’t want to go to work today. I didn’t really want to go to work today. We both have a case of the Mondays (ahahahahah).

My work email is SO SLOW I could finish a post before it gets to the next screen. I guess the email server has a case of the mondays as well. Today is an easy day. Not to many meetings. I was going to go to the gym in the middle of the afternooon, but a meeting snuck in there, so I can’t. I guess the gym will have to wait until after dinner tonight.

Let me just say if you’re reading this an you’re a home building contractor of any type - RETURN PHONE CALLS! We’d all appreciate it.

My painter was supposed to start on Thursday. I haven’t heard from him. I’ve left 4 messages, and none of them have been returned. I’m just glad I work from home and didn’t take time off to wait for him. I’d be more irritated than I already am.

I called my 2nd choice painter and he hasn’t called me back either. I really don’t want to get the phone book out and start looking again, but I’ll do what I have to do to get this place painted. I may even do it by hand at this point.

Then the carpet people are supposed to call. Nope, didn’t hear a thing from them either.

So, to recap. Return Phone Calls, but avoid having to do anything if you can. This your public service announcement for the day.

And here we are - starting week 5 of 2006……that’s almost depressing.

Week for had our standard showing. No feedback again. There is a trend with every other one not providing feedback. Ah well. This week’s showing was Thursday. I did my conference calls from the park. That was an interesting place to work. I’m sitting in the car, on my cell phone watching a nice fountain. It actually was quite nice.

I only worked out once this week. I was in Chicago for work, which is no excuse. Laziness is a better excuse and I’ll use it!!

I didn’t get any writing done, but I have been playing with my pictures. I’m working on my website layout and picture editing. I am being creative, so that is something. And I am writing in my blog, so that it something else to keep my fingers and mind nimble.

I’m going to work on week 5 bringing more of a consistant workout schedule and God willing a sales contract on the house! My internal goal was to have a contract by Valentine’s day - I have 2 weeks and 3 days. I’ll be in Houston that week, so I figure that will have to be the week something will happen. Thank goodness faxes exist everyplace!

I hate feeling icky and that’s exactly how I feel today. I had a great morning. I had breakfast with Krista, we talked about everything. The waitress was funny - we told her to just check that we’re still alive, she came over and poked us every once in a while. She’s a good waitress.

I came home, did some grocery shopping and now i’m feeling eh - achy and such. I don’t get it. I certainly hope I’m not getting sick. I don’t have the time to get sick right now. I’m going to go to bed early and see if I can sleep it off.

Just heard it on the news, frazing - frantic multi-tasking. Everything they said was true, constant interruptions, can’t get back to things. Their suggestion, you shouldn’t check email just because the icon is there. I’ve heard other ‘organizational’ suggestions, only take phone calls during a certain time of the day, return them at certain times of the day. Don’t constantly check email. Set a schedule and only read and answer emails during that time. All good suggestions, but let’s get real.

In my job, if someone is calling me, they want to talk to me. They may not neccessarily NEED to talk to me right that second, but probably pretty close to that second. If they didn’t, they would have sent me an email. I can’t even imagine telling my boss I only take calls between the hours of 10-12 and I return messages between 2-4. Worst yet, what if I need to get in touch with my boss?!!? My clients are going to want to wait a couple of days for an answer. You call me at 9 and leave me a message, I return your call at 2:30 when you’re not available, you call me back the next day and I’m not available, but I don’t return your call until 2pm. How long will we play telephone tag until the issue is resolved?

In terms of organization and ability to concentrate and get things done, yeah, I’m all for doing one thing at a time. Unless everyone is going to play by the same rules, it will never happen. The first time an irate customer/client/prospect escalates the fact that they can’t contact, blah blah blah, game over. And here we are again.

So, if you’ve read this far, what is the point of this - nothing more than thanks for pointing out the obvious - now I feel more frazled than I did before! At least I’m in good company.