Feb 29 2008
Tina Fey kicked off the first new episode of Saturday Night Live since the writer’s strike ended. The best skit of the night had to be the “Women’s News” section of Weekend update. As the “Woman’s News” correspondent, Tina Fey pulled no punches as she reviews key women’s issues in the news. The most important being Hillary Clinton and the Presidential 2008 Campaign. Check it out.
Feb 18 2008
Being a consultant I am used to dealing with the unexpected. These “surprises” are usually in the form of last minute customer requirements, flight delays, faulty projectors and defective laptops that spontaneously burst into flames. Imagine my surprise however when I got back to my hotel room late last Tuesday night to discover that my team mates “pranked me”.
A little background. For the past 10 days some team members and I worked diligently on a customer Proof of Concept presentation. Most of the team had been working in preparation of the event for several weeks where I was coming in to learn about the project and lend some final preparation assistance. What started as a 1 day trip to Dallas, TX turned into a 10 day trip to Los Angles, CA. We worked days, nights and weekends getting all the presentations and programs to work in sync for the big event.
The night before the presentation we had a client dinner scheduled but we also had submitted some last minute color printing to the local Kinko’s. Our Creative Director, Kerry, agreed to handle the job and since both he and Kim were scheduled to leave for home early the next morning, they agreed to pick-up the job and bring it back to my hotel room. I in-turn would bring it with me in the morning to the customer presentation. All appeared to be good .. or so I thought!
I find myself even now asking the question when they planned to get me. Did Kerry ask me for my room key knowing that that he had devised this scheme, or had the thought occurred to him after he was standing with the printed material in my hotel room. One thing is for sure … I never expected to return to my room after dinner to find my hotel room covered with neatly lined up tri-fold brochures all standing in a line, one after the other across the entire hotel room, like little paper solders.
I was also not prepared to explain the sketch he left on my bed of a gorgeous brunette kissing me which I discovered at the head of my bed. Even now Sharon is looking at me suspiciously.
The moral of this story … Never let your colleague pick up the printed material at Kinko’s while you go out to dinner and party with your client. For if you do … you deserve everything that happens to your hotel room in your absence. Thank goodness he didn’t find the mini-bar key and clean me out of my private stash of macadamia nuts!
Thanks Kerry & Kim for a great surprise and a really good laugh!
Jul 06 2007
Jul 04 2007
It is hard to believe that the dog we rescued when he was only 4 days old is turning 8 years old tomorrow. Owning a dog in NYC has a unique set of challenges. It’s not like you can just throw open the back door and let him go pee. Well, you could if you lived on the 1st floor of a Brownstone .. but that is a different story all together.
My point of this post is that I can clearly remember the decision I made at 6pm July 9th, 1999 that changed my entire life from that point forward. The decision was simple. Made in a split second like, “let’s go out for dinner”. I had been working for 70+ per week on a consulting assignment for the past 6 months and Sharon and I had not spent much time together. I wanted to make it up to her so I decided to skip the gym and meet her uptown for dinner. I thought it would be a nice surprise. That decision .. to meet her vs going to the gym changed every moment that followed. If I had just gone to the gym and met Sharon at home after we wouldn’t have had a nice dinner at Popover Cafe (great place BTW) and stopped by Fairway to get groceries on the way home. Wouldn’t have stopped at Pat’s animal rescue table in front of the supermarket to make a donation. Wouldn’t have stopped to ask her about the box of eight puppies she was caring for. Wouldn’t have agreed to help her foster 4 of the puppies (they were abandoned in front of the NY Center for Animal Care and Control). Wouldn’t have spent all weekend caring and feeding for them and then deciding to help raise them until they were old enough to be adopted. Fallen in love with a chestnut colored puppy who would change our lives forever and help find homes for Ricky (now Eli), Ethel (now deceased) and Lucy (now Sofie).
Because I didn’t go to the gym that day, I got a dog, which lead to Sharon and I buying an apartment, which lead to us having a child. Who knew one dog had so much power over a person’s life.
The rest is history. You can even read about it in Dan Ackerman’s July, 16, 2000 NY Times article, “Meaningful Peer-Group Experience for your Dog” (pdf).
So .. remember that the next time you decide to skip the gym.
Jun 21 2007
