At last! Swimwear for my daughters!

Went and worked out with Brad "Blue" Jeffrey today. After deer and pheasant hunting over the past few weeks, Brad grew a beard, and Will coined the name of "Ol' Blue" (From the movie Old School) for Brad.

In the past I've mentioned before the ongoing practical joke battle we've had with the Niemi's. One of the things they did was stick a pickle-smelling (the manufacturer claims it's "Harvest Spice") air freshner in our houre. For a couple of days we couldn't figure out what the horrible smell was until Cathie discovered it and the Niemi's fessed up to it. We thought it would be funny to stash this in my parent's house, so on Thanksgiving, I hid this behind their dresser and we waited. And waited. After only a couple of hours, the upstairs smelled awful. My parents went out of town for about a week, so I called my sister for an update. She said that she walked into their house and it smelled like someone was canning Pickles. She asked my Mom what the smell was and she said she didn't know, but wasn't it wonderful? A nice buttery popcorn smell (?!?). She didn't know where it was coming from, but figured it was her popuri bowl (which happened to be situated right next to the air freshener). My sister eventually removed it, and I think my Mom is blaming my brother.

I sat in a meeting yesterday with a guy who could of been Chris Farley's twin brother. I didn't see it at first until he got really animated, and I had a tough time not laughing.

Monday night Cathie and I went to the Triad for the circuit training program they offer. There are twenty stations setup where you exercise at each station for a minute, rest for thirty seconds, and then move on to the next station. The entire workout consists of cycling through everything twice. It was a killer. There were times going through the workout that I felt like I was going to ralph. I felt good at the end, but wasn't really enjoying it all that much meanwhile.

J turned me on to the new My Immortal video from Evanesence. Slightly different than the album version.

Check out Dan's 12/08/03 Post - good story.

Remember the whole thing I mentioned earlier about the tradition in my family of calling each other on our birthdays? We were ragging on my sister Susan pretty hard about forgetting to call Will, and next thing you know she sent these pictures to Will. Sure this points to the power power of shame, but it also shows just how much my family loves Will.

I had a pretty uneventful weekend. Cathie and I hung around on Friday night, had a nice fire - read for a while and watched Drumline. It wasn't a bad movie, but it's tough to see Orlando Jones as anything but the Seven Up guy. Saturday afternoon Madeline had a dance recital in Brighton and that night we had a kids birthday party at the Niemi's. This was actually a pretty fun time, where the adults hung out while the kids played. Afterwards, Will, Justin, Mark and I all went out to the South Lyon Hotel for a beer. Last night we had a gal we've gotten to know in our neighborhood come over along with her daughter, who's Nate's age. She's a single Mom whose life is pretty hetic. She's pretty young - only 25 or 26 and she doesn't have a lot of friends with kids. We've gotten to know her over the past year as Cathie and I both go to her to get our hair cut (Yes world, I go to a Salon to get my hair cut). We're doing a brunch thing at our house after Crossroad's Christmas Service on December 21st, and she and her daughter are coming to btoh, which is cool. We've also got a couple other friends coming who don't do church unless it's coming with us, which is a good place to start.

Jason turned me on to these dubbed Jesus Videos.... Sacriligious - maybe... Funny. Yep.


Jesus - Part One

Jesus - Part Two


Jesus - Part Three


Jesus - Part Four

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My brother Jon nominates this as the best Survivor quote ever:
"Promises are like wicker furniture and fat women - easily broken by Johnny Fairplay"
-Johnny "Fairplay" Dalton

THE RELEVANCY OF RELATIVITY :: RELEVANT magazine :: GOD.LIFE.PROGRESSIVE CULTURE.: "There will always be people who cause you to question your opinions, people that will shatter the rigid rules you prepared and cause you to really explore why you believe what you do. "

For the lady who has everything. You can support the ministry via Betty Bowers site.

Did I mention that I got my new cell phone? It's amazing. I went with the Samsung i600 through Verizon. The phone has complete PDA capabilitiy, full browser, e-mail, contact and calendar functions. I can syncronize everything wirelessly with my laptop so all of my e-mails, meetings and contacts are always completely up-to-date. I'm pretty sure I was this proud of each of my kids when I was born...

I went out to dinner last night in Kansas City with my mentor, Mack McCormick. Mack is the Vice President over the North American Document and Content Imaging group within Xerox. Mack is a really amazing guy and one of the finest leaders I've ever worked for. He was in the Army Special Forces for 22 years and retired as a Colonel - you can imagine that he's got some great stories. He's lived all over the world, and has a very unique and informed perspective from both political and economic standpoints. I get the chance to replay differente scnarious with him and get his feedback on my performance, dig into the thought process that went behind his decisions and those of his superiors. He's the kind of guy you want in the trenches with you when things hit the fan. In the book From Good to Great, Jim Collins talks about people who have Level 5 Leadership:
"Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. It's not that Level 5 leadres have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious - but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves." If this level 5 crap interests you, read more about the role of humility and will here.

Unfortunately, like Bill, Mack also created a video, which you can watch here. It's no less akward than Bill Belanger's video.

Will updated his blog! Looks like Jesus must be coming back soon, or else hell has frozen over. This is something Will only does every few months, so it's a special time for all of us.

Noel is famous. He's in the paper. Because the paper is on the internet, you know that what he says is true. Noel uses words like synthesize and hyperindividualism. Noel has a beard like an amish man.

I'm in Kansas City until Thursday. We've got a Christmas Party tonight with both the customer and our project team, which should be a good time. I'm not feeing much like hanging out with people today, though, so we'll see how it goes.