TAKS - again

Assuming everyone passes, the 5^th graders will be taking the last of the TAKS test for the year today.  This time around is Science.  Two years ago when Sheela first had to sit for these tests I bought her strawberries, blueberries and raspberries to take for her “healthy snack”.  We’ve had them for every test (well, not the raspberries) since.  We forgot to buy them last night when we went to the ice cream parlor next door to the store (Baskin-Robbins birthday celebration – 31cent ice cream cones).  Sheela took the disappointment of not having the TAKS snacks pretty well.  So I ran out this morning and picked them up.  I came in work all pleased with myself for being dedicated to family traditions even though it was awkward until I talked to my friend Carolyn.  Her family tradition, now in it’s four year, is a breakfast buffet.  So she prepares three or four full breakfast meals form which the kids can pick and choose.  This year she’s quite ill (but not with Swine Flu) but still in there doing her best to whip up pancakes, fruit/yoghurt parfaits and quiches with fresh squeezed orange juice for the fourth morning in a row.  She has three kids, each in different grades, taking different tests on different days.  That’s dedication to a tradition (and why its best not to go nuts in the beginning).

 

Treasure

During the gardening portion of our weekend we cleared fallen leaves from underneath the hedges.  I found a variety of broken plastic toy parts, a fair pile of trash and a rodent skull.  I'm guessing it's a squirrel skull but I haven't really looked in to it yet.

Sunils's run

Cubmobile Races

Pinewood derby grows up but only a little bit.  Sunil's age group didn't get to use the ramp, they pushed each other around on the flat.

I love my family

We spent the morning on yard work.  The kids chipped in pretty cheerfully for most of it (in the end we had to get perental).  We followed that up with the kids doing the laundry while I read a book.  Then we had a humbling baseball game.  In the end the boys lost 25-11 but the first three endings went all to the other tem (15-0).  This makes up for yestardays win 25-0.  This was much more fun to watchthan the shut out.  Now we are wqtching game shows together.

Another Shooting Star

Sheela was selected to receive the "Shooting Star" award for her class this grading period.  I'm so proud it has been nearly three years since her last one.  The picture of her receiving the award from her principal will follow in a few weeks.

Oz

The current mgmt regime is quite enthralled with the "Oz Principle".  It boils down to accountability in the work place and not burying your head in the sand when disasters are looming.  I read the book a decade or so ago and wasn't that impressed.  It isn't that accountability is a bad thing it's that I don't like the writing style and the examples are trite.  Anyhow I'm forcing myself to reread it and it is slow going made worse by the fact that I have a short stack of novels and "The No Assholes Rule" business philosphy book waiting in the wings.

The ground has been broken

The ground breaking ceremony for our new facility was held today.  After a catered bbq lunch at the office we loaded everyone on to five coach buses and trekked up to our new home.  We'd erected a floored tent in the middle of our huge field, set up a PA system passed out bottled water, commemorative t-shirts and hard hats.  Silver shovels were presented by our four presidents (and one Sr VP) to the mayor, our landlord, our CEO, our North American President and a member of our board of directors.  Speeches we made, dirt shoveled and pictures taken.  Then we trekked back to the office.  In the tradition of our operations department we concluded with an Ops Team happy hour.  The day went off beautifully.

Spring Portraits have arrived

I'm not wild about either one particularly but I do like the way they look together.

The flowers of spring

I planted some white verbena on either side of the front door and coreopsis by the mailbox (we call that one "tickweed" here abouts).  My daylilies are about burst, the snap dragons are blooming, the iris are at their peak and the jasmine is about to bloom.  Now I remember why people choose to live here.

Texas Tradition

Bad mom that I am I skipped taking pictures of "toddler Sunil" surrounded by the bluebonnets.  We stopped for a few quick pics by the raodside today.

Texas Bluebonnets

They are pretty

New cut

The hair finally grew out enough to reshape.  Now Sunil and I are sitting at the slowest traffic light in town.

HATs Canoe Trip

Sid and Sheela leave this afternoon for their daddy daughter weekend canoe trip down near Waco.  One of the HATs tenets is that there is no such thing as inclement weather just improper clothing.  They will put that to the test during the rain showers and thunderstorms passing through the area from now until late Saturday night.  Sunday should be beautiful by the time they head home.  Luckily they both have a strong sense of adventure (and proper clothing).

Game 2

The Angels played their second little league game last night.  They won 20-14 in a game that turned out to be much more about their fielding than their hitting.  It was a very different game from the last one but as much fun to watch.  We couldn’t have asked for a nicer evening.  Sunil won the game ball this week for “effective use of teamwork” while backing up the first baseman from the outfield.  His friend Sam got the game ball for his batting. 

 

It rained pretty hard last night so tonight’s game is in jeopardy but if it dries out enough they’ll play tonight and again tomorrow morning.

Enterprise City

Sheela’s class spent the day at Enterprise City yesterday.  They each had to apply for a job by writing a resume of sorts.  Sheela worked in the gift shop.  She worked for three hours earning three pay checks of $4.50 each which she had to spend on her breaks.  The other stores/businesses included a snack shop, a bank, a newspaper, police station and a radio station.  The businesses had to collect money for services, or sales, pay their employees and purchase advertising.  Her store won the award for the most profitable of the day (they made a whole $1.50 profit).  Apparently a good time was had by all.  I asked her to buy me a newspaper (mostly ads and two sentence stores), she bought Sid a T-shirt, the rest of her money she spent on bouncy balls and junk.

Closet

Every night we tuck Sunil in to "bed" he has taken to sleeping on a pile of boxes in his closet.  It is a rather tight fit but he likes it.  Usually we find him back in his own bed by morning but sometimes he stays in the closet all night.

Iris Pic

Iris

It looks to be a good year for my iris crop.  I’ll have more than 30 blooms of Chocolate Daddy this year and possibly as many as a dozen of the really pretty generic yellow.  Hopefully I’ll get to take some pictures this evening before it gets too dark.  This Fall I’ll need to dig them up and thin them out some.  The place where I’d like to plant the “extras” is along the neighbor’s fence on the low side of the driveway, but they don’t much like to have wet feet so I may not even try that.  I could put them on the high side but I won’t get to see them there.  I have a few months to figure it out.

Business Travel

I counted five trips that I need to take in the next two months.  That’s not going to happen.  But I love the possibilities and all of them are trips that I want to take.  Three of them involve visits to our biologics’ suppliers.  These are trips that I’ve been promised for the last two years that haven’t come to pass.  Unfortunately if something has to slip these are the most likely candidates…. again.  One is to take a training class on our new labeling software.  That will take place back in MA where I just was.  This one is definite.  I’m booking tickets today to go in early May.  The sixth is to teach a training class on some of our custom business processes at our sister company.  This one shouldn’t be my job but I want to do it anyway.  I’m too much of a control freak to let someone else tell these folks how to make my systems work.  If they tell them wrong I’ll have to clean it up.  Plus by teaching the class I’ll know who I’m talking to when we try to troubleshoot it over the phone later.  And we will be troubleshooting because the system is not as stable as it should be.  It was designed as a temporary solution to hold us for a year or two while bigger pieces fell in to place.  That was nearly seven years ago and the bigger pieces aren’t even on the table.

Over

The meeting finished a little bit early and was very successful.  We reduced the number of label templates that we need for nearly 200 down to six.  This sounds good but doesn't really show how good it is.  Each template represents 1000s of individual changes to process every time changes are made.  Even better we now can use electronic reviews and approvals.

Even better my counterpart up here is bringing his wife down to TX next week on a house hunting trip in case they decide to move down.  I really want them to come down.

Sightseeing in MA

I had a little free time before it got dark so I drove around for a while seeing the sights some of which included: the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Bridge, the Long Hollow Bison Farm and Sully's Breakfast "Home of Polish Music".  There is better stuff to go see but I hurried back to watch the Daily Show and South Park.

Springfield bound

In the morning I'm heading up to Massachusettes for a few days.  This close to Easter the flights were pretty full so I'm flying out earlier than intended and not coming back until late Saturday. I'm excited about the trip.  First I'm traveling alone for a change.  I enjoy the group dynamics but being alone can be like a vacation.  Second the purpose of the trip is to get a big start on updating our labeling software.  This has been a hot topic for me for the last four years.  We should have upgraded long ago.

Season opener

The Angels opened their Spring season this morning.  It was cool and misty during the game.  The fans grumbled some but we all know what it will be like come June so we didn't grumble much.  They started off with a double play which was pretty much the field highlight of the game.  The rest of the excitement was all about the batting.  In the end it was a tie 15:15 but it went down to runners on second and third when the third out was made.  One time each the teams scored 5 runs to close an inning rather than three outs.

Windy Day

It was another blah sort of day around here except for the wind.  It was a good, hard, sustainable wind with even harder gusts to keep it interesting.  It finally pulled the back off of our shed but Sid's already put it back on.

Receivership

One of the lending institutions for Sid's business has been taken over by the FDIC.  It shouldn't effect his business (except he has one less relationship with a lending institution).  Still the world is becoming a scary place.

Not for the politically correct (or the sensitive)

I was introduced to a new book today Our Dumb World it is an encyclopedia of countries of sorts.  It was compiled by the editors of my favorite website www.theonion.com.  Unfortunately I won’t get to spend the rest of the day reading it… I’ve got to get back to work.