As A Man Thinketh...

Daddy / Daughter Campout 2008

2008-06-23T12:59:00.000-07:00

On Top of The World!

Every year my friend Lynn Martin and I have a campout with two of our girls. We are sad since they are moving to New Hampshire in a couple of weeks but we were able to get our camping trip in this year with Erika and Morgan. This is always a special time and I think the Dad's love it as much as the girls. This year we found a really nice campground not too far away and had a wonderful weekend. Some fun pics below!

Lot's of Rocks to Climb

Daddy and Erika - How do we get down?

Lynn and Morgan - nice!

They found the Geocache - nice hike and a perfect day

Geocache goodies in front of an old miners cabin

Our campground and "Old Bessie"

More adventures of Curious Jim and George!

2008-06-10T20:21:00.000-07:00

It has been another busy week. I flew out on Friday morning to Montreal for the annual Montreal Grand Prix. Our distributor, Future Electronics hosts a very nice annual executive event and also have a great suite in the paddock club above the pits at the raceway. The Formula One is an amazing race and it is difficult to describe the sensation of being there and feeling and hearing the power of these cars. We also have access to the pits so we can go right up to the cars and check them out - pretty cool. Last year Angela joined me but felt that she could not go this year and as it turns out with all of the illnesses that the kids are experiencing - she was right. The event is nice but it is actually work - especially if your spouse is not there since you are talking about work the entire time and always have to be "on". On Monday morning George and I flew to Detroit for some additional customer meetings. We stayed in a very cool historic hotel which was built by Henry Ford on the Ford campus in 1931 and is now a Marriott property - very nice. Here is a picture of Henry Ford in the early 1900s. The picture was in our room and George climbed up for a closer look. This morning we got up early and flew from Detroit to Des Moines, Iowa. These are places I have never been before so it is interesting to see. Right now it is a little iffy since there are floods everywhere. They are sandbagging the road in front of our hotel right now - good thing I am on the 11th floor. I just hope I can get on a flight home tomorrow after our last meeting. Today one of our meetings was in Oskoloosa, Iowa. We visited a customer that does a lot of stadium lighting, most of the major baseball and football stadiums, racetracks etc. are lit by them - they also do a lot of set lighting for Hollywood. George and I saw a cool statue in the town square of an Indian Chief so he wanted to get his picture taken - I obliged him. Below is some information on the Chief that I got on Wikipedia.

Mahaska, or White Cloud, (1784 – 1834) was a chief of the Native American Iowa tribe.
Mahaska became chief at an early age after killing several enemy Sioux to avenge his father’s death. He was later imprisoned in St. Louis, Missouri for killing a French trader, before he escaped and led a raid against the Osage. Afterward, he decided that his father’s death was finally avenged, so he laid down his arms and adopted the lifestyle of the white settlers, building a log home and farming. He refused to let his braves avenge the death of an Ioway chief named Crane at the hands of Omaha Indians in 1833, and when several Ioway killed six Omahas, Mahaska assisted in their arrest.
The next year one of the Ioway escaped from Fort Leavenworth and killed Mahaska.
Chief Mahaska became a symbol of the virtues of his native lifestyle and of the possibility of peace between natives and settlers.

Barnstorming through Europe with Jim and George!

2008-05-23T03:03:00.000-07:00

I have been a little hit and miss on the blog and will likely always be so... only so many hours in the day. At any rate, I am back in Europe again this week, UK and Denmark. I visited some customers in the UK on Monday and then conducted business reviews with my sales team and distributor in London on Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday I was in Denmark seeing customers and heading home today (Friday)! Because I had to be in London early Monday morning I flew in on Sunday. I had some time when I arrived on Sunday afternoon and visited Windsor castle, weekend residence of the queen. I have not been there in probably close to 15 years so it was nice to go back. The castle is great and is the oldest continually inhabited castle in the world, and yes, the Queen was in residence although we did not have tea together. I was able to get a quick tour of the castle in... it's pretty big so I skipped the royal doll room! As usual, I have some challenges follwing the rules and was reprimanded for taking photos of the portrait of Angela's great, x,x,x,x, Grandfather, the Duke of Wellington in the Waterloo room. No worries, if you just go around to another room and then duck back under the ropes quickly you can still take a picture without being seen :-) I also wanted to see St. George's Cathedral which is on the castle grounds but it was closed on Sunday unless you attended a service... therefore, insta-catholic! Seriously, I decided that since I was unable to go to our church it was best to at least have some kind of worship so I attened the evening mass or "Evensong". It was a memorable event filled with pageantry and tradition, although I am not thinking of changing teams I am glad I attended. You were also not supposed to take pictures in the chapel but I found that if you crossed your leg and surreptitiously held the camera under your knee you can get a few good shots. Angela swears this was punishment but later my telephone (incl. camera) froze and I had to reset it thereby losing all of my ill gotten photos - serves me right!

Angela and Brock asked me to also take a few photos with his curious George so I did! I suspect that this may be an ongoing tradition. Below are a few photos of him.

George on his 1st Ferrari George on a mailbox in Denmark

On Thursday evening I had a wonderful visit with our friends and former neighbors Michael, Helle and Cornelius Hasselris at their beautiful estate in Birkerod, Denmark (approx 20 miles outside of Copenhagen). This was a last minute addition to the agenda as I had some time that evening and they were fortunately home and invited me to visit them. They have a beautiful estate on 25 hectares with thousands of trees, 38 horses and several lovely ponds. In fact, they also have deer on the property and shot one the previous evening which we enjoyed for dinner! The visit was a highlight for me and I was very glad that we were able to get together. Both Michael and Helle work for IBM and were formerly on assignment to the US where they resided across the street from us. It was fantastic reuniting with them again and enjoying a wonderful meal together on one of their patios... it is a world away from Mead! The days in Scandanavia are quite long and the conversation was good so before we were aware it was already 10:30pm. Some photos below... of course, with George.

Michael and Helle - thanks a ton it was great to see you!

One of their ponds viewed from the patio yet another pond!

It turns out Michael is a fantastic carpenter (I had no idea) He built a fort for Cornelius which is far too large to capture in this photo but very cool nonetheless - way to go Michael!

One last anecdote and then it is time to get on the plane... I took the train back from Michael and Helle's to the airport Hitlon where I was staying. Needless to say, it was very late and I was very tired after a long week. I fell asleep on the train - Uh Oh! I was fighting to keep my eyes open and finally succumed. Needless to say, I missed my stop but only by one station. However, that particular staion was an important one since it was some distance from the previous one... when I woke up I was in Sweden, just in time for meatballs and lingonberries! Not a great situation to be in when it is 12:30 in the morning and you have no Swedish currency but I perservered and eventually got back to the hotel OK - a little chagrined but definitely wide awake!

Lest we forget - A Dad's take on Disneyland!

2008-05-01T18:48:00.000-07:00

Angela posted earlier on the drama at the conclusion of our Disneyland trip and that was indeed a big deal and NO FUN for anyone - especially Brock and Erika although it was taxing on the whole crew.
I know we have a reputation for misfortunes and accident's - could probably write a book about it! So, to counteract the reputation I wanted to remind us all of why we went to the magic Kingdom in the first place.

Brynne is part of the middle school chorale group and they were singing in a chorale contest at Disneyland. The kids performed great and although they did not do as well as they had hoped for in the contest they represented themselves, their families and the school very well.

On the way down we had a nice visit with my parents for a couple of days in St. George (We really enjoyed it - so much so that we decided to come back for an extended stay on the way home!)

Disneyland really WAS great and we also had a nice time at the beach and other places on Saturday although it was a little cold. It was great seeing my brother Tim and his family as well. It was also fantastic to have Mom and Dad drive down from St. George to see Brynne perform and join us for a few days. We spent the day with them on Sunday and went to their church and they also came out to Disneyland with us twice and showed us a few "locals only" secrets!

I was so proud of the kids, they were generally well behaved and we really had a great time. Lily was so brave and rode virtually all of the rides. I think there were only three that she could not ride but she hit some of the classics like Space Mountain, Matterhorn and the Haunted Mansion! The older girls got to spend some time with their cousins and also ride some rides by themselves. We learned to leverage the magic of fastpasses and parent passes to get maximum ride time on the rides like California Screamin' and Indiana Jones.

And, of course, after the drama in St. George on the way home we were really blessed with an easy and uncomplicated drive home. It was good by any one's standards which made it absolutely awesome by ours!

So... all in all even though it was not exactly the trip we planned it was a good one and certainly one that we will ALWAYS remember, which at the end of the days is really what it is all about - right?

As A Woman Telleth A Man To Thinketh....

2008-03-25T14:17:00.000-07:00

Okay, still not getting the whole blog thing, but I am desperately trying! If it is a way that I can honestly say that I am following the Prophet's directive on journal keeping - then, count me in!

I don't know if there are enough areas on a blog to keep track of my children & their kid'isms, but some are too funny to keep to myself. Plus, my kids are so weird, what I think is funny you may think is more twisted!

I am still trying to figure out the whole website here - but, when I do, Jim will wig a little when he signs on from a far away land only to find his conservative homepage has had a stylish face lift! As Alyssa said to me, after sitting & reading other's blogs, "Mom, seriously, our blog is the most boring, ugly one I have seen! I am SO embarrassed!" More than you were when you saw the photo of you in the fish head that your Dad posted on the blog? I think not. :0

Why does Chicago hate me?!...

2008-03-08T00:58:00.000-08:00

SO... here I am in Tokyo, all alone and feelin' blue. Sounds like the opening lyric from a really bad country song! Forgive me - I am a little punchy. You probably noticed that the title of this post appears to have absolutely nothing to do with Tokyo. For those of you who know me well you know that I had really bad luck with some of my trips last year and the bad luck always seemed to center around Chicago when traveling to Europe or Montreal. I spent two joyless nights there on two separate unplanned ocassions. OK, I have to confess, the night I spent there with Angela was actually pretty nice, despite having no luggage. We had a really nice dinner and enjoyed the adventure, but I digress. You would think that traveling through Tokyo to Singapore would not be affected by Chicago in any way - you would be wrong! When we landed here I discovered that my connecting flight was delayed by almost 4 hours! When I enquired as to what the delay was the response was "we are waiting for a plane that is late coming in from Chicago".. unbelievable! For those who give a rip - here is a diagram of the airport. it is dark outside so not much else to see. I was supposed to land in Singapore at midnight but now it will be more like 4:00am! Nothing says fun like staying up for 36 hours and spending 22. 5 of them flying.

What did I ever do to the Chicagoans, or as Erika would say the "Chicagers"? I have faithfully travelled through their fair city for years and have spent more than my fair share of money buying Chicago style pizza and pasta - where is the love? Are they mad at me because I think they are all overweight and have an accent that makes them sound like candidates for the single digit IQ club? Are they jealous because I now live in Colorado where the skies are blue, the days are long and the powder is deep? Or is it simply some kind of well orhcestrated cosmic joke? Whatever the case may be I am really getting pi**ed off. I say we close down their airports altogether and route all of the midwest traffic through Denver. At least we have a decent airport!

Sorry for the rant... I am all better now, I guess there is nothing left for me to do but go eat some raw fish and rice. One last kind of funny thing. I am sitting in the red carpet club posting this message and almost was not able to do so. As I logged into blogger the page was basically entirely in Japanese, I fumbled my way through and finally made it in - screen shot below! Have a great day.

The youth of today!

2008-03-05T15:24:00.000-08:00

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?cl=6768917

Europe Part 2

2008-01-26T02:56:00.000-08:00

The last couple of days were spent conducting meetings in Italy and Austria. I was in Venice on Wednesday and Ancona on Thursday. Unfortunately it seems that on these trips that my experiences are limited to hotel rooms, conference rooms and restaurants! Venice is always nice but this time I was not even on the peninsula but out and around the city. We drove from Venice to Ancona on Wednesday evening. I had not been in Ancona before and it was very nice. It is a beautiful, hilly area with lot's wineries, bike paths etc. It is on the coast so the seafood is also fantastic - very fresh. I am currently sitting in the airport lounge in Frankfurt and some lady from Norway is talking my ear off so it is hard to concentrate... so if I am rambling then you know why. I was in Austria (Vienna) yesterday for some meetings and it was of course, also nice. I took some nice pictures with my phone but my it somehow froze and I had to reset it so I lost all of the pics so I dumped some from the internet. Anyway, I am going to log off so I can go somewhere and get away from this woman - she is driving me nuts.

Euro Sprint!...

2008-01-22T20:45:00.000-08:00

Well... I guess it is time for a Jim update. One of the reasons I started this was to keep my wife and kids more up to speed on what I am doing and seeing each day as I travel. Right now it is 5:30am in Venice. However, as with much of my travel this could be any city in the world! The last two days were quite busy - I arrived Monday morning in Munich, took a shower at the airport hotel and immediately hit the road seeing customers in Southern Germany. We were fortunate as the weather turned from rain to sunshine and it was a beautiful day. It is also somehow still interesting although frustrating to roll through the areas we used to live and not being able to really stop and enjoy it. I had one of my meetings Monday afternoon very close to the Chiemsee and memories of our trip with Steve and Elsie came flooding back. I remember sitting with Steve waiting to go through the tour of King Ludwig's castle (Schloss Herrenchiemsee) in the island and he had this horrible medeival torture device looking back brace that he had to wear under his shirt. He was particularly miserable that day but we had a very nice time nonetheless. After three meetings on Monday it was back to the hotel on the autobahn... I love driving at 200KPH!

At any rate the meetings are going fine. I have had some struggles as I picked up a cold right before I left so have been taking vitamin C like candy, drinking lots of water and sucking on Ricola lozenges and I seem to be holding my own. I lost my voice but it is coming back and I have been able to manage all of the meetings OK. I had kind of a funny experience yesterday. We were meeting the team for Bosch refridgeration close to Ulm Germany. The meeting was at their WW HQ facility which is also their primary factory. Our meeting was in one of the buildings on the campus and in typical German style it is all about efficiency. When we got into the building our host decided to take the lift (elevator). However, instead of the typical elevator with a door and a button there were simply two openings in the wall with open elevator cars going up and down contuinuously. You simply stepped in (quickly) as the box went past and then stepped back off on the desired floor - kind of like a giant assembly line. Each elevator car only holds one or two people so it was quite unique. Below is a picture of one of our distributor's sales guys just after he got into the lift. Well, it is time for me to get ready for the day and try to get some short workout in prior to running around Italy.

Why we don't drink alcohol!

2008-01-09T14:29:00.000-08:00

JK!... this is Alyssa wearing the remants of a pinata' as a hat this summer at one of the kids' birthday parties. She is a beautiful, confident 14 year old and is a pleasure to be around... when she is not acting like a teenager. Alyssa, if you are reading this remember, I am watching you! I have a lot more embarassing photos than this one I can post...

Oops - there is one now!

Best buddies... sometimes.

2008-01-09T14:18:00.000-08:00

Lily and Brock totally crack me up. Lily is now 4 and Brock will be 2 in a week. They spend most of their day together and have a traditional big sister, little brother relationship. Lily loves to cuddle Brock and dress him up, he likes to pull her hair and take her toys! Lily got a new jeep for her birthday and if we would let them they would spend all day, every day driving it around the yard. Lily packs it full of dolls and stuffed animals, Brock prefers rocks and sticks. She has become a very good driver and can navigate around most things at high speed - we don't let Brock behind the wheel! We did not expect these two additions to our family but are so glad they are here.