January 25, 2009

Well winter certainly decided to visit this year. We have had snow on the ground since the new year which is very unusual for us. Plus the temperatures continue to hover in the 20's instead of the usual high 30's. This has made for some very cold runs and the more than occasional decision to stay inside for our aerobic workout. To emphasize the point, we woke up to a frigid 9 degrees this morning leading Jo to decide 30 minutes on the ellipitical trainer sounded like more fun.

We enjoyed our shortened week and could certainly vote for several more of them being added during the year (like one a month). Monday we attended a morning yoga class which was a nice addition and then spent the day working on various chores around the house. One of which was conducting our year end meeting for our LLC. We reviewed the books - which showed how much money we lost on renting the house (yep, the rent doesn't cover the mortgage even - not to mention the taxes. I agree with Mark, I can't seem to figure out how to really make money on renting) and wrote up our year-end meeting for the records.

Jo was then off to New York for a couple of days as I did my usual of holding down the fort here at home. Nothing too exciting for either of us during the week, usual mix of meetings and squeezing some exercise around our day jobs. I've been spending a lot of my free time reading as I'm going through a 12 book series - I'm up to book 6 at this point. One nice thing is I don't have the usual let down of finishing a book as there is another to pick right up where the last left off. The downer will be when I get to book 12. This weekend we had our annual prediction dinner with Sheri and Bruno at a Mexican restaurant. We each make about two pages of predictions of things we believe will happen in 2009 - then in December we review to see who got the largest number of them right (usually the winner gets about 6 out of 25 predictions). These can be anything and involve celebrities, politicians, weather and natural events, to things at work (we banned any predictions on Pfizer buying Wyeth as that was all over the news this week). Always a bunch of fun.

For this week, Jo is off to Germany today for the week. And, yep you guessed it, I'm holding down the fort at home.

Have a great week

January 18, 2009

Brrrrr.....Winter has definitely decided to make its presence known this year. While I know it is worse for Cheryl in Chicago it has been plenty cold and snowy here this year. We had another signficant snowfall on Thursday this week and the really sad thing about it is that they guy we have plow our driveway beat me home so I only got to snowblow the edges and a few places he missed. As it was bitterly cold when it snowed it was the perfect kind of snow to really blast it out the snowblower.

Work was work this week. Very busy with changes while Joann spent the week in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. She took advantage of arriving early due to last week's snowstorm (see below) to tour some of the local attractions. As she wasn't able to have time for this in her last visit it gave her the chance to learn a bit about local culture. She took in a shrine (picture on the right above in case you don't recognize a shrine when you see one), a pewter factory, and a place they made batik. While she has several lovely pictures of the Petronas Towers, she hasn't actually been up inside of it since it is always closed on Mondays and that is usually her only day free. The business side of her trip went smoothly although she had a bit of a time adjusting to the time differences as it wasn't until her last night there that she managed to sleep through the evening. Fortunately she came home to a long weekend which will provide the opportunity for some daily naps to help reset to eastern time.

Not too much planned for the weekend as Jo needs to recover a bit. We went to see indoor beach volleyball at the Mohegan Sun casino last night. Interesting to see them create an entire indoor beach volleyball court. Can't imagine how they truck in all the sand and most importantly get it all back out. But it was a fun night, the volleyball was great (it is amazing to see two players cover that much court; in the sand no less), and we walked away with 20% winnings from the slots (ok we only played five dollars and walked out with six - but hey we won, and nothing else in our portfolio is providing that kind of return. The amazing thing was our big win was at a penny slot). Today we are planning to hibernate, do some indoor chores, and finalize the 2008 books for our LLC. Tomorrow after yoga in the morning, who knows?

Have a great week and stay warm!!

January 11, 2009

We are enjoying a winter wonderland, as we had another snowfall over night. We have been going through these regular cycles of snowfall and then just about when it has all melted away, another snowfall. The unfortunate fact of this snowfall meant Jo needing to scramble and change her travel plans. Jo is in Malaysia and was originally scheduled to leave from Newark on Saturday at 11:30 PM - right in the middle of the predicted snow. So with some quick calls to her administrative assistant, who was really special helping on a Friday night, and the travel desk she moved her trip up to leave at 8:30 Saturday morning. Unfortunately, this meant she spent Saturday on a plane instead of at home. I spent the day running errands and chopping some wood as we have been making big use of our fireplace with all the cold weather.

This last week was the usual mix of work, exercise, and evening relaxation. Although, we both spent a bit of time in the evenings working on year-end performance reviews as it is the time of the year to have all those completed. Fortunately, those are all completed and now just have to wait to conduct the one-on-one discussions. Nothing too exciting to report, except we are watching to see if Dow completes its acquisition of Rohm and Haas. I'm of mixed feelings, personally would love to see Rohm and Haas stay independent, but I'm sure it is probably better for it to be sold. As a shareholder, I suppose it is better for it to be sold to Dow.

For the coming week, I'm a bachelor, so I'm grabbing some key introvert time. Will spend today, snowblowing the driveway (believe it or not, one of my favorite things to do - don't ask why, I just love it. I think it might be the driveway looks all neat afterwards, or I just love to watch snow shoot out of the blower) and then will hunker down with a good book. The rest of the week will be work.

Have a great week.

Waterford Weekly - Jan 1, 2009

Happy New Year 2009

Wow another year has gone by and in the interest of keeping current with modern technology - I'm moving my weekly letter from email to a blog. This will make it easier to post pictures and to share with a wider audience. Hopefully, this will work for everyone viewing.

Jo and I have been enjoying the two weeks off from work. We spent last week in New Mexico and it was great to see everyone there. This week we have been relaxing at home getting in some exercise - yoga class twice already along with the usual running/lifting mix - and home chores (such as setting up a blog). We went to the Rhode Island School of Design's museum, with Sheri and Bruno, to see the glass exhibit - along with the rest of the museum collection - of Chihuly (one of the teachers at the school). It was very interesting what they could do with glass. While there we enjoyed a great lunch at Geoff's and a hot chocolate and cookie at a local coffee house. We celebrated New Year's eve at home watching the ball drop in Times Square and drinking a wee bit too much champagne. Here's to an exciting 2009!