October 10, 2009

What a quiet week, we were all thinking that our big news from the FTC would be coming through and Pfizer could finally get on with the merger of Wyeth. Well that didn't happen, so here's hoping it is next week. As you might imagine, everyone at Pfizer (and probably Wyeth) is eagerly waiting for clearance so we can begin finishing the process that started at the beginning of the year. We have certainly trained us all to be good at waiting.

Last weekend we finally did get a sunny day on Sunday (see how that works - sun on SUNday) so Jo and I spent the morning mortaring in the several of the loose bluestones on our patio. This is a yearly chore as there always several of the joints that loosen over the winter. Was good to be out in the sun and we had a good chat while doing it since mortaring leaves a lot of time for a talking. That afternoon, I got to play lumberjack as I took down our dead elm tree in our side yard. If certainly convinced me that lumberjacks are way underpaid (no matter what they currently earn) as it is a lot of hard work to cut down a tree - even with a chain saw. Of course, it didn't help the task that my chain saw is about 16 inches long and the tree was 30 inches wide. Jo did a good job of staying out of the way and capturing the tree felling in action. As I was doing this it did make me wonder how the heck our fore-fathers cleared the land after landing from Europe. It was tough enough to do with a chain saw - I couldn't imagine tackling it with an axe and handsaw. Especially since, getting the tree down is only 10% of the work - you then have to chop it into small enough pieces to move. All I can say, they must have been tougher, stronger, and have more endurance back then. Of course, they probably didn't spend their days sitting in meetings deciding on the next enabled formulation.

After we got the tree down the next step is to get into smaller pieces, which is my chore for this weekend. The rest of week was fairly quiet. Jo went to Madison, WI where she presented at an HR conference - that just happened to conveniently be in Madison. She also had the opportunity to meet with some of the HR students at UW in the Business school. It was an open question and answer session where Jo got to share her experiences on working in HR in a global company. She said she had a blast (imagine Joann having fun just talking about her experiences) and she is hoping to come back next year and do it again. This weekend, she and her sister are going down to University of Illinois for a football game - so she will have hit both her Alma Mater's in one week. I'm of course very jealous, but as Jo is supposed to be bringing home Papa Dels pizza I'll get over it. Papa Del's in case you aren't in the know - is the best thick crust pizza on the planet. I lived on it as my Sunday meal as a freshman/sophomore since we didn't have cafeteria service that day. Which might, of course, be coloring my opinions.

That's pretty much the week and weekend except for me doing some shopping for someone's major decade birthday coming up (I'm not allowed to say which one or who, but I'm married to her and she is a year younger than I am). And I need to watch the Illinois game in case Jo gets on TV.