November 30, 2009

Last day before December and the start of the Christmas season. Time to be singing carols and trimming the tree and baking cookies. Speaking of cookies, I spent Sunday morning making my favorite Christmas cookie to enjoy for the next few weeks. Check out the photo

We spent the week of Thanksgiving in Madison, WI with Jo's sister, Kathy. Her other sister - Mary - and brother-in-law joined everyone for the beginning of the week and it was great for Jo to have the chance to catch up on all the family news. Plus I didn't have to talk that much since the three sisters were doing enough for everyone - at least that was my observation. Her brother Bill also came up on the Sunday before Thanksgiving so that most of the clan was together (just missing her brother John from Colorado). The photo is everyone - minus Kathy who was the designated photographer. Going clockwise from the bottom left - Jo, yours truly, Mike, Mary, Sean (Mary and Mike's eldest son who lives in Madison), and Bill.

I had a very relaxing time during our stay, as always, since I spent my week playing computer games, reading books, and napping. Almost in even portions of each. As always, I decided that I could really handle that pace full time and was ready to call up Pfizer and tell them where to send my final check. I did manage a few constructive efforts during the week helping install some new lights for Kathy.

Jo and I met with our architects and got excited about renovating our house in Madison again. We came up with some new ideas to try and get to the laundry room out of the basement as well as some modifications for the third floor guest suite. Had a great time and the architect was incredibly encouraging about being able to get everything we wanted planned out and through the zoning approval process. We walked out very charged about the house and ready to do it now. Which won't happen, but it was nice to get excited about it again.

Thanksgiving dinner consisted of turkey with all the trimmings and was delicious. It is a shame that cleaning up a turkey afterwards is such a pain otherwise I could really see making it more often. Very tasty and there are few things better than stuffing with gravy all over it. Our last day in Madison, Kathy and Jo hit the stores to take advantage of the Black Friday sales while I installed some landscape lighting for Kathy to light up her walkway steps a bit better for visitors. Then it was back home to the realities of work. Our flight home went smoothly which is always nice and we managed to sort through the mail and get unpacked quickly.

Jo then had to turn around and pack for a week on the road in New York. Although with the Christmas windows on display this is one of her favorite times to be in New York - makes her morning runs more enjoyable as she tries to wind her way past all the best windows. I'm in town with a full calendar of meetings to catch up for relaxing last week. This Friday is my group's holiday party. Then, we are planning to put up our Christmas tree this coming weekend and hopefully will get the whole house decorated in the two days we have. Stay tuned for the photo montage.

November 22, 2009

No pictures again this week since I don't have any way to connect my camera to the computer I'm using. Busy travels for Joann this last week as she spent the majority of the week in New Jersey meeting with her leadership team from around the globe - Brazil, Germany, Australia, and the US were all represented. She had quite the adventure traveling to New Jersey since she managed to not get off Amtrak at the right station. Landed up having to go to the next station and get a taxi to her final destination - and if case you were wondering - it wasn't Amtrak's fault, except for closing the door to move on. Jo apparently was dawdling.

I spent the week at home with a full schedule of meetings. Nothing too exciting meeting wise, but many of them were in preparation for our annual year-end reviews. Always a fun time for all. Friday we packed up and headed off for some vacation time with Kathy in Madison, WI. We had smooth flights all the way out and have already been enjoying the down time that vacation brings. I spent almost all day yesterday playing computer games which is something I would never do at home. Joann did some baking with her sisters - Mary and Mike have joined from Nebraska.

Not too much planned for the rest of the week except for a meeting with the architect on our house plans to check out a few new ideas we had and update the firm on our construction (or lack thereof) plans. Hope everyone has a wonderful turkey day and remember the point of Thanksgiving is to eat too much.

November 14, 2009

Since the weather outside is all windy and rainy it seemed like a good time to update the happenings of the week. Many folks have requested a photo of Joann's new bobby haircut and that should be coming. Unfortunately, I can't apparently just take any ole picture of her hair - it must be properly styled and looking good before a photo is allowed to posted. Needless to say and as the absence of a picture this week shows - all those events haven't come together this week. Stay tuned.

We both were in town for the week. I was supposed to be in sunny and warm LA to attend a conference (AAPS - American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists in case you wanted to check into it). But was asked late last week to be in the office as the research division of Pfizer made several key announcements this week. As you can tell from the news, we are closing several research sites around the globe following the merger with Wyeth. The local impact is our New London, CT facility will close and we will move folks over to our Groton buildings. As I'm already in Groton - not much change there. Joann however will no longer enjoy her views of the Long Island sound, submarines going out from the submarine base, and will certainly miss the seals she gets to watch every winter.

On a more cheery note, Jo crossed a major milestone and one she is sooooo excited about. She became a platinum executive flyer on one of the major airlines. As this is tantamount to free stuff and anyone who knows Jo realizes how much she loves a bargain this has caused her to practically walk on air due to the excitement. Of course this has required flying over 100,000 miles since January - this is even more impressive (or depressing depending on your love of travel) is that this is equivalent of flying around the earth 4 times (circumference of the earth is ~25,000 miles) or almost halfway to the moon (~240,000 miles). Wonder how much extra radiation she picked up being in the air that much - no wonder her hair is turning white (although she swears it is just more blond).

My thrill for the week was to discuss with my dentist replacing my capped front teeth. As the rest of my teeth have aged and moved off the brilliant white of my youth - my capped teeth have stayed their original color. Therefore, I'm a bit mis-matched. That along with some degradation in one of the caps has moved this to the probably should do list. In the process of discussing this with my dentist it became clear that what was acceptable practice 30 years ago might make it difficult - and in the case of my teeth, read painful - to remove the existing caps. I'll still probably go through with it, but it isn't easy to knowingly decide to cause yourself a bunch of pain to have matching teeth again.

That is all the exciting news for the week. Today is a haircut for me - although nothing as interesting as Jo's, along with some shopping for a new bird bath (or old concrete finally cracked) and some books. Tonight we are doing dinner and a show in Westerly with Bruno and Sheri. We don't have anything major planned for Sunday so will probably catch some naps and reading.

November 7, 2009

As promised last week, the photo for the week is our sweet potato crop. We didn't get any really large potatoes but we did manage to get a larger number of roots that we thought given the weather. We have found that this size sweet potato works really great in soups since they are usually to small for much else.

Joann had a fun week in Paris as it is her favorite city on the planet and she gets to practice her french. While she had serious work to do while there in explaining the new HR model to the European country managers for Pfizer she did get to enjoy the exquisite use the French make of chocolate in desserts. Also she had a little free time one afternoon that allowed her time to come home with a brand new haircut - sort of a bob - and savor a crepe nutella made on the street. I could go on for pages on the shear joy of a well made crepe nutella but I'll leave it at - if you are ever in Paris buy one. The best we have found are made right on the street, you don't have to find a creperie.

My week by comparison was fairly lame. Besides going to work and doing my usual work stuff. My free time consisted of exercising, eating dinner, ironing my shirts, and doing the crossword puzzle. Not too hard to figure out who is leading the more cosmopolitan lifestyle between us. The coming week will probably consist of more integration activities as Pfizer continues to bring together the people and processes of the two companies.

Other than that we are both looking forward to Thanksgiving, a little time off, and naturally the turkey dinner.

November 1, 2009

Welcome to November and apparently the start of the Christmas shopping season since most of the stores seem to have started decorating and selling Christmas items two weeks ago. We were both busy traveling for work this week so not to much exciting news on the home front from the week.

But we did manage an exciting weekend. Friday night we joined Sheri and Bruno, and Gene and Kathy for dinner then it was off to the Providence zoo to see the pumpkin extravaganza - see Providence Zoo Pumpkin. They had over 5,000 carved pumpkins displayed. Everything from very fancy faces carved onto the pumpkins to the more standard three triangles and a mouth. It was an enjoyable evening as the temperatures were warm as we wandered through the pumpkin displays. One interesting item was they had several carved 1,000 lb pumpkins. When you have something that big there is a lot you can do. It certainly gave you ideas for our next pumpkin carving event.

Saturday brought another warm day so we tackled the leaves and garden after our morning chores. We collected the leaves for garden mulch and then removed the last of our crops for this year - the sweet potatoes. While we didn't get any monsters we were pleasantly surprised as we didn't expect much due to the wet and cool weather we had this year - photos will be posted next week. Then it was in for a meal of pasta and fresh homemade bread with a fresh apple crisp (with vanilla ice cream naturally) for dessert before heading out to see Avenue Q at the Garde Theater in New London. Great show and we enjoyed seeing it again - we had seen it before on Broadway - and certainly worth going to if it is nearby.

Today we enjoyed the extra hour of sleep before our morning exercises. Then Jo packed up as she is headed to Paris for four days. She is certainly looking forward to getting some warm crepe nutellas from the street vendors and of course, she might have to a little work in between her crepe's. I tackled some indoor chores and hope to bury myself in a book later this afternoon.

We have been enjoying watching the World Series and are cheering for the Phillies due to our years in Philadelphia. Although, both teams looking really strong this year, so it could be either side at the end.