Soccer and Spaghetti

I rushed home today so Jadyn and I could play outside. Today I was going to teach Jade the basics of soccer. I'll post some video later. After soccer practice, my beautiful wife made a pasta dinner for us all and we ate it outside on our new patio furniture. A nice end to a day tht already had me having lunch with the President of our parent company, Brown & Brown. I love warm weather!!!

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First Car Wash

Today was the first outdoor car wash at our house. Since I live so close to work, I don't really have time to unplug from work like most do. When the weather is nice, I'm able to unplug while working outside. The past few months have not granted me that pleasure. Thank God for warm weather!

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The Big Ten

My wife and I are spending the weekend in Indy at the Big Ten tournament. I'm trying to enjoy the game without worrying about spectator injury as I'm insuring the event.

Oh, funny story....one of the Michigan players was called for traveling and my wife goes, "Oh, did he fumble?" HAHA

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My Office Meets The Office

Today I spent the entire morning in an awards ceremony. Because I'm a visual junkey, I was captivated by the graphics and production side of things. They really go all out. At one point, I was reminded of The Office episode where Dwight Schrute gives his acceptance speech and I nearly started laughing out loud during one of the speeches. Not a good career move...

The second photo is of the Programs Tangle B members for 2007. You'll see my name and a few others from my office on there. This is a special club for those with new production over a certain $$ amount.

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Annual Awards Meeting

I'm in Orlando for the annual B&B awards meetings. This year, after the awards night, we took a police escort to see Cirque Du Soleil's La Nouba (2nd photo shows one of the CDS people....they had some of the people "showing" us to the transport). Pretty cool show - but it makes for a long day!

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Big Head Fridays

Have you ever had one of those weeks where your heads feels like it is continually growing and that your neck may snap?  Well, that was this week for me.  What a freaking stressful week - but now it is over and my little girl is trying to pull me away from my computer so she can push me in my "rolly" chair around the house....I can feel my head shrinking back to normal size.......ahhhhhh

What A Week

The weather has sucked the last few days.  Three inches of melted snow along with 2 days of rain causes some serious issues.  As I drove into work on Wednesday, I ran to the local coffee hut to grab a quick drink and noticed that one of the roads was barricaded off.  I didn't even notice why as I tried to navigate a different route (not hard in a small town, but hey, it was early).  As I finally made way to my parking space, I noticed water rushing through the once quiet "stream" next to the lot.  I instantly pulled up the weather on my phone and realized it was going to be a long day for some families in the area.  

Later in the afternoon, I received a call from our Director of Loss control asking that I be "on call" in case we needed to sandbag the office.  Fortunately, the rising tide subsided and I was never called to duty, but it made me think briefly of the madness of Katrina.  I watched a LOT of news coverage of that event as it happened a little before Jadyn was born.  I found myself glued to the TV in the birthing room I was stationed in for the weekend.  I couldn't believe the destruction created from Mother Nature.  While the high waters in small town Indiana came no where near the destruction of Katrina, I was still reminded of how small I really am in this powerful world.

Top photo of CR 1100N (Herald-Press/Ben Hopper)

Bottom photo of Katrina Destruction (New York Times)

Hard Work Yields Corporate Success

This has been one long and tiring month. The start of the year is always stressful. Even though I had a great year in 07, my results can no longer carry me in 08; it's a new year with new production goals. Having said that, I am strangely fueled by the challenge. I'm a rather competitive guy, so I enjoy taking on challenges and proving myself. Now that I have two beautiful girls at home depending on me, my drive to succeed is even greater.

Being rewarded for hard work is wonderful. In my job, if you hit your numbers you are rewarded - it's as easy as that. For my wife, and many others out there in the world, it is not the same; hard work cannot be measured by a number at the end of the day. My wife does not have a year-end evaluation, nor does she have monthly production meetings to measure where she's at compared to goal. But she works hard just the same. I think of my high school youth pastor and the amount of time and energy he poured into his students. I think of the professors that spent so much time outside of class, teaching me things that could not be found in a text book. Parenting has helped me appreciate all the hard work my parents put into raising me. Hard work produces results. Maybe not the exact result you want, maybe not even a measurable result, but it produces results - I'm a firm believer in that and hope that my kids can have the same kind of people influencing their life as I did growing up.

This past week, my hard work was rewarded as I was promoted to Assistant Vice President after 2.5 years with the company. When I started right out of college, I knew nothing about insurance or risk management, but I was willing to bust my butt to learn it, and made sure I absorbed every bit of knowledge I could from everyone I worked with. I don't say this to "toot my own horn" as that is not the purpose of this post. Sure, I am proud of my accomplishment, but at the end of the day, a title means nothing if you don't back it up with continued hard work.  At age 25, I don't have much of life figured out, but I do know that much.

Back To Work

I love coming back from vacation or business trips. The drive/flight home especially. I normally fly out of Fort Wayne, so I've got about 15-20 minutes before I get home. It is actually perfect - just enough time to unwind from the trip and pull myself out of business mode and back into father/husband role. I often times think about what Jade will do when she knows Daddy is home, or where Andrea may be in the house as I arrive and what candle she has burning. It is great to have that to come home to.

Coming back from Vacation isn't always easy. I'm a bit of an anomaly because I love my job and love to get back and do it. However, it is also interesting to think that the only way a vacation can be a vacation is if it comes to an end. If it never ends, it becomes your norm. We had a great time together as a family, but it is great to be back in the wonderful norm that I find myself in. I'm not sure that any vacation could pull me away from that.

Me? Relax?

Above is the view I've got from my hammock. This has been the first vacation I've been on since starting full time that didn't involve:
1. Checking in at the office every few hours
2. Spending at least 1 hour of the trip on a conference call.
3. Trying to close at least 3 accounts (I say 3 because I'm trying to close 2 this week)
4. Taking 2 hours out of each night to check e-mail and do a little work.

It has been great so far. I think the main reason for the change is the week in which I have taken off. January is typically a slow month in the Entertainment world.

I think we'll have to do more vacations during this time of year....

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Sports - Passion and Religion?

I am one of those guys that could sit on the couch all day and watch sports. I've got a great wife that understands my passion, and for the most part, allows me to be extremely lazy some days to practice that passion.

Today, I had the opportunity to go to the Purdue basketball game with some friends of the family. There is not too much more exciting than experiencing the passion of thousands of others, just like me, first hand.....the sound....the lights, the smell of really expensive crappy food....you can't beat it.

I've got a poster in my office at work that sums it up. Its a shot from the top of the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning - high above Forbes Field during Game 7 of the 1960 World Series between the Yanks and the Pirates. At the bottom of the image, the text reads: "Baseball? It's just a game. As simple as a ball and a bat, yet as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes. It's a sport, a business and sometimes even a religion." -- Ernie Harwell

[Posted with my Treo smartphone using hblogger 2.0 ]