Merry Christmas 2012

The year was fun, interesting...and gone in a flash!

I'm getting to the point where I understand my job at Great-West as Senior Manager of Learning and Development; I'm told by old hands at GWF that tenure at the company is kind of the reverse of dog years - it takes about seven years at GWF to equal a year of experience at other companies, given the financial services sphere and the overall culture. At least I know where the bathrooms are!

After getting back home to Denver, one of the very first calls I made was to my friend Ginger Wilson, one of the best realtors the world has ever seen. I closed on my new townhome in January and moved in after new floors, carpet and paint in March. It's a quiet refuge from the job and I like it almost as much as my former Lowry townhome...although I still have a soft spot for that home since I had that one built!

I've had friends and colleagues over for a housewarming and for some BBQ. During the summer, the deck overlooking the 7th fairway is about as peaceful as it gets.

Being a "swing" state, we in Colorado were drowned in political ads all summer and fall. Over at my friends Bill and Gary's place for Election Night, I couldn't help feeling...relieved...that the election was over, no matter the outcome. Sadly, I think we all have a respite of about six weeks until the 2016 election is all that's talked about on the news.

Probably the highlight of the year was the return to Phillipsburg for my high school class reunion. It's been - ahem - 35 years since we graduated, but among the 40 or so classmates who came together for the Labor Day weekend, I must say that we all looked and acted like it was our 10-year reunion. No doubt we're all aging; it just seems like we're aging at a much slower rate than our parents. We had a blast and it was fantastic to reconnect with so many friends from a high school life that seems like hundreds of years and millions of experiences ago.

At the reunion, we set up our reception at Willers - the former Club II at the golf course where my mom ran a disco (of all things) in the late 70s and early 80s. I got to meet the current owners of the restaurant and commented that I pretty much knew where everything was in the building, since I had waited tables and DJed as a college student on the weekends back in the old hometown. My eyebrow raised when the owners said, "We have an...artifact...from the Club II days and we're not sure what to do with it. Would you like it?"

And that is how I came into possession of the giant mirror ball that slowly rotated at Club II in its heyday. Given that my sister Peggy is an unofficial "curator" of all things O'Neill, I found the world's biggest box, used two complete rolls of wrapping paper, and delivered this year's Christmas present to Peggy and her partner Laurie at their home north of Omaha just today. Peggy was a smidgen surprised, but since my sister has the audacity to own a home with an indoor swimming pool, I know there is enough of Reva in her to find a home for the giant blast from the past!

As I complete a full year back home in Denver, I want to take time to thank all of my family and friends for their support and advice. It's wonderful to be back in the West where I belong, and I hope your holidays and coming year are all that you desire them to be.

Merry Christmas!

Save the Bunnies!

At the townhome in Saddle Rock, deep in the Denver 'burbs, I share the landscape with golfers, the occasional fox...and bunnies. Lots of bunnies.

We have rabbits throughout the neighborhood, generally innocuous and admittedly cute little creatures, although some get annoyed that they really can't adorn their entries with flowers during summer season. Rabbits do munch a lot.

I hadn't thought too much about the bunnies in the neighborhood until a few weeks ago, when I was doing a little project in the basement. The main water shutoff is behind a door in the third bedroom - or at least it is now; it originally was a wood slab screwed into place, but a piano hinge and some ingenuity fixed that.

As I was cleaning up after yet another successful DIY excursion, I happened to glance out the basement bedroom window. It's a fairly deep window well, perhaps 5 or 6 feet, and it's topped with a metal grate with about 3" of space between elements of the grid. At the bottom of the window well sits a few inches of rocks, a few old leaves and the occasional brave plant that tries to eke out a living with only a few minutes of sunlight a day.

Oh. And bunnies.

Sadly, bunny remains. As my eyes resolved what I was seeing, I realized that the window wells' grates, while able to stop most animals from falling in, were sadly not built for a bunny fleeing a fox. Plop! It appeared that, months ago (by the looks of the fur that remained), about four bunnies fell into the window well and couldn't escape.

Very sad. Circle of life and all that, but still.

While I could do nothing for the bunnies that came before, I resolved that their deaths would not be in vain. I took a personal stand against bunny traps in basement window wells, and went in search of a solution. Which I found at Home Depot.

Plastic mesh inside my window wells saves the bunnies.

With a roll of 3/4 by 1 1/2 inch plastic mesh, some wire and a great deal of twisting with Channel Locks, I was able to line the inside of all my window well grates with a second layer of protection for the bunnies. They can now scamper across my window well gates to their little furry hearts' content, safe in the knowledge that the great Window Well Pit of Doom is no longer a threat to their floppy-eared lives.

Oh - and Home Depot also solved the bunny corpse cleanup problem as well, with one of those nifty long grabber thingys. I never had to get closer than about four feet from the poor dead bunnies. Another crisis averted!

Reunion!

I continue to be flabbergasted over the fact that it's been 35 years since my class walked the stage to graduate high school. What is this aging thing, anyway? Inside I still feel about 25, although the outside is beginning to show a bit of weathering, to be sure.

The Phillipsburg High School Class of 1977 has, always and ever, considered themselves to be special. For a group of 84 students in a small northwest Kansas town, we had a wonderful mix of farmers, athletes, smarties and artists - virtually all of whom knew, conversed, and built relationships with each other. We had just the right amount of kids in our class - enough that a huge number of the class found success in various student activities, and small enough so that everyone knew everyone, keeping the "clique" factor to a minimum.

We met in 1982 at the five-year mark and again at the ten-year mark, each time enjoying each other's company and comparing notes between the locals who stayed in Pburg and the wanderers who scattered to various cities around the US. By our 20-year reunion, we were firmly adults and had begun to simply enjoy life and each other during our weekends catching up.

We were all expecting a 25-year shindig, but something happened and our "locals" decided that we could all be recognized during the annual all-class alumni banquet that's normally held around Memorial Day. For our special class? Pshaw! We didn't meet that year, nor did we meet at the 30-year mark.

As I was winding my way through the Great Recession (Atlanta, then Austin) in 2009, I finally decided that I would exert my "authority" as senior class president and DEMAND a 35-year reunion. As I told classmates about a year ago, if we didn't get one more reunion in, our next one (the 50th?) might have half of us in walkers!

Great initial help from Tina Pool, and later from Lisa Holzwarth, Bob Dusin, Barry Yoxall, Mick Heisterman and others, resulted in an 18-month push culminating in a fantastic 35-year reunion over the Labor Day weekend.

Phillipsburg, like so many county seat farming towns of the plains, is down in population. When we were in school, Pburg had 3,000 people and 400 in the high school. Today, it's down to 2,000 population with about 200 in the high school. A friend let me know that, when we toured the schools as part of the reunion, we'd see twice the facilities for half the students. He wasn't kidding.

Still, it's this small-town school system that produced our class - and about a third of us went on to successful careers in education or training. Had I had children, I know I would have seriously considered raising them in Phillipsburg - the experience was, and is today, vastly more kid-friendly than the 6,000-student schools in Denver.

Knowing what we owed to our teachers, we invited them to attend our Saturday evening get-together, and we were delighted that some of them were able to join us. (Remember, they are 35 years older too!) Zella Roeder, our 8th grade teacher who pushed us but always treated us as adults; Dave Koelsch, our junior high football coach who provided me with a great role model just a couple of years after my dad died; Francis Karlin, one of the most dynamic junior high teacher personalities EVER; Don Cassatt, a true genius who created a special math program for four of us our senior year (AP programs before AP programs were invented)...these and so many other teachers gave us inspiration, encouragement and acceptance. We owe them everything.

 

Our class is now on the backside of 50 and holding up well, if I do say so myself. We remembered the eight classmates who have gone on, our non-graduating classmates and teachers who have passed; but we also celebrated the vibrant life in all of those who were able to attend. We had fun - the essence of life, the very reason to breathe.

We've made commitments to do this again, sooner rather than later. Hopefully, others will step up for the 40th year reunion - Tina and I did a mountain of work, including accounting, planning, hundreds of phone calls and letters, convincing some of our classmates to come, etc. I don't think I'd want to try to turn this around again in a year or two. But maybe in five.

It was so very, very good to see the 35 classmates who were able to come to Phillipsburg.

For many more pictures and postings, check out our class Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/phsclassof77/

Number 14

Hard to believe, but I just signed the paperwork on the 14th car I've owned in my life. This one is definitely special - it's a 2013 Kia Sorento EX in Titanium Gray.

I've always been pretty conservative in my car picks, with the possible exception of the 1977 Pontiac Grand Prix that was my very first car. Maybe I grew up too fast, but almost all of my cars since have been pretty solid sedans.

My first flirtation with an SUV was back in '95, when in the midst of my time with Mark, I splurged on a Nissan Pathfinder completely out of my normal spending habits. To this day, that car had the biggest payment I've ever had - $534 a month! In 1995! Luckily, it didn't last long; Mark responded to my supposedly logical choice ("We need an SUV for all the things we're going to do!") by promptly trading his little Mazda Probe...for a Toyota RAV4 SUV. Oh well.

It was back to sedans for a while - four Camrys in my history, plus a great few years with an Oldsmobile Intrigue - and then in 2007 at the height of the boom, I splurged on a Toyota Highlander. Yes, plenty of Toyotas among the 14 vehicles I've owned. Toyotas don't break, and they are conservative in styling, even dowdy to some, but I like 'em.

Not this year, though. My trusty '08 Highlander was due for trading; it was either keep it and spend money on an upcoming timing belt and new tires (over $1K these days!) or look for a replacement. I got back in the new car market thinking I'd just up the year on the Highlander and be done, but Toyotas have lost a bit of luster the past few years, and the latest look of the Highlander is...well...insectoid, because of the weird stuff they've done with the headlights.

And then, I noticed the 2013 Kias just arriving in showrooms. I've been a fan of the Sorento for a couple of years - it's a well-made Korean nameplate that is assembled in Georgia and it comes with a 60,000 mile basic warranty. Most of the auto press likes the Sorento, with the only knocks seeming to be a stiffer-than-normal ride. I drove one, didn't find that a problem, and found a whole bunch more to like.

For about $7,000 less than a comparable Highlander, I'm now the owner of more geegaws and hoohahs than I though could possibly fit in a car. I got heated AND cooled seats. And power folding mirrors. And Homelink. And a navigation system that you can actually use while the car's in motion (Toyota is very nannyish about this and it's something I've always resented). And not one, but two sunroofs - a panaroma that really opens up the feeling of the car when driving.

Oh, and better gas mileage. I was sold pretty quickly.

450 miles later and I'm loving the car as my new ride. I'll be off on vacation starting Friday, and while I could have flown to Vegas, I've decided to drive via some of the parks and monuments in Colorado and Utah. For the 14th time, I get to smell that new-car smell and enjoy the open road in the area of the country I love.

1,329 Days

About 7 percent of my entire life.

These are the number of days between my having to sell my home in Lowry (to accept the wonderful Noble gig) and my moving into my new home in Saddle Rock tomorrow (as I settle into the wonderful new company gig).

These 1,329 days have been quite the chapter in my journey. It's my own personal story of the Great Recession; many of you have similar stories.

In actuality, my recession story begins with its own "day of infamy" - December 7, 2007. On that day, in Phoenix, the boss with Aspire made two alarming decisions: First, that she would lay me off at the end of the day, while I was blissfully unaware of any impending trouble of any kind; and that she would conveniently leave town and delegate the pink-slipping to two other associates in the company...one of whom had been at the company for ten days. Surprise, surprise, surprise!

So, from another perspective, it's been 1,536 days since the Great Recession began for me. Of course, getting into the job hunt unexpectedly is enough to create plenty of anxiety, even though in late 2007/early 2008 most of us were still clueless as to how bad things were going to get. However, it was the decision I had to make to leave Denver - to leave home, as it were, not to mention my wonderful home in Lowry that I had had built and for which I had carefully detailed every upgrade, color and finish - that imprinted TROUBLE AHEAD for me.

I certainly could have stayed in Atlanta and worked for one of the best bosses on the planet - Bob Mruz and Noble Investment Group truly believed in performance excellence, and it was a delight to get to work with such wonderful, friendly people. But as the Great Recession continued, and as "green shoots" began to dominate the political discussion in '09, I admittedly got restless. Atlanta would never be my home; my home is Colorado. (Oh, yes, it's Kansas too, but even in the best of times there aren't many jobs matching up with my skill set in Pburg!)

Off to Texas I went. As I convinced myself, Austin was much more similar to Denver than Atlanta, and it was "halfway home." I hoped to work a few years in Austin and then make my way back.

And the Great Recession bit again! This time, I had seen it coming - Sears is likely in an end game as a going concern - and I started working on getting home much earlier than I had originally planned. On August 12, I received a TBNT phone call from a wonderful oil/gas company in Denver; I took the call, remained gracious, said "ah well" after hanging up, and continued my job search. The very next day, August 13, I ran into my second reduction in force of these economic times. Once again, my boss couldn't be bothered to be there in person; this one happened over the phone in about 90 seconds.

The second time around at the layoff rodeo, I felt...relieved. I had been looking to leave in any case; this was a bit more of a push-out than I preferred, but it did prompt me to completely re-evaluate life, the universe and everything. I want to be in Denver. Somehow, Colorado calls to me. This was a perfect opportunity to make that happen, one way or another.

Bill and Gary, the two best friends in best friendom, offered up half their house for me, no questions asked, so I could have a base in Denver from which to re-enter (again!) the job market. Without them, my goal of returning home would have been gravely more difficult. I can't thank them enough, but will continue to do so as long as I'm drawing air.

And, after many leads, dozens of interviews and all the inevitable TBNTs, a wonderful lady at my new "financial services" company has taken a chance, and as of tomorrow, I'm back home and back in my own house.

One thousand, three hundred twenty-nine days. I cannot imagine anyone in the country predicting that this recession would last over four years. But finally...finally...I see hope on the horizon. We're moving forward. Slowly, yes, but forward.

Yet another move-in is imminent for me, but this time it's back in the area I love, surrounded by fantastic friends and new colleagues. So let's see...where was I? Oh yes, colors, finishes and upgrades! The new place on the golf course is ready for occupancy...and I even have the same carpet and wall color in some rooms as I had at Lowry. Ahhhh.

More to come as I plan a housewarming party and the inevitable poker night!