Technicolor Yawn

Where will the madness end? I Just read a story that that the pentagon is contemplating enlisting foreigners to serve in our military in Iraq. The reward: fast tracked citizenship. This actually made me nauseous. Get it through your thick heads, will ya. We voted, we don't want no F****** war! No draft, no troop increases and no poor SOB's searching for a new life - willing to gamble with their lives.

Anyway - how was your day?

Christmas Eve

Good Morning.

D made it in one piece. He had an uneventful trip - everything went like clockwork. B & P, we picked up your train tickets as discussed yesterday. So that one final loose end is no longer loose!

We kicked off the visit with the first episode of season six of the sopranos on the big screen last night. Man have I missed Tony and the crew!

Today we are going to kick back and watch too many DVD's, eat too much food and just enjoy. I hope all of you can enjoy the day too.

Merry Christmas

You'll see by the posting time that it is early here. Since I quit smoking, I've reverted back to my time schedule of 20 years ago. This is my time of the day. A time of quiet reflection - unless I happen to be watching MI III (which, by the way I thought was a great movie). Where was I? Oh, right: Just checked Flight Tracker and "D", to many of you "P", is halfway across the Atlantic on his way to Europe right now. He will have a four hour layover before he travels on to the city where we will pick him up to celebrate his first Christmas in Germany. It's these early hours when I think back to what was: We really did have some great Christmas' together!

I'll be thinking of you all!

I hope all of you have a MERRY Christmas!

A Tale of Two Cities

...it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

The best of times:
Houston, we are prepared for liftoff!! We are ready for christmas and looking forward to the arrival of our guests. Let the holdays begin. Today is our last day at work until 2007: Wahoo! I'm so looking forward to our time together, B, D & P.

The worst of times:
A co-worker, friend, and one who I consider to be a truly good person, found out yesterday that she will be spending her holidays wondering whether the lump that will be removed in the New Year is the begining of the end.

So as always in life, there is the duality to be oberserved. Unfortunately, sometimes you don't have to look very far.

Perception IS Reality

I was sent a link to a short film (in French) yesterday. Even though I don't speak a single word of French, I'm going to jump off into the deep end and tell you all what the 8+ minute film was about. And this is the point...what it was about was how I perceived it. Being in a language I didn't understand allowed me to "interpret" more than if the words had been laid down at my feet.

Short and sweet, I belive this was what the film was about - maybe the intention was another one - but this is what I took from it: The sound that some may here as the music of life can be the sound of misery and torment for others. Thoughts to ponder as we head into the "happy" holiday season....

To the Film producer (and cameraperson for half of it)...Well done! I enjoyed it because it was meaningful and creative!

John Doyle's I Love Deutschland

There is an American Comic that lives here by the name of John Doyle. He's originally from NJ and speaks German with a heavy American accent, and is - IMHO - just great. He has a TV show going at the moment called "I love Deutschland". In the recent episode he was visiting a medieval Christmas fair in Dresden Germany. Pointing to the fair he says "Dresden sure has a penchant for all things mediaval. We've got a place like this in America: We call it Texas."

Common Enemy

Premise: At work we are motivated by positive and negative factors. We can refer to one the negative factors as the common enemy(ies) identified by the group. This seems to be a natural state of affairs in social groups like businesses. Within a business organization some groups have contact with the outside world and therefore may develop a common enemy that is the competition, or the parent company, or maybe even another related business unit. For groups within the company without external contact, and without good direction, the identified common enemy may actually be another group within the organization. If this behaviour is fostered by the group leader (group alpha) truly destructive and bizarre behavior can occur, whereby the group starts to destroy the very organization that pays the bills...

Anybody seen this before?