Zappy

I wanted to wait until I took some pictures for this post, but I can't wait any longer. The other day, Jenna took Zippy for a walk around the block. When she got back, she let the dog outside without taking off his pinch collar or putting on his collar for the invisible fence. (Insert picture of collar here) The dog, realizing he just walked out of the yard a few minutes ago, made a run for it. Heather grabbed his collar for the invisible fence and put it in her pocket. Why she did this is unclear. It's not like we use it to walk him, and he already had his pinch collar on. Anyways, the house down the street also uses the same invisible fence that we do. (Insert picture of warning on their mailbox here) Do you see where I'm going with this? While bee-bopping down the sidewalk, Heather got zapped from the neighbor's invisible fence. If only I was there to see her jump when she got juiced.

Only Heather. You gotta love her.

More Bears Vs Eagles Pictures

Do you see that?



Check out the dude on the right mid-dive.



Dirt flying.






Pointing (again)


It's in the air. do you see it? The defense does.


Fumble on the third yard line. FFS!

Bears Vs Eagles Pictures

Eagles Vs Bears

Heather and I had never been to an NFL game, so when I got an offer for some free tickets to see the Bears vs the Eagles in Philly, we decided to go. We had some really good seats. We sat in between the 50 and 40 yard line in the eighth row.

We both had been warned about Philadelphia football fans, so we went wearing neutral colors. No orange and blue for us. We were both surprised at how long the seats remained empty right up to kick off. Speaking of the kick off, it wasn't what we expected. There was no real anticipation. There wasn't, "Gentlemen, start your engines!" There weren't any pace laps building up the excitement to the drop of the green flag. It was anti-climatic.

We can't go anywhere without having a Heather moment. She came back from getting food with her pants wet. No, she didn't piss her pants. She did manage to spill a Pepsi all over her (a $3.50 Pepsi).



I remember a British friend of mine complaining that American football was too commercialized, and that it was too slow. After seeing a game live, I couldn't agree more. Every time it got interesting, it was time for a commercial.

Mandatory Family Fun Day

Saturday was designated mandatory family fun day by Heather, so we went to a farm to get our pumpkins for Halloween. It took us about 40 minutes to get there, and we managed to get there without the girls getting into a fight. Once we got there, we decided to try our navigational skills in the corn maze. This was a first for all of us.

Here are the girls at the start. Would we make it out???

And we're off…

I've concluded that Ainsley channels a scavenger, because she is always picking things up from the ground. Corn, anybody?

I asked Heather if she knew how to orientate the map. She gave me her, "What the hell are you talking about" look, so I took over the duties as navigator.

The master and his grasshoppers. Are you imagining Heather standing there looking confused?

With the girls' help, we were able to successfully make it out of the maze.

We had a good time. We all had our moments. Can you pick out the crabby patty in this picture?

You can't go without getting your face painted!!

We each picked out our own pumpkins. One of them took a bit of an adventure, but you'll have to go here to read about that.

Multi-tasking

I'm a fan of Shepard Smith. I listen to his show on Sirius radio while I drive home from work. I find his conversational approach to telling news refreshing. You never know what he is going to say, or how he is going to say it. I found this interview of him very interesting. He talks about skipping verbs sometimes (who needs them), and how technology has revealed to him his ability to multi-task when processing information from different sources at the same time (tv, internet, phone, etc).

Here's a quote from the interview. "Technology has taught us that we can do more things at one time, that we can take in more information and process it more quickly than we could 15 years ago. I know I can. When this computer thing first started, I couldn't deal with the computer, and the e-mail, and the phone, and the TV, and all of that at one time. Well, I can now, and everybody I know can. We don't have the patience.

It's not unusual for me to be on a conference call, following along with the slides on the live meeting link, instant messaging co-workers, and working in JDE at the same time. Another example. Watching the race on tv, listening to the scanner off the internet, instant messaging my brother, and browsing the internet.

We all do it, which makes the next point even more important.

He goes on to say, "You sort of eliminate the things that get in your way in this era of multitasking, and sometimes the verbs just aren't necessary. It's, "President Bush in Washington today." I don't need to say, "He is in Washington today." "President Bush in Washington today, talking with Colin Powell, getting ready for a trip overseas. Telling others yesterday about what happened when, dah, dah, dah, dah." You don't need all of those verbs."

I can find the link between delivering the news to communicating in business today. You have to be pithy, to the point, and you had better make your argument quick. You can't dance around the subject and ramble on, or your message will get lost in the noise. As he says, we have lost our patience.

To get back to story telling, I was recently reading some material from work that taught how to use story telling to help mentor other employees. Interesting stuff. Studies show that people retain information better when provided to them in a story format.

For those of you who are not familiar with Shep, here's a video. For those tasked with coaching others and/or getting the point across quickly and in a manner which aids retention, read the linked article.