LONDON CANNOT BE THIRD AND THE “FUN” OF SEEING WICKED

A PS TO LAST POSTING

I forgot to share something from last week. I had to go to Boston for an MIB Board meeting. It was one of the better Board meetings I have been to since being on their Board. But what I wanted to share was a photo of the clock over my bed in my hotel room. This was the first time MIB had put us up at this hotel and I thought this clock was so funny. I cannot imagine they put a clock this big in every room


The "tiny" clock over the bed

NOW BACK TO THE LONDON AND ITALY TRIP.

Supposedly, London is the third most expensive city in the world after Tokyo and Osaka. I doubt that. It must be THE most expensive city. It is unbelievable. I have traveled all over the world and have never seen prices like this.

A few examples. The four of us went to Deya, an Indian restaurant on Saturday night when we arrived. The bill was $340 with no dessert. Ca Chink.

Sunday we ate at a hamburger place-the burgers were good-but 3 normal ones and a junior one-two sides of fries, a coke and two milkshakes-$78. Ca Chink

Monday we went to see Andrea’s new University.


Part of City University in London

We stopped at a pub and the three of us had the following:
2 cheese sandwiches
1 ham sandwich
3 small bags chips
1 coke
2 waters

The bill was $62. Ca Chink.

Monday night we went to another Indian restaurant. The four of us each had an appetizer and a main course and we splurged on a “basket” of Naan (3 pieces, each the size of a CD disc) and a side of Lentils, an inexpensive bottle of wine, water and no dessert. $444.96. Ca Chink.

Tuesday Cathy and I had lunch at a department store She had an appetizer only. I had a small bowl of soup and a side salad. We each had one glass of wine. No dessert. $86.94. Ca Chink.

Tuesday night the 4 of us went to a casual Italian by the theatre. We had two individual pizzas, one coke, one beer, water and two pasta dishes. $89.42. Ca Chink.

But the best example was when I decided to get a trim on my hair. I stopped by two salons but they were booked up. I was in a department store and noticed they had a barber shop for men. I went in-said I wanted only a trim. Nothing else. “Just a quick tidying up”? The man asked me and I said yes. Ten minutes later he was done. $85. Ca Chink. The Salvadoran woman that cuts my hair and Landons' charges me $15.

It was all worth it to have the time with Lee and Andrea so if this sounds like complaining, it’s not meant that way. I was just really, really shocked. Even the Starbucks is more than twice the cost for the same thing you get in the states and I have had Starbucks all over the world and they are usually at par with the prices at home.

On the opposite end of the spectrum you have the deal I got on the room. We booked 4 nights at The Churchill, a traditional London high end hotel purchased in January by Hyatt. We stayed there in April for one night.

So, I used points to pay for the room which is normally around 515 GB Pounds a night this time of year, or about $960. When we arrived, due to my Courtesy Card status they put us in a suite-it was the only one of their two room suites they have refurbished since buying the hotel so they wanted us to try it. Not a bad deal for a price of zero. So we stayed there two nights and each night they brought a bottle of champagne or some fruits and chocolates.

After two nights they said they really had a big favor to ask us. They were going to do a shoot in this suite (since it is the only one refurbished) the next day and would we mind terribly if they moved us into the Presidential Suite. I struggled with the decision but finally agreed. So we stayed there two more nights with more champagne and chocolates and still a cost of zero. One of the bargains of my life. See two photos below of part of the Presidential Suite. I must be living right.


The living room


A partial shot of the "small" bedroom

OTHER LONDON STUFF

On Monday after going to meet Andrea for cheese sandwiches (actually they were cheese and pickle sandwiches) and see her University, we walked 1,000 miles to the apartment we have rented in Kensington for our whole family over Thanksgiving. We wanted to see it since Andrea had been there but we had not seen it yet. It is great. Three bedrooms, a huge living room and dining room, nice size kitchen, WiFi (thank goodness), and all the amenities. We are going to have 13 people over for Thanksgiving dinner and it will be plenty big for that so we were very, very happy to see it. There is a playground nearby for Landon and Wes (assuming it is warm enough) and everything about it is just perfect.

On Tuesday we walked another 800 miles over to Hyde Park and all the way through it down by Kensington Gardens where there is the Memorial to Diana (below). It is quite understated but tastefully done. It is called a fountain but it more like a huge heart that somehow has the water coming down both sides of it and meeting at the bottom as they come from opposite directions. We also walked to Marks and Spencer, Selfridge’s, Harvey Nichols and finally Harrods, all big department stores with huge Food Halls to see if we would be able to buy turkey (you can only get it in London they said during late November and December), cranberries (same thing) and chestnuts (same thing). We settled on Harrods and Andrea will preorder it in early October and they will deliver it to us in time for our Thanksgiving dinner which we will have on Saturday rather than Thursday since Thursday in the UK is just a normal day and our guests will have to work.

Lee’s family is coming down from Newcastle for the dinner along with James and Kristen, whose wedding is where Lee and Andrea met. And of course in addition to all of them the six of us (Grove, Cris, Landon, Wes and the two of us) from the US will be there so it will be a great time.


Diana's Memorial-not much more to it.


THE LIGHTHEARTED PLAY CALLED WICKED

Andrea had purchased tickets for Tuesday night for the four of us to go to Wicked. They were good seats near the front and I was looking forward to seeing it since it is loosely based on the Wizard of Oz. Andrea had already been to it and said it was a fun play.

Now, I cannot deal with anything remotely sad as my family knows. I thought Forest Gump was the saddest movie since Old Yeller and Love Story and not because the woman died in the end but because at the beginning the kids made fun of the boy who was handicapped on the school bus. I was in a funk for days after watching it. So, with that as background, let me explain what WICKED was all about and see if you think it sounds like a lighthearted play.

It was the story of a woman whose Mother had an affair when she was conceived and then gave birth to this girl who had a birth defect that made her completely green.

Then she had a second daughter who was disabled from the start (couldn’t walk) and the Mom died during childbirth. The father, who did not know the first daughter was not really his, blamed the fact the older one was green on the death of the Mom and from then on the Green Girl felt guilty that it was her fault her sister was crippled. The idea of carrying that guilt all her life made me well up in tears.

The Green Girl became, supposedly, a Wicked Witch but she was actually a really good person trying to fight for others. There was another woman, who was supposedly The Good Witch, who was evil, conniving and always hurting others. While this was going on, the Green Girls step-dad died and his death was blamed on her. More guilt for her to carry around.

The Green Girl fell in love with a good guy who also loved her but he was killed by the supposed Wonderful Wizard.

In the end, the Wonderful Wizard turned out to be a real ass, very mean. He ended up killing the Green Girls boyfriend and in turn, killed the Green Girl and then found out he was her real father.

In between all of this tragedy there was a lot of great music, incredible singing, a beautiful set and tons of tears running down my face while everyone else seemed to be enjoying it. There is no question I empathize too much with people. I understand intellectually it is just a play but my heart just breaks when I think about how these people would feel if it was real.

After that, we told Andrea and Lee good-bye and took the Tube back to the hotel. We got up Wednesday and flew to Parma, Italy, where I am typing this.

Last night we had what may have been one of the best meals I’ve had in years, for only 90 Euros I might add (about $115). It was in a small Trattoria in the old section of Parma that was recommended in the Michelin Guide as a very typical, family owned place. Everything they do is homemade and the meal was just fantastic. Our pasta appetizers (see photos below) were so good I cannot describe it. The bottle of local red wine, only $11 was excellent, the entrees were good and for dessert Cathy had a homemade apple pie and I had some lemon sorbet in Limoncello that is the best I’ve ever had. So today we will be off to see what we can learn about this area.


Culatello-a photo for Grove and Lee


The inside of the restaurant


My appetizer-Parma's famous Totellini d'Erbetta

MARTA, CHAKRAS, BANGLADESHI CHOW, A POX, A BIKE CRASH AND LONDON

I last wrote on my Blog on Thursday, ten days ago. I never seem to have time to write about what is happening. I thought I would write a little now on a few events of the last ten days.

MARTA AND CHAKRAS

Friday the 15th was a great day. In fact, it was a glorious day. I rode with Cathy on MARTA down to GSU on to show her where the building was for a meeting was she had to attend all day. It was my plan to drop her off, go back to MARTA and head home to catch up on my never ending emails.

When I arrived back at MARTA I suddenly had the idea to ride the MARTA system all over Atlanta as there were parts of the line I had never been to. I have no idea why I did that but I spent the next two and a half hours on the subway. Since most of it is above ground, it was more like riding a scenic train. I rode out to the last stop on the west (Hamilton E. Holmes) and then to the last stop on the East (Indian Creek) and back downtown. I passed through some areas like Inman Park and Candler Park that I had not been to in 15 years and I could not believe how much they had changed. I just sat on the bench, listening to Robert Miles’ Dreamland CD on my IPOD and enjoyed the view. It was something completely and totally uncharacteristic for me.

When I finally got home about 3 hours later I decided to do a CHAKRA meditation. This is an hour long process that clears and opens up your Chakras through a hard breathing over-oxygenation procedure. In the end, I felt like a million dollars although I had almost lost my voice from the breathing. It is a very unusual type of meditation because at the end of 45 minutes of this intense breathing, you sit perfectly still for 15 minutes and you have this incredible energy coming out of your body-it makes all the hair on your arms stand up and if you hold the fingers of your two hands near each other you can feel the energy jumping between them. It is almost like an out of body experience as you can visualize the brightly colored energy jumping between your fingers as if you are a spectator watching it from above.

Yes, I know this sounds weird but it is a Hindu practice and there are a number of things in Hinduism that I think seem weird to most of us Westerners but that doesn't mean they are not legitimate.

The rest of the week has been busy with life’s daily activities. I went through some discouraging times when several of you who read my story on Grover and told me how much he and I look alike after my last Blog. I was discouraged because I felt so bad that you thought he looked as old as I am but then, suddenly, it hit me-you all think I only look 35! I suddenly felt much, much better!

THE BANGLADESH DINNER

Saturday night we went to dinner with Bill and Cheri Robinson (photos below) at a Bangladeshi restaurant called PANAHAR.
None of us had ever had Bangladeshi food and when we go there the guy insisted we not look at the menu but just allow him to put out a spread for us. We agreed and totally pigged out on really good food. It is a little hard to distinguish from Indian food, understandably, but there were subtle differences and the food was just really, really good. It is a BYOB place so we took a couple of bottles of great red wine and had a fun evening.


Bill was showing his new dental work


A much better photo of Cheri than of Bill

THE BLACK MAGIC SPELL OR POX PUT ON ME

Sunday I had a bit of a fright. We have a nice neighborhood and the people we have met seem nice but we have not met all of them. However, a woman that lives on one side of us, who is a very nice person, has been frustrated with the noise of our refrigeration unit keeping her up. She is not frustrated with us but with the builder. The people on the other side of us, an elderly couple, have received 3 letters over the last 15 months that were for us but had the number 56 instead of 58 in the address so it was accidentally delivered to them and they have been quite upset about it. I have been feeling bad about both of these things since we have always gotten along great with our neighbors.

Well, on Sunday, I pulled up from being gone and saw (see photo below) what was clearly, at least in my weird mind, a bundle of twigs that had been placed in front of our garage door that were clearly the makings of a witch doctor or someone else hired to put a pox or a hex on us. I was worried that it was the neighbors still mad about the mail. I went rushing in and told Cathy that we had a curse placed on us by one of those “Curses to go” businesses you can probably find in some shabby strip center mall. At least I assume you can.


Any fool can clearly see this is something made by a Witch, Sorceress, She-devil or Warlock.

She looked at me quizzically and asked me what in the world was I carrying on about. I explained the packet of herbs, leaves, twigs, sticks and to me, the final proof, a long green bamboo like stick that was obviously meant to suggest driving a stake through my heart. She asked me to show it to her so I nervously took her outside and showed her.

While I am still not sure if this is a true story or if she just made it up to calm me down, she swears she had swept up these twigs earlier in the day and just hadn’t gotten around to picking them up yet. She pointed out the green “stake through the heart” was actually a garden stick we used to prop up our tomato plants.

I still remain unconvinced and have had several nightmares about this since.

THE BIKE CRASH FIASCO

I also should mention that all the good feelings I had from my Chakra breathing on Friday were put to the test on Saturday morning when we decided to take our bikes our on Atlanta’s SILVER COMET BIKE TRAIL.

We decided this on Friday night so on Saturday I got up and looked for the bike rack. I looked everywhere and could not find it and so at first we both thought one of our kids had borrowed it when they were visiting. In other words, we blamed Andrea or Grover.

So I went to Dick’s Sporting Goods at 9am, their opening time, to buy a new one. Going to a sporting goods store is like going to Home Depot for me. I am totally out of my element. And this store if humongous. It is as big as a Home Depot turned up vertically.

First I couldn’t find the bike section as it was on the third floor. The woman who was helping me needed the year, make and model of Andrea’s car which I was going to put the bike rack on. So I had to go back down three floors and go outside and get the info off her insurance card as I had no idea. Then it turned out they didn’t have some kind of glass hook needed for the rack but told me I could order it on the internet. That wasn’t going to help me since I wanted to go there that day.

I left and was driving home and realized that we could put it on the other car. So I turned around and went back up the three floors (for the third time now) and talked to her again. She needed to know the model of the other car-fortunately I knew the year and make of car so I guessed at the model from a list-amazingly I was right. I paid the 90 dollars for the bike rack and went home but could not figure out how to install it. Fortunately Cathy figured it out.

By now it was 11 am or so. We put the bikes on and they didn’t seem to be real sturdy but we decided they were okay. Off we went. As we were driving down I-285, the scariest and deadliest road in Atlanta, we were in the middle lane going about 70 and everyone was flying past us as the average speed is about 85. Suddenly, one bike came off one side of the rack and it was obvious it was going to fall off completely and if a car behind us hit it someone was likely going to be killed, perhaps us. I tried to get to the right but a big truck and the car behind it wouldn’t let me over even though they could clearly see what was happening. As they flew by I made it over and right when I pulled onto the shoulder the bike fell off completely.

We got out, I ran back and got the bike, and it didn’t seem that badly damaged. We put it back on the rack, this time the right way, and noticed the tire was flat. I decided to stop at a service station and fill it up with air. When we got to the trail, there was a gas station but it wouldn’t hold air so I thought the tube was blown. There was a bike store there but they said it would be an hour. So we drove home, arriving at 2pm. I had been trying to go on this bike ride since 9am and finally had to give up. The only good part of it was on the way back we were taking some back roads (no more I-285 with the bike rack) and came across a really cool, really old, one lane Covered Bridge from the days of the Civil War.


An old covered bridge near the bike trail we didn't get to go on.

I called Bill Robinson to ask where I could get the tire fixed and knowing my mechanical ability he suggested he take a look at the bike so I took it to his house. Of course the damage was a little more severe. He worked on it and then we noticed there was a six inch hole in the tire. No wonder it didn’t hold air. Evidently the tire was scraping on the Interstate after the wheel fell off. We took it to the bike shop. They had to replace the tire, tube, chain and then they had to unbend the derailleur and frame.

The next day we did manage to go to the trail and the bikes stayed on the rack. Later in the week we found the old bike rack we thought the kids had confiscated. If we had that earlier none of this would have happened of course.

LONDON

Friday night we flew to London to spend a few days with Lee and Andrea. If you click HERE and read her September 24th post you can read about our first couple of days, including Andrea’s famous bout with “food poisoning” which she was swearing was the cause of her illness on Saturday although in her Blog posting she finally fessed up to what we already knew was the cause.

Their apartment is great-they have decorated it and it has a real "home" feel to it. It was nice to see Kimball and Tyson (her cats who moved to London with her)again and to tour the neighborhood. They live in Wimbledon and below are some photos of the area around their apartment, including the shot of the Catholic Church right across from their place.


The Church across the street


A nearby street.


The White Swan Pub where we had lunch


Wimbledon Village with my 3 comrades on the left (barely in the photo)

We are off this morning to go see her new life as a student again at a UNIVERSITY
-her first day of classes in her Masters in Journalism program begins today. Will report more on our time here later.

GROVER 3

I was thinking that I have not written much on my Blog about my son Grover, something he may be thankful for! I have been thinking about that for about a month and while I have put lots of photos of his family on the Blog, and a few of him, I haven’t written about him. I titled it Grover 3 because sometime, many years ago, someone started calling him that since I go by Grover Jr.

Today I was looking for a photo of my Dad that is different than the one I used on his birthday last week and found this one below of my Dad, my Mom and me when I was just ten months old. My Mom was smiling then and is smiling now.


Mom and Pop with me when I was 10 months old

That made me start thinking of Grover for two reasons. First, I remember when we brought him home from the hospital to our rented house on 28th Court in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Yes, our son is actually an Okie, although we moved from there right when he was turning three to New Orleans so he has both Okie and Cajun upbringing in his soul. Here is a photo of him at five months of age.


Grove at five months

The second reason I was thinking about him was because he is going with me to Peru in April on a Freedom From Hunger trip and I am very excited about that. I always liked having time alone with him but of course once he was a teenager, that wasn't cool which is the same with all boys and their Fathers. In 2001 he and I went to Patagonia, to a fishing lodge on the Rio Palena in Southern Chile and it was so much fun so I am really looking forward to this trip.

When Landon is with us he likes to come in our bedroom in the morning and burrow all around the covers while we are still in bed. I found this photo from three decades ago and realized I now know where Landon got that trait from.

What is also interesting is the Stuffed Tiger sitting in the background on a hamper. This is the first gift I ever gave Cathy when we first started dating. I was playing some dopey old guy nine-ball in a bar and he couldn't believe anyone that looked as young as me could beat him in pool. We were only playing for a dollar a game and I hustled him out of $36. I went to a store and spent $30 of it on this Tiger. Damn good investment as I look back.


Grove at 3 years lying in bed with me-the photo on headboard was of me when I was about 4 years old

So I then looked for a couple of other photos that I thought would be cool. Here is one with our wonderful pet; Ms. Du. This dog was as whacky as they come. Dalmatians typically live until they are about ten. She made it to fifteen and in her entire life was only scolded a few times. Was it that she was that well behaved? Oh no, definitely no. It was because she learned at about six months, that if someone raised their voice to her even slightly in anger or discipline, all she had to do was squat and pee all over the floor or carpet and we would stop yelling. That strategy served her well for the next 14 plus years. She was, all in all, the canine version of Fidel Castro. She was really not a very nice individual but it appeared she would live forever.


Grove and Ms. Du in 1992

Grover, or Grove as we call him, is a very smart and very eclectic guy. An example of how smart he is occurred in the last month when he passed the third and final test for his CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) on his first try. The tests are given annually and very few people pass them on the first try, having instead to retake it a year later. But he passed all three on the first try so he managed to get this designation in three years when most people take many years more. And of course he is one of those people who in high school and college rarely opened a book and still did well.

But it is the eclectic part I want to tell you about. These are just some of the hobbies he has taken up over the last 15 years or so:

Cooking, Soccer, Fishing, Bowling, Scuba Diving, Guitar Playing, E-Bay King, Music Downloader Extraordinaire, Woodworker, Biking, Golf, Fantasy Football, Beer Making, World Almanac Memorizer, Beer Aficionado, Baseball Card Collector, Beer Can Collector, Rubik’s Cube Champion, Math Bee competitor, Trumpet Player, Table Tennis Champion, Competitive Swimming, Camping and a whole bunch of other things I can’t recall.

Now understand that he didn’t just dabble in any of these. In each of them he immersed himself until he could talk with anyone about any of these things and they would be convinced he was a total expert. And often he was.

The family joke was and continues to be “What’s next?” We are sure Cris just shudders when he starts talking about a new subject.

Like most guys, he doesn’t comprehend the idea of losing. So he attacked all of these things with the goal of being the best and no one knows better than me how that feels when you are on the other side.

When he was younger I often won playing tennis (because I am as bad as he is about wanting to win) but this was a slippery slope for me. He got stronger as he matured and I got older. Once he won the first set against me I don’t believe I ever won one again. He would just hammer me and if the score was 5 games to zero in his favor do you think he would let up? Not on your life.

Below is a photo taken on March 13th, 1993. It was Cathy’s birthday and the day of one of the worst snowstorms in Atlanta history. Weather.com rates it the third worst storm of the last century. For the story of this storm, (Click here to learn about it)

The city was closed down and Grove had just started a temporary job in DC after graduating from college. He was bouncing off the walls because he couldn’t get to the airport that day but in this photo he really looks quite calm. And I look like Larry King. What’s with those glasses? Geez.


Grove, Cathy and me on March 13, 1993

Of course now he has his own family. He married Saint Cris, at least I think she is nearly a Saint and they have blessed us with two great grandsons. I can’t wait to see which one of them will be like Grove as he grows up. They need to save their money now to pay for all the hobbies!

Seriously, we are very proud of Grove for what he has accomplished education wise, career wise and most important, his family. We only wish we had more time with them but they live in DC and have their own busy lives as we did at that point in time in our life so we have to remember that.

Grove, we love you and are proud of you and I want to close this Posting with two photos. One is a photo of you on my shoulders when you were six months old (yes I know how dumb I look) and the other is of me again a couple of weeks ago with your son Wes (middle name Grover by the way) on my shoulders. Some things never change-I’ve always loved carrying my boys around on my shoulders.


Grove on my shoulders when he was six months old


Wes on my shoulders checking out the gray

COMO ELVIS Y STEGGY, ANDREA Y LEE HAN ABANDONADO EL EDIFICIO-¡DE NUEVO!

Well, I waited 3 days before writing about the latest “Adios, Ciao, Sayonara, Au Revoir, Tchau, Auf Wiedersehen, Allahah Ismarladik Gule Gule and of course, Oodbyegay” to Andrea. Incidentally, these are the only languages I’ve ever learned to say goodbye in (the long one is Turkish). I just wish I could speak all of them.

I figured if I waited a few days I could write this without falling apart as the tears on the keyboard may screw up my PC.

So after six weeks of being home to recover from a surgery, she and Lee, who came over the last week to be with us, flew back to their home in London last Saturday night.

I was determined not to fall apart at the airport and actually convinced myself that this time it would be easy since we have accepted the reality that she has moved to Wimbledon when she left in June. In fact, we encouraged her to do it so she and Lee would get to know each other better.

Aand in less than two weeks we will be eating with Lee and her at Sir Michael Caine’s “Deya”, one of the best Indian restaurants in London. (Click here to learn about it)

So I was quite chipper on the way to the airport.

While they checked in I went to the bathroom and came out and saw Andrea was crying. We went and sat down in the waiting area and things seemed a little better. When she was little I would buy her candy when she was crying but this time I bought her Excedrin. It worked. She calmed down. But eventually they had to leave.

So that you know who I am talking about (if you are new to this Blog), the photo below is of my three girls. Andrea is the one on the right (both politically and in the photo) and on the left is Cathy, my bride and in the middle is Cris, our daughter-in-law and the Mother of Landon and Wes.


Cathy, Cris and Andrea in Copenhagen September, 2005. 

So it was time to say goodbye and I hugged Lee (he is getting pretty good at it) and then I hugged Andrea. As I stopped, I was reminded of the time that Grover told me I don’t know how to hug because I hug too light. Because I am a hugger (I hug strangers for Pete’s Sake) I likely have, over time, learned to not hug tightly since in a corporate environment you have to be careful of things like that.

Well, as I was pulling away, I realized I didn’t hug Andrea tight or with feeling. Yes, I know she is a grown woman-but she is my daughter. She is the young girl, now grown up, who always wanted me to carry her as she hugged me tight on my neck, rode on my back or pestered me with “Pick me up Daddy.” She was crying and when she was little and would cry I would pick her up and hold her tight and tell her it was all going to be okay. This time I should have held her tight, kissed her on the cheek and assured her that it was all going to be okay. But I couldn’t talk and I didn’t hug her goodbye the way I now wished I would have.

That was the beginning of the problem. We then waved goodbye until they were through security and out of sight and I managed to keep my eyes dry. As we walked away Cathy was starting to melt down but I held my composure. We didn’t say much on the way home but I realized Cathy really was having an allergy attack as much as she was sniffling.

When we got home I said I was going upstairs to take a shower. I walked up and saw the room where Andrea had been staying the last six weeks. I walked into it (the second mistake) and sat down on her bed. I was consumed with the smell of my daughter. I don’t know if it is her skin, her perfume, her lotion or a combination but she has a scent, like we all do, that over 30 years you just immediately identify. I then looked up on her nightstand and saw a card she had left for us. I fell apart (and didn’t even open it-I couldn’t).

I put my head on her pillow, filled with the scent of her, and cried.

My Mom says she likes that I talk about how I feel on my Blog. People reading it could care less I realize, but I find that writing out how I feel helps me get through things. It is a technique I learned through an organization called Stop at Nothing in Jacksonville, Florida that I have been to hell and back with and that has helped me better understand many things about life. For me, writing about my feelings is like looking in a mirror. If you don’t look in a mirror you don’t know what you look like. For me, if I don’t write about how I feel, I end up denying how I feel and just stuff it down in my subconscious. This is a relatively easy thing to do and many people do it. But it is incredibly unhealthy.

I heard Cathy wandering up the stairs so I left Andrea’s room and went into our room. A minute later she was in there, in tears, and handed me the card I hadn’t wanted to open. She was crying so I knew the card wasn’t filled with some really good jokes. I read it and fell apart again. It is still sitting on my bathroom counter next to a photo of Landon that I love so much.

The rest of the night sucked. When I got up Sunday morning I had a text message saying they had landed safely at Gatwick and over the last couple of days I have talked to her twice, exchanged many text and email messages and as a result, I’ve recovered somewhat.

Now the question is “Why is this so hard on me?” I know it is also hard on others, but I want to know why it is so hard on me. Sometimes it is okay to be selfish.

Some would say it is the Daddy’s Little Girl syndrome. I don’t think so. I think it is the fact that we are really good friends. We really have fun together. When she and I are together, we play off each other. As an example, I think she is one of the funniest people I know. Almost as funny as I think I am. She thinks I am one of the funniest people she knows. Almost as funny as she thinks she is.

When we start rhyming words the rest of the crowd leaves the room while we roll on the floor hysterically at our dueling dumb words. We both like practical jokes and Lee and I just nailed her big time a few weeks ago by double crossing her when she was going to pull a practical joke on Lee.

Like me, she expresses her feelings. Unlike me, it is not in writing although one could argue it is written all over her. You always know if she is happy, sad and especially when she is pissed. Right Lee?

So I am just going to miss her. Period. That is all my funk is about. I could not be more pleased with who she is choosing to marry. Lee is a really nice man. He has really opened up to us and I think he is thoughtful, value based and what I really like is what you see is what you get. He is not remotely pretentious. And he loves beef, red wine and plays a decent game of pool, being savvy enough to let me win some times. This is all good stuff. But most of all he treats her very well and he calls her on it when she is misbehaving.

He will be good for her as he will help her think things through as a counter to her impulsiveness. She will help him enjoy life more with her adventuresome spontaneity. At times they will drive each other nuts, but both will grow as people because of the other.

I wish they didn’t live so far away of course. I’d be less than honest if I didn’t say that. But, on the compensating side, she is living a dream I always had-to live in a different country. There is so much to see at their doorstep

They say the will move back here at some time. Of course, because of who I am, that makes me feel bad for his family who will miss him the way we miss her if they do in fact move here some time. If I hadn’t met his family it might be different, but we have, and I like all of them a lot so then I worry about how hard it will be on them because I know how hard this is on us.

It’s also sad for me because I know how conflicted Andrea is. She has found the man of her dreams but unfortunately he doesn’t live down the street. So she has made the right decision to be with him, but I know she not only misses all of us, she really aches over not being close to Wes and Landon. Landon is as much a part of her as her elbow is and the separation is really hard.

The other thing is the relationship with her Mom. They have always been so close. Cathy has a plaque hanging by the sink that Andrea gave her years ago that says “My Mother by chance, My Friend by choice”. I am certain that millions of those have been bought to give to Mom’s, but I know in this case it is how she truly feels. And these six weeks with all the time they spent together on the wedding planning made it so obvious how close they are.

So, that is how I feel. Maybe it’s selfish. Maybe it’s self-pity. Maybe it is irresponsible as a parent. I hope it is none of these. I hope it is a Father just being honest on how he feels without losing sight of the fact that I am so, so happy for her that she has found Lee (or he found her-I’m not sure which) and for that, it’s okay with me if they live in Djibouti (which of course is a place she likely wants to visit), Wimbledon or Vladivostok.

CHALK AS A METAPHOR TO LIFE


Landon's disappearing art

When Landon and his family were here earlier in the week he created some art on our driveway with chalk. They were bright yellow and every time I pulled up in the car I smiled, recalling how much fun he had when he was doing it. The chalk drawings seemed like such a good example of the creativity and no limit thinking of a 3 year old.

Now, several days later, as you can see in the above photo, the chalk has almost completely faded yet my memory of he and his family being here with us for nearly twelve wonderful days remains. Landon and Wes have gone back to DC with their parents and their lives go on. Our lives go on also, but without being able to share daily in their experiences.

I think about Landon and Wes and when their Dad was little like them. Again, Grover’s life has gone on but the memory of when he was little like them remains.

Andrea and Lee left last night to go back to London. Again, their lives go on but the memory of when she was little remains. It has been a great time having her here for six weeks. I don’t know where the time went. Just as when Grover and his family left last Tuesday, when she and Lee left it was hard to say goodbye. "Thank goodness" I said to myself, "it will not be as bad as when she moved to London in June".

I was wrong about that. It was just as hard. I may say more about that later. But we now have the benefit of knowing she is enjoying London and adjusting, albeit with a lot of whining about how different things are, something that should not be a surprise when you move to a different country.

More important, we know Lee much better and know she has found the right guy or he has found her, however you want to say it. So I thought saying goodbye last night would be easier knowing how well they are doing together, not to mention the fact that we will be with them in London in just two weeks.

However, if you want to read a real tear jerker, go to my post of June 2, 2006 which can be found at: (Click here to access it)

But all of this ties back to the Chalk. As I watched it fade a little more every day I realized that in what seems like no time, my kids have gone from this photo of the two of them below:


Grover and Andrea in 1976-nice hair on both of you

To the photos below of them today with some of their loved ones.


Andrea and Lee last week-her hair has improved over 30 years


Landon and Dad at Stone Mountain

And of course there is more to Grover's family than just he and Landon in the photo above. Below I have a photo I just love. It was taken inside and the lighting is horrible, but the look of wonderment on Cris's face, as she holds her two boys and they all watch the Sting-Rays, expresses so much about who she is-a teacher-a person with the imagination and wonder of a kid and most of all, a wonderful Mom who understands the value of devoting much of her time to teaching her children about the world.


Cris and her boys watching the fish at The Georgia Aquarium

So what does this mean in the end? What does this feeling mean that my life is like the Chalk Landon left on our driveway? Day by day it fades away. That is not necessarily bad since we have been blessed with a great life-but as my daughter once more headed off to her home in London, five days after the rest of our family went back to their home in DC, I am reminded of how quickly life flies by. The next four photos are pretty much proof of how much we have changed, like the chalk evaporating in the rain and the sun, in what feels to me to have been a very short time.


Cathy, my Bride, on our wedding day


Cathy now-she has changed a bit wouldn't you say? But as cute as ever.


A photo of me in a news article in 1976


Wes and me last week

And Finally, to end this Post-HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEE!

MY DAD'S BIRTHDAY

Today would have been my Dad's 93rd birthday had he not passed away in 1991. I still miss him. Like all of us, he had his strengths and weaknesses but the thing I remember about him the most was his unwavering love for all of us in his family and the pride he had in Grover and Andrea, his grandchildren. As a grandfather now, I know the feelings he had.

I know I posted this 1974 photo of him with my Mom on my Blog on Fathers Day this year but I want to do it again for his birthday. (Click here for my Fathers Day Tribute-go to the post on June 18th)


I miss you Pop.


My parents, September, 1974

WHERE DID MY STORY GO?

The posting below I had put on my Blog around the 29th of August and it just disappeared. Bobby Jones, who I talk about in the story noticed it. Evidently he has been reading it daily so he can see his name on the internet (I fear it may be on some other more dubious sites) and he sent me an email last night and said it had just disappaeard. I don't know why, but here it is again.


Andrea taught Wes how to salute this weekend



FORT WORTH AND THE WEEK OF SCREAMING

The good news is once I got to Fort Worth on Monday, things improved. We had a great Board Meeting at USHealth Group and Ben, the CEO, has assembled a great team. His assistant, Patti, is one of the top Executive Assistants I’ve met and his senior team is awesome. They have big challenges but they have the talent to meet them.

We had the board meeting on Monday afternoon and 3 of the board members are venture capital guys from New York. I loved them-they are typical New York VC guys-driven to do one thing-make money-and smart as Einstein. It reminded me of one of the best things I enjoyed when I worked in Manhattan for five years-the amount of sheer brain power you are surrounded by.

That night we had dinner with the guys from New York and Ben’s senior team. Cindy, Conrad, Rick, Leo, Pat, Bernie (and I may have left out someone) joined us at Del Frisco’s steak house where I ate a 8 pound steak and we drank great Argentine Malbec.

Tuesday I got up at 5am and went for a three mile walk and then after buying a Starbucks, just wandered the streets of downtown Ft. Worth while drinking it. The temperature was over a 100 degrees both days but in the morning it was cool and pleasant walking.

I met with Ben that morning and had an uneventful flight home (even got upgraded to First Class for a change) to Atlanta. We then went to a restaurant for dinner to check it our as a possible rehearsal dinner venue for the big wedding. Wednesday night the three of us went to dinner with Bill and Cheri at a place called Enoteca and had a little hassle at first because we brought our own wine which they had said we could do and then changed their mind. In the end, we let the waiter and sommelier try the wine and they became our friends and didn’t even charge us a corkage fee.

I’ve been trying to walk every day for a few miles since my knee is screwed up so that has been pleasant but humid early in the morning. On Wednesday I was almost back home and on the sidewalk a woman about 30 was walking toward me wearing an IPOD and walking a tiny dog not much bigger than a baby squirrel. As she neared me she nodded and smiled as most people do and I did the same in return. Right as she passed she decided to ask me what time it was. Unfortunately, she had her IPOD at full blast so she screamed, right as she was passing me: “SCUSE ME-DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS”?

Of course, as readers of this Blog know, I am the jumpiest person alive. So, I started screaming at the top of my lungs as I thought there was a terrorist attack or something and I jumped off the sidewalk. This in turn scared the daylights out of her and she jumped about ten feet, screamed loudly and let go of the leash. Her dog, who I think was named Fritz, came at me barking like crazy. I stepped toward it and she yelled “Step on the leash”. About this time, because I stepped toward him, he started to run. When he was at the point of a full gallop, I had stopped hyperventilating enough (I may have still been screaming) to understand the problem and I stomped my foot on the leash. This little dog of course was at the end of the leash and immediately did about five flips in the air as I very quickly almost either

a. Broke its neck OR
b. Rapidly squeezed the life out of it by choking it.

Fortunately neither happened but I am sure she had to rub some kind of Doggie Ben-Gay on this poor dogs' neck when she got home. She apologized for yelling at me but I am sure she wondered if I was operating with a full boat.

I then proceeded to finish my walk and after about 10 yards I started thinking of this little dog flipping around and although I felt bad (I love dogs) it struck me as funny. I started laughing so hard I couldn’t stop. So naturally I turned the corner by a big bush, laughing hard, and these two women were right in front of me taking their daily walk. They saw me walking toward them, alone, laughing my head off and they immediately stepped aside to let me pass.

On Thursday, Bill Robinson invited me to go to lunch with him at an Indian restaurant. He picked me up and told me Bobby Jones, who has spent years jumping out of the shadows at me, was going to join us.

Now, to give you some history of Bobby, let me summarize by saying that 20 yuears ago when he was working for me he showed up for work at 5:30 am and hid in the dark behind my office door for a half hour. When I arrived into the dark office he jumped out from behind the door, grabbed my neck between his hands and started choking me while yelling in my ear. I almost died. That was one of many years of him pulling stunts like that. I should have fired the little weasel then but he was too good of a friend. I found an old photo of him before he started looking old and two more since he has started looking old and have posted them below.


This was Bobby Jones (in the red) back in 1987. Yes, the seated Bill Gates looking guy with the bad haircut is me.


New Years Eve 2002 (left to right) Bobby, me (the shirt makes me look fat) and Bobby's brother Steve (no, they are not twins) at our home in Florida


Bobby in Spain next to me at my birthday party 2004 (4th from left)

Did you notice how even though he is the one always scaring me it is his hair, not mine that is turning white from fright.

So, last Thursday, right before we got to the restaurant Bobby called and said he was tied up at office and would be about ten minutes late. I said to Bill "Great-I will go in the restaurant and hide and when Bobby comes in I will jump out at him and scare him".

Naturally, Bill and I should have figured this out, but we didn’t. So of course, we walk in the restaurant and Bobby is lurking behind the door and jumps out and once again, the whole restaurant hears me screaming at the top of my lungs.

Friday was a wonderful day as Cris and the boys arrived and I will type more about that later. But in the meantime, below I have a couple of photos from their visit.


My first grandchild Landon-I think he is the smartest kid in the world and may be as funny as me!


Wes and Papi having fun

Yes, they are doing what it looks like 

CRICKET P0RN STARRING JIMINY & JANE CRICKET

It is 450 am on Saturday morning. I have just experienced one of the stranger things to have happened to me. I will give you the story in chronological order.

11:40 pm last night-turn off light and go to sleep

2:50 am this morning-wake up from alarm beeping when Andrea comes in from night at Hole in the Wall, her favorite Bar/Club/Dance Studio/Whatever.

2:55 am Go back to sleep

3:00 am Hear alarm from outside door beep again

3:05 am Hear alarm from outside door beep AGAIN

3:05 to 3:15 am Hear alarm from outside door beep 3 MORE TIMES

3:15 am Get up to see if burglars are ransacking home. Can find no one on main floor and no cars in driveway. All the lights are on in Andrea's room and her cell phone is on the nightstand so I know she is home but not in her room. The main floor is totally dark so she is not there.

3:20 am I conclude she is kidnapped and they have taken her away

3:22 I hear door beep again but I am on the main floor and I can see that no one has come in the doors on that level. Begin to think we have ghosts and they may have abducted her.

3:23 am I can see a light on down on the terrace level but Cris leaves it on. As I am peering down there I hear whispering. I know Cris, Grover and Wes are sleeping down there and wouldn't be up so the burglars/ghosts must be down there. I grow concerned the intruders will take wine out of my cellar or kidnap Wes.

3:24 am I hear Andrea giggle. Then I realize she and Cris are whispering.

3:25 am to 4:00 am I join the two of them downstairs looking for a cricket that has been keeping Cris up all night. Grover is totally oblivious to it and is snoring away.

We cannot hear it for a few minutes and then when we do it sounds like it is in the door itself (to the outside). Of course every time we open the door the alarm beeps which is what woke me up in the first place.

We have a flashlight and are looking all over outside. We find 17 spiders but no crickets. We try everything. I'm even standing up on the chaise lounge outside to see if I can see it on the door sill at top of door. Andrea and Cris are down on the floor of the room with ears to the ground trying to see if they can pinpoint it. In the meantime the hair on my arms is standing straight up and I have the chills as I am sure the cricket is going to jump on me.

Cris and Andrea keep reminding me that I cannot scream if I see the cricket as it will wake up Wes. They know me well.

It is about as loud as a siren when it goes off. We could even hear it from upstairs. Cris is exhausted as she can't sleep and the boys will be up in 3 hours.

This is absurd. The three of us are crawling around on the ground, the floor and shining a flashlight all over the place, both inside and outside, trying to find a cricket while Grover sleeps like a baby five feet away. Cris finally decides to go up to the top level and sleep in the other bed in Landon's room. She and Andrea go upstairs and go to bed.

I sit down at computer and ponder this. I've had three hours sleep and spent the rest of the night hunting the world's loudest cricket. I decide to look on the internet for how to stop a cricket from chirping. I find lots of sites where you can buy crickets live to fry up and eat but I cannot find my answer.

I then find this interesting article: "Female crickets avoid costs of inbreeding by mating with multiple males" An excerpt from it says "In crickets, the female can avoid the negative effects of inbreeding by mating with more than one male and, through an unknown mechanism, selecting the sperm of a genetically compatible father. This is the conclusion of a new study by British researchers"

It is now 5am. I realize this must somehow be Lee's fault as he is British and the "Cricket Porn" researchers are British. Just for spite I begin to secretly hope he cannot sleep on the plane flying here from London today and that he reads this before he leaves.

Basically, as you can see from the photo at the start of this posting, what has really happened here is that the British have been tinkering with Mother Nature and two of their experimental subjects escaped and came down to Cris and Grover's room at our house. The nymphomaniac, multiple partner female decided to be playful and found a mate and the chirping the three of us were trying to locate was actually Cricket sexual moaning. Fortunately, Andrea always has her camera at the ready and snapped the photo above. Cris and Andrea went back to sleep and I am now up for the day since once I wake up I can never go back to sleep. Thanks, Jiminy and Jane. See you in 12 hours Lee.

As I post this on my Blog, I wonder if by using the title I gave this post, I will show up everytime someone looks up the word Porn on the Internet?

(Click here for the entire article on Cricket sex)

FUN WITH THE BOYS AND ELLIE

Last Saturday our friends from Jacksonville, Mike and Jan arrived at our house with daughter Rachel and her two kids Logan and Ellie. Rachel is going to be the best woman (or whatever they call it) in Andrea’s wedding and she was throwing the bridal shower at our house. That meant Mike and I were assigned the task of entertaining Landon, Logan and Ellie during the shower. Mike always entertains me and vice-versa, but I was not sure about the two of us with three little ones.

We took them downtown to the Children’s Museum and spent 3 hours there. It was so much fun and the kids were so good.


Logan loved the fishing pond at the Museum 


Landon the machine operator 

However, keeping track of them was tiring so when we got back to the house, in place of the kids taking naps, guess who did?


The two grandfathers after the museum trip. Why Mike sleeps with his phone is not clear to me. 

Landon was wearing a tee shirt I brought him from Borneo. This week he also wore one I brought him from Shanghai and another we got him Prague. This little guy has so many tee shirts from all over the world-it is pretty funny.

Later that night, Rachels husband Eric came over and we all had pizza, sat outside, drank too much wine and then we played pool. There is some rumor that Rachel beat me but I’m a little skeptical.

Monday Landon and I went and had breakfast at The Waffle House. When they brought the waffle he wanted to pour the syrup on it. He knew how to push down on the button to move the little metal thing so the syrup would come out but he didn’t know he should move the jar around in circles.

Result-one fourth of the waffle had about 3 inches of syrup on it and the rest had none. I asked him if he wanted me to spread it or cut the waffle up and he said “Nope” as he folded the waffle in half, and then in half again and they he just lifted it up with his fingers and ate it. Remarkably, not that much syrup cascaded out onto the table.

Later that day we took Wes and Landon to the Georgia Aquarium. What a wonderful time. We were there over three hours and both of the boys were so fascinated. If you go to Andrea’s Blog at (Look for the Posting titled "Finding Deepo" and you will see some amazing photos of the fish and the boys)

Tuesday morning I was telling Andrea how much I was craving Persian food. So that night, Andrea called in an order to Mirage. As we were driving over to get it I was telling her how I was starving as I had not had lunch due to conference calls. I said I could hardly wait until I could sink my teeth into the Barg Kabob, made with filet mignon.

We got home and they had mixed it up and gave me lamb so I had a plate of rice for dinner.

Wednesday I got up at 4am so I could do my emails and the power was off due to storms so there was no internet. I left the house about 530 and drove to MARTA and took the train to the airport, catching a flight (of course it was out of Gate B29) to Chicago. There were 4 empty seats in First Class and on the upgrade list I was first out of 17 people. Yet I didn’t make it. I have no idea why.

This drives me nuts. I am a three million miler with Delta. I have been at their highest level, Platinum, every year since they started the program. I’ve accumulated over 6 million frequent flyer miles with them due to the bonuses and yet I still often don’t make the upgrade. I always buy the cheapest ticket to save the company money and maybe that is why-I can’t think of another reason.

Thursday morning at the hotel I put on my shirt and tie for the Board meeting and realized I left my suit in my office. So I had to put on a pair of casual pants and hope I would slip unnoticed into the building. In the elevator a woman I didn’t know looked at me and said “Interesting Outfit”. Then she looked at me again and said “Oh my God-you are the Chairman, aren’t you? I shouldn’t have said that”.

I laughed and told her not to worry about it and why I didn't have on a suit. With that I stuck my hand out and said “Hi-I’m Grover”. She responded by saying “I’m, uh, uh, Sally and I work in uh, uh, claims.” It was clear she made up both things as she didn’t want me to know who she was since she was worried about commenting on my dapper get up. I’m sure of that because we don’t have claims people working in our Home Office.

We had our Board Committee Meetings and part of our Board meeting Thursday afternoon and evening and I didn’t leave the office until 10pm. We started again at 7:15 this morning and I am now writing this on the way back home. I was once again reminded of how blessed I am with such an engaged, capable and supportive Board. They are really a good group of folks.

This afternoon at Ohare, I was waitlisted again for the upgrade and again didn’t get it. So when I boarded, there was a guy about 40 hugging an older woman who was crying and it was clear she was the Mom leaving for somewhere and it was upsetting her to leave her son. The guy asked a Delta employee to walk with her to the plane which he did and I was following right behind her.

She was going to sit a couple of rows farther back then my seat so she went down the aisle and I sat down. Suddenly they asked if anyone spoke Spanish and while I was quite hesitant, I volunteered. I had not noticed that she was speaking Spanish and she looked German so I was surprised. They told me they were worried about what was wrong with her as she was crying profusely. So I talked with her and learned the story. She had said goodbye to her son and was going to Atlanta and then connecting on to Santiago, Chile which is where she lived (which explained why she looked German). They had me tell her a bunch of stuff and ask her several questions.

After that, I sat down and the flight attendant came over to thank me and she was saying how good my Spanish sounded to her. Suddenly the guy in the window seat (I was in the aisle)piped up and said “No, he doesn’t speak that well. He conjugated some verbs wrong and he has a Spanish accent, not a Latin American one". I could tell he was trying to be funny and then he asked me if I lived or had lived in Spain. He said he knew I wasn’t a native speaker but he could tell by the accent I had spent time in Spain. It turns out that he (an American) lived in Spain for two years and also in Argentina for two years and is fluent in Spanish. Why in the world he didn’t volunteer to help is not clear since he said he is always on the lookout for opportunities to help someone who doesn’t speak English, much like a good friend of mine does.

Hey, if you can’t be your own friend, there is something wrong with you.

So we are sitting there talking (in English) and the guy arrives who will sit between us. He was having trouble expressing himself and I asked him where he was from and he said Spain and we started laughing. I told him in Spanish that we had just been talking about Spain. He couldn’t believe he was randomly seated between two gringos in the US who both spoke Spanish. It was a little weird. He is a consultant with Accenture who was in Chicago the last week attending a training session and was headed home to Barcelona from Atlanta tonight.

What was weirder was when he asked me if I knew about the Jamón in Spain. We then got into a long discussion about Serrano versus Ibérico versus Jabugo and I told him that for a long time I was really counting on Grove to marry a young woman he had met in Spain whose Dad had a Jamón plant. But fortunately, he found Cris instead and I’d rather have her and our grandsons than a plate of Jabugo, but it does come right after them on the list. I showed the guy a photo Andrea took of a plate of Jamón the Hyatt gave me (but put in Lee’s room so I never saw it) and he thought it was so funny I was walking around with a photo of Jamón on my laptop. I didn’t think it was that unusual since I was considering making it my screen saver.

I’m supposed to meet Grove tonight at the airport as he is flying in from DC about the same time but with the Tropical Storm moving into Virginia he might be delayed. I hope not. Lee is arriving tomorrow so we all will be together over the Labor Day weekend and Grove is going to cook up a boatload of ribs on the Egg on Monday and Bill and Cheri and the kids are coming over to help us eat it.

On the plane I read this article and it gave me hope. Since I only feel 40 this was encouraging. Click here to read it

We landed 25 minutes early and of course-guess where? GATE A-33. I swear-they really don’t use all the gates near the middle of the Concourses where the escalators bring you from the train.

I told my two new friends goodbye and waited for the lady from Chile (who naturally was going out of E-27-about as far from A-33 as it is possible to be in this airport). They brought her out on a wheelchair as they had been worried about her. She saw me and got all upset and was saying she didn’t understand what they were doing or why they put her in the wheelchair. The flight attendant said they had called for it as she didn't want to get off of the plane and was still crying.

I looked at her ticket (which is how I knew it was E-27) and asked the guy if he would take her over there. He was hemming and hawing around and whining about how far it was so I gave him ten bucks and explained the dilemma and he said okay. I told her he would take her right to the gate and said good-bye. I really was feeling bad for her over having to tell her son goodbye.

Grover was also right on time even with the Tropical Storm so we soon headed for home on MARTA.