Monthly Archives: August 2009

Supporting the healthcare industry

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Lately, my family has been almost single-handedly holding up the healthcare industry, or so it seems. In the past two months I’ve made four trips to the emergency room and even more affiliated doctor visits. Here’s the score:

Cohen: two (stitches near left eye, then a month later, several stitches on left arm)

Tristan: one (stepped on a long screw and then needed a booster shot)

Keegan: one (messed up his right knee, had to also see an orthopedic specialist yesterday and has an MRI today)

Michele has been to a regular doctor visit and so have I.

See? It all adds up to a lot of support for healthcare. (That is a bit ironic since we are in a big healthcare debate right now in this country. While I think we need significant changes in our current system, I would be horrified if the plan pushed by the Obama administration gets passed into law.)

Let’s hope that today’s MRI will show that Keegan’s knee isn’t as damaged as I think it may be. He really wants to play football this fall.

Silly corporate buzzwords

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I’ve worked in a large corporate culture now for a little over three years. There was quite a bit of culture adjustment during that time. One of the harder things to deal with was silly corprate buzzwords like the following. It is a sad fact that I find myself using these or hearing them used regularly. What other buzzwords would you add?

bandwidth
big picture
bottom line
brain dump
brainstorm
call out
core competency
engage, engaged, engagement
facetime
focus group
future proof
gap analysis
integration
intellectual capital
knowledge acquisition
knowledge sharing
level set
leverage
metrics
push back
reach out to
reengineer
right-sizing
ROI
seamless
value proposition

It’s almost back-to-school time

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I can’t believe it is August already. Back-to-school ads are now commonplace. As a child this was a depressing thing and somehow even as an adult it is a little discouraging. I’m thinking of all kinds of work deadlines that are looming and that keeps me awake at night.

On Thursday I had to take Keegan to urgent care because he injured his knee in football camp. The doctor said it was a bad strain and gave him naproxen and instructions about caring for, and resting, his knee. After three days of this he doesn’t seem to be any better and says he’s in a lot of pain so I think he will need to see an orthopedic specialist soon.

We did a number of things this weekend including a nice dinner out at a restaurant Saturday evening. In addition we bought a new tv and did some shopping at a local hardware store to get a new countertop for the used kitchen cabinets I installed in the kitchen last week. Fortunately we were able to get one that matches our existing countertops. I installed the new one last night and the whole setup lookes pretty good!

On Saturday I also picked up our Kirby vacuum from the repair shop and it is now like brand new. (It is a big deal to have a working vacuum in our house.) Saturday evening I shampooed the carpet in our living room.

One thing I had hoped to get a chance to do this weekend was to get out and about to take photos with my new (used) DSLR that I got as a birthday present. Alas that will have to wait.

We watched Spiderwick on Blu-Ray last night, our first attempt at watching a high-def movie on our new tv. Although a bit scary and intense in parts, the children really enjoyed it.