Suddenly Spring

Well, again I seem to have lost a month.  It's April, and I'm not really sure what happened to most of March.

What I do know, though, is that lately the weather has been phenomenal.  Until last week (and maybe a bit of the week before that), we were having plenty of sixty, seventy, and even eighty degree days.  I could live without getting up to the eighties, especially in March, but I've been able to spend time outdoors, and that's been really wonderful.

St. Patrick's day was one of the highlights of last month.  I woke up early for a 5k, which arguable I could have performed better in.  I placed 23 out of something like 160 people, though, so I guess I did alright.  My biggest concern was that I had to walk up half of a fairly large hill and in doing so let half of those 22 people who finished before me in front of me.  I had previously spent most of my time running indoors or on the outdoor track at Brady's Run, and consequently had not prepared myself well for the hills.

After my 5k, I went to Iain's championship basketball game.  I kind of feel like I brought them bad luck, though, because they lost, and I think they only lost one other game all season.  I left the game to head over to my mom's house and help Jeff clear out the fire pit.  Last year we burnt a lot of brush that he had cleared from around the property, and the ash pile was too large to allow anything else to burn.  It took a few hours, but we got the pit cleared out and a new fire set up.  Then we picked up a bottle of Irish Whiskey, lit the fire, played some Flogging Molly, and had a good family get together.

March's other major highlight was my trip to Kalamazoo, Michigan, for training.  I think I mentioned that I was promoted at TMI to purchasing in February, and one of our vendors that we do a lot of business with is located in Kalamazoo.  Eliason makes swinging doors that we resell, and spending time at their plant really helped me to understand the doors that I'm constantly writing purchase orders for.  I was seriously impressed with their product line, a good portion of which I don't think most of our sales people even know about.  I was also impressed with the production facility, which is much cleaner and seems more efficient than ours.  I think we could learn a thing or two from them.

I can say one thing for sure:  our facility may not be as clean or as efficient, but we still seem to be able to ship things when our customers ask for them.  Part of my job is to keep track of the vendor performance, and Eliason is one of the worst vendors in terms of shipping things when we ask, or even shipping things on their own expected ship dates.  I think the problem, though, is TMI's relationship with Eliason.  I get the feeling that if we were on better terms with them that they would be more likely to ship things on time for us; at least I don't think they do the same thing to some of their better customers.  That's a touchy subject, though, and I think I'll just leave it at that.

I did learn a few things about life while on the trip.  I went with Joe P. and Joe S. from another division of our company.  Their division, unlike the main company, has more of a partnership with Eliason, and they went not only for training but also to do some negotiations.  The Joe's are in a different social class than I am, and this was very evident throughout the entire trip.  For example, for dinner on Wednesday night we went to an amazing restaurant called Bold.  The meal was beyond fantastic; however, I think the bill for five of us came to around $500.  There were two bottles of wine involved, and my main course (they were fairly insistent that I have three courses) was a $28 fillet steak, which, believe it or not, was the cheapest thing on the menu.  I don't want to talk down the steak, though, because it was so delicious that I had to savor each bite.

The life lessons really centered around something Joe P. said on the way home.  I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since.  As you may have heard by now, Highmark had a bit of a scandal on March 25, which resulted in CEO Ken Melani getting fired.  I heard about it while we were driving back from Michigan.  Joe S.'s wife works for Highmark, and both he and Joe P. know Ken personally (which is why I am calling him Ken: they called him Ken the entire time.  It took me a little while to figure out who they were talking about).  The Joe's have played golf with him, and Joe S. has had dinner with him and his wife several times.  As if that on its own wasn't enough to rattle me, Joe P. then started talking about how much money Ken would have left once he got fired, assuming (reasonably) that his wife would also divorce him because of the entire ordeal and take roughly half.  He tossed around some figures and came to a conclusion of about 3 million dollars (assuming his financial situation before becoming CEO was not impressive enough to make a huge difference).  Now, my first thoughts on this are: "With 3 million dollars, I may not be able to get another job as a CEO, but I could probably do something reasonable, make enough money to cover my day-to-day expenses, and basically retire.  At least I'd be very comfortable.  Joe's first thoughts, though, were a lot more morbid.  He honestly said, "If I only had 3 million dollars, I'd probably jump off a bridge."  My response, besides being nearly dumbstruck, was to ask if he'd then leave that money to me.

I cannot fathom the amount of money that Joe must have to make 3 million dollars seem paltry.  This whole ordeal has really been challenging how I think about life.  These men really do live in a different world, and I don't see that there's really any way I can ever be a part of it.  They spent their time joking around, making business deals, and talking about golf.  I spend my time striving to pay my bills and have enough left over to have a social life one or two nights a week.  I don't really know how to cope with the thought of someone believing that 3 million dollars isn't enough money to live.  He even went on to say that he couldn't even invest that money, which further blew my mind.  That's the kind of money I'd love to have to invest.  Maybe someone else can explain the whole thing to me so that I can stop laboring over it and get back to my day-to-day life.  What are your thoughts on the whole ordeal?

Otherwise, I suppose it's April now.  Easter is in a week and I think I have to learn how to cook a ham in that time period.  In the mean time, I suppose I should get going.  There's always plenty of things to do.