one of my nephews got a hold of his sister’s diary. not only did he read it, he made edits on nearly every page.

most notably, at the end of a poem describing the curse that would befall him should he ever read his sister’s journal, he wrote “will not: i’ve read it”

we recently purchased a gps and are now having lots of fun playing with it while we should be driving. even the kids in the back seat are clamoring for us to hang it on the front window so they can see it too.

i was all ready to say goodbye google maps and live and die by the gps directions until early last week when we had a few cloudy days. that’s right, a few clouds and all the sudden the gps can’t find any satellites and had i been depending upon it for directions i would have been equally blind.

rain and clouds don’t mess with my satellite television. guess i need a two foot diameter dish hooked up to my gps to keep me from getting lost in the clouds.

one year ago today we sold our house in cleveland ohio thanks to the fine folks at olsen ziegler realty.

not a week this year has gone by when i haven’t been thankful for their help.

thanks again chris and julie.

remember the marbles i mentioned yesterday?

ethan is ‘star of the week’ in his kindergarten class which meant today he could bring in his favorite toys to share with the rest of the class. either because they couldn’t be missed sitting at the top of the stairs or because he actually enjoys them, the marbles made the list of toys he wanted to share.

so, circumstance has removed the hazard from the top of our stairs, but who could have anticipated those very same marbles would be dropped on the floor of a kindergarten class and in the excitement to contain the marbles from rolling away the entire class would collapse in a heap of kids, marbles, desks and chairs.

i’m pretty certain parents will be advised to leave their marbles at home in the future…

for the past few days we’ve had a tray of marbles sitting at the top of the stairs.

its not that i haven’t noticed them…

its not that i haven’t seen lots of black and white tv skits with comedians losing their footing on marbles…

its not that my safety conscious partner hasn’t seen the marbles…

its not that i’ve lost my marbles, i know exactly where they are, in a tray at the top of my stairs…

i have been an accomplished pack rat for most of my life. i say accomplished because i didn’t just keep things, i kept them ordered, in pristine condition and could put my hands on them within seconds.

after having moved a few times and living in new zealand for a year, i now feel encumbered with all these things and have been shedding them a little at a time (the process would be faster if i weren’t as meticulous at disposing as i was at storing).

one of the most recent files to hit the shredder was one of the 360 reviews i had done during my tenure in corporate america. in case you’ve missed this experience, a 360 degree review is where a collection of your coworkers, managers, subordinates and peers review you across a variety of highly valued corporate metrics. these reviews, even when done poorly, can be quite insightful.

case in point, the review i just sent to the shredder included a section at the end that grouped my lowest scores. the category on this review where i scored lowest was “setting direction”. interestingly, it was my managers who brought down my average with very low scores while all my subordinates and peers rated me quite high.

i would contend that “setting direction” is most accurately measured by ones subordinates, unless of course the direction i was setting was to undermine the management team.

in reflecting on this review now, i had such low regard for my management team that i simply disregarded their scores. what i failed to realize at the time is that their scores in contrast to the others somewhat prove that point.

so i’m conflicted, years later i benefit from a review i had squirreled away but the matthew of november present hasn’t got space for all this junk.

our kids lack the normal self governing mechanism that would deter them from eating all their halloween candy in one sitting. we know this to be true because the few times we’ve let them have unlimited access to junk food we’ve had vomiting kids soon after.

so, for the past two weeks we’ve gotten a lot of requests to dive in to the candy bag we put up on top of the refrigerator and we’ve been pretty easy about saying yes. but as the number of requests seemed to increase i got tired of hearing it and started throwing candy out if i got too many requests in a row (only the crappy candy that no one liked, but i didn’t let them in on that fact).

that worked for a couple of days, but then logan changed strategy. instead of asking for candy twice an hour she would say “aren’t you proud i haven’t asked for anything on top of the refrigerator” three to four times an hour…

when temperatures drop and i’m not living close to a ski hill, my next favorite thing about winter is sliding around the house in my socks on the wood floors.

i think arranged marriage is a good idea. its a good idea because it prevents similar people from hooking up, mixing their d.n.a. and churning out kids with amplified versions of their mutually dominant characteristics.

in the case of our daughter she got a double shot of wanting whatever comes next. she can go hours without eating in anticipation of a treat she thinks may be coming. within seconds of arriving somewhere she asks to leave, never mind we just left somewhere else to get where she doesn’t want to be now.

over the weekend she asked me to take her camping, when i asked her what we would do while we were camping, she cut our future trip short and had us come home early to play with friends…

by new zealand standards, wanganui is a conservative town. but unlike the u.s. where a little bit of nipple creates mass hysteria, it looks quite at home at their business awards banquet. and no, it was not as a friend of mine suggested, the adult entertainment business awards banquet…

i don’t know what they are teaching him in school, but the other night when the kids were going to the loo before bed, ethan yelled at logan “stop! you have to flush first, if you pee where i pee it will make a baby.”

until my kids are living on their own i won’t be dispelling any myths about how easy it is to make a baby…