Happy Birthday, Diane!

There are at least two good things about birthdays. if you're in the right situation. If you're on Facebook, you get lots of greetings from all kinds of people you may not hear from any other time.
And if you're on the Magazines staff at Standard Publishing, you get free lunch with all your other co-workers at the place of your choice.
Today was Diane Jones-Dunham's birthday, and she chose a place new to her--and me! The Rusty Bucket on Mason-Montgomery Road. I was surprised at how good it was, and how hard it was to choose what I wanted from all the interesting possibilities on the menu.
Happy birthday, Diane! Today's celebration was the perfect proof of a truth we sometimes forget: "It's more blessed to give than to receive." I've received another great idea for where to take Evelyn for lunch on Sundays or dinner anytime! (Or dessert! I had a couple bites of that cookies and cream sundae Diane got free for being the birthday girl. Let's see . . . just six more months till mine!)

Two Days of Disconnect

This is a picture of the inbox for my email account as it appears via the Outlook Web App on my laptop. I took my personal laptop to work today with a plan to find a Wi-Fi connection for accessing email, because we had no email or Internet connectivity in the office yesterday, and as it turns out, all day today.
So much of our work is via email; we go through a huge volume of email correspondence in a week. I had made a bunch of assignments last week, and the people were responding to them this week. And I had more assignments to make and questions to ask.
I went to Panera for awhile this morning. Good coffee. Interesting interchange at the table nearby as I listened to some sort of manager or supervisor interview two applicants for either manager or assistant manager positions. (You can only overhear so much from a distance!)
I was impressed by the way she listened to the applicants, the questions she asked, and little snippets about how Panera does its business. (They grow all their own tomatoes. The chicken arrives in the store presliced. They keep complete records of their business--sales volume, by dollar and by item--so they can predict from one day to the next and one holiday to the next what kind of inventory to stock.)
The first guy seemed to be a winner. The second guy, not so much, for a variety of reasons. Probably the killer was that he'd been fired from managing another restaurant because one of its health/cleanliness standards hadn't been met. After that second interview, she stood up to leave, looked over at me, and smiled.
"You're not going to hire him, are you?" I said.
"Was it that obvious?" she said, laughing. "I could tell after the first five minutes he wasn't for us, and it's so hard to give a reasonable interview to someone you know you're not going to hire." I think she did a good job.
Believe it or not, I did get emails written during that time, as well as some information pulled off onto my stick so I could print a Word document back at the office to give some contract info, etc., to Diane Jones.
They told me there was Wi-Fi access in the small snack room in the main lobby of our building. So I trudged down there about 1:30 and stayed till after 4:30--with 3 or 4 other Customer Service gals on laptops, also accessing the Wi-Fi. We were accompanied by ABC's daytime programming on the big screen on the wall over us. And the little room was HOT. I really think I was more productive at Panera.
I'm a little surprised at myself at the flood of relief that washed over me later when I was back at my desk and my email account popped up open (this was about 5:15). I tried the Internet, and there was Evelyn's latest post on Facebook.
Connected again. Connected again! Thank God, we're connected again!
"Thanks for your patience and understanding," said the note telling everyone that the problem was solved. I'm not sure there was that much of either in my heart today.

A Team to Thank

Diane, Lori, and Sheryl were first through the food line.

Today is Administrative Professional's Day, and Carla Johns in our office decided it would be fun to have a big spread of food to honor the three admins in Editorial and Magazines. So she distributed cards that we all signed, we got small gift cards and colorful bouquets, and I wrote a song that four of us sang to Diane Jones-Dunham, Sheryl Overstreet, and Lori Davis. 

The tune is (generally!) "If You Were the Only Girl in the World, and the words went like this:

1

If you were the only admins in the world,

And we were the only bosses . . .

We’d still have no fear, ‘cause you’d be right here;

You work like a team of hosses!

You pay all the bills and keep Accounting glad;

You keep going on, Elan won’t drive you mad!

Computers can’t rile you; you have such style, you

Work like a team of hosses!

 2

If you were the only admins in the world,

We wouldn’t be in a bind.

We’d still give you tasks, and you’d never ask

If we’d lost our bloomin’ minds!

Peter, Mark, and Margo have become your friends.

If you weren’t here, we know our lives would end!

Deadlines can’t throw you, we always know you

Work like a team of hosses!

 3

Problems with the warehouse or the U.S. mail—

They won’t make you grouse or let your products fail.

Our mission’s secure, you always endure;

You work like a team of hosses!

A colleague wrote me an e-mail after the party. "Thanks. It was good to laugh again!"

Morale-building, some moments of fun, LOTS of good food, and three worthy administrative assistants thanked: I'd say we did pretty well for one day!

A Birthday at Betta's

What's more fun than a new restaurant? Jim Nieman introduced most of us to Betta's Italian Oven close to Xavier University for his birthday lunch today. It's very fine!
The sign in the window proclaims, "The best pizza in Cincinnati," an award bestowed at least once by Cincinnati Magazine. I don't know if I would have labeled it the best, but the margherita pizza I had for lunch was really good. The pizzas are cooked in a wood-fired oven. They have one size and style: 10-inches, thin and crispy crust.
When the waitress brought it to the table, I thought, Well, I'll be taking half of this home. But I managed to eat the whole thing! It's in a part of town I never get to, but sometime I'll make a point of going there just to try something else on their menu!

Sheryl Overstreet, Jim Nieman, Mark Taylor, Shawn McMullen, and Mike Helm
enjoying Betta's for Jim's birthday!

Spent most of the day working on the March issue, which goes to the printer next week: Read proof and talked on the phone to get quotes from Christian college presidents for the editorial I hope to write for that issue. Spent most of my time after supper this evening studying for our men's group's first study in Revelation Thursday morning. I'm so glad I have Matt Proctor's articles, Part One and Part Two, on Revelation as a help to get us started!

Find the Mark

Took two carloads of my coworkers to lunch today--all of them colleagues in our magazines work at Standard Publishing. Forgot to ask the waitress to take our picture, but I got the folks to pose for a picture outside the restaurant, Ferrari's Little Italy in Madeira. Then one of them, our Creative Services Director, Mark Haas, told me to jump into the frame and he snapped a second picture. He offered to Photoshop me into the first picture, but it's easier just to post both pix here. :-)

The lunch was a fun and tasty interruption to a productive planning day Paul and I enjoyed. Tomorrow I'm going to try to follow up on all of the ideas and assignments I've jotted down as a result.

Getting Ready for Travel, Getting Ready for Christmas

Today was a somewhat typical last day in the office before a trip away. I mentioned yesterday that I'm reading a book in preparation for attending a spiritual life retreat sponsored by the Stone-Campbell Dialogue. Well, I leave home about 8:30 tomorrow morning to catch a plane for Chicago connecting to Dallas, where the retreat will be held.
Today I spent checking items off my list, all of them items that really needed to be handled before I'm back in the office next week.
Had a productive couple of meetings settling on prices and procedures for a program I'll introduce to the Christian college presidents meeting before the ICOM next week. We're going to offer student subscriptions to Christian Standard, and I'm going to see how they like the idea, suggested by Matt Proctor, when I meet with them.
Did some planning with Diane Jones-Dunham and some last-minute consultation with Jim Nieman on the January issue of Christian Standard, whose layout he'll be designing starting tomorrow.
Meanwhile, our printed copies of the December issue arrived. We're thinking about the holiday as we send contributors' samples of our bright red, "Merry Christmas" cover.

Celebrating with Diane

Shawn McMullen snapped this pose
of Diane and me with a carving of some unnamed
Ohio native guarding the back door of the restaurant.

In the midst of my pretty productive day, we took a break and went to lunch to celebrate the birthday of our associate, Diane Jones-Dunham. She was traveling to a friend's wedding last weekend, and was still gone for her actual birthday, so we picked today for our little celebration.
Last year I began the tradition of inviting the whole staff (of Lookout and Christian Standard) to go out for each person's birthday. The person celebrating picks the place, and I treat him or her. It's been a nice way to force us to go out together and have fun.
For the second year in a row, Diane picked Montgomery Inn. It was great!
Today was a perfect day for an outing. Almost summer-like weather, but with a nice breeze and beautiful leaves on the trees. It's supposed to turn cool and rainy tomorrow and stay that way through Saturday. We promised the neighbors we'd go to the Lakota football game tomorrow night (their son is in marching band), but I'm probably going to wimp out if it's pouring. We'll see.

Good People, Important Work, a Beautiful Day

Sheryl and Diane were game to pose for me this morning.
Two great ladiesI get to work with every day!

We started the day at work with a very small celebration. I brought in a box of Dunkin' Donut donut holes to celebrate the return of Diane Jones to the office after her honeymoon. Now she's Diane Jones-Dunham.  Sheryl Overstreet had been out some last week, tending to her husband, Ed, who had a pacemaker installed Thursday. So today everyone in the Lookout and Christian Standard staff was back at one time. Seemed to me like a good enough reason to eat donuts, don't you agree?

Tomorrow is our second deadline on a new production schedule for The Lookout and Christian Standard. We're giving four issues at one time to the printer, who will print and mail them all at one time. We had been mailing issues two at a time. Printing and mailing four at a time really saves on postage, and postage is every periodical publisher's big concern these days.

Our managing editor, Jim Nieman, already turned in one of this week's four issues last week. Yesterday he uploaded the second of the four, our April 8 issue in which we invite several church leaders to weigh-in on the attractional vs. missional discussion. I'm looking forward to seeing how readers respond.

Today he uploaded the April 15 issue, which examines the idea of elder governance, an adaptation of the Policy Governance model that some corporations and volunteer boards have adopted. It, too, should prompt some helpful discussions.

For the record, today ended in the high 70s, a glorious, sunny, summerlike day. As I left the parking lot today, I saw some guy, evidently from another office in the building, kneeling by a bed of daffodils to take a picture. I smiled and felt like less of a nerd for doing the same thing several days in the last week.