A Beautiful Morning

These are unedited photographs shot from my kitchen window.

Who am I? A Poem

Walking through life, who am I?
A light spring snow falling from the sky

The wind that blows the hair about your face
Walking through life exploring my space


My wife, my love, keeper of my heart
There till the end, there from the start


The feeling when I watch you walk to me
Deep in my brain I feel things I cannot see

Complicated and simple is the life that's mine
Like the photograph, just a moment in time 

Spring flowers rise from their sleep
Come alive evoking feelings so  deep

Watching my children grow and live
To them, Guidance I give

Lessons  for them to learn
You must stoke the fire for it to burn

Touch the roses, see the smells 
Feel the sound of the bells

Walking through life, who am I?

Customer service

I live in a customer service world. Or so I always thought! As I make my way around different businesses from grocery stores, to coffee joints, sports venues to restaurants I am continually amazed at the low level of service that is considered acceptable.

I had a redeeming experience recently at Wachusett Mountain in Princeton, MA. I had originally learned to ski there back in 1980 (ish) and had not been back there to ski since 1987. I had attended many other events during the off season that are held there.

My 6 year old son and his 19 year old sister decided they wanted to learn how to snowboard. I will not go into the debacle I created when I scheduled the wrong lessons for them, but, let me say that this started my great experience with them.

Everyone that I encountered over the phone was gracious and willing to help. When I arrived at the mountain I was kindly directed to where I needed to go. The lessons were fantastic! We went inside after a while to get some lunch. Inside I was actually surprised to see Carolyn, one of the owners, carrying trays! Little did I know but that was one of the reasons the place runs so well!

Over the next couple of visits I met rental people, cafeteria workers, ski instructors, retail agents in the ski shop and a couple of maintenance workers scraping ice off the deck area, without a doubt the worst job to have that day! Everyone that I met was happy, willing to help, and represented their employer with class!

I contacted the office to get Carolyn's email to send her a detailed account of my great experiences and sent it along. I wanted her to know how great it was. You see I am in customer service myself, I know how difficult it is to maintain that smile all the time. I know that it is even harder to motivate your employees to have that smile all the time!

I was impressed and I hope to learn more about the secrets of this perpetual "smile" ! Thank you to all the employees of Wachusett Mountain!

Added Photo's

Sorry, apparently I had a technical issue yesterday and many of the attached photo's  to the previous post did not display! They are there now!

Enjoy!

A blizzard of thoughts

I love a good storm, snow, wind, rain, thunder, lava. Maybe not lava but definitely the others! Due to work this years blizzard was experienced mostly at a hotel and in a plow truck at Boch Honda! I did get out to take a few photo's during my stay. I struggle with being able to take quality shots in the snow, I am, after all a novice, an amateur only about a year into my first "real" camera. One of the shots is of a hotel worker that had never seen snow before and wanted her picture taken, a first for me for someone to want to be photographed by me! It felt good!
I have also included some shots of the birds enjoying a post blizzard snack. I hope you enjoy!

Restless

I am restless today. I'm anxious. My head has a thousand thoughts and my body is not interested in any of them.  I'm feeling like I am wasting time on my days off. I just finished working Thursday - Friday 7 AM-9 PM ( if I leave on time ) and Sunday 7 AM-5 PM all with an hour commute each way. It was a taxing 4 days that started with month end and not leaving the dealership until 11 PM. That added up to 63.5 hours working or driving in a 96 hour span. Leaving 32.5 hours for getting ready to go to work and sleeping.

I have found myself lately, not turning off the store while I am home. That is my precious free time, to be a Dad, a husband, to be a person outside of work. I sit here typing with the sun cascading through the window and flowing over me and I keep glancing outside and wishing it was summer so I could get some "therapy" working in my yard. I feel like it is a metaphor for my life with the weeds being my personal demons and the flowers being me, as simple as a seed and yet as complicated as their many varieties.

Do not get me wrong, I love my job, love where I work, and, a little self congratulation, I am damn good at it! But it is a highly demanding and stressful job that starts over and over again each month.  Awesome job, you hit your projections for January and as you read this email congratulating you on that accomplishment you begin to fall behind for February!

Balance is the thing I feel I am lacking lately. I have a job I love, a family life that is awesome and an overall life that I cannot complain about. I need to learn to let go of work and engulf myself in home while I am there. I am trying.

I shut off my work email on my phone today. The place survived 9 years without me I'm pretty sure it can survive a day more!

I'm going to go and have some of my photos printed today, I will enjoy the camera shop and browse equipment I long for. I am really enjoying Twitter and all the artists I have connected with. I continue to evolve everyday, Hopefully growing to sun and not being choked out by the weeds.