May 23, 2010 - Summer is here!

Hey there, hi there and hello there. Wowzers, what a glorious weekend that wrapped up a pretty darn good week. Congrats to the class of 2010 Mount Mercy grads, hope commencement was fun. Big happy birthday wishes to MarJoan this week ... hope you have a great day indeed.

This past week things have begun to pick up again at Aflac especially with bike to work day on Friday. Seven miles in 26 minutesish ... great good time indeed. O yes, I was again asked to prove the value of the team. A monthly thing this has become, but hopefully after this last one, we have proven ourself for a while. Of all the projects we drive, and that's between 3-5 at any one time, our team drives value of the company in excess of $5,000,000 ... yup, over $750K per 6 people on the team. Made me feel pretty good to pass that along to the leadership team:) One of the big things I'll be working on over the next few weeks is working towards my certification as a Precision Leader. We have been focusing on this concept of precision leadership for some time now, which is basically the constant recognition of your people ... or, the right thing to do:) The exercises, journaling and tracking will all be a part of the presentation ... should be fun! I also picked up another mentee that I meet with this week, hope I can help him out too.

Last week Jenny and I started the weekend off right with date night downtown for dinner then off to the RiverCenter for the play Chicago ... which was fantacular! Saturday we got back on the workout track on a run with Caden, made a delicious dinner and went to watch the new Robin Hood movie. Russell Crowe gave an amazing performance and the movie exceeded my expectations, two thumbs up indeed! Today we spent heading to church, laying by the pool and going for a bike ride with friends. Two flat tires later, we finished out the weekend:)

Emory started back up this week with Managerial Finance and Strategic Management. This summer is going to be full of reading and financial analysis, yay! O, if you ever win the lottery and are trying to determine whether to take the lump sum or payments, let me know and I can help out;) I am really looking forward to my strategic management course though, the professor came in and was able to name almost every one of the 50 students in class minus four guys ... very impressive. Should be a fun summer indeed.

Couple weeks until a trip back home which Jenny and I are thoroughly looking forward to ... can't wait to see you all! I'll leave you with the quote of the day, "Rise and rise again before lambs become lions." Never give up and life will be good ... o, and that is Caden's friendly squirrel that eats his food sometimes;)

Alwayz,

Nate