What I Am Reading This Holiday Season

A couple weekends ago I joined my wife's family for a college football game in Ann Arbor. I love college football games because of the energy and the excitement. This game was by far the best one we had been too, mostly because the Fighting Illini and Michigan went into overtime and battled back and forth, until, sadly Illinois fell short.

It was also a nice weekend because neither my wife or I had to drive. This gave me the opportunity to pick up a magazine at a truck stop to read on the way home. The truck stop we stopped at had a very dismal inventory of magazines, so instead of my preferred Sports Illustrated, I ended up picking up a Rolling Stone.

After reading a couple great articles about Conan O'Brien and Taylor Swift, I read a great book review about Keith Richards. Keith just wrote his autobiography with James Fox called "Life". Now because the review was so good, I thought I would pick up a copy from Amazon. Boy was I not disappointed. I am currently a hundred pages into it, and simply reading about Keith Richards upbringing has been a joy. I cannot even imagine what a ride I will be in for once we get into the Rolling Stones years.

My second book on the agenda is Decision Points by President George W. Bush. Now this book at first would seem political, but skimming in it seems very insightful and thoughtful to the Bush presidency, and how he came to make the decisions that would, for better or worse, shape his presidency. Far be it to me to wax poetic about a presidency, however I am one of the few out there in the world who think that as history evolves, the eight year term term of G.W will be looked at differently, with fresh, respectful eyes.

I imagine these two books will last me, but if there are any suggestions I would appreciate it.

Why I Disappeared

So as my five followers have noticed I was on a great blogging rampage leading into labor day and then completely disappeared. I will not lie that some of this was laziness but for the most part the business of life sort of caught me by surprise. While I was blogging about leaderships lessons and great websites, I was also on the sly, looking for a new job. It had come to the point at my last job that I had become way to comfortable, with the work and the people and the business. Life in the office was one repetitive task after another, and I was slowly just evolving into the type of worker who spends his days surfing the internet and not caring about th output. In mid-August, after a good month of refining my resume, I found a hit. I had two very good interviews, and by October 15th, I was in a new company where my hard work and ideas would be appreciated.

During that time I was also taking three classes at Depaul that for lack of better phrase, were kicking my ass. The worst of the three was a statistics class that was taught online and totally utilized Microsot Excel to formulate problems. Now this may seem like an easy class, but trying to create formulas in Excel and copy and paste data from one tab to another was time consuming. Not to mention this class had one huge project each week.


So I abandoned the blog for a while. But I am back over the holiday break and hope to really dive in to the blogosphere.

sorry for the interuption.

Today's Reading List

Some nuggets for you :)

If you want to hang with the executive set. You need to know what they are reading and how.

What a Player Executive Reads

Training people at work? Work Awesome will show you the way.

11 Tips for Training People at Work

An invaluable idea.

No One Nos: Learning to Say No to Bad Ideas

Today's Reading List

Here are some of the things I have been reading today.

About.com has a great article on what you should do on your first day as a manager.

A First Day Manual for Managers

Lifehacker offers a little etiqutte lesson on remebering and dealing with people's names.

On remembering and dealing with people's names

Finally, 10 easy ways to improve your cooking.

Bucktown Art Fest 2010

Bucktown Art Fest 2010

 

This past weekend, the wife and I (and daughter too) attended the 25^th Annual Bucktown Art Fest.  Despite the horrendous heat, we loaded into our mini-SUV and made the 45 minute ride into the city.  Back in the day, my wife and I attended this particular fest, and loved it.  We even walked away with a few pieces of art which at the time, we both felt was the best artists that the festival had.  This year was beyond our expectations.

 

The wife and I literally saw dozens of pieces (sculpture, art, and photography) that we wanted or could use in our home.  I could have easily dropped 10K on art this weekend if the economy and my wallet were not in the way.  In the end my wife and only purchased one piece of art. 

 

 

This piece was created by Maria Ciaccio, and as you can tell is an abstract painted onto an old window.  The wife and I were totally besotted by the art that was on display in Maria's tent.  Unfortunatley I did not catch the name of the other young lady who was also in the space, but both were very grateful at our purchase. 

 

For the wife and I, there is nothing better than to buy and admire works by local artists from Chicago.  In this instance, we will we thoroughly enjoy this piece for a long time. 

 

Sent from my iPhone

The Dentist

Why is it that if you show up a minute late, the receptionist wants to tear your head off, but if you happen to arrive ten minutes early they act like you are throwing off their flow.

It amazes me that someone in the medical profession hasn't come up with a more efficient way to clear people through a daily schedule. I understand that a doctor has to wear many hats but there has got to be some room for delegation along the process.

Any thoughts?

Sent from my iPhone

Today's Reading List

Here are the articles I am reading today. Hopefully my 5 followers will enjoy them.

The Life Work of a Thought Leader

Great Q&A with the late Coimbatore Krishnarao (C.K.) Prahalad - former professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross Business School. Courtesy of Strategy+Business.

The Complicated Lives of Today's Leaders: Why Being at the Top is Harder Than Ever

An insightful Q&A on ethics, values, and competencies required of today's global leaders with four fellows from The World Economic Forum's Global leadership Fellows Program.

How CEOs Will Use Social Media in the Future

Another interesting article courtesy of Gist. I have no idea how CEOs will pull this off in the short-term but the long-term expectation is that tomorrow's corporate leaders will be twittering up a storm.