Monday, April 30, 2012

#92 - Fun in the forest at Fahnestock

Monday, April 30

Today I am thankful for an uncle and aunt who love their nieces and nephews.

On Saturday evening I got a call from my brother.  He and his wife had some time and were thinking of coming up to see us.  Were we free?  We had some things on Sunday morning, of course, but the afternoon looked free. 

So on Sunday after church we went down to Riverside Park in Beacon for half an hour to wait for the train.  We piled in the van and went to our new almost-house and played and walked around.  Then we drove a few minutes away to Fahnestock state park.  I've been there before, and this time the beach was closed again.  But the campground across the street was open.  We drove in, parked in an open spot near the restrooms, and explored.  The kids headed straight down the hill to a marshy area (there are a lot of those here - the solid rocky bottom prevents water drainage from low areas).  In the first pic, you can see Christian and Libby.  But you have to look closely.  Christian is an easy find - Libby is a little spot of pink from her pants, almost completely hidden by the trees.



When Christian and Libby were exploring back there, Christian's shoes got wet.  Libby stepped boot-deep in muck.  She was embarrassed at first, then she was laughing about it: "I stepped in the mud and I got fish in my shoes!"  The extra legs there belong to my brother.  We dropped him and Aki off at the station just before 6, I dropped the family off at the hotel, and I went to choir practice.  We have stake conference next week, and this was the 2nd of 2 practices.  I'd missed the first one. 

Saturday, April 28, 2012

#91 - Building bridges, always

A few days ago at work, I met someone who is far up the management chain from me.  I'll call him Ken.  He unexpectedly showed up to a meeting I was running and took a seat in the corner.  As we were dialing in to the conference call number, he greeted me.  He mentioned that when he saw my name come across his desk (when I applied for the job I have) that he called my former VP (who I'll call Jim).  I knew that Jim and Ken were conncted on LinkedIn because I had done some homework, and had half-expected to need an introduction from Jim or another VP at some point during my job hunt. 

Ken said that when he asked Jim about me that Jim had said, "Hire him.  You'll be happy you did." 

Now, Jim had told me as I left the company that he would say some nice things about me.  He encouraged me to ask people to call him.  I didn't do it, because I wasn't sure how much he knew about what I had accomplished, and sometimes he said things that were wrong because he didn't know as much as he thought he did.  I did not want to risk him messing things up for me.  It turned out that quite the opposite had happened.

The importance of this event brought some things home to me.  The first is that putting your best foot forward at all times is a requirement for a successful career.  I was able to make my job transition in 2012 successfully only because I made a very good impression on someone in 1998.  The initial impression I made on that guy let him hire me in 1999.  When I needed a new career path in 2012, that's the guy I called.  In the mean time, I had done very good work for a very long time, and a fair amount of it had crossed Jim's desk.  I did not put him on my list of references, and I did not expect my new company to call him up and ask about me.  But they did.

I think about the opportunities I had at my previous company to disappear - to take on less challenging work, to not challenge the status quo, to stop asking questions.  Sure, I made mistakes.  But I owned up to them, and never made the same mistake twice.  That stuff sticks - and you never know in our connected world who knows whom.  The one time you performed poorly, that one interaction you had with someone: that might be the someone your next employer calls to ask about your performance.

There are no opportunities to slack any more.  It's much like the GMAT's math section.  The GMAT is a test akin to the SAT for students who want to enter a master's program in business.  The math section is self-selecting: the test gives you an easy question.  If you get it right, it gives you a harder one.  When you start to get questions wrong, it goes back to the kind you could solve before.  By the end of the test, it knows what kind of math you can do, and how good you are at it.  A quality employee is going to find getting and keeping a good job pretty easy.  The test is self-selecting where good performance is noted and stays with you.  A poor performer, like the self-selecting math questions on the GMAT that may show that you barely passed high school algebra, will find himself stuck in the same place.  There is no more opportunity to restart a career in management any more, no fresh chances.  Good careers will build consistently.  Poor careers will flatline pretty quickly.

Most of this is to the good.  A poor performer does not belong in, and will not be good at, a position that requires a more competent person.  The converse is true for high performers.  There will be people who get burned by a bad boss or the 1 big mistake she didn't see coming.  But overall, it's a system that is going to be good for companies and the people who run them.

So build your bridges at all times.  My last written communication with Jim was a long, thoughtful note on the company, its strategies, his leadership, and what I felt the company needed from him.  He told me he had read it once and would read it again.  That was 4 hours before I walked out the door for the last time.  Build bridges, even as the heel of your shoe takes the last step onto the other side.  Always.

#90 - Life changes with cash in the bank

About 2 weeks ago, I walked into our local Chase branch to get a cashier's check for what we'd call earnest money for our home purchase.  The teller greeted me happily, and asked casually if I had considered upgrading my checking to a premium service based on my large balance. 

Our down payment is sitting in the bank.  It's more than we've ever had in a bank before.

She told me that she'd like to give me the check with no fees, and if I had a minute, she'd have someone help me.  She got on the phone, and Kim walked over to take over the transaction.  This entire episode took maybe 2 minutes - I already had my cashier's check made out, and had been escalated to the "relationship banker".  This is a buzzword I had heard before.  This day was the first time I had experienced it.

It turns out that banks want to handle your money.  All of it, if they can.  And if you have a bunch available, you are suddenly an actually valuable customer whose business they appreciate.  This is in contrast to the "valuable customer" we have been in the past, who takes advantage of free bill pay online, account transfers, and free checking, but who rarely has a large enough balance for the bank to find useful.

So Kim took me to her office and we sat down.  She explained that my new premium account is free, as long as I kept a certain balance limit in checking, savings and investment accounts. "Investments?" I asked.  I did not know that Chase did investments.  Indeed we do, she assured me.  It is, after all, JP Morgan Chase.  To write that sounds kinda haughty, but it was very colloquial, just some idle office chitchat.  When did I open my account?  What brought me to New York?  Oh, look!  You just got approved for a home loan! 

I don't know if she had clicked a button to check or what, but the printer behind her had spit out a home loan prequalification letter with an excellent loan rate.  In 2 minutes while we were chatting.  Would I like my address updated?  And was my phone number correct?  There I was, my account was all set up, contact info fixed, free cashier's check in my hand.  And did I have a minute?  Our loan officer happens to be free, and he can go through the prequalification with you if you'd like.

No pressure, nothing asked of me - simply a series of "how may I help you"s scattered with some very pleasant and low-key chit-chat. 

To cap off the experience, I shook the loan officer's hand, and we walked to his office and shut the door.  He asked how far along we were in our loan process.  I told him, and told him our interest rate, closing costs, and points, and he looked at me like a friend would.  "That's a great deal.  I could give you a song and dance, but I can't beat that."  He smiled at me, we stood up, I thanked him for his time, and I left. 

Zero pressure, genuinely friendly people who just wanted to help a customer.  Of course, there's something in it for them, but they did not want to take my money.  They wanted me to like them enough to give it to them.

And I think I will.  There aren't any downsides to it, and there are plenty of advantages.  Well played, Chase.

#89 - Daily life April 13-28

Saturday, April 28

Today I am thankful for permanence.

It has been about 2 weeks since I last wrote.  I don't expect to let it lapse that long again.  In the past 2 weeks, we have signed a contract to buy our home, had it rejected by the bank, taken our signed contract (the one the bank rejected) to the school to apply for residency to get the kids started in school, and finally scheduled our home inspection, appraisal, and survey. 

In addition (meaning everything that is not work or house-buying related) Paul Hawkins came to visit us, we've been invited to eat with several families in the ward, and we've started buying things for our new home.  With restraint - we have many large items to acquire, and no space for it all to stay.

So first things first - the house process is moving, finally a little more quickly than glacially.  We signed the contract on the house after we attached a rider.  The initial contract put all the risk on us, and we are not willing to commit to the purchase blindly.  The risks are specific to NY real estate, so I won't elaborate, but the risks were unacceptable to Katrina.  As usual, I wanted to plow ahead and she wanted to stop.  And she was right.  So we put a rider on the contract.  The bank took a few days to reject it and to inform us that they would accept no changes to the contract. 

So we proceeded with mitigation.  Once we have the home inspection complete and we're confident that we are buying what we think we are buying, we'll sign the contract without addenda.  We did find some broken heating registers, so we had to verify that the repair would go forward.  Without a working heating system, a home inspection loses a lot of value.  It should be done on Monday, so we scheduled the home inspection for Wednesday.  If the inspection comes out reasonably clean (and we expect it will), and the inspection paperwork for the home's recent addition comes back ok, then we'll sign the contract probably on Friday.  On the following Monday (the 7th) we'll have a survey done on the property.  There are no official surveys registered with the town or county, so each home owner has to have a survey done to verify the property lines.  An appraisal needs to be done, and title information needs to get to our attorney.  Both of these are ordered and should be done by May 7.

At that point, everything on our side will be complete - for the contract, the bank's loan requirements, and the seller's requirements.  And we'll just be waiting for the bank to sign the papers to sell us their property. 

The waiting has been maddening.  The impermanence, the constant shuffle of papers and emails, the ebb and flow of information against a background of no progress at all.  From a legal, pragmatic perspective, we have made no progress on the house in the last month.  We have negotiated in vain and filed some paperwork that was rejected, and that's it.  And yet we are hopeful.

Being thankful for permanence today is really because, despite the lack of progress on our new home here, the fact that we are here in NY and that is the deal has finally settled in.  It's often windy here.  The low might be 28 one night in late April, and the high may be 75 a couple days later.  Going to do things requires a drive.  Paperwork is done manually, by hand here.  Aria is the only Beehive in our ward.  There are lots of things for families to do here that are not free, but not expensive.  Sales tax is a nuisance, but we can live with it.  Pumping gas must be done, and complaining about it is not productive.  The entire area is phenominally beautiful in the spring.  Nature gets a complete makeover once Spring really arrives. 

On the fmaily activity front, we've started to do our Saturday thing - we get out every Saturday to do something.  Today, we (Katrina, Liberty, and I) went to the dog parade and festival in Beacon.  I've never seen so many dogs at one place in my life.  Main Street was closed off, the street was packed, and there were as many dogs as people.  Then we went to a park by the Beacon train station again after wandering the old city streets for a bit, and then we hit Kohl's for some school clothes for Liberty and a waffle maker. 

Last weekend, I took the kids to see "The Lorax" at the drive-in in Hyde Park.  Good movie, great time.  We parked Gortja backwards, opened the gate, and snuggled together in the back.  It was perfect.  We had left the hotel at 5:30, went to Petco where we looked at fish a lot, stopped to pick up chap stick for Libby, and to see a cool park between Poughkeepsie and Hyde Park, and got to the drive-in just a few minutes after it started.  Perfect.  Katrina was working on a lesson for church, so we left her in peace. 

Last night, Christian and I saw the new Pirates movie.  The Wallace and Gromit Pirates, not the Disneyland Pirates.  Decent movie, but not nearly as good as Chicken Run or the Wallace and Gromit shorts.  Then we got dinner for 2 at Pizza Hut, which was surprisingly good. 

I think Katrina has finished tying up loose ends in Oregon, and those are all done.  I still have work to do on school paperwork (about 2 hours per kid per year - blah!) and there are some odds and ends on the house purchase I'm working on, but that kind of work has started to calm a bit. 

So that's it for this entry.  I need to file a couple more on specific topics, so I must move on.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

#88 - a few finalities

Thursday, April 12

Today I am thankful for some closure.

Sunday at church was a good time.  My talk went all right, we talked with other members for an hour I think, and the kids just hung out until we were done.  Good thing it wasn't raining.  They just stood around the car waiting for us.  They all had a good time, and the younger 4 all made friends.  Aria is just the wrong age - she may be the only Beehive.  Which means she may become the Beehive President. 

Monday we went to someone's house for Easter dinner.  It was excellent - super informal, relaxed, with food that everyone was happy with.  Cheesy ham topping over rice, salad from a bag, rolls from Wal-Mart.  Perfect.  They have 4 kids, all of them about 4 years younger than ours.  We left there about 8:30 and came home to sleep.  Tuesday I had a normal workday and went back in to work after the kids were down.  I got back to the hotel about 2am, exhausted but happy that I was done.  We also got a phone call from the bishopric inviting Katrina and Aria to speak this week in church.  They both accepted. 

Wednesday I got an email that the buyer had signed the purchase papers for our Oregon house.  Today I got an email from our loan officer that our loan was officially approved.  They needed to see 4 other documents before funding the loan, but the loan was approved.  We should see the equity from our house in the bank tonight.  And the sale will be complete.  A massive chapter in our lives closed. 

Also today, my boss apologized to me.  I've been working through performance reviews the last few weeks, and she and I disagreed on 1 person's review.  We've gone back and forth on it, and today she was back from vacation and we talked about it.  She apologized for not taking the time with me up front to cover them, and gave me complete license to give the review I thought was appropriate.  So tomorrow morning I can put the review back to where I and the other folks I talked to thought it should be, and submit it for the 4th and last time.  It feels good to have her confidence.

The kids went to mutual and scouts last night, and that was good, too.  Things are coming together.  We should have the signatures we need tomorrow so we can put the kids in school next week, which is our next big hurdle.  And we should see contracts from the bank by Tuesday, so we can schedule the home inspection and the appraisal. 

Here are another couple pictures from our trip to the park last Saturday.


That's the Beacon train station for the Metro North railway in the background above.  It's only 10 minutes from our hotel, about 20 from our house.  The picture below was too pretty to not post.  That's Libby out there, surrounded by the Hudson.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

#87 - A real family Saturday

Saturday, April 7

Today I am thankful for the cool little people that live with me.

I got up this morning to prepare for Terry's departure and my escalation meeting for work.  Thankfully, we had figured out some things and the meeting went pretty well.  Katrina took mom to the airport, the kids and I had a leisurely breakfast, then we got busy.

First, we had the kids clean the hotel rooms - dirty clothes, garbage, toys, the whole deal.  By the time they were done, it was 10:30, and Katrina was back.  I took the kids down to the pool.  They were done around noon, we came back and hung out at the room.  I had a date with Aria to see The Hunger Games.  We have a rule that if a kid wants to see a PG-13 movie before he or she is 13, they have to read the book first.  Aria did that.  So we went to see the movie.  Wow.  It is unrelentingly intense.  No attempt at silly humor - the team that made the movie understands that it's a serious movie with serious themes, and there is no attempt at making it a circus.  It's deadly serious from the starving people in the opening montage to the closing credits.

Really a stunning movie.  Well made, well-produced.  Stark, gritty.  Makes you feel different having watched it.  It reminds me of seeing the video from the Vietnam war where the military guy shoots a guy in the head point blank for no apparent reason.  We saw that in US History in high school.  It's always stuck with me.  This movie shows just how ugly people can become.  Even the good guys have serious trouble hurting others.  There's no James Bond remorseless killing going on, no inconsequential violence like in a superhero movie.  You get a very real sense that these are real people dying, and that their deaths matter. Nothing gratuitous in any of this.  Wow.

I got back and started to write my talk for church tomorrow and Christian came in and plopped down on a chair.  "Dad," he said, "I want to do something." 

"Something that is not staring at a rectangle in the other room?"
"Yes.  I want to go somewhere and run around, do some physical exercise.  Can we go?"
"Sure.  I know just where I want to take you."
"Okay!  I'll go grab anybody else who wants to go!"

So Jakers and Libby wanted to come, too.  Aria was watching TV, Katrina was napping.  We took off to the park in Beacon right next to the train station.  It's an awesome place.  We spent a long time strolling along the beach, then spent time in the play grounds.  Beautiful place, stunning setting.  Here is one of many beautiful pictures I got there.


We left the park at 7, hit Wal-Mart for some dinner and other things.  The boys did not have church shoes, and Jakers' tennis shoes were destroyed.  The boy got good use out of them, I can't complain about him or the shoes.  I got some Voila! in the freezer section, and a few other odds and ends and we got home at 8.  I made some dinner, and the kids went to bed. It was really nice to finally spend a whole day with my kids.  I love these people, and I have missed our time together.  I love their enthusiasm and excitement.  I miss discovering things with them, and teaching them new things.  Teaching curious Christian about the world around him, and him asking followup questions is one of my favorite things in the whole world. 

Katrina has been busy putting together Easter baskets in the other room while I write in here.  Need to finish my stuff now.  Tomorrow morning should be nice.  The morning meeting for work might be cancelled, and we're heading off to church at 9.  It's going to be a good day.


Friday, April 6, 2012

#86 - A weekend, almost

Friday, April 6

Today I am thankful to not have to put in a full work day tomorrow.

Work this week has been one difficult machine problem after another.  We may have finally addressed a problem today, and so if our luck is good, we could be out of the woods by tomorrow morning.  Nevertheless, I have a meeting at 8am tomorrow.  I can only hope that we have a few successes tonight, the meeting will be short, and I can not concentrate on work for the rest of the day.  Same thing tomorrow.  So it's almost a weekend. 

I got the first piece of documentation on our new purchase here today.  The attorney the bank had been using is no longer doing foreclosure work, and the person who was supposed to find a new attorney for the bank dropped the ball.  So we won't have the signed contract until next week.  Which means the kids won't be in school by Wednesday, most likely.  I'll see what I can swing, but it may not work.

We are still unsure when the van will get here.   It was supposed to be here on Sunday, but it's Easter, so delivery will probably be Sat or Monday.  But I got no phone call and no email from the moving company today, so I have no idea.  Frustrating.  I like to plan, and that is obviously impossible without information.

The top pic tonight is from yesterday, Christian and Aria back to back in a chair, spinning.  The bottom pic is the kids in the pool.  If you look closely, you'll see Christian doing the back stroke, confident as a fish.  Both he and Jakers are spending a lot of their pool time learning how to hold their breath and gaining confidence under water.  I think we're headed back down there tonight.

#85 - A normal, home-cooked dinner

Thursday, April 5

Today I am thankful for time.

Time passes.  And problems get resolved.  And we make progress.  Today I got in touch with our Oregon realtor, and he reassured me that the sale of Valsetz Ct was on track to close next week.  I also got a call from our moving coordinator.  It seems that Katrina's van will soon be here, and our entire house full of stuff is now ready for delivery. 

I got home from work today.  Katrina had a migraine she had to take care of, so I went across the street, picked up some noodles and cream of mushroom soup, and made tune noodle casserole.  It lacked hot sauce, but otherwise was good.  It was a taste of home.  And we actually sat around a table (most of us, for some of the time) to eat it.  Which is a first for me in a month. 

I played with the kids for a bit, and then it was time for bed.  Long workdays with an early start time really shorten the evening.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

#84 - Being a contributor

Wednesday, April 4

Today I am thankful for clarity. 

Work was good today - a stretching day that I made some good things happen.  I knew from my email traffic early this morning that nothing went right overnight.  And so this morning I was in full "pull out all the stops and get stuff fixed" mode.  And in order to do it, I didn't have to call anybody's boss. Everybody recognized the situation and offered to help.  It was phenominal.  By the end of the day, we had 5 parallel paths moving to fix a certain situation, fairly certain that 3 of the 5 would be complete by morning. 

In the afternoon I had a meeting with my customers.  It was just 2 of them and me in a room talking about issues.  They are great - we don't try to fake each other out. We both have trouble at our companies, and we're working together to fix them.  They're nice guys and I like them. 

After work, we went to look at a house.  "What?!?" you say.  "I thought you had an offer on a house!"  Yes, you are right.  But there is one house that Katrina has really wanted to look at for a long time.  "What if, what if the house we're going for is not the right one?  What if this other one is the right one?"  So today we went to the best home we hadn't seen yet.  It was not right for us.  So we're at peace with our home decision.  It's nice to get that clarity.

We've also been able to work out the list of things we do for the house, the order we do them in, and how we will pay for them.  It's all going to work out.  Once again, Nikon, thanks for paying me to not work for you any more.

And, as a last cool thing for today - I've been asked to speak on Easter Sunday, about the Atonement.  And my family's records have arrived at the church, so we are all going to be read into the ward on Sunday.  Should be a good time.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

#83 - Refocused

Tuesday, April 3

Today I am thankful for the immediacy of family. 

Katrina and the kids went out to visit their new school and the mall today.  They picked me up just after 5 and we headed to the hotel.  Jakers wanted to play Uno.  So we played Uno.  Then the kids wanted to swim.  So I took them down to the pool to swim.

Then we came back up, I had some leftovers from last night, and after I blog and read for a bit, it'll be time for bed.  I like it this way.  It's a simple life.  Lovely.

The kids are settling in well.  I think Jakers and Libby are so used to a frenzied abnormal pace that they are really relaxed here.  We don't have to keep the hotel spotlessly clean (like a house for sale) and they don't have school yet.  So they sleep until 9, have a big breakfast of donuts, hot chocolate, cereal, and sausage, swim, head out for a few hours, get some dinner, and then head to their own hotel room to play and watch TV.  In my uncle Jack's words, "Happy, well-behaved children: what could be better?"

#82 - A fairly normal Monday

Monday, April 2

Today I am thankful for the beginning of routine.


Today was what I think of when I think of a normal Monday: wake up, work out, go to work, come home, go to sleep.

Work was normal.   Coming home was nice, though.  Katrina picked me up from work (we're a one car family for now, so she has to drive me around like a teenager) and we had our first real face to face talk in a long time.  We've been separated and busy for so long we just haven't had time.  It was really good to have that talk.  We sat in the parking lot at the hotel for a bit after we arrived. Then we walked in to the room, mom was making dinner, and she shooed us out the door. 

We went out to see Mirror Mirror.  Which excellent.  Along the lines of Ever After, I think, in the modern fairy tale sense.  A great family movie, I think.  Well acted, well written, beautifully costumed and set designed.  Elegant, dramatic, and beautiful.

Then we went to Charlie Brown's for dinner.  I love that place.  So far, everything I've had there has been truly excellent.

We got back to the hotel about 11, and I konked out right away.  A very good day.

Sunday, April 1, 2012

#81 - A week gone by

Sunday, April 1

I obviously have not blogged since last Saturday.  Instead of trying to make up each day, this entry serves for a week, and it means my 365 will last a little longer than a year.

Major events this week were centered around...everything, I guess.  The movers showed up on Monday morning in Beaverton.  So did the asbestos tester, the electrician, and our helpful handyman, Troy.  We put our final offer on the NY house out on Tuesday morning.  On Wednesday, the movers were at the Beaverton house until 6:30.  Nobody expected it would take that long.  I guess we have a lot of little things.  Unpacking is going to generate an enormous amount of garbage.

Also on Wednesday, I made the first modificaiton to our potential home.  It's easy to undo, and didn't hurt anything.  I hung a blank canvas in the master bedroom.  Thursday the bank accepted our offer for the house.  And the family came to NY. 

I have missed these people.  I'm so glad that we're together again.  Work this week has been unbearably stressful, mostly because I'm in my first cycle of performance appraisals, and the new system is frustrating.  It does not achieve what it is ostensibly set up to achieve and that irks me.  On Thursday, the family arrived at 9:30, we had an hour drive to the hotel, and then it took us an hour to settle in.  We didn't get to sleep until 11:30.  I was up at 4, and headed to work.

The entire week has been like that - go to sleep at 8, wake up at 2 and head into the office.  It's been draining in every way.  By Friday morning, I was a complete zombie.  I had to keep my eye on the prize - finish the workday, drop Katrina, her mom, and Nikki off at the train station, then head back to the hotel, relax with the kids, and sleep forever on Saturday.  We eneded up putting Nacho Libre on in the evening.  Jacob passed out a bout 2/3 through.  And then we were all headed to bed.  There was one question mark until late in the evening about having a work meeting on Saturday, but the guys fixed it, and I was able to sleep for a long time. 

Saturday was a relaxing day, possibly the first genuinely relaxing day for the kids and certainly for me for a long time.  We went down to the pool in the morning and swam until noon.  I sat down to watch the kids, and Christian swam away with a perfect backstroke.  I asked him later who taught him.  He said nobody did, he just figured it out.  "I like to figure things out for myself better."  The boy is a carbon copy of me. 

The kids watched TV in their room, and I took a 3-hour nap.  Crazy.  Then we went back to the pool around 4.  I got set up in my swim suit and after about 2 dozen little girls left the pool at 5, I got in for half an hour or so.  We went back upstairs about 6, and we fended for ourselves for dinner.  The boys had nachos, I don't know what the girls ate.  I left with Christian for a visit to Wal-Mart at 7.  We picked up groceries, a Wii sensor bar, and Christian spent almost all of his considerbale allowance hoard on Hexbug stuff.  He got a few cool hexbugs and a maze terrarium thing. 

We got back, and Liberty climbed between the couch and chair to retrieve The Muppets, which I had picked up Friday morning.  We watched it, and when it finished at 10:30, the day was done.  We all went to sleep with happy stomachs and sleepy heads.

This morning was very similar.  The kids slept until 9.  I woke them up so we could get breakfast.  And now, at 10:30, we're back at the pool.

Katrina has had a great time in the city so far.  She called last night from an Irish pub on Times Square.  They even got out to the Statue of Liberty, which we had skipped last summer.  They were going to meet up with Aki to see a show in the evening.  She's been here a grand total of 24 hours, and she's a tour guide.  I suppose it's important that she was here as a kid, here in 2010 on vacation, and here for my interview in January.  So it's not as if she's actually that new to the city. 

Later today, we're going to put General Conference on, then head to the church to play with the other kids for a while, then we're going to hit the Walkway over the Hudson.  It'll be good to get away from the hotel for a while.  And some time this evening, I'll go pick up the ladies from the train station.

That's all for now.  Have a happy April Fool's day!