When Peggy and I come to Colorado each year we typically drive. It is about a twenty hour drive from Baton Rouge and we usually do it in two days. Since we are coming off the trips to North Carolina, and since I have to drive to San Antonio as soon as we get home from vacation, we decided to fly this year.

Now, you need to understand that the reason we usually drive is because it helps me acclimate to the change in altitude. In the past we have flown up to Denver and come immediately into the mountains. When we did that I seemed to get sick for a couple of days. It took us a few times to figure out that my symptoms were actually altitude sickness. The gradual change in altitude when driving does not seem to create any symptoms in me.

When we do fly now, the remedy has been to spend the first night in Denver and give my body the chance to acclimate in that way. It seems to work, and Denver is a nice place to spend a night. So we flew into Denver today and we are staying at a favorite hotel in the Arts District called, simply enough, Art. I assume it is because of the location and not the owner’s first name.

Denver has some pretty good restaurants that we have visited, but the food here at the hotel is also excellent. Additionally, the hotel has a really cool outdoor bar where we spend quite a bit of time on each visit. I’m sure an outdoor bar four stories up in the Denver air probably has fairly limited utility seven or eight months each year, but in late July it is primo (I have also been here in late September and it was pretty much awesome then, too). We enjoyed dinner and spent a couple of very relaxing hours sitting outside in the cool night air.

We will get up tomorrow morning and make the drive into the mountains, feeling confident that no altitude sickness will befall me. All in all, it’s not a bad way to travel.

We are looking forward to seeing two different sets of good friends up here on this trip, but really we are just looking forward to being back in Peggy’s happy place. I’m sure I’ll keep you posted on how it’s going.

When I started this blog I made the conscious decision not to talk about work. First, I think I owe my employer my absolute best at all times, and talking about what happens at the office is not in line with that belief. Secondly, job stuff is never as interesting to other people as it is to the people at the job.

I’m breaking that rule tonight. I am leaving my current job with a fantastic company to pursue something completely different. I am not only leaving my job — I am leaving the industry in which I have worked for my entire thirty-three year career.

This was not an easy decision. In fact, I put it off for more than a year hoping it would go away. I have loved my job here in Baton Rouge, and I have loved the people with whom I work. They are almost like family to me. In fact, when I told the CEO I was leaving, I told her the only thing that could have made me leave is family.

I am going to be joining my brother in a business in San Antonio. As I told the CEO, the new situation has everything you could ever want — lower pay and in an industry I know nothing about! But my brother’s business is growing and he asked me to come help. So, I am.

We do not plan to leave Baton Rouge. Not only do we love it here but our first grandchild is about to be born next month. I will be working from home some, but mostly I will be traveling back and forth between Baton Rouge and San Antonio.

We are currently traveling with the Board of Directors this week, and it has been really nice to be able to spend time with them and let them know how much I have appreciated working with them and with this great company. I would love to someday maybe have the opportunity to come back, but right now I am doing what I need to do. But they are great people, and I will sorely miss them.

After this Board Retreat, Peggy and I are traveling to see my group of closest friends. We are very excited for that trip at the same time we are sad to be leaving this great group of folks. Life is funny that way.

After a week back in Baton Rouge, Peggy and I will make our annual trip to Colorado. Then, I will begin working in San Antonio. Here we go…

LSU overcame Mother Nature and Mississippi State tonight to qualify for the College World Series in Omaha, or as we say in South Louisiana, Geaux-maha!

It was a long night — five hours due to the rain — but the end result was worth the wait.

When you are a college baseball fan there is nothing more important than qualifying for the College World Series. When you are the fan of a team that has qualified for the College World Series fifteen times — oops, make that sixteen times after tonight — it is possible to become a little bit spoiled. Six National Championships and 17 SEC Championships lead to the expectation that there is really only one way to end a season.

So, our last night hosting for the year was a big success. It’s pretty hard to screw it up when your team makes the World Series.

And maybe the best thing about it is we got to share it with our nephew, a proud LSU graduate who happens to be working as an intern in Baton Rouge this summer as part of his graduate program. He is living with us and putting up with old people who need him to house-and-pet-sit a little too frequently. So the LSU game felt like the least we could do.

I hope they win it all, but they did the most important thing. They got there.

Geaux Tigers!

Today was an amazing day. And I am totally beat!

Peggy and I have season tickets for the touring Broadway shows that come to the beautiful Saenger Theater in New Orleans. We like to go down the night before and spend the evening in New Orleans, have dinner, stay at our favorite hotel on Canal Street, and go to the Saturday matinee before driving home.

This time, though, we had an engagement on Friday night. And an engagement on Saturday night. So we just made the run to New Orleans for the play and came back.

We have seen “Mamma Mia” before, and, frankly, it is not a huge favorite of mine. However, it was quite enjoyable and the cast was excellent. And the Saenger is always a treat. We managed to sneak into town early enough to enjoy lunch at one of our favorite restaurants, too. So, all in all, a successful artistic foray into the city.

Then we hot-footed it back home to change clothes and make the most important engagement of the day — LSU hosting Mississippi State in the NCAA Super Regional to determine who will play in the College World Series, with Peggy and I hosting clients at the game.

What a night! LSU was behind from the first inning until the eighth inning when the Tigers scored four runs to win 4-3.

Comedy and music in the afternoon. Drama, excitement and great friends in the evening. We’ll be back at Alex Box Stadium tomorrow night to see if LSU can punch their ticket to the College World Series.

But right now, I have to go to bed!

Peggy and I have a standing date night every Friday night. Sometimes we go out to dinner and then go back to the house to sit on the porch. Occasionally we go to a movie and then go back to the house to sit on the porch. In the spring we sometimes go to the LSU baseball game and then go back to the house to sit on the porch.

This weekend is Mother’s Day, and for the first time in many years we are not traveling anywhere for Mother’s Day weekend. We just got back from a trip to Scottsdale, so we decided to stay home instead of heading out again. Our dog and two cats appreciate the consideration.

Since we are in town we hosted a group of clients in the suite at the baseball game tonight. It is always a great pleasure to host our clients, and doing it in a suite in the best college baseball stadium in America just adds to the enjoyment. We have food, drinks, snacks, game programs — everything you could want to enjoy a baseball game. Oh yeah, and it doesn’t hurt that we have one of the best baseball teams in the country to watch.

I love to watch LSU play any sport, but there is just something about a baseball game that makes it the perfect way to entertain clients. The pace of the game is slower so you can have conversations with people and not miss anything. The noise at a football game makes it hard to relax and visit, but baseball encourages visiting.

Tonight the weather was perfect. It was cool enough that everyone was comfortable without being too cool to enjoy the game. We have had some rain this week but the field was dry and in great shape. The suite was full of excited people ready to have a good time. If this is work I’ll take it every day of the week.

The good guys won. Any guesses about what Peggy and I did after the game?

I had to be in Lake Charles for business on Monday and Tuesday of this week, so we decided to mix business and pleasure and come over for the weekend, too. We got here Friday evening in time for dinner. It was perfect gambling weather: too cool to stay outside for very long and too wet to get in the pool. We had a great dinner and then Peggy played slots while I watched sports in the VIP lounge.

Saturday was also cool and wet, but Sunday dawned clear and warmer. It was the kind of day that makes you glad everyone else is checking out of the hotel. We had a leisurely breakfast and then wandered down to the pool for several hours. The pool is never very crowded on Sunday, so it was perfect.

My company does two things every spring that make us very popular. We deliver dividend checks to our customers and we host crawfish boils for our distribution force. I was in southwest Louisiana on Monday delivering checks and then we hosted our Lake Charles crawfish boil on Tuesday night. Delivering the checks is one of the best parts of my job because it shows our customers how much we appreciate them. The crawfish boils are always a huge success, especially when the weather cooperates.

With business out of the way we got down to the real fun.

On Tuesday night one of the restaurants at the casino has karaoke. The singers are actually up on the stage where the live bands play in the Jack Daniels Bar and Grill. Several of my employees had planned work in Lake Charles on Wednesday, and I coerced many of them to come to karaoke. Because I am a man of my word there are no pictures or videos to be shared, but everyone had a great time. Several of them are pretty good singers. None of them could understand why the host kept calling on me to sing with him.

Peggy and I have been here more than a few times on Tuesday, and David likes to have me sing songs with him whenever we are there. I didn’t share this tidbit with my employees. Let’s face it, they don’t need to know the extent of my wife’s gambling…

We are heading back to Baton Rouge in the morning. Since we aren’t getting to travel for Mother’s Day this year, this trip served as proxy for our annual time away. Sometimes it is OK to mix business and pleasure.

As long as you mix them in the right amounts.

I don’t talk about work a lot. I have a great job with a great company, but I don’t think people are particularly interested in hearing details about what someone else does at work. Every once in a while I make an exception.

We have a group of clients that serve as an advisory council for our company. The members of the council are hand-selected based on the company each represents and the amount of business they have with our company. It is a very efficient way to get feedback, both negative and positive, that helps us run our company more effectively.

Once a year we take this group somewhere for a meeting, and we invite the spouses. Before I came to the company employee spouses were not included. I, however, understand what an amazing asset my wife is in these settings, so as soon as I got here I pushed for spouses to be included. It is especially important on a trip like this when the clients bring their spouses.

These are some good folks. I have always been very careful about understanding the difference between work relationships and friendships, but these folks make you cross the line into friendship. It works to everyone’s advantage, and it makes trips like these a lot of fun.

We meet until noon each day and then we plan an event for everyone during the afternoon and evening. While we are meeting, Peggy usually plans something active for the spouses to do (she is a personal trainer, you know). Not everyone participates, but everyone is invited.

Today we went riding in the desert on ATVs and then went to a ranch for dinner. The ranch has an “Old West” town set up, and we shot pistols and threw axes before dinner. It was a great active day and everyone seemed to have a wonderful time.

Tomorrow is our last day out here. I’m ready to get home, but we have really had fun.

And riding the desert in an ATV is an excellent exfoliator.

I was sitting here this morning, minding my own business, when a blast from my past shows up on my timeline. I wasn’t ready for it. Here is a memory from thirty-five years ago today:

The picture brought back all sorts of memories.

By this time we had been together for almost two years, so there was none of the ridiculousness of trying to impress a prom date with how much you can spend. Her mother, a wonderful seamstress, made her dress. My tux rental was all of thirty-five bucks (yes, those are my cowboy boots; they were the only black “dress shoes” I owned). I made and served dinner to her — salad, ribeyes, potatoes au gratin, broccoli, and cherry pie and ice cream — at my parents’ house, then we changed and went to the event at the Union Station, an event center that used to be the train depot in Dallas. We danced and hung out with friends, then we went to the obligatory after-party. Obviously, it was a pretty good evening if I recall all of the details.

When I look at her today I think she is even more attractive than she was then, and that is saying something as you can tell from the picture: she’s just gorgeous. I almost cannot believe that thirty-five years have passed since that night. We have our thirty-second wedding anniversary this summer, so I know it really is, but it just doesn’t seem that long ago. Now, when I look at myself in the picture I realize how long ago it really was!

A lot of life has transpired since that picture was taken, but the best part is that we have done all that life together. Very few people get to share all their memories from high school with someone who was there to enjoy it, but we have that luxury. I was at all the big events of the year with her, so they are our common memories. Her memory is just a little bit better than mine, though.

I wasn’t expecting to think about this today. We are actually in Scottsdale, Arizona on a business trip, but it certainly brightened up my morning! I’ll have to show her what popped up when we get together for lunch today.

I think I’ll let them fix the meal this time…

I have a group of friends that I grew up with. Altogether there are ten of us who lived in the same small town in south Louisiana as kids. Some were there from birth, the rest of us moved in at different times.

What makes this group special is that we still get together every couple of years as a group. We are in the midst of planning the get-together for this summer in North Carolina (NC-17), so it was ironic that this picture popped up on my timeline this morning to remind me of our get-together five years ago.

They’ve held up pretty well for old dudes. When we went to New Orleans on this trip five years ago, half of the group had already turned fifty and the other half of the group was still forty-nine. This led to constant competitions between the two groups to prove the 49-year-olds were hardier than the old guys. It turned what is normally foolishness anyway up a few notches. Well, that and the fact that the wives were not along on this trip to keep us in line.

I have realized over time that the fact that we still get together and that our wives are all friends is really a special thing that doesn’t happen all the time. We rarely get all ten of us together but it happened in 2012 and it is looking like it will happen again this year. We all went to the same high school but we went to six different colleges (and seven different professional/graduate schools). We live in seven different states from California to North Carolina and Florida. I’m just saying it’s pretty special.

Several of our kids are married, and there’s even a grandfather in the group (soon to be two grandfathers). We all have obligations and responsibilities that could serve as excuses not to get together, but we always seem to find a way to make it happen.

I am really looking forward to the trip this summer, and so is Peggy. Looking back today was fun, too.

I don’t know what I was expecting. I just know it wasn’t this.

I was quite excited when I got up this morning. Today is the day of the final cast removal. We’ve gone through two weeks of ankle elevated above the level of the heart, two weeks in a cast with no weight bearing, a week of minimal weight bearing, and a week of increasing the weight bearing while wearing a cast and walking shoe. Six weeks of either incapacitation or very limited mobility coming to an end. Huzzah!

I had already worked out in my mind that I was going to do the William Wallace thing and yell “Freedom!” at the top of my lungs as we left the doctor’s office.

In all of our conversations about follow up and rehab the word “boot” was never mentioned. Until today. Gut punch.

I don’t know why it brought me up short. Surely I did not expect to leave the doctor’s office and sprint to the car — in reality, sprinting has been in fairly short supply since well before the injury — but I had geared myself up for the six week period. And nothing more.

The boot is huge, even larger than the cast. The good news is I can take it off at night, and she wants me to begin walking a little without it while I’m at home. Her consistent example is peeing and I’m really not sure what the urine obsession is all about. I will follow her suggestion and walk without it at night when I need to go to the bathroom.

The bad news is she wants me to wear it for six MORE weeks. I was not emotionally prepared for that.

I’ll get over it, but there is no joy in Mudville tonight.

Six more %*&$ing weeks…