Death by Platypus

We had a fantastic night trick-or-treating with the kids tonight! Wife got the good pix of Tyler in his postman costume and Quinnie in her spider outfit. My parents came over for dinner, then walked the neighborhood (all 8 houses or so we stopped at) with us. Tyler caught onto the process real quick, and even figured out that he could ask everyone for an extra piece of candy (we did NOT encourage this!). Quinn enjoyed getting to pick a nice shiney piece of candy out and dropping it into her bucket. They had a ton of fun!

After we got home, Tyler and I hung out on the front porch, handing out candy while Alyssa got Quinn to sleep. Tyler had fun picking a couple pieces of candy out and handing it to each of the other trick-or-treaters. He was super excited the whole evening, and a little disappointed when the steady stream of kids let up.

Got him into bed around 8:45, read him his two favorite Halloween books, then he was asleep within about 5 minutes of blowing out the lights. Can’t wait till next year!

Halloween is by far my favorite holiday…

Fairytale pumpkins at the pumpkin patch	A bountiful harvest
The kids both helped me carve our Jack-o-lantern this year

Some more older shots. We had weeks and weeks of rain in the spring and early summer. Even later in the year, the creeks were still running (typically by July the beds are all dry). Going out to Turkey Creek was a fun, cool adventure for the kids. And for us.

See, I told you this was lots of fun.	No crisp shots of the little man.
Best I could do were some fun motion shots.	Waiting for the next round of action.

I had to lay one of my team off this past week. I understand the business reasons. I understand the selection of the particular individual. And the timing wasn’t as bad as it could have been with the holidays coming up. But none of that made it any easier.

 The only earlier time I’d been around for layoffs, HR made the decisions, told the employee, and walked them out before the manager knew anything. For some reason, this time around they decided to have the managers do the dirty work. I’d known for a couple weeks before the event, which allowed me to better plan for it, but also to dwell on it. Two weeks of 1×1s, staff meetings, general interaction knowing this individual was about to lose his job, but not being able to say anything about it. But to be honest, I preferred to deliver the message myself. Much better than an unknown HR employee doing it.

At my scheduled time, I had to go get him from his cube and get him to a team room on the second floor, half the building away. This was the most awkward moment of my life. I don’t think he expected anything the whole way. But once he got to the room and saw the HR person (they were there to go over the severance and next steps, after we delivered the message), he was visibly shaken. I went through the spiel as quickly as possible – not wanting to belabour any of it. I think my voice only cracked twice. He had just a couple procedural questions, and one editorial “this sucks”. Then, I walked him back to his desk to get his cell phone, and then out the door. The walk back from the team room trumped the walk up for most awkward moment.

I think it was over in 20 minutes. I huddled with my team shortly after, and told them what happened. Overall, the “big layoffs” people were expecting turned out to be just a few individuals, at least in our immediate organization. I think that helped the team feel better about things, but I didn’t bother to tell that to the guy while I was letting him know he was no longer a fit.

This is one aspect of managing I’d been perfectly happy to never experience.

Yes… still out there. As usual, Fall is flying by, but this year at least I haven’t been missing all the fabulous weather. Because there hasn’t been any. Mid-October, and it’s still regularly hitting 90. Fortunately, that’s supposed to change soon.

Main diversion from blogging has been work. Leading a new project – this is the first major one from the operations / business side, after many from the product management / IT side, so that’s been interesting. Also, it’s the second phase of a major project I helped lead as a PdM a year and a half ago, so it’s nice to see things finally get followed up on. That happens so rarely at my place of employment. At any rate, this should keep me busy until the Christmas break.

I’m still enjoying work, but am conscious of how volatile things can be, particularly as the year comes to a close. How long will I still be in the same organization? Under the same manager? With the same team and co-workers? Who can tell?

Beyond work, we’ve had many adventures. I still haven’t blogged about the amazing Montana trip, our trip to the pumpkin patch, or the weekend in Port Aransas. And I’ve got pictures sitting around for those, plus a few other random events to get online.

For now, here’s a few random cute kids shots.

Quinn: Tyler, isn’t that book a little bit above your reading level?	Quinn: No pictures, please!
Sitting in Momma’s doll crib.

I need to still write about my trip – it’s only been three weeks since I got back… But my photos are on the site: www.alphadogphotography.com/Montana

So what does going shopping with the two kids look like these days?

• Quinn chasing Tyler down an aisle at Petsmart while brandishing a cat toy (long plastic rod with feathers on the end) – with both of them laughing hysterically the whole time
• My first Quinnie store meltdown when we had to put the cat toy back (fortunately Tyler’s now pretty good about not always getting things when we go to the store)
• Quinn deciding to toddle down one aisle while Tyler takes off down another
• Quinn getting so excited over the geckos and birds
• Tyler leading his sister over to the big fish tank so she could watch the fish while I stood in line to check out
• Having to go home from Target after 15 minutes because Tyler had to go poo… then having to return because we didn’t go look at the Halloween decorations
• Tyler bringing a continual stream of clothes over to me – “will this fit Quinnie?”
• Quinn unloading an entire rack of clothes onto the floor in about 5 seconds flat
• Tyler insisting on pulling the shopping cart backwards the entire time at Target
• Both kids taking turns pushing the buttons on every scary Halloween decoration at Target (you know – the hand that starts crawling, or the ghost that pops out from behind the tombstone… Quinnie only got scared once)
• Tyler trying on his first Halloween mask – Frankenstein

All in all, two simple errands stretched out to over three hours… But it was a blast too