The Weekly Catch-Up (2011, Week 12)

Home: Brooke is still drinking the allergy formula because she gets sick every time she has regular milk. Thinking this was a simple allergy we had an allergy test done only for it to come back that she is not allergic to anything! (Which is great) Now we have to figure out why the milk is bothering her tummy so we can get her off of the ultra-expensive Nutramigen.

Last night Sydney watched the 101 Dalmatians and she was quite scared of ole Cruella DeVille. The expression on her face looked very similar to her expression when watching Maleficent go after Sleeping Beauty

I cooked good meals every night this week. Two came from Williams-Sonoma's "The World Kitchen" cookbook. I made the "Shaking Beef" salad (which was to die for) and a Vietnamese Pork Stir fry which was also great! I also made a couple of soups from "For the Love Of Cooking", the first was Ribollita (I used the Giada version) and the second was the White Bean and Chicken Chili and it was outstanding! Great week to not be traveling and in the kitchen.

Other highlights include: Having a 40+ minute conversation with Andrea Braun, receiving flowers from Jane, celebrating Queen B's birthday.

Work: This week I began re-using the Franklin Covey Plan Plus System for Outlook (for the 10th time) and it has greatly improved my organization skills. Other than methodical planning the biggest overall change I am making to improve my effectiveness is logging out of email. Email is such a distractor, when trying to complete a task, you see that little preview message open and are immediately dragged off into email-land to deal with that crisis or this question or another action item. This results in you never getting to complete the task you started so the solution is to schedule email time on your calendar and log out of it when trying to get something else done.

Highlights from the work week included: Getting my surprise package, sneaking in two good lunches, having 6 of 7 Performance reviews delivered and having the FSO All Hands meeting. I'm looking forward to a couple of site visits in Southern Cal next week. BTW, Joe called me "Kimmer" yesterday, I love "Kimmer"!!!!

Other: Did you see where Oxford added a bunch of words to their dictionary? My favorite was "Bloggable"-so happy that is now official.

Lastly, Elizabeth Taylor died, USA Today had the following headline "The biggest star ever?". I say, No. Zsa Zsa Gabor reacted by thinking she was next.