Kotsis Ski Club

Sad News, Very Sad...

2005-11-09T19:45:00.000-05:00

Today the doctors told my papou that he has 30 days to live; if that. It was very depressing to hear. He has been sick with cancer for quite some time.......it recently took a turn for the worse about 2 weeks ago. he went into the hospital for routine treatment, then ended up staying there for 4 days.......he came home for 5 days, then went back into the hospital late last week. The cancer has spread to his bones and has gotten into his spinal column, so he can't walk now - he can't even feel his legs - this all rapidly took place within 2 days time. The doctors took away all hope today when they gave papou the news.

Things are becoming clear to me now. I can see a bigger reason why i quit my job in boston earlier this year to move back to michigan...... i can also see the reason why i haven't been very proactive in looking for a house or condo. That reason was because my family needs help right now, and i'm glad I am here and am able to help out. That doesn't make things any easier to deal with though....

It's been a while....

2005-07-06T19:56:00.000-04:00

Wow, I just realized that I haven't updated this blog since April! Yeah so I’ve been pretty busy over the past couple months. Last time I updated this, I think I just got back from Greece.

I'm still living with the parents here in Michigan. Things are going good. It's kind of cool living with them again - especially since everyone is here right now. This fall, my brother will be moving out to college (in Ann Arbor - GO BLUE!) so we have a house full right now. All of my stuff except for my computer, bed, and clothes are in storage still. I haven't made a ton of progress on the house search yet, because I haven't seriously started looking just yet. When I first started looking, back in April, I found a few cool places out in the Royal Oak area. I also noticed some awesome looking lofts that are going up in downtown Royal Oak - that would definitely be a sweet place to live! (hmmm....they're a bit on the expensive side though....we'll see)

Manny graduated from high school. Since I’m back at home, I got to see his last few band performances at the high school back in April/ May timeframe. They definitely put on a good show. I'm glad that I was here to see them. We also had a huge graduation party for him. My mom went a little nutz and invited over 500 people over our house for it. Thankfully they didn't all show up. Quite a few did though.... we estimated that about 400 came that day (over memorial weekend). Check out the pics online - our backyard actually looks like a banquet hall.

Work has been consuming most of my time lately. For some reason I have been totally wiped out at the end of the day during the week. Needless to say, things have been super busy. Working with family has been both great and challenging at the same time. It's awesome that they've given me the opportunity to basically have free reign to work on what I want to work on. But at the same time, its really tough to get some things accomplished when others aren't motivated in the way that I am. I think there is so much potential for Atlas to grow - I just know that I can't do it myself. I'll definitely need to hire in different areas - first off sales, then purchasing / logistics, accounting, marketing, etc... Well, in order to do that I need to show proven sales growth for the company - so that's what my main focus is right now (even though I’ve been doing other things like purchasing new trucks and working with graphic designers on changing our image) I've also been the self nominated IT guy - I recently figured out how to export data into excel from our antiquated DOS based computer system. That has been a huge breakthrough because now I'm able to view and sort key data in ways that they have never been able to do before. That's been huge. Now I'm trying to teach myself how to write macros in excel so this whole thing can be automated. I learned how to do simple macros - and that's not much of a problem - the tough part is linking 4-5 workbooks together, and having several layers of looping algorithms work successfully. So yeah, that's taking up quite a bit of time too. But hey, it'll be so much easier once I can get this stuff to work!

Last weekend I went down to Orlando for a bachelor party. One of my good friends, Philip, is getting married at the end of July in the Chicago area. So we threw him a huge bachelor party in downtown Orlando. It was a blast - we went out to several bars that night. I couldn't believe how hot it was down there though. The humidity was insane. But hey, I’m glad it was last weekend and not this coming weekend - I just saw on the weather channel that hurricane is coming to Florida this weekend.

Anyway that's all for now (I know there is more, but I just can't think of it all right now).

Oh yeah - I'll be sending out this year's ski trip email shortly - be on the lookout for it. If for some reason you don't get a copy of it - just check out the website under the 2006 ski trip section - that will give you all the main info you need to sign up for this year's final ski trip!

Back from Greece and Started work with Atlas

2005-04-13T00:06:00.000-04:00

Manny and I got back from Greece on Saturday, April 2nd 2005. It was an awesome trip! We flew into Athens on March 25, 2005 and stayed there for 3 nights. I just put up the pics from our trip on my website - so check them out when you get a chance. We took a ton of pictures - over 400 from our week in Greece. We also took quite a bit of video. I plan to edit it over the next few weeks too. So anyway, getting back to the trip..... I booked us a room at Hotel Omega before we left - but that was all I booked. We figured out the rest of the trip once we go into Athens. We bought ferry tickets to Mykonos and Santorini for the rest of the week.

We definitely had a jammed packed trip. We visited many sites throughout Athens including; Acropolis, Parthenon, Temple of Zeus, Parliament Building (watched the changing of the guards), National Gardens, Marketplace of Montastiraki, National Archeological Museum, ate many awesome meals in the Plaka, hiked up to the top of Mt. Lykabettus at night to see the church on top and to see the view of the city of Athens, the original Olympic Stadium, and a few others too. I think that was more walking that Manny was use to! It was fun getting into the culture of Greece - eating dinner at 11pm, going out on the town, and seeing all the sites throughout the day.

After we explored Athens for a few days, we headed over to Mykonos. We met up with a few girls that we met a few days earlier in Athens. They happened to be going to Mykonos too. Mykonos was awesome. We had great weather for the two days that we were on the island. Manny and I rented 4-wheelers while we were on the island too. It was awesome - we got to explore most of the island on our own that way. We cruised up and down all the mountains, and checked out several beaches around the island. The island was pretty empty since we were there way before tourist season starts. Tourist season usually runs from May - October, so we were a little over a month early. It was kind of nice though b/c there weren't any crowds at all! The beaches were amazing. We had one day that it was warm enough to lay out.....that's not bad, considering it was only March at the time.

We then headed off to Santorini for a couple days as well. Santorini was a beautiful island. The views from Fira (the main town in the middle of the island), were amazing. The town is imbeded along the top of the cliffs of Santorini. We hiked throughout the town and checked out most of the shops, restaurants, churches, and bars. We also took a bus out to the Red Beach one afternoon. We met a few locals along the way too; Yakavos, and Spiros. The old greek guys were pretty funny. Remind me to tell you the stories sometime. On our last day on Santorini we took a cable car down the cliff to sea level. We hung out at the bottom for a little while, then decided to ride the donkeys back up to the top! That was pretty crazy! The other cool thing about our time on Santorini was that we stayed in the same hotel that I stayed at 4 years ago. This was by complete chance that this happened. Hotel Lignos was the same place that Lora, Sara, Jen and I stayed at when we stopped by Santorini for a few days during our Backpacking trip throughout Europe in 2001.

We had a little challenge getting back to Athens on our last day in Santorini. Apparently the ferry was canceled due to bad weather. At the last minute I was able to get us plane tickets on Aegean Airlines (sketchy), back to Athens. It was a good thing we were able to get some seats on that plane b/c our flight left for the States the next morning at 5:50am. So we arrived in Athens at 8:30pm on Friday night and we went to have dinner in the Plaka, and explored downtown Athens until 2am. We then headed back to the airport to spend the remaining few hours of the night before our plane headed back to Detroit (via Amsterdam and Boston). Needless to say, our trip home was quite a long one - we were up for a total of 41 hours on the way home.......i'm sure the video is pretty amusing at that point. I had a blast on this trip and can't wait to do it again someday soon!

We got back to Detroit late on the night of April 2nd, and I started work at Atlas on Monday morning (April 4). I've been working for nearly 1.5 weeks so far, and I'm trying to get my arms around what we need to accomplish for the company as a whole. I spent the majority of my first week meeting informally with all of Atlas' employees so that i could get to know them better. I also spent quite a bit of time cleaning up the office place - throwing away old papers, boxes, and other old items that I could find. I also spent alot of time clearing out the front office since there were several boxes and financial reports sitting in there from the last 11 years!! Yikes! Anyway, I moved most of that stuff out of the way so I could have a somewhat clean and open workspace to get started.

This week I started a 5-6 week analysis of the entire company. My plan is to spend 1-1.5 weeks in each department to learn the business; Sales, Order Entry, Warehouse, Delivery, Inventory Replenishment, and Accounting (company financials). I made it clear to everyone that we need to go about improvement opportunities in a methodical way. I want to learn what it takes to do all the job functions throughout the company, as well as what are the challenges / frustrations that people are having in each area. Once I'm finished with the analysis we'll have an all-hands meeting in early June to present the prioritized plan of attack throughout the company. I plan to present a master prioritized list of actions to the entire company with the understanding that these items are the specific things that are inhibiting growth, and will be focused on improving Atlas' bottom line. With that said, there is alot that needs to be worked on. I've had some good customer interactions so far - since i was out on the road with a couple sales guys so far. It's helping me to understand the market we are currently serving as well as giving me the insight to begin evaluating whether we should be attacking other markets or not. Anyway all in all this is going to be a great experience for me. I just know that I'll need all the help I can get - from everyone. I want to hire a couple sales reps in the near future once we get a few things cleaned up - this is critical for survival and for funding several projects that i want to do in different areas of the company. If you have anybody in mind that would be a good sales rep for a whole sale food distributor, please send me their contact information. I'm looking for someone that is on the younger side (25-35) and is hungry for new accounts.

Anyway that's all for now. Time to hit the hay. Drop me a line if you want anymore details about the Greece trip, or about my new job at Atlas! Goodnight!

Off to GREECE!!

2005-03-23T01:17:00.000-05:00

That's right - i'm headed off to Greece this Thursday with Manny for 9 days! I can't wait!! Just the two of us are going during his spring break, so it should be a blast! We're planning to stay in Athens for the first 3 days, then make our way to 1 or 2 islands before the end of the week. I'm sure we'll have plenty of pictures and videos to share when we come back!

I am also finally back in Michigan. I recently finished my obligations with Optiant last wednesday (3-16-05). I had one last trip down to Florida to meet with TNT Logistics in Jacksonville for an afternoon. Then I headed off to Orlando for a night to meet up with Philip, Erika, Luke, Sara, and Lydia. It was great seeing all of them! They cooked some awesome lasagna, then we just hung out for a few hours. Philip and Erika gave me all the latest and greatest details of their upcoming wedding (July 30, 2005). I'm definitely looking forward to that!

Speaking of weddings... after visiting everyone in Orlando, I headed off to Mike Burke and Kristin Kern's wedding in Austin. It was a jammed packed, fun filled weekend from Thurs - Sun in Austin, Texas! We went out to celebrate St. Patties day on Thursday night - we also watched some of the March Madness NCAA games downtown that night. On Friday, most of us groomsmen went golfing for 18 holes at Avery Ranch Golf Course. It was beautiful out that day. It was about 70 degrees out - definitely a nice change from the snow and freezing temps we've been having up north, ya know?! Anyway we played a scrambles match, with 3 foursomes. My team lost, but I'll bet that we had the most fun out on the course! My team consisted of Miller, Brian, Chris Yanez, and myself.

After the golf outting, we barely had enough time to change and get over to the church for the rehearsal. The rehearsal went well - wow, what a huge wedding party - 9 bridesmades and groomsmen - whew! After the rehearsal, we all went over to Dave and Busters for dinner. It was awesome. They reserved a private room, where we all had a few hours to hang out and eat dinner together. After the dinner, Mike & Kristin introduced every person that was standing up in the wedding. They told everyone what their relationship was with that person, and their main reasons for asking them to stand up in their wedding. That was really cool! The best men (yes there were 4 best men in this wedding) and matron of honor gave their speaches as well at this time. There were some really funny stories that were told! After everything was finished, we all hung out at the bar for the rest of the night.

The wedding day was a long, fun filled day. Us groomsmen met out at Bone Daddy's for brunch, then put our tuxes on and headed over to the church by 3:30pm. Yes they had us arrive 2.5 hours before the wedding actually started! We took several pictures before the wedding started. The ceremony only lasted about 40 minutes or so, and it was a beautiful ceramony. We headed over to the reception hall, which was near downtown Austin. The reception was a blast! Check out all the pictures up online from this fun filled weekend!

More to come, upon our return from Greece next week!

Moving Challenges....

2005-02-20T03:30:00.000-05:00

Why was this the worst moving experience that I’ve ever had? I’ll tell you why. It all started 3 weeks ago when I resigned from Optiant and selected a moving company to move me back to Michigan. I researched 9 different moving companies and picked one that seemed to be credible and about middle of the road on price. I purposely didn’t pick the cheapest one because I didn’t want to have a crappy job done. So anyway, I selected Countrywide Van Lines to pack my stuff up and deliver it to Michigan from Boston.

2-12-05 - - It all started from the pick up. They called on Friday night to let me know that they would be at my apartment in Davis Square by 11am on Saturday. 11 comes and goes, 12 comes and goes, 1 comes and I call – no answer. I called every 5 minutes until I reached somebody at the office. The dispatcher gave me the number of the driver. So I called the driver to see where he was. He said that he was running late and would be there by 2pm or 2:30pm. I thought to myself “ok, fine. So they’re a little late, big deal.” Well it was a big deal. They didn’t get to my apartment until 5pm, and I was beginning to get frustrated. Also as a side note, my previous experience with a moving company from Austin to Boston was great – it was very professionally done. (The reason why I didn’t select that same company again was that they were several thousand dollars higher than everyone else) They came and packed everything up – wrapped everything individually. They also had a team of 5 people come over to pack it all up – it only took them a couple hours to do as well……. So back to the 2005 move to Michigan…. Two Russian guys (yes that’s right, just 2 people as opposed to the 5 that packed my stuff up in Austin) show up at my door around 5:30pm – they didn’t even acknowledge that they were 6+ hours late. After a first glimpse of the Russians, I knew I was in for a long night – and that was an understatement. These guys came in and started packing everything up. Honestly they were doing a sloppy job – nowhere near the quality of my last move. I had to force them to label the boxes so that I could have some clue what they were putting in there. Also in this move, I divided my things up between the things that were going to the house and the things that were going to the storage facility. This was a disaster waiting to happen. The plan was for the movers to put all the things that were going to the storage unit in one crate, and the things that were going to the house in another crate, and possible a 3rd crate with a few of the left over things for either place. That seemed like and easy / logical plan, right? WRONG, as I found out 1 week later upon delivery. Before we get to the delivery, lets just note that the movers finished up at 1:30am that night – and that’s with me packing the entire bathroom and some of the family room (remember I paid for a full pack job). Oh and get this – the driver point blank asked me for a tip. I’m thinking – give these guys the benefit of the doubt – they worked hard (and it took them 8.5 hours!)….. but no. He said that they normally don’t get $20’s for tips, they usually get 15%-20% of the total bill. After running some numbers quickly in my head, I almost burst out laughing. 15-20% adds up to somewhere around an additional $400-$600! I gave the guy $40 to split with his co-worker – I couldn’t believe that they were asking for so much more, especially after how we were arguing over the total amount due on the bill. They also wanted me to pay the bill in full right then and there – I said “no way”, and would only pay half at that time. Okay, enough of the pick up – this wasn’t even close to the worst part of the move….

2-19-05 The day my things were suppose to be delivered – Saturday. They called on Thursday night, to let me know that my things were going to be delivered at my house and storage at 11am on Saturday morning. I’m thinking, “great – this gives me the rest of the weekend to unpack and whatnot”. Did it work out that way? NOPE! Of Course Not! I received a phone call at 9am that morning that let me know they were not coming on Saturday at all. Apparently the truck broke down somewhere, and they were waiting for a replacement truck. I was slightly annoyed by this, given the experiences I had with them last week. Also keep in mind that Saturday was a great day to move – even though it was cold outside, it was a clear, sunny day. They said that they would be able to deliver my stuff on Sunday morning and they would call me first thing in the morning to let me know what time they were coming for sure. I’m thinking “good, at least its early in the day”. So I stayed home from church, waiting for everything to arrive. I attempted to call them 10 times between 9:30am and 12:30pm with no luck. Finally at 1pm I got a hold of the dispatcher - he gave me the driver’s phone number. I called the driver – he said that they’d be by around 3pm. Well, guess what 3pm comes and goes – no delivery truck. I got a hold of them again around 4pm – they said that they were running late and would definitely be there by 5pm. Meanwhile a nasty snowstorm starts packing a heavy punch in the late afternoon hours – thus further delaying the movers. We received several inches of snow in a couple hours – making the roads a mess. So guess what? The driver called me at 6pm to let me know that they were still an hour away. ARGH!! I was getting nervous because the storage unit’s hours end at 9pm – that’s when the gate closes and locks for the night – and it doesn’t let you out until 6am. So I told the driver to go directly to the storage unit first – and I would meet them there. They called at 6:45 and said that they were 15 minutes away – so dad and I drove up to the storage unit to drop off my old bed (this is something I was going to make them do after they unloaded everything at the house). We drove separately because I had a feeling it would take a while to unload that night. Well the truck showed up at the storage unit around 7:30pm. The semi truck started pulling up the driveway, then stopped ½ way up. Now that 5-6 inches of wet snow fell on the ground by this time, the truck was STUCK in the driveway. The driver proceeded to spin 16 wheels on the semi – without getting any traction whatsoever. I eventually called home to have Dad bring some shovels. He arrived at 8:15pm (45 min to go before the gate closes for the night). After several attempts, we were able to clear enough of a path for the semi to drive all the way to the gate. Now the tricky part with the gate was that a vehicle needed to be right infront of the gate (on the weight pad sensor) in order for the gate to open. So I drove through and left my car on the other side, sitting on one of the weight pad sensors; hoping that the semi would eventually get through. Long story short, it didn’t make it. They decided to lower the off-road hi-lo to start taking the crates off the truck. They figured that they could just drive that back to the storage unit. Time check 8:50pm – 10 minutes until gate lockdown. Just as they were lowering the off-road hi-lo, 2 police cars pulled up into the driveway. They were wondering what in the world were we doing out here at this time during this snowstorm? I explained to them that I was in the process of moving from Boston to Michigan…..after a while of explaining this to them (and after they ran my license in their system), they wished us good luck, and moved on. We now finally got the first crate back by my storage unit by 9:20pm. I strategically placed my rental car on the weight sensor to keep the gate open throughout this time – I would quickly move it back and forth anytime the driver needed to get by with the off road hi-lo. This seemed to work pretty well. We got through 1-2 trips of unloading the storage unit, and a lady shows up in the elevator. This was the owner of the storage unit property – she immediately began to chew me out for being on the premises after 9pm. I told her that I knew the gates locked at 9pm, but it didn’t actually say that we weren’t allowed onsite after 9pm (well, lets just say that she didn’t like that comment too much). She was also quite pissed that I left my car on the weight sensor pad. She began to freak out that the gate motor would burn out (which in no way would it have burned out because it doesn’t even run when there is a car on the weight sensor). After talking with her for a while, she calmed down for a bit – then she disappeared in the storage unit office somewhere. I think she actually lives there – that’s crazy! So we told her that we’d hurry and get out of there within the hour. We actually did pretty well – got the stuff unloaded by 10:30pm. But did we leave at that time? NOPE! I spent another 1.5 hours watching these guys trying to put the crates back on the truck, watched them smash the hi-lo into the semi truck and break the headlight, watched them completely miss the truck with the hi-lo and dump a crate upside down on the ground (thank GOD it wasn’t one of my crates with stuff in it!), watched them spin the 16 wheels on the semi truck as they attempted to back it out onto Groesbeck, and watched them talk to the police once again as they pulled over to see why the semi-truck was sitting on the side of Groesbeck highway. So now the time is 12:00am and we’ve just begun to make our way to my parents’ house to drop the rest off. We took Utica to Garfield to 15 mile to Bobcean – to hopefully avoid any tough turns with the semi. As they slowly followed me down Bobcean, I noticed that they stopped moving just before the intersection of Bobcean and Papstein. Yes, they were stuck once again. They spent another ½ hour moving the truck up 20ft so that they could get the hi-lo off the truck and drive the crates to the house just using that. This was a much better idea than attempting to drive the semi down through the dead-end part of our street. They began to unload and were mad that I made them take their shoes off in the house (keep in mind that they’ve been walking through 6 inches of snow and slush all night). They unloaded the first container pretty quickly. I noticed that several pieces of furniture being unloaded were clearly marked storage, as they were suppose to go in the storage unit. Somehow they miss loaded them in the wrong container last week in Boston – so that completely screwed everything up. I was really pissed by this point – it was now 2am, and they weren’t finished (they still had another ½ container to go, and they already unloaded a bunch of stuff that was supposed to go into the storage unit!) They also brought up the payment topic right around this time. They wanted me to pay the balance of what I owed. And I said “sure, but there has to be a significant discount off of that price”. The driver said “no – I can’t give discounts – you can work that out in the morning with the office, but right now I need the payment in full”. I proceeded to go back and forth with him until he got his dispatcher on the phone with me. The dispatcher couldn’t offer a discount either, but I worked out a deal with him – basically said that if they finished unloading everything in the morning – it would then be working hours, and all of us could talk with the main office to see how much I should actually pay. There was no way that I was going to pay this guy the full amount now and go back to negotiate with the office after the money has been paid – I would have no leverage that way. So the way we left everything, now at 2:45am, was that he was going to leave to go somewhere else and then come back in the morning to finish unloading my last crate. At that time we will also have a discussion with their main office. The amusing thing is that I’m sitting here right now at 3:30am typing this long synopsis of the week’s moving events, and its still not over. Oh and by the way, they are still stuck in the snow on the corner of Bobcean and Papstein. I have a good feeling that they will still be there in another few hours – hopefully they’ll still be there when business hours start in the morning! Wow what a crazy adventure so far. I hope it all works out tomorrow – I hope I can get the rest of my stuff, plus a discount TOMORROW! For now I need to go pass out – I just cleared a spot for my bed…. YEA!

3-02-05

Oh yes, the saga continues. It turns out that they did not come back to the house to deliver the rest of my stuff in the morning after that long Sunday night, even though that’s what we agreed on the night before. I called their office to see where they were, and the dispatcher said that there was no way that they could drop off the stuff in the morning, and they were on their way to Chicago and Minneapolis for other deliveries. I was not happy at all to hear this. He said that “maybe” they could drop off the rest of my stuff the following weekend. So I called the manager (Arthur) and spoke with him about all the challenges that I was having. He apologized and told me that they would discuss my email (below) with the rest of their senior staff later that week, and he would get back to me. In the mean time he would try to get the rest of my things delivered soon. Shortly after that I was on my way to Newark for work with Optiant and I got a call from the dispatcher. He said that they would be able to deliver everything on Tuesday afternoon (the next day) since the guys would be on their way back from Minneapolis. I was frustrated because I couldn’t be at the house for the delivery, since I was traveling for the rest of the week. I was able to work it out to have Mom be at the house around 4pm for them to deliver the rest of my things. The next day (Tuesday), I just arrived in Boston at around 3:45pm, and I received a phone call from the moving company. They said that they would not be able to deliver my things until they received payment in full; meanwhile, they were sitting infront of the house. Yes, the semi truck was sitting infront of our house again – oh joy. The only way that I could pay them was via fax. So I drove up to the office at Optiant to fax over the credit card form. On my way up to the office I called my credit card company to figure out how I could dispute the claim after it was paid. They gave me a few good ideas, but suggested that I try to work out a discount directly with the company before I attempted to dispute it through the credit card company.

Over the next several days I proceeded to leave messages and talk with a few people at the Countrywide Van Line office (mainly Arthur). He kept saying that they would get back to me tomorrow because some decision maker was not available at that time. Now it is 1 week and 1 day later since the rest of my belongings were dropped off at my house, and I still have not been able to find out details around my requested discount. They have not called me back a single time. I have left messages every day since the delivery. I’ve also recently noticed that I had quite a bit of change stolen from my nightstand drawer. Everything else is in the drawer, except for the bags of change. I couldn’t believe that the movers stole this from the drawer. I estimate that I had about $60-$70 of change in those bags, plus I also had some European currency in there as well. This is something that I still want to report to Countrywide Van Lines when I actually get them on the phone. That is where I am with this crazy situation right now……I’ve updated these events here as I am en route from LA to Seattle for another sales call. As the world turns……..

Here is the letter of complaint that I wrote to Countrywide Van Lines

Hi Tom

I wanted to follow up with an email regarding my moving challenges over the past week. As I expressed to you, I am frustrated with the entire move. I’ll bullet out the points below that frustrated me over the past week.

Pick up:
• The workers originally called and said that they would pick up everything at 11am on Saturday 2-12-05. Long story short, they didn’t arrive until 5:30, and spent the next 8.5 hours packing and loading. They didn’t leave the apartment until 2am.
• The pack job at the apartment was sloppy; some boxes were labeled, but most were not.
• I was paying for a full pack job, and the workers didn’t pack the bathroom, and some of the things in the family room. I ended up packing these things myself as the night wore on. Normally I wouldn’t be upset with this, but since I was paying for a full pack job – it didn’t make sense that I was doing some of the packing at this point

Delivery:
• The driver called the day before to let me know they would be delivering at 11am on Saturday (2-19-05). I received a call that morning to let me know that they wouldn’t be able to deliver on Saturday because the truck broke down. I understand that these are circumstances out of your control.
• They were then supposed to deliver everything around 12pm on Sunday. After several attempts at trying to get in touch with them, I found out that they were going to be here around 3pm. Long story short, they showed up at 7:30pm. I understand that it was snowing, but that’s still 7 ½ hours late.
• Because of the snow, the semi got stuck in the driveway of the storage units, on the way in. I helped them dig the semi out, and after 2 hours we began to unload.
• Once everything was unloaded, it took them another 1 ½ hours to put the empty crates back on the truck.
• We didn’t arrive to the house until 12:30am (the house was only 2 miles from storage). This was frustrating because I have a family that is trying to sleep and get up in the morning for work on Monday. At this point, I suggested to the workers that they finish the job in the morning instead; they refused, and said that they would not finish do this in the morning.
• They unloaded one crate at the house (the pack job was suppose to have one entire crate bound for the house, another full crate bound for the storage unit, and a third with a few things that go to both the house and storage) – and this is where the poor packing job became visible. From the crate that was supposedly packed 100% for the house, several large pieces of furniture that were supposed to go in storage ended up in the house – and these pieces were clearly labeled “storage”. So now, what am I suppose to do? I’m going to have to rent a truck to take these pieces back to the storage facility.
• The workers also did not complete the unloading that night because it was getting late – it was now 2:30am. I was also frustrated with all of the extra work that I will now have to do – mainly taking several pieces of furniture back to the storage facility, so I did not pay the drivers at that time. We worked out a deal that they would come back in the morning, once business hours started. That way they would finish unloading my last crate, and I would get an opportunity to speak with the Countrywide Van Line offices during business hours to work out payment. I feel that I should deserve some sort of discount for the extra work that I now have to do. Once they were able to come back in the morning (Monday morning), I would be able to speak with the offices, the workers would be able to complete the delivery, and payment would be made at that time.
• It is now Monday morning, and I spoke with several people at Countrywide Van lines; including Tom (sales), and Leo (dispatch manager). To my surprise, Leo mentioned that there was no way the drivers would be able to come back this morning. This frustrated me once again – especially since I worked out a deal with the workers last night, before they left.

So now I’ve explained my main frustrations that I’ve had with the move over the past week and a half. I do not mean to be a difficult customer, but I’ve encountered a significant amount of stress by the way the move was done – including the late pick up and delivery, the length of time it took to pack (8.5 hours) and unload (7.5 hours), the late hours that they were at the house – several hours after midnight on both the pick up and delivery, the packing that I had to do in Boston (when I was paying for a full pack), and the miss-deliveries at the house that will cause me extra work, time and money to correct.

Moving On....

2005-02-05T22:14:00.000-05:00

Well, I’ve been in Boston nearly 2 years, so it’s time for a change once again. I recently decided to resign from my company, Optiant, to pursue another venture in a completely different industry. I enjoyed my time at Optiant, and I’ve learned a lot over the last 2 years. I originally hired into Optiant’s consulting group where I implemented strategic and tactical supply chain projects for some well known corporations; Gillette, Boston Scientific, Case New Holland, and more. In my second year at Optiant, I made the choice to move into the sales organization under a pre-sales (technical sales) role. In this role I learned how to sell consulting projects and software to multibillion dollar corporations. This was achieved by selling extremely technical concepts to the technical workhorses of these companies as well as selling the high level business proposition to CXO level executives of major corporations. My reasons for resigning are two-fold 1) I want to use the skills that I’ve learned at Optiant, Dell, and UofM in a way that those that would help out those that I am closest too in life and 2) I am burned out from traveling to 3-4 cities per week in my current position (I flew over 120,000 miles in the last 8 months of 2004). I will be moving back to Clinton Township, Michigan on February 19th, 2005, and will be temporarily living at my parents place for an undetermined amount of time.

Anyway, now as for what I’m going to do in Michigan. Whether all of you know or not, Atlas Wholesale Food has been in the family for a very long time. It has served as a great “stopping” point for many people in our extended family at some point throughout their lives. Everyone that is currently working there has poured a lot of hard work, effort, and time into the business throughout the years. The owners would never ask for help, whether they needed it or not. Many of you might not realize that I helped out Atlas during after hours for the first 6 months of 2004. Although we made some good progress throughout that time, I learned that I need to physically be there in order to make a successful and ongoing impact. That is why I’ve decided to move back to Michigan to work full time at Atlas. My primary goals are to increase work life balance for those that have worked there for so long, grow the business, and get the right people in place throughout the different job functions of the company. I fully recognize that this is going to be a difficult and challenging task in the road ahead. I am up for the challenge. This satisfies two goals of mine 1) To help those that are closest to me and 2) To grow professionally through managing and improving business processes. With that said, don’t be surprised if I lean on some of you for advice in the months ahead. In the near future, I will most likely be asking some of you for referrals so that we can hire the right people for the job.

Thanks for all of your support in my time of transition

p.s. looking forward to hanging out with those of you that are in the Michigan area!

Happy New Year! 2k5

2005-01-02T23:28:00.000-05:00

Wow, I can't believe it's 2005 already. Where has the year gone? 2004 was a very busy year for me - alot has happened. In brief, I brought in the new year of 2004 in Times Square, went skiing in Lake Tahoe, spent St. Patrick's day in Chicago, went to Vegas for my first time, helped plan a 50th wedding anniversary surprise party for my grandparents, helped out Atlas for 6 solid months, switched from consulting to Sales at Optiant, flew over 120,000 miles in the US with work, made it to Austin a few times to visit friends, went to Upstate New York for a family vacation, had several visitors out in Boston, moved from Harvard Square (Cambridge) to a new apartment in Davis Square (Somerville), survived many big employee changes at Optiant, and went back to Michigan for 2 weeks at Christmas time. Whew, and here i am on the night of Jan 2nd trying to remember all of this. I know there is a ton more, but that's all i can think of right now. I do have several pics up on my website from several of these trips though!

2005 is already shaping up to be another eventful year for me. I kicked off the new year with friends Carolyn and Jesse here in Boston. We made last minute plans to have a party at their place over in Brighton, MA - they had quite a few people over and we played several board and drinking games, and watched several movies over the past couple days too! It was a fun time! The only downer was that Michigan lost the Rose Bowl to Texas by 1 point :( UGH! So Close!! But anyway, I'm headed out to Killington Vermont for our annual ski trip in a couple weeks, I'm standing up in two weddings.... Mike Burke and Kristin Kern in Austin Texas in March, and Philip Hueneke and Erika Larson in Illinois (sometime in July). I'm also taking my brother to Greece for his spring break (it's his Christmas / Birthday / Graduation present). I also forsee some other changes coming up in terms of my job. I don't want to speculate here, but i know change is iminent (they will be for the better so don't worry!).

Well, for now, I'm off to a busy start to the month with work - I'm headed to Jacksonville, Florida this week, and probably to numerous other places as well.

Oh yeah, and I now have more clarity and direction in my life than when I wrote the last post. I've put it to prayer, and I feel more at peace with some of the decisions I had to make and will be making over the next several weeks.

That's all for now.... Happy New Year!

Where Am I?

2004-12-06T00:25:00.000-05:00

Normally I write about all the crazy trips i've been on lately, but honestly I don't feel like it right now. It seems like i'm constantly asking myself that question - Where Am I? - over and over again. I really don't know where i'm at 1/2 the time. Things have been really crazy lately. Work seems to be dictating my life, and that's not at all the way i want to live. I feel like i've come to a new crossroad in my life. As I'm sitting here at 12:30am on Sunday night listening to some U2, I'm trying to analyze where I am at in life. I'm usually a planner by nature, so I tend to think about the future quite often. This is the normal process for developing goals, then creating a plan so that they can be achieved. For the first time in my life, the future seems very foggy. I'm not sure why. I've debated putting everything I have up on Ebay for sale, just to get rid of it all. That way I could potentially get out of my apartment and move somewhere on a whim. Right now I'm leaning on Michigan for something I know I need to do, but i'm not necessarily sure that I feel it. I guess so many things are uncertain right now, I'm having a hard time clearly seeing what direction I should be going in. Believe it or not, I've been seriously thinking about leaving my job and moving to some far away destination......probably in europe or somewhere. I also thought about moving to NYC as well....who knows. I'm not sure what I want to do.

I prayed about several of these things in church today. It was so strange, I had such a feeling of emptiness at the beginning of service today with no thought or reason. God gave me a glimer of hope after the service was over today in two instances that I could see. One was when I met the choir director at church during donut hour. I know who he is, but we've never actually met or spoke before today. I was shocked to find out that he is in the supply chain industry too, and that he knows the company that I currently work for. Apparently he started up his own spin off of I2 recently and is trying to get some traction in the marketplace. Its interesting how things work out. I also received a phone call tonight from a friend in Jersey. It was from someone that I really didn't expect to hear from tonight. I'm glad that it happened thought - we had a good but brief conversation about life. Something was said during that conversation that helped me to take a step back to think about things from a different light for a minute. The main thought was "trying to force things to happen in life isn't in our control". I've always known that, but it's good to have a reminder once in a while too. I need a good swift kick in the rear sometimes to remember that I'm not the one in control, so I shouldn't try to control things that happen in many aspects of my life. This thought is very applicable to so many aspects of my life right now - I need to take a step back. Step back and realize that things will work out the way they're suppose to - it's all in God's plan, in His time, not mine. It's easy to say this, but much more difficult to internalize sometimes because it's hard to see the reason why things are happening when they happen.

I'd like to end my story on this note..... I know there will be some decisions that have to be made within the next 2-3 weeks. The outcome of these decisions will change the direction of my life - hopefully for the better! I know these decisions will happen soon because I feel it, however its the direction that will be chosen that is still unclear to me right now. So, as Bon Jovi's song goes... "Give it a shot...Living On A Prayer" - I need to put my trust and faith in God that He will open my eyes, ears, and mind to make the right decisions when the time is right.

I can't believe it's November!

2004-11-07T08:29:00.000-05:00

We're already approaching the midpoint of November, and the year 2004 is racing to a close - already. Wow, I can't believe it. I can't believe i've been in Boston for over a year and a half now - where does time go??

What have I been up to for the last month? Well, lets see.... I think I last updated this right after Philip and Erika left Boston - I was probably chilling in Dallas when I updated this last. Yup, I was. After I finished my work in Dallas during the Week of Oct 11, I headed to Ohio for meetings with Ridge Tool and EPT (Emerson Power Transmission) - they were located in Cleveland and Florence, Kentucky. The meetings went pretty well. I was cramming to get everything done that week, as I had to present final results to Ridge Tool on Thursday. It didn't help that the presidential debates and Red Sox game 5 were on TV the night before. So I watched both while I cranked out the final presentation. The red sox pulled off an unbelieveable victory in 12 innings. Not bad! I also somehow pulled off a good presentation the next day -so I was pretty happy about that one!

Oct 16-17 weekend was a relatively low key weekend. I finally was able to catch up on many things around the apartment. I took my suitcases in to get the zippers fixed, since I've completely wrecked them through all of my traveling, I found a closer laundry place rather than going all the way to Harvard Square all the time, I found a place to get my UofM football stadium picture fixed - since I broke the glass when I was moving into this apartment, and I found a place to get my kitchen chairs fixed too - yeah, I waited 10 months to finally get them fixed after I melted the fabric on accident last New Years... well, we won't get into that one now - just ask me about it sometime. Oh yeah, and I almost forgot - I finally went to the grocery store for the first time since July! That was a milestone for me :) Needless to say, it was quite a busy weekend for me that weekend. I really had no choice though, since I had several visitors coming in town in a week or so.

The week of Oct 18th, I spent entirely in Dallas. This was our project kickoff week at Celanese. Unfortuantely I missed my flight on Sunday night because I was selected for further screening at the airport......they only had 1 person running that line when there was about 20 people in line. I waited 45 minutes in that line and ended up missing the last direct flight out of Boston that night. UGH! So frustrating. I ended up getting on a connecting flight through Atlanta, arrived in Dallas at 1am CST. I eventually got my rental car and arrived at the hotel by 2am CST (keep in mind this is like 3am to me). Yeah, so we had to be at the client site by 7:30am the next morning, and I was scheduled to present the kickoff for the entire day. Wow that was a rough day for me. We had about 30 people in the room and I had to explain everything to them for 3 straight hours, then I had to lead the training class throughout the afternoon. Thank goodness Gokhan was there to help me out a bit in the afternoon.... i was totally wiped out. The week went pretty well overall. We made some significant progress against a pretty agressive timeline -so that was good. But that also means that we pulled some really long hours that week. Wow it was a long week. It was nice getting back into Boston that friday night - it was much needed. Too bad we had more flight trouble coming back because of storms.... my flight was delayed and we didn't get back into town until 2am Sat morning. Wow. I completely passed out after that- that's for sure! On Saturday, all I did was head over to Carolyn and Jesse's place to watch the Red Sox win game 7 of the ALCS vs. the Yankees. this was the first time in history that a team ever came back from a 3-0 deficit to win a playoff series. Everyone in Boston went absolutely crazy that night! I'm thinking that it was a good thing that the game wasn't actually in Boston that night....it was in NYC. It's even more impressive that the Sox came back with having to play the final 2 games in NYC - it was AWESOME! I then attempted to look for world series tickets, but, hmmm, well, the cheapest I could find at Fenway were about $3,000 a ticket for bleacher seats! I don't think so!!

The week of Oct 25nd was a historic week for me - it was the first time since June that I didn't travel anywhere! Wow, I know that was amazing, eh? I was actually in Boston for the ENTIRE week. I actually was able to cook some food that i bought over the weekend.....finally broke in the stove and the rest of the kitchen (yeah, well, in my case, even cooking mac and cheese is considered to be "breaking in the kitchen")

On to the visitors of the week.... Victor and Martha came to visit me from Austin for a long weekend. They arrived on Wednesday afternoon. They flew into Providence and took a bus up to Boston. I picked them up around 4pm from South Station, then dropped off their stuff back at my place. We then took the T down to Jillians to watch Game 4 of the World Series - Sox vs. St. Louis. Jillians is a bar right across the street from Fenway. Eventhough we got there at 6pm we waited in line to get in the bar.....nevermind that the game didn't actually start until 8:30pm! Well, we barely made it into the bar - infact, they cut people off not too far behind us, since it was already filled to capacity. We ate dinner and had a few drinks while we watched the Sox pull of a historic World Series win - ending in a sweep over the St. Louis Cardinals. Sarah K joined us to watch the game too. It was a fun time. After the win, we left Jillians and wandered the streets for a while - it was complete madness out there. I've never seen so many cops and cops on horseback before. They were all decked out in riot gear too. Luckily the crowd was pretty positive and didn't do anything too stupid. It was amazing how many people were out there in the streets though! We had to walk all the way to the BU bridge from Fenway before we could actually find a cab backt o Davis Square, so that was quite the challenge. Wow, what an adventure this was for Martha and Victor - this was their first trip to Boston - ever! Not bad timing to see the Sox win their first World Series since 1918, eh?

I unfortuantely had to work the next day. Victor and Martha explored the Freedom Trail, then we met up back at my place for dinner in Davis Square that evening. On Friday, I had to work once again, but managed to cut out decently early because I had more visitors coming in town. this time, all 4 of my college roommates were coming in for the weekend. Victor and Martha opted to stay at a Hotel on Friday night, since they were headed down to Providence on Saturday. Its a good thing that they decided to do that, since Charlie, James, Nathan, and Brian all came up to crash at my place for the weekend. We went out to the bars on Friday night in the Quincy Market area, of course after having some stiff drinks that James made us. All I have to say is thank goodness for public transportation - that proved to be key this weekend! Since the bars close relatively early 1:30am, we headed back to my place and proceeded to have a few more drinks and watched a couple movies while cooking up some pizza. Somehow we met up with a few others downtown, and ended up with a crew of people back at my place. It was a fun time hanging out with all the guys again. We realized that this was the first time that all 5 of us have been back together since we graduated college back in 2001. On Saturday we chilled out in the AM and watched the Red Sox victory parade on TV. Then in the afternoon we headed down to Our House East, the Michigan Alumni bar in Boston, to watch the Michigan vs. Michigan State football game. Our original plan was to have a few drinks, watch the game, then head back to my place to get changed up and head back out on the town. Yeah, well, it didn't work out that way. Somehow James thought it would be a great idea to see how many pitchers of beer we could drink while we watched the Michigan game.....somehow 17 seems to ring a bell in my mind. Wow! It ended up being a historic Michigan game too..... Michigan was losing by 17 points (there's that number again) with 6 minutes to go in the game. Somehow through a field goal, a long pass and an offsides kick, they were able to come back in the last 6 minutes of the game to force overtime. In the end, Michigan beat State in 3OT It was awesome! The Big House in Ann Arbor must have been going crazy when we pulled off the tripple overtime victory after being down by 17 points with 6 min to go in the game! It was a great game to see! It was fun to watch it with the old roommates too. Good times, definitely good times. After that we ended up back at my place - Nathan, Brian, and I ended up passing out when we got home at about 10pm. James and Charlie decided to go out in Harvard Square. Ah, yes, the night continues.... we woke up to James coming home at 3am that night, realizing that he left his cell phone in the cab. He completely flipped out and started calling all 206 cab companies that google found from one of our phones. He eventually found out that whoever found his phone ended up back in Rhode Island for some reason.......long story short, he never got it back. Now that James came home we were all wide awake again...esp since we had our 5 hour nap by that point. We woke up, got some food, and started watching some movies while watching James bang his head against the wall because he lost his phone somewhere in Boston. It was quite an amuzing scene.... The other thing to notice is that James came home alone.......withOUT Charlie. So of course the rest of us are thinking the worst things possible, since he has a pretty bad track record when he dissappears from the group at that hour. Long story short, Charlie ended up back at my place at 7:30am......he said that he woke up on somebody's porch in Cambridge after exploring the Harvard Business school for a while........ hmmm, lets just pretend that the story ends there for now. Anyway, everyone eventually departed from my place on Sunday afternoon.....then I spent the rest of the day cleaning up the apartment from all the craziness of the weekend. It was a fun time, but maybe its a good thing that we all haven't been together in the past 3 years, I don't think my liver could handle it if we got together more than that! :)

Now, this brings me to last week, the first week of November. On the Optiant front we've had some trouble lately..... sales haven't been as great as expected since the economy has been pretty rough....still. So we've had a bit of attrition recently, well, we've had quite a bit of attrition actually. Basically I'm picking up the jobs / territories of 2 other guys that recently left, so this means that i'm going to be traveling even more if that's possible. Throughout the week, I traveled back to Dallas and to Minneapolis. I spent a couple days at Celanese to push the project along, then headed off to a few sales calls in the area too, one of which was Daisy Brand. It was interesting because they only make 1 product, and that product is Sour Cream. The meeting went pretty well - we'll see how it goes from there. I also headed up to Minneapolis to have some discussions with Medtronic - they're a major manufacturer of medical devices, competing with Boston Scientific. Anyway it was a pretty successful week overall, just a tiring one too, that's all.

Oh yeah, and this week was election week too. In a very close race, Bush pulled off a victory over Kerry. Let me tell ya, I live in Kerry town, and people around here weren't too happy about him losing. The republicans pulled off a victory in the house an senate too, taking over a majority of seats in both. I must admit that I am quite relieved that Bush won the re-election - I don't think Kerry could have lead our nation through the rough times that we are going through with the economic situation and the war on terror. He seems to have conflicting views on many of his points. To me, that definitely does not define a leader - especially a leader of a country. Anyway, now Bush can focus back on the next 4 years instead of worrying about the campaigning process - so that's good!!

This past weekend, I went to the BC vs. Rutgers football game. It was my first BC football game. It was a fun time - BC won 21-10. Their staidum is alot smaller than I was expecting. They only hold about 40,000....compared to Michigan's 111,000!! Anyway it was a fun time. I went to the game with Steve, Marianne, and two of marianne's friends. Check out the pics on my website! It was a fun time. After that I basically came home and passed out early because I was wipped out. Trying to prepare for another crazy week. I'm headed out to NJ, Dallas, and possibly Minneapolis this week. I worked it out so i'll be able to meet a friend out for dinner in NJ when i'm in town - so that should be fun! I will be ending up in Michigan next weekend - Nick Kotsis (my cousin) is getting ordained as a Deacon next weekend, so that will be great to see! It will also be great to see the entire family..... I just realized that the last time i was home was back in May for my Grandparents 50th wedding anniversary! Wow! that was a long time ago already.

Anyway that's all for now.......as usual, things are still super busy in my life - barely a moment to relax, although i'm working on that one!

Mid October Update

2004-10-12T02:41:00.001-04:00

I've noticed that I typically seem to update the blog about once a month - since it's now mid October already, its time for an update. Wow - lets see, lots has been going on over the past month. Believe it or not, I was actually in Boston for 2 of the past 4 weekends - impressive, eh?

Backing up to Mid September..... I did infact work in a trip to Austin right after i posted the last blog. I worked in a business trip from Thurs - Sunday, since I was suppose to be working in Dallas the following week. Of course as soon as i got down to Austin, I found out that my trip to Dallas was going to be cancelled for the upcoming week - so I was able to head back to beantown for a day before continuing on back to Ohio for a few days the following week. I had a good time in Austin that weekend. A few of us went to the Austin City Music Festival on that Saturday - it was a good time. I can't believe how packed it was there though. There were 6 or 7 stages set up at the park, with thousands of people in the crowd. It was extremely hot out that day - it must have been at least 100 degrees. Yeah - I was never use to that kind of heat, ya know? So we didn't end up staying all that long, and headed back up north to chill out for the evening. On Sunday I went to church and saw several old friends that i haven't seen in a while. After that I drove up to Dallas for the evening and headed back to Boston on Mon afternoon.

I was gone for pretty much the entire week - working at a few accounts in Cleveland and Cincinnati. The next weekend - Sept 25 weekend - I spent hanging out with friends in Boston. I helped a co-worker move into her new apartment in Southie on early Saturday morning, then went to the Michigan Alumni bar for most of the afternoon to watch the Wolverines whoop IOWA in the big 10 opener. That was fun. That night, I was somehow convinced to go to a MIT frat party. Honestly, I didn't know MIT had fraternities. Jay, joined Optiant earlier this year, and is a recent graduate of MIT. This was his old frat, and they were throwing a beach party. It was fun, but let me tell you, I felt really old there - I couldn't get over how young everyone looked - was I really that young back in college??? WOW. I didn't end up staying too long, so I headed out and went to see a movie with Sarah. On that Sunday, i enjoyed a relaxing day hanging out in the Boston Common with Sarah - it was one of the last nice days we will probably have for the rest of the year - so we had to take advantage of it!

Well then it was back to work, and back to the crazy travel schedule.....the next week (Sept 27th week), I headed out to San Francisco for a first round sales call with NEC. While I was out there, I was able to meet up with Izabela for dinner one night - it was good to see that she was doing well out in San Fran. I also attempted to meet up with Mike Miller - as he was temporarily transferred to San Fran for a couple months with Applied Materials. It sounds like they have him working pretty hard out there, so we didn't end up getting to meet up unfortunately. On Thursday of that week, I headed back to Austin for the weekend. I actually had planned on going down to Austin this weekend from quite a while ago because this was the weekend that my old roommate, Aron was getting married. I got in on Thursday evening, and went to Aron's rehersal dinner at his house. It was good to see everyone. We hung out there for a while, at some tasty rudys bbq, then headed out downtown with Brian and Kevin that night. I haven't been out on a Thursday night in quite a while - it was a fun time in downtown Austin. On Friday, i met up with a few people that i haven't seen in a while - ate lunch with Victor, and met Godwin out for ice cream in the late afternoon before heading to the wedding. Aron and Allison's wedding was in downtown Austin at the Shoreline Grill - they had an outdoor wedding, along the park on lake austin. It was really really hot outside - especially since i was wearing a suit! The wedding was definitely a fun time - it was great to see some old friends at the wedding! We all went out, including the bride and groom, to speakeasy after the reception. Somehow a few of us proceeded to 6th street and several bars out there after that. I also ended up making a pit stop at Taco Cabanna on the way up to Mike Burke's new house that night at about 3am. This was the first time I got to see his new place up in Balcones Woods. They have a really nice place, and are in the process of remodeling it as they are moving in. On Saturday, a few of us headed out to Ringers sportsbar to watch some football. We pretty much had a low key day, which was nice for a change. Somehow we still ended up heading back downtown with Kirsten, Ben, Chris Yanez, Burke, and Kristin that night. We went to Light - a new bar on 4th street - it was more or less a trendy bar, but it was really cool b/c there were recliners that gave mascages when you sat in them! So that was definitely nice - I had a hard time getting out of those chairs! On Sunday, I went to church and saw quite a few people that i haven't seen in a while. I went out to brunch with Ken, Stacy and Family - I haven't seen them in quite a while, so that was nice!

The next week (Oct 4th week), I headed directly to Ohio from Austin for a few more meetings on Tues-Wed in Cleveland and Cincinnati......... of course - where else would i go?! I finally made it back to Boston late on Wednesday night. On Thursday, my long time friend Phil Hueneke came up to visit from Florida for a long weekend. We went out to dinner at the Burren in Davis Square, then out for a couple drinks with Steve Z and one of his buddies. Unfortunately i had to work on Friday, while Phil hung out at my place. We went out to dinner at Christophers in Porter Square with Neal and Kim that night and caught the end of the Sox game. It was good to hang out with Phil again - i think its been about 1.5 years since i've seen him. The last time I saw him was in Austin when he visited me there.......i definitely need to make it down to Orlando sometime soon. His girlfriend, Erika, came up to Boston late on Friday night. We were all pretty wiped out by the time she got in, so we just crashed back at my place. On Saturday, Phil, Erika, Neal, Kim, and I all decided to head up to Vermont for the day to see the fall foliage. It was amazing! We drove through the mountains and periodically stopped to take pictures along various rivers and bridges where we could see several bright red trees. We also ended up at an apple orchard somewhere in Vermont. We picked some apples, drank some cider, and ate some awesome apple pie. It was a great, relaxing day - i'm glad we got the opportunity to head up there - that was my first trip to Vermont! On Sunday we headed downtown Boston to show Phil and Erika the historic sites. We also went to Cibo's in the northend for lunch. mmmm - italian food out there is always awesome. I also introduced them to the infamous Mike Pastry shop for dessert - I think they definitely liked that place. After that the 3 of us headed to the airport - Erika and Phil were headed back to Orlando, and I was off to Dallas for a couple days for work.

And that brings me to now....sitting here on a late Monday night typing this blog in my hotel room in Dallas. I was so wipped out earlier today - I came home and passed out for about 4 hours, and now i am wide awake, hence the reason for the 2am blog update. Tomorrow i'm headed back to Cincinnati and Cleveland for the rest of the week for more meetings. I think i'm actually going to be IN Boston this weekend. After watching the Sox / Yankee's playoff game this friday, I'll probably plan to sleep for the next 2 straight days.....i'm long overdue for an extremely chill weekend. I know I'll need it b/c I'm going to be in Dallas for 4 days next week, and in Wichita Kansas for 1 day next week. Yeah, I've never been to Kansas before....i guess i'll get to check that one off my list of states to visit, eh?

Well, that's all for now........time to get some sleep!

Time for an update...

2004-09-13T01:26:00.000-04:00

It’s been quite a while since I posted the latest on the board. I finally moved into my new apartment and got the internet hooked up! Let’s start from where I left off last time first.... here it goes.... Last time I wrote, I think it was the end of July.

I went on a family vacation with Dad, Mom, Manny, and Elaine during the second week of August. It was great - we went to a place called Sodus Point in upstate New York (it’s located about 50 min east of Rochester). It's kind of amusing how we found the vacation rental.. Earlier this year I was trying to find a new place for our fam to go on vacation - we usually go to Charlevoix in upstate Michigan, but wanted to try a new place. So that's how the search began. We had talked about going to someplace in upstate New York, but didn't know exactly where to go. I looked on yahoo maps, and clicked along the shore of Lake Ontario until I found a bay area, then typed in the city name into yahoo for vacation rentals. The first bay that popped up was Sodus Bay. I found a vacation house that was located on a peninsula; the front of the house faced Lake Ontario (about a block away), while the back of the house was right on the bay. One thing that worked out well was that the vacation house was almost exactly 1/2 way between my parent’s house in Michigan and my place in Boston - so we all drove there; it took each of us about 6 hours. It was a really neat resort town that hasn't been overrun by tourists yet - so that was really cool. It was a great vacation - we got to relax a ton, which was great. We rented a ski boat one day and cruised around the bay and lake. I went golfing with Dad one day. We made a few bon fires at night on the lake, and we also played card games and monopoly. We also watched some old home movies back from when mom and dad first got married, as well as a few from when Me, Elaine and Manny were little kids - it was really cool to watch some of those videos. One video that we watched was the Houghton lake vacation we took with the Kohl family back in 1988....it was great to see! We also spent some of the evenings reading a few chapters of "The Purpose Driven Life" and discussing it as a family - that was a great experience; especially since we were all able to be so open with each other on our beliefs. It was a great, relaxing vacation - quite a relief not to have to travel anywhere for work this week!

Once I got back from vacation the craziness started up again at work. I checked my email to find a couple plane tickets that were purchased for me that week......so then it was off to Ohio and Kentucky for a few days with another prospect. Vacation was quickly a distant memory :( I also started looking into truck rentals to use when moving into my new apartment at the end of the month. I originally wanted to move during the last weekend of August, but couldn't find a truck rental anywhere in the Boston area for that weekend. Apparently that is the biggest move weekend for everyone in the Boston area because that's when all the college students come back into town. So I decided to move during the upcoming weekend, even though I wasn’t ready at all! The one good thing about my new apartment is that they allowed me to move in 2 weeks early because the prior tenant moved out already. So Derek, Neal and Jay came to help me move on Sat. Aug 21. The night before we all went out to the bars for my birthday – so that was fun! The next morning we got up early and moved all day. It was a crappy day out too…..it was very very humid and rainy during the afternoon. We got it done though – and we emptied my storage shed too. My new apartment is in Davis Square, which is a really cool area. There are a ton of cool bars / restaurants in this area. The people here seem a little more “down to earth” than in Harvard square too – so I think I’m going to like it here. Believe it or not, my new place also has parking right outside my door – that is HUGE out here – I am very excited about that.

The next weekend, Manny came out to Boston. We had originally bought him a ticket to come help me during the last weekend of August, but I guess he lucked out since I already moved into my place the prior weekend (because of no trucks being available). So we moved the last few remaining things, but it was no big deal. We just relaxed for the weekend, which was nice for a change. Sarah Korth moved to Boston the night Manny got in town. She started at a BU grad school program this fall, so we helped her move into her new apartment that evening. I also got tickets to the Red Sox Game that Sunday. 6 of us went to the game – Me, Manny, Neal, Kim, Matt, and Annie. The funny thing was that Manny was the only one who had been to a Red Sox Game before – for the rest of us, this was our first time! Manny went to a game earlier this year when he was at the Holy Cross program. It was a fun game to see – The Sox beat up the Tigers 6-1…..hopefully this will be the year of the Red Sox! Looks like they’re going to get the wild card this year –so that’s good! Check out the pics on my website! Later that afternoon we went out to dinner with Sarah and her parents at the Cheese Cake Factory – dinner was great! It was good to see Mr and Mrs Korth too – its been quite a while since I’ve seen them.

This brings me to the week before Labor Day Weekend……this week wasn’t too bad. I was in Boston for most of the week, except for a quick trip to Dallas for lunch on Thursday. I then went up to Kentucky for the weekend to meet up with some old college friends – Brian, Meredith, James, and Rachel. This was the annual houseboat trip weekend at Lake Cumberland. I had never made it on a trip, so I decided to go on this one this year. It was a blast. About 90 people went on the trip – we had 9 house boats and a party barge that we tied all the boats up to. The boats were really cool – they all had several bedrooms, full kitchens, porches with bbq, stereos, TVs, and some even had a hot-tub on the roof! Needless to say, the weekend was quite a workout for my liver. It was a great time and I met quite a few new people on the trip. Check out the pics on my website!

I got back to Boston late Monday night (labor day), then headed to work in Burlington for the rest of the week. I actually didn’t travel anywhere this week because we had a 3 day sales training scheduled in the office. All the remote sales guys came to the headquarters for the training for the week. It was good to see everyone and it was fun grabbing dinner and drinks with them while they were in town.

I was actually in Boston this past weekend. I didn’t do anything too crazy……just tried to hang back at the apartment and attempt to finish unpacking everything from the move since I haven’t been here all that much. I’m almost done with it – finally! Well that’s about it for now……looks like I’ll be traveling quite a bit in the upcoming weeks. I’m headed to St. Louis, Cleveland, and Columbus this week. Next week I’m off to Dallas for 4 days and Columbus for one day. I’m thinking about working a trip to Austin in during one of the upcoming weekends! We’ll see though.

That’s all for now….

Last Week of July

2004-07-30T00:23:00.000-04:00

As usual lots has been going on for me in Boston. Mom and Elaine came to visit last weekend here in Boston. They came for a therapy appointment for Elaine, there was a really good therapy session that was going on in Arlington last friday, so they came for that. It went really well. It was good to have them out here. Believe it or not, they both stayed at my apartment for the entire weekend! We also went out to dinner with Stacie and Nate on Saturday night. They are both taking a class at Harvard for the summer in the theater department. Their program is very intense, so it was great to see them on Saturday! On sunday morning, I flew back to Michigan with Mom and Elaine - Dad picked us up from the airport and we met everyone out at Spencer park for the annual Atlas picnic. It was great to see everyone out there and it was a perfect day for the picnic too! We played a ton of volleyball and had some good food to eat too. On Monday afternoon I flew to Cleveland for work Tuesday, then drove to Columbus for another meeting on Tuesday afternoon. We were suppose to fly out to Newark around 5pm from Columbus, but there was a really bad storm on the east coast - our plane was held up for about 4 hours. Needless to say we spent alot of time at the airport bar that evening!

It was great to get out of Boston this week, since the Democratic Convention is in town for the whole week. The news has been warning us about this for months, telling us how bad the traffic was suppose to be. Actually there hasn't been any traffic at all. Boston has been like a ghost town this week. Everyone left town so they wouldn't have to be here during the convention. Security is another story. I've never seen so much security in my life. The FBI Speical Operations team blocked off all of the parks near downtown Boston and set up camp there. There are so many police officers in town, its unreal. On every freeway and major intersection, there are 5 police cars sitting at every 1/2 mile monitoring traffic. They have also been pulling over random trucks and cars for searches. Almost every street near the fleet center has been closed for the entire week. I93 is closed everyday during main travel periods - mainly from 4pm to midnight. That causes a bit of chaos for the homebound commute. Police Helicopters and jets have been circling the city all day, everyday since the convention began on Monday. I'm glad tomorrow is the last day of the convention!

Other news...... guess what? I finally found an apartment last week! I signed a lease for a 1 bedroom apartment in Davis Square in Somerville, MA. I'm really excited about it too. The apartment is bigger than the one i'm in now (in Harvard Square), and its in a really cool location - i'm right in the middle of Davis Square, less than 1 block from the T stop!! My lease starts on Sept 1st, but they're letting me begin my move a little early. I'm pretty happy about that! I'm going to start moving during the last 2 weeks of August. I'll post some pictures and clips up on the website as soon as i get in the apartment. They're going to clean and paint it over the next 2 weeks. The big news is that this apartment actually has PARKING at the apartment! I'm very excited about that. I never thought that I could get so excited about finding an apartment that has parking at it.....then again, I never looked for an apartment in an area like Boston before last year!

What else.....? I officially changed the ski trip destination last week to Killington Vermont. It'll be much easier to have the trip out on the east coast - flights will be cheaper for most people, and people out on the east coast will be able to drive up there for the weekend, so that will be a huge plus! We already have a few signed up for the trip. I'm still in the process of trying to lock down a house. I recently came across some really good websites, so I hope to have a place locked down by this weekend. If you're interested in coming on the trip, definitely send me an email if you have any questions. I'm also collecting credit card deposits on the website as usual.

Anyway that's the latest going on with me!

The Latest

2004-07-13T12:56:00.000-04:00

So its been a crazy couple of weeks. My brother, Manny, came to Boston for nearly two weeks recently. He was accepted to a program at Holy Cross for 10 days - the program was focused on juniors in high school from all over the country. It was awesome that he met several other people his age that all had the same upbringing and beliefs. The 10 day program really helped him grow spritually too - it seems like it was an amazing experience! He came into Boston a few days early so we could hang out for a weekend. We went to see a MLS game at Gillette Stadium - the Revolution beat the Metro Stars - it was a good time!

Also i've been traveling a ton with work lately - last week was probably the most insane week i've had. We had monday (july 5th) off, so it was only a 4 day week too. In that 4 day week i spent a day in Chicago, a day in Dallas, and a day in LA before flying back to Boston all day on Friday. I didn't get too much of a chance to go out in the cities I was in throughout the week, except for LA. I met up with a friend and went out for dinner and some drinks on Thursday night. We went to the Venice beach area along the ocean. I definitely like that area, along with the Santa Monica area - I highly recommend them if you are ever out in LA!

Well, this week has been much slower, which is nice for a change - i'm only headed to Chicago for a day this week (Naperville actually). Other than that, I've started looking for a new apartment in my spare time. My current lease is up at the end of August - eventhough I love the location i'm in right now, I think its time to try another while I still have the opportunity (plus it wouldn't hurt trying to save a few $$ in the process too, ya know?!)

That's the latest from Beantown.

Ski Destionation Set

2004-06-20T18:07:00.000-04:00

The ski destionation has been set for Jackson Hole in Wyoming! It should be a great time as always! I'll need a payment from everyone that is planning on going as soon as possible so I can secure the house for the trip. There are pictures of the house, along with resort information on the website. Payments will be accepted via paypal, as they were last year.

Last week was a crazy week, but a fun one too! I was in Charlotte NC on Monday, then in Los Angeles from Wed-Fri. I was able to meet up with a friend in LA and went out to dinner in Santa Monica, along 3rd street. It was a really cool area..... it looks like i'll get to check it out again this week, as I'm heading back to LA for a couple days during the middle of the week.

Upcoming week

2004-06-13T08:43:00.000-04:00

This week is going to be a crazy one. I just got back from a couple days in LA. That was my first trip out there. I had a sales call, then hung out at the beach for the rest of the day until my flight left at 11:30pm (the red-eye to Boston). And of course when I got to the airport, I found out that my flight was over 2 hours delayed! So I didn't get out of LA until 1:30am PST (4:30am EST). I eventually got back to Beantown at 1pm and went home to pass out for the rest of the afternoon. When I woke up, I found out that I had to book a couple plane tickets for the upcoming week - heading to Charlotte, NC on Mon-Tues, then to LA again Wed-Fri. Its going to be a crazy one this week!

First Post

2004-06-12T18:34:00.000-04:00

Check out the new Blog on Http://KotsisSkiClub.com