Since this is my last blog post for the year, it is time once again for my annual apologies. Once a year I take time to say sorry for the past year of posts and those who I have offended.
First stop has to be my family, for all the times I mentioned you and all of the personal things I might have revealed, or possible for he times you have been forced to read this blog out of compulsion or proximity to me. Having to read a blog about nothing, is painful enough without having to have someone ask what you thought of the above-mentioned nothing.
To my co-workers who get mentioned probably more than anyone else, sorry. There is no dislike for anyone in this blog, it is just that I see things in a funny way, at least, funny to me, and so when I sit down to write many times it is about what I am seeing at the place I spend most of my time.
And finally to the year 2015 itself. You sucked! Not on a personal level but on a national and international one. The crap put out in this year was so large I am not sure the pile can be dug out of for years to come. I am hoping that the coming year is very different from this one but with it being a presidential election year and seeing the candidates that are in the lead I think my hope is just wishful thinking, and I am sorry for that.

I am sure if I asked you what the perfect Christmas cookie was the answer would be, whatever one you grew up eating. Christmas cookies can be a cookie you eat all year long, but if they are baked within the last two weeks of the year they become extra good. Something is sweeter, something smells better about them now. Walking into a house with them baking has to be on the top ten smells list. I can tell you that cookies I did not like as a kid are now treasured. As a kid, they were the adult cookies they had weird flavors and didn’t have chocolate chips. Now I have to have a plan to get all of them I want. You can do the kitchen helper, if you are cooking you are eating. The fly by on the way to the living room, or the ever present get up early or stay up late so no one can see me eating them. Whatever method you use just remember that New years is not far off and that resolution won’t be any easier with a few more pounds to work off. I know I will be hitting it hard come the first!

As I sit here on my couch looking at all the amazon boxes I wonder how small specialty stores are going to survive? We are all so busy, I would love the time to go look for some original gift unique to the person I am giving to, but I just don’t have that kind of time. So I look online in between meetings until I see something or maybe I look at the wish list my family created and I click a few times and it shows up on my door a few days later. It is super easy, I don’t have to drive to the trendy part of town try to find a parking spot, then figure out how to use my credit card to pay for an hour of parking before I can even look for a gift.  Even when I am buying local it is usually at some giant box store chain, which sent me an online coupon for 20 to 30 percent off. Yes, what I bought everybody is only unique to about 30 million others who purchased it this year, but I can’t see how to fit anything else in. I know there are smart people running a lot of small stores with wonderful things not found anywhere else. I am just not sure that uniqueness and smarts are enough anymore to help them thrive. I hope I am wrong and you all went to those stores this season, but based on the online order numbers, I think we all are in the same boat and that doesn’t bode well for the local store.

How do you deal with a long-standing issue at work? Since I took on my role there are a few issues which my team let me know about that I have been trying to get solved. The problem is they involve multiple departments and team, so they require what I call, the long game approach. I had a boss a long time ago who was at that company for 25 plus years. HE told me that if he had a problem with his boss he knew that if the boss wouldn’t change he just waited him out. He believed he would be at the company forever and the boss would not so he would just wait it out. I have no vision of me being anywhere for that long so I ham hoping I can solve at least a few of these before Jesus returns. They do however require that I not get frustrated and not give up but to make small incremental steps toward my goal. Whether that is making good will with someone I need to fix something for me or changing the way I do something so someone else sees the need for change. I have to look at it as if I am chipping away at a giant block of marble. I am sure Michael Angelo didn’t create his David statue with one swing of a hammer instead it took many swings both big and small over time to end up with a masterpiece. Me I am not looking to build a masterpiece I am just looking for something that resembles a human form, just getting part of it to look like a leg would be enough to make me happy.

Please change your password! Do it today, better yet do it now. Stop using your dog or your kids or spouse in the password. Your information has been stolen, you can argue with me this point, but you can go look for yourself. Just about every retailer out there has been breached this Christmas. Heck, even Barbie is passing your information. The worst part is Barbie is passing your kids information. Someone changed one of our accounts and then tried to order something, Luckily the vendor denied the order because it was trying to be shipped to somewhere it did not match to us. Most vendors are not that good about catching those things. Last year we had a computer shipped to somewhere in Tennessee. That was a credit card event that required me to call and get new cards issued. I was also pleased to see that all my records for getting a clearance through the government has also been launched into the wild. I can’t stress enough that all of us are getting taken to the cleaners right now by some evil people with great computer skills. I can also tell you I don’t do this as often as I should as well, but I thought I would just give you the chance to minimize the damage to you this season.

Every time I watch the open credits to the Simpson I have a little twitch. Most of it is cute, but the part where Bart rights some sort of “I will not…” on the board brings back memories of my elementary school. St. Adelaide’s was where I got in trouble and it seems now like it was every day. Besides hitting me with a ruler or a pointer, the favorite punishment was writing a thousand times “I will not….. “. When you end up having this punishment you start to develope strategies which make the work go faster. For example you would never write the whole sentence, instead you would write the I then the will and so on down the page to make it go faster. Some would even write one long line and then come back and put the tops and bottoms on the I’s, but the Nuns would get upset at this one so you had to line them up with the blue lines on the paper. Others would try to make one mark to be both the bottom of one and the top of the next, but this also might get your lunchtime punishment rejected. The idea was to know what your current teacher would accept and do it as quickly as possible hoping to get at least a few minutes of lunch to play. The only other option was to prefill some sheets leaving just the actual offense off to be filled in when needed. This would take real commitment to getting in trouble and I don’t think any of us thought that much in advance.