MIssing All of You - Busy Week

Hello to all of you once again. I've missed writing to you over the last days. I'm back in the saddle and will be back to posting regularly. So what has gone on:

My time away was filled with the end of tax season - for the last time for 2008. Yes, there are clients that needed extra time to take care of business. I'm glad it's done, like every year, it is good to have it all completed. I've some time to prepare for next year, put my improvements into place, and yes it is exciting to prepare for another tax season - it will be my 31st one at that.

It's Friends membership time of year. My staff and I worked diligently and prepared the letter, the printers took care of printing, folding and stuffing, the post office got them out in the mail and I didn't have to remind the local post office to deliver the letters from the Friends. So far, in about two weeks, we have receive over $12,000 which is more than half we are to raise.

I'm preparing to give two talks - one this week and one in November. So I'm practicing as this week's must be done in 20 minutes!

Then it was my high school reunion - yes the Class of 1974 from Trumbull High School. WOW, you do the math - it was our 35th year. I must say we are a very very handsome bunch. We've aged beautifully. Much thanks to Liz and crew that made all the arrangements. This is the first reunion I didn't organize. I was heavily involved in the fifth, tenth, fifteenth, and twenty-fifth. It is an enormous job to put on a party like this. So big thanks to her and my classmates that stepped forward.

The weekend was just too short. We had over 160 classmates attend (I graduated with over 600). It was like speed dating. You get to say, OH YEAH!!!! I KNOW YOU!! (screaming at the top of your lungs) hug hug kiss kiss, and then the reasonable safe questions, 'where are you now? what are you doing? married? kids? ' and then ding - on to the next classmate. On Sunday at brunch (for those of us that were staying at the hotel) we were remarking, in very horse voices, about who we saw and many of us surprised that 'so-in-so' was there and "I didn't see him/her". We voted, it's a do-over event as we didn't have enough time to see EVERYONE! Just some simple math - 160 classmates and if you spent just 5 minutes with each, I need 800 minutes - and that equates with over 13 hours!!!

I'll make another entry of observations and pictures once all of the pictures are posted.