I am headed off to Orlando for several reasons: as an adjunct faculty member for Mountain State University, we are offering a three-day three-college-credit course on Aviation Management & Marketing II. This will be held at MSU’s Altamonte Springs campus, just north of Orlando.

I’ll spend some time with my parents, then head off to the Orlando Convention Center. I am offering an NBAA Professional Development Program, ‘Goal Setting and Performance Appraisals’ on Sunday, then attending the convention.

I will be soliciting experiences and examples in communications from all these venues. Please pardon my lack of postings … rest assured I’ll have a lot to blog about when I return!

In the meantime, I challenge you to listen, really listen, to your representatives talk about the bailout, and to the vice-presidential debate. Listen to what they are saying, and to what assumptions you are making from hearing them.

Remember, it’s not what they said, it’s what you think you heard!

I watched the season premiere of Grey’s Anatomy… a very interesting showing of egos under stress. Seattle Grace Hospital had fallen to 12^th place, and as such, are not the top trauma hospital. They had three women in long dresses drive to the hospital because their driver was thrown (more…)

I found an interesting article on Knowledge@Wharton’s website. It was actually a five-page book review. The book is called “It Starts With One: Changing Individuals Changes Organizations” by J. Stewart Black and Hal B. Gregersen. The authors asked “why do we fail to see the need for change?” Their research showed “Fundamentally, we fail to see because we are blinded by the light of what we already see.” We make assumptions on (more…)

This seems appropriate after we’ve been introduced to Hurricane Ike:

A 92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud man, who is fully dressed each morning by eight o’clock, with his hair fashionably combed and shaved perfectly, even though he is legally blind, moved to a nursing home today.

His wife of 70 years recently passed away, making the move necessary. After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, he smiled sweetly when told his room was ready.

As he maneuvered his walker to the elevator, I provided a visual description of his tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that had been hung on his window.

‘I love it,’ he stated with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having just been presented with a new puppy.

‘Mr. Jones, you haven’t seen the room; just wait.’

‘That doesn’ t have anything to do with it,’ he replied.

‘Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn’t depend on how the furniture is arranged .. it’s how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it. ‘It’s a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice; I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the ones th at do.

We were part of the lucky crowd that was only 76 hours without power. We always had water. We could have fussed and complained that we had minor house damage, that we had a full freezer and might lose all that food [and money!], and that we could not watch FoxNews or access the internet from our computers.

Instead we were thankful that our home didn’t suffer more damage and that all of us [including the 'kids'] were fine.

It’s all in how you frame your thoughts. What do you say to yourself, and what do you hear yourself say?

I have been inundated and mesmerized by the tracking of Hurricane Ike. At this point, roughly 12 hours before landfall, some people on Galveston Island have decided to leave. Mandatory evacuation began nearly 72 hours ago … what part of “this is worse than [Hurricane] Rita, can be (more…)

I have been avoiding getting a PDA-type phone for years. The time has finally arrived and I am now the proud owner of a Blackjack II. My husband also got a new phone and we had to call AT&T to get us connected. The customer service rep (more…)

A recent US Magazine headline: Babies, Lies & Scandals with a photograph of Vice President Nominee Governor Palin and her baby. One would assume that the ‘babies, lies and scandals’ had to do with the Governor and her son. When the publisher was questioned about this … what exactly were the lies … the truth of this was the lies were really blog entries!

Misleading? Or accurate? Or .. was it what the magazine meant to write? Or was it what we think we read?

Now that both the United States Republican and Democratic National Conventions are over, to quote the Olympics “Let the games begin!” As each candidate gives their speeches, the opposition immediately gets on the ’stump’ and gives their interpretation of the opposition. These are usually groundless. For instance, (more…)

I was talking with my financial advisor, Pat, recently, and our conversation steered towards insurance. She asked me if I had term life insurance or whole life. That’s one of those details that simply slips my mind. Knowing me well, she explained the difference:

(more…)