Mark's last day

Today is Mark's last day at Goodrich.  They're taking him (the folks who used to work for him) out to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch...I hope he gets the firecracker shrimp. 

When you leave a job you get the chance to reflect on what your presence has meant to the people and place where you spent most of your waking hours for the past howevermany (n) years.  What impact did you have?  What difference did you make?  Whose lives did you touch and in what ways?  When Mark first started working as an engineer in 1979, age 22, he thought that like his mentors before him that he'd work at Hamilton until he retired.  A big send-off party, a good nature roast of his personality (people would have really known him), the satisfaction of believing that he was important and valuable up to the last day.  Leaving HS for Goodrich, then leaving Goodrich for Boulder was not something he could have envisioned.  But isn't life like that?  Mark is a person of integrity...the most sincere and honest person I've ever known both personally and professionally.  I think he's incredibly brave to follow a path that aligns with his principles instead of taking the easier (but ultimately deflating for him) route of maintaining the status quo.  He does indeed have an impressive body of work (and may I add, an impressive body!) and I agree that he should be very proud.  I hope he can remember that as he navigates through his last day.

Had a martini with my bff Lea Ann last night at Cavey's...I need to record her laugh so I can replay it when I need a shot of levity during this whole thing. 

Tonight's the first parent meeting of the year at school and I am going to tell everyone that I'm leaving in December.  I want to somehow communicate that while it's sad that I'm going, Odyssey is way bigger than me (always has been) and that the school and all of the teachers, parents and kids are going to be in the care of a leadership team that truly cares about them and that has what it takes to nurture Odyssey and move it forward.  I want everyone to feel secure that in the middle of this huge change their kids will be safe and taken care of.

I think that the posts on my blog say that they're published in the wee morning hours...but that's really not true.  I have been known to be up at 3am to email my poor staff members, but not this time.  I just don't know how to change the time-stamp.  Jodi?!!!