Catching Up

So I've been pretty busy over the last few days, between working at two schools and taking care of my two boys and doing multiple presentations and a training for Kyani, things have been moving pretty quickly. Which gives me little time to put thoughts to blog. Certainly not enough time to put coherent, well thought out thoughts to the blog, that's for sure.

But let's try to to catch up a little bit to share what's going on in my/our world.

Both the boys are now full engaged in and loving their preschool. Grady is old enough to have gone on to kindergarten, he's also bright enough to do it but he's not emotionally ready to make the leap. And, after many conversations with other parents, teachers and anyone else who cared to talk about it, we decided that it made more sense to hold him back a bit than to shove him into a full-on school setting. So he's now one of, if not the, oldest kids at the school. Which is fine by me and him.

Sully, who was exposed to the preschool last year, loves, loves, loves his school, his teacher and most of his classmates. He's a great group player, he engages in the circle time singing, he rides the trikes with gusto, he's just a very engaged little kid.

But he was also running a pretty good fever yesterday afternoon and into the evening so he's being kept on the sidelines today, much to his chagrin.

For my own part, I've been starting to settle into something resembling a schedule. I've got three days of work a week right now at two different schools. It has been a bit of a hassle to have to keep pulling on my old department for access, passwords and authority to do things but I understand where they are coming from as well as the fact that they are seriously (and woefully) understaffed now after the loss of more than half the department to the budget cuts.

By the way, our school district just found out last week that they are going to have to cut another $10 million from this year's budget. I do not have the faintest idea how this will be accomplished but I can all but guarantee that the fat cats at the top won't be suffering any pay cuts even though they get paid the most and do the least to actually educate the kids. My suggestion would be to cut any salary of someone making more than $150k by 10% and anyone making more than $75k by 5% across the board. How much would that save? How much solidarity would it show with those of us in the trenches? How likely would something like that be to happen? Not bloody. These are the same jackholes that voted themselves raises last October and then further voted to make those raises untouchable in the budget cut talks they knew were coming in the next year. Which is, of course, unconscionably scummy and lame of them.

Anyway, when I'm not working, my wife is so I'm on kid duty which is fine by me. The better her shop does, the better we all do. We're still looking to fill out the schedule there with an additional hair stylist and someone in the back room, either a manicurist, esthetician, massage therapist or waxer. Once we do this, the shop goes from being a net negative to a positive which would be just fine by me.

We are also putting in quite alot of time with our Kyani business. I drove up to Morgan Hill the other night for a training session. It was an Advanced Leadership session with some of the top people in the entire company and it ended up being immensely useful and empowering. I wrote up my notes from the session and posted them over on my Kyani blog. We also had a presentation on Tuesday afternoon before the training and then another one on Wednesday evening. We've got a couple of quieter days and then a big presentation on Saturday where we are hoping to sign up some distributors for our new star.

Things on My Mind

Just a little peek inside my busy little mind of the things that are going on in there.

State Park closures - I was speaking a lady over the weekend who mentioned that some of the pending State Park closures California is considering would include some of our rather magnificent beaches that are run by the state. I think this would be an absolutely horrible idea to try and shut down the beach. But then, I think its a ridiculous idea to allow our forested State Parks to turn into massive hobo camps if they close them to the public.

Seniority and Bumping - its great to be a part of a bureaucracy if you are sufficiently high up the totem pole to be doing the bumping. It sucks if you are fairly new and easy to bump. I checked with my school district's HR office the other day and found out that I'm 6th on the totem pole of site techs to be called back. I'm not holding my breath.

Fictionarium - I've been on a roll creating new words lately. From my recent post about the development of a Twitter lexicon to random new words, I think I'm running at about two or three new words a day right now. Which means my brain is working pretty well.

Cycling - I've been making more of an effort to get out on my bike lately. I've averaging about two rides a week right now and am trying to push that number up to three per week. I find my body is happier, my brain is happier and it just makes me a more balanced guy. The one or two downsides are that my bike is in bad need of a major (and expensive tuneup) and I need to get some good cycling shoes with stiffer soles. My feet are starting to get really sore during the long descents down the backside of Nisene Marks. But I'm still loving my rides more and more.

Kyani - Our business is starting to really get going which makes the likelihood of my having to go back to a full time job less and less which is just fine by me. You are welcome to check out my blog that I've started about my experiences with Kyani and network marketing.

More to come as I'm headed out the door with Nande and the boys to go for a walk at the dog park.

Some Program Notes

For anyone interested, I've started (yet) another new blog. This one is called The Kyani Dream and is focused on our Kyani business, it is not all about selling though there is some encouragement to try out the products. It is more about sharing information, knowledge, health issues, thoughts about network marketing and our growing success which will lead to posts about our free vacations and, eventually, our free Cadillac Escalade Hybrid when we get there.

If you have any interest in learning about network marketing or the opportunities presented by Kyani then I strongly encourage you to check out the new blog and let me know what you think or what kind of posts you'd be most interested in reading.

Also, if you are in need of some miniature awesomeness then you should check out Plastic Life. Very, very well done miniature photography. I'd love to give some of this stuff a shot.

In other news, I took the Learning Styles Inventory Test after seeing at Where's My Plan and found out that I am...

The Great Communicator

75% Visual, 75% Musical, 88% Linguistic, 75% Kinesthetic, 75% Logical, 63% Interpersonal and 67% Intrapersonal!

Want to give the test a try? Take Your personal Learning Styles Inventory Test at HelloQuizzy

And, finally, check out some pretty awesome photos of nature's fury in full force.

That's all for now, I've got some other things I'm working on but they aren't ready for primetime just yet.

Scorecard

- I've processed somewhere on the order of 700 photos from this last weekend with a mere 1150 or so to go. It is slow work but the results are worth the effort. So far I've posted a little over 100 to my Backprint site for sale. I hope to get the second batch finished this morning and posted today.

- My black eye is now the technicolor yellow, purple and black eye. It doesn't hurt too much anymore except when I absent mindedly rub it.

- I got my first check from Kyani the other day. Not a big one but a step in the right direction for sure. The nice thing is that my wife got a matching check. As these totals go up, it'll get more and more awesome.

- Also on the Kyani front, I'm working out a trial run with a famous Bay Area columnist after a column he wrote. I'm looking forward to him becoming an advocate for the products after he uses them for the month.

- Several packages to get shipped and then we're supposed to be heading to the East Bay to do some war-walking. Not sure if it'll happen today as there's still plenty of other stuff to do around the house and calls to make but we are working on expanding our empire.

And now, back to the photo processing. I'm close to finishing up one entire wedding and then I get to start on the second. If I don't go cross-eyed first.

Big Day, Big Week

Today is the first day of the biggest week we've had since I was laid off from the school district. In just under ten hours we'll be hosting our first ever Private Business Reception (PBR) for Kyani. With some luck we'll be filling our house with prospective distributors and customers and members of our team. It involves many steps including a clean house, finding a place to temporarily park Nande and our border hound (my wife's brother is visiting from Colorado and his big goofy friendly dog isn't so welcome at grandma and grandpa's house due to aged and inflexible cat already in residence), making sure our kids are occupied or at the neighbors for a little while.

And there's also making calls and trying to pull in folks we've already talked to to try and bring them to the PBR. The exciting thing about tonight is that we'll have one Kyani's executives here. He's one of the top earners in the company and, at the end of this week, will be getting the keys to his Kyani Escalade Hybrid at the national convention. If I were him, I'd be giddy with excitement!

On top of the PBR tonight, there is the aforementioned national convention taking place this next weekend. Almost everyone from our Northern California team will be attending and I would be but my weekend is already very, very stacked full of previously scheduled goodness.

I will be working as a professional photographer for not one but two weddings in two days this coming weekend. And, in between the two weddings, there's also the mma magnificence that is UFC 100.

Each wedding poses some significant challenges but all four of the participants are very easy going, good people and I'm really looking forward to commemorating their special days with my cameras.

Also, we'll be doing our first Skype video conference call a little later this morning with WindBlossom, who has joined us on our Kyani adventure after trying the products out and finding that her knees no longer hurt and her thinking is clearer.

It should be a really good week. And, with some luck, we'll be much further along in our Kyani dream by the end of the week. So much so that my wife may be one of the many that gets to walk the stage to receive her promotion in front of the entire company. That would be awesome! I wish I could be there but am looking forward to my weekend of photographic madness!

Why Is This Man Smiling?

People spending any amount of time in my company these days, the lucky bastards, will note that I'm more upbeat and happier than usual. You might wonder why I can be so upbeat in such a shitty economy.

I mean, if I stopped to think about it, I'm facing the distinct possibility of another layoff next month. We're not making enough money to cover our bills. Our house is valued at a good $50-60k less than what we paid for it a few years ago. I've got weeds trying to take over my back yard and I don't get a chance to ride my mountain bike anywhere near as often as I want to and need to.

And yet, I'm a happy camper. How's that work?

Well, in a word, Kyani. In a few words, Kyani Sunrise, Sunset and Nitro FX. The Sunrise is an anti-oxidant juice with vitamins, the Sunset is wild Alaskan sockeye salmon fish oil and the Nitro FX is a nitric oxide vaso-dilation delivery system that enhances the effect of the other two.

Let me disclaim here for a minute before I launch. I'm not being compensated for talking about Kyani. Well, not directly anyway, you see, I've become a distributor for the company and am working hard to bring more people on board. But that isn't the main thrust of this post really. I wouldn't say no to someone who wanted to get on board solely based on this post but that isn't my main point here. And I'm not even going to touch on the business possibilities (but they are outstanding!).

I want to talk about the ways that my use of the Kyani triangle of products has positively affected my life, my outlook and my energy level.

I've been using the products for a couple of weeks now. What means is a dropper full of the Nitro FX first thing in the morning followed by one ounce of the Sunrise to get the day rolling. Some people on the plan use the Nitro FX throughout the day to keep their energy levels high but I haven't found a need for that. I take another dropper full of the Nitro FX at dinner time and then two or three of the Sunset softgels.

Its simple, the juice tastes good (unless you've just brushed your teeth and then think of how nasty orange juice tastes and you're right about there) and its easy. I wake up right now and look forward to getting my supercharged anti-oxidant burst in the morning.

And, for the first couple of weeks it had a decent effect on me. I felt healthier, felt like my energy levels were elevated, felt like I could ride my bike further and faster. But then something changed yesterday. It was like driving an 8 cylinder car and only being able to use half the throttle and then, all of a sudden, the block gets removed and I can mash that accelerator all the way to the floor. I don't feel energized, I feel flippin' supercharged.

And I am definitely not the only one, the testimonials page reads like it is too good to be true but I've met some of these people and heard them tell their stories.

I'm loving the new found energy, loving how strong and powered up I feel and am looking forward to sharing this with my friends and family. Want to give it a try? I'd be happy to get you a sample so you can get charged up too!