Happy Sunday, faithful readers!
This is the longest I've gone without blogging since I started the blog, for which you have my apologies. The life of a freelance-consultant/father-to-be/guy-who's-packing-up-the-house proves busier than expected. No deep leadership insights at this time for you... I've made little to no progress on my research over the last week. Instead, I've been spending my time reading up on organizational behavior research techniques, and I've been pleasantly surprised at how much of it I'm already at least familiar with.
That's right... unicorn meat.
See, every April Fool's Day, ThinkGeek rolls out a bunch of fake advertisements for joke products that don't actually exist, like an E-Z Bake Oven with USB connectivity, or Spazztroids Caffeinated Breakfast Cereal. This year they went with unicorn meat, calling it "The New White Meat." The National Pork Board, seeing their trademark of The Other White Meat in jeopardy, immediately moved for legal action to prevent Thinkgeek from selling... canned unicorn meat.
It's a bit of an embarrassing situation for the plaintiffs (you can read all about it here: http://www.thinkgeek.com/blog/2010/06/officially-our-bestever-cease.html), but the moral of the story is this: we should all just lighten up.
Speaking of lightening up, that's exactly the opposite of what Debby is doing right now. Instead, she continues to grow her baby-filled girth to mammoth new proportions... which, when you're pregnant with twins, is a Very Good Thing. Recently we got new ultrasound pics of both of them, including one 3-D model of Baby A! Unfortunately, Baby A wasn't too happy with his picture session, as Baby B kept kicking him in the face. Cutest darn thing you ever virtually saw.
Baby A
Baby B
Sadly, there are not yet names beyond the alphabet for the two boys: Debby steadfastly refuses my suggestion of "Nathaniel" and "SuperFly" despite near unanimous agreement from our friends and family. Heavy sigh. We're still taking suggestions (and in case you were going there, she's also vetoed Bill and Ted, Bugs and Daffy, and Voltron and Optimus Prime).
Last week I had the honor of training the Louisiana CTSO state officers in Baton Rouge, and I learned quite a few things from them. I'll close with some life lessons from the conference:
- Leadership is best demonstrated not by certain behaviors, not by certain traits, and not by certain appearances... but rather by the ability to actually get amazing things done.
- I heard one of them listening to a Kenny Chesney tune on their iPods... I resisted the urge to throw the offender out of the training!
- Never underestimate FCCLA. Those girls (and one guy) are tough competitors.
- The Technology Students of America should add acting to their list of exciting new innovations. I've never seen so many buy so much, when absolutely nothing was for sale!
- Louisiana DECA continues to amaze me with their propensity for an almost frightening degree of intelligence. If you haven't heard about these guys yet, you will. A simply amazing team.
- I'm very disappointed that FBLA, of which I am a former national president, was only able to send less than half of their officer team. Where's the love? But despite that... that was a heck of a balloon tower, wasn't it?
- And, okay, sure, FFA didn't win the CTSO Cup. But FFA is and always will be My People: in the words of my old National Vice-President, they'll rock your momma's booty somethin' awful.
And speaking of mommas, I saw mine last week for the first time in years. She looked very awkward at the chance meeting and made an excuse to leave as quickly as she could, before I had a chance to strike up any kind of conversation. She didn't seem to want to talk to me, but despite that, I learned that I apparently have a little half-brother now. Who knew?