Fall!

Hello All --

This morning's ride into work was a photographer's paradise; unfortunately THIS photographer opted to stay in bed a couple of minutes longer until Zackie had enough of my laziness and urged me to climb out from under the covers and feed him. The fall colors are in their prime now . . . the tree across the street is a vibrant red and ours is colors of golden orange and yellow. The fields along my route are tinted brown and one can almost smell Fall in the air. I caught the sun setting from my office window and smelled my favorite fall scent -- wood burning fire places. Ahhh, I love it! I wonder if there's a definite change in one's perspective without the dramatic season change?? Brother John moved out to Arizona a few years ago and vows never to return (except for visits) -- he feels that if he grows lonesome for snow he can run up to the mountains in the morning and be back in time to take a dip in his backyard pool. Not me, I'm a Wisconsin girl through and through; however, I could convince myself that Vermont is just as nice if need be. Gregg and I snow-shoed up in the Green Mountains over Christmas / New Year's a couple of years ago and I fell in love with the scenary, people, slower pace, no drive-through McD's or big box stores. That was one of the things that stole the romance from Germany . . . here we were in towns that were a couple of centuries old and on the corner was a MCDONALD'S. Yuck! It was almost blasphemous.

OK, off my soapbox.

While I was on vacation one of the partners in my company decided to take an early retirement so I was offered his responsibilities. YIKES! I thought about it for a bit and discussed my idea of supporting the revenue-producing units (instead of directing them as the past CFO did) with the other two remaining partners. They liked my idea and came up with a new title, 'Administrative Manager'. In this role I still do all my controller-type duties (creating the financial statements, administering HR, managing the IT processes, etc.) but do it in such a way to help the sales and production team leaders do their jobs with assistance from me and my team. My team is awesome and have alot of experience in the industry for me to learn from. So, stay tuned, this latest challenge is proving to be quite the ride.