Nightglow Window

First In, Last Out

I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, but work was long and tough today. It was also surprising and hopeful, but I'll get to that in a second.

It rained hard last night. As hard as it’s rained in a long while, but the sunrise was beautiful as I made coffee and looked out my kitchen window this morning. Our soon-to-be new owner, Jonas B, president of the Magazine Group, was coming to t-dub today and I wanted to make a good impression by being on time -- early even.

But I guess I went a little overboard, because there I was at 7:00 a.m., alone in the empty parking lot, waiting for someone to show. Now, I close the building often. But I take pride in that I have never been the first one to open up the office. (Truth be told, I'm worried about messing up the security code and having O-side PD cap a bullet in my chest.)

When I finally get in the building at 7:10 a.m. (first in), I see that the roof has leaked. My office is directly under the drain spout for the west building. Usually this is okay, peaceful even, as it sounds like a relaxing Japanese fountain when it rains. All very Zen-like to my poor addled nerves.

Unfortunately when it rains, really rains, this drain spout clogs up, over flows, and pours down on my office. I'm glad I have a tin roof, but it can get pretty bad. I had more than 50 gallons pour down on me a few years ago (or at least we filled up one of those super huge 50-gallon ice chests with excess water). Anyway, this morning wasn’t so bad. John our super-cool cleaning guy had saved my bacon by putting a wastebasket under the leak, a wastebasket that was now filled. My floor is sopping wet -- as is my yellowish corduroy jacket that I had left near the door of my office.

So it's a wet start.

Josh calls a few minutes later (I had wanted the staff to be in to work by 8:00 a.m.) saying that his car had been broken into and his iPod stolen. He's bummed and will be late.

There's also good news, though. I trade a series of fast e-mails with a girl named Alex from the Munich show and managed to get two rooms at the anna hotel. This is my favorite place to stay. The decor is spare and modern without being cold, and there's a great restaurant/bar downstairs. Plus it's steps away from the Subway.

So that's all good and it's nice to have that last detail of the upcoming trip nailed down.

The senior management meeting was supposed to start at 8:30 a.m., but Jonas and Terry S, Tom B, and Scott are running a bit late and we don't get going until about nine. But it's a good one. Jonas is young and likeable and appears humble.

Things are also good at the company wide meeting, where he goes over the history of the Family, the structure of the company, and its philosophy. This is the surprising and hopeful part.

First, he's pretty funny and, well, cool. He doesn't seem like a corpo stiff. He soon has everyone laughing with stories about his family, his dog, and the misadventures of the family business. There's some crazy stuff, like how his great grandfather helped Lenin sneak into Russia to start the Revolution. Seriously.

He's also pitch perfect, saying exactly what I wanted to hear. Namely, we want you to be happy, do good work, have all the tools you need, and we don't want to get in your way because you are the experts. The Group looks to be big and healthy and has a very patient view of things (progress, apparently, is not measured in quarters or even years but decades).

If true, that's a huge breath of fresh air.

The meeting broke, Jonas had to run to catch a flight to San Francisco, and we all had lunch. Morale was about as high as it's been in a while. Two miles higher than when it was when we heard we were up for sale.

But by now it was 1:00 p.m. and my to-do list was still three miles long. So I worked until 7:15 p.m. and turned off the lights in the west building and was the last to leave.

First in, last out.

I came home and made myself a celebratory stir fry Kung Pao steak and then it was back to work on this computer upstairs. I'm tired, but finally relieved about the whole sale. It's been weighing on my mind for a long time, but I didn't know how much until the weight was lifted today.


The T-dub management group.