Last week I had the good fortune to be invited to Houston, TX for job board strategy meetings with CareerBuilder and a little primo golf at the Adminstaff Small Business Classic Pro-Am. This was a trip of firsts for me, and I enjoyed every bit of it.

The experience really began for me 2 weeks prior when I was invited to attend. I was quaking in my boots at the thought of putting my golf game on display in front of pros, and even **eek** a gallery. But, I accepted the challenge anyways with a high handicap of 25 and the thought that this is a once in a lifetime experience. I’m not one to back down from this sort of thing, even if I’m scared sh!tless.

So, October 10 I flew to Houston for the first time. I’ve been to Dallas and Austin before, and was struck both times by how different Texas is from Western NY. Laid back, friendly and warm vs. high-strung, reserved, and always a bit nippy – to me Texas is a foreign country, but a beautiful one. I got in at around 8pm and took a cab to a dinner at Perry’s Steakhouse and Grille. There I met with the team from CareerBuilder and a few other staffing firm clients like Kelly Services, Select Remedy, and Volt. The highlight may have been the gigantic bone-in NY Strip that I’m still digesting to this day.

Thursday morning was a whirlwind. Up at 5:30am and to the Augusta Pines Golf Club by 7:00am.

Arriving at Augusta Pines Golf Club at 7:00am

I registered, got my rental clubs and RAN to the practice range for only 3 minutes of swings. Let me just say I didn’t straighten out my game within 3 minutes. We found that we were paired with R.W. Eaks so it was off to the 8th hole for the shotgun start of stroke play. This being only the second tournament I’ve ever played in, I barely understood how this was all going to work.

We briefly shook hands with R.W. and his caddie “Johnny Mac” who were both very personable guys. Then it was crunch time. I was shaking so much on the first tee that I could barely see the ball. And when I swung the ball ended up going no more than 20 yards – ouch. Luckily the other guys on my team at least got the ball down the fairway. The good news is that in however this scoring works, we could get no higher than par. If we were shooting above par on the hole, or the extra strokes given because of handicaps didn’t keep us in contention for birdie, we could just pick up the ball and let the other guys play it out. If none of the amateurs got birdie, but RW did, then we could take the pro’s score.

R.W. Eaks’s sweet golf swing

Well, I didn’t have enough good shots on the first 5 holes to even be putting 🙁 however, slowly I could feel my nerves subsiding and some semblance of a swing return. By the 8th hole I was hitting some shots and taking some putts. The great news was that we had some excellent golfers on our team, especially Michael Morrow from Kelly. At the turn we were in a tie for 3rd place in the tournament!

Proof that we were on the leaderboard

On the back 9 I actually managed to have the best score on 2 of the holes to help contribute. This was a great moral victory and therefore made the entire day perfectly enjoyable. We ended up the tournament at -19 in 4th place. No trophy, but a very respectable finish. I picked up some great tips from Johnny Mac, and got to see how effortless a tour pro makes this sport.

During the afternoon, I had more meetings with the CareerBuilder, then in the evening we had a real treat. We were able to attend the player’s dinner. Johnny Bench spoke as well as Roger Clemens, who had just returned from NY after getting ousted from the ALDS. Arnold Palmer also was a central figure. He’s the spokesperson for Administaff these days, and while he is getting on in years, he’s a very inspirational person to listen to.

Arnold Palmer speaks at the players’ dinner

To top off the Texas evening they brought in a live, unplugged country music show featuring Pat Green and Jack Ingram. I’m no country music connoisseur, but I’m going to become one. Their music was awesome!

I haven’t been as emotionally involved in a football game since the Music City Miracle. Last night’s Monday Night Football game between the Buffalo Bills and the Dallas Cowboys had all of the trappings of a classic Western New York sports moment.

Somehow our defense, who has more starters on injured reserve than not, managed to snatch 5, yes f-i-v-e interceptions from the NFL’s new golden boy, Tony Romo. We scored a kick-off return for a touchdown. Every time the Cowboys punched, we punched back. Yet, I’m sitting there watching with 22 seconds left in the game and a 24-16 lead, and I just know that something is going to happen. C’mon it’s the Bills. We have Scott Norwood’s karma. tick-tick-tick As Tony Romo gets a touchdown pass, then misses the 2 point conversion to T.O…tick-tick-tick as a miracle onside kick is executed…tick-tick 2 seconds left…Jauron tries to ice the kicker on a last second timeouttick-tick-tick…the kicker makes his second attempt from 53 yards away…GAME OVER…the Bills managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory yet again.

I guarantee this one is going to be talked about for the rest of this season. Have fun comparing 2 of the darker days for a Bills fan.

Monday Night Football October 8, 2007

Music City Miracle

I dedicate this post to my new old boat. This ’67 Starcraft was my Dad’s first boat that I think he got sometime around 1985. At the time he and my mom called the boat “Dreamweaver”. Pretty ambitious for a small aluminum, but a proper forerunner of bigger boats in our family’s future.

Dick Rzepkowski with the “Dreamweaver”, 1986.

The boat was old then, but was a major upgrade to the four of us who fished the ESLO derbies in it on Lake Ontario. My dad, uncle John, my cousin Jason and me were used to fishing in an aluminum MirroCraft workboat with a temperamental 25hp Merc and bench seats. So, sliding into the brown ‘deluxe’ padded seats and hiding underneath its dilapidated canvas during inclement weather was luxury fishing baby. Dad built a custom rod holder array and downrigger mounts on the transom out of pressure treated wood and PVC to make it the perfect Lake Ontario rig.

Jason, Kris, Uncle John with the ‘Dreamweaver’, 1986 Fall ESLO Derby

The boat could take 5 ft. waves over the bow and still keep the lines in the water. The local tackle shops liked to tell stories of the ‘idiots out there in a little white and green 16 footer’. Plus, the 40hp Evinrude was a HUGE speed upgrade topping out at 20mph. So, when we weren’t fishing I learned to waterski, tube and kneeboard off the back.

After a few years we grew out of the boat. We wanted an open bow for family rides plus many more horsepower to push our skiing skills. Dad kept this old boat in the family by selling it to my uncle and grandpa for use in Dunkirk, NY on the walleye grounds of Lake Erie. As soon as my grandpa got his hands on the boat, it underwent an amazing transformation. He painted over the awful green bottom paint to make the boat completely white. He tore off the rotting canvas and had a perfectly fit replacement canvas installed. The trailer got a paint job, a VHF radio was installed, and grandpa even mounted his mid-1950s Evinrude trolling motor.

Grandpa Rz, Kris and Dad with the boat in 1990

Grandpa and uncle Neal got a ton more use out of the boat. I remember going to Dunkirk a few times and fishing on Lake Erie. As long as the ‘walleye chop’ wasn’t too much, grandpa liked to get out his chugging irons and sheisters to have a go at the tasty fish off the Niagara Mohawk power plant. My grandma loved the boat too. They would go out on the lake to ‘see if the sunset was still the same’.

Around 5 years ago, grandpa became more interested in parking within his one car garage than having the boat take up space, so he stored it at uncle Neal’s house in the snowy hills of Cassadaga. It was there that the boat took the brunt of a wicked snowstorm. 3 feet of heavy snow cracked the windshield and broke the canvas. Uncle Neal mothballed the boat from then on in a relative’s garage where it sat for the better part of 2 years.

Fast forward to September 2006. After moving back to Rochester and getting the fishing bug from my first excurison to Canada, I convinced my wife to let me rescue the unused boat from my uncle. For some reason she said yes.

Kris’s First Boat, September 2006

She (the boat, not my wife) was a little battered and bruised. The windshield was cracked, the canvas frame was bent, the lower unit on the motor was cracked and leaking, the tires on the trailer were dryrotted, but overall it was much as I had remembered it. It’s a boat, and it’s mine that’s all that matters. I quickly came up with a name for her – the Fish Fry. While Mason didn’t think it was a tough enough name, like the Predator or Salmon Slammer, I think it is absolutely fitting. The boat is a small fry will certainly put fish in the pan.

The Fish Fry has become both a tinkering hobby of mine (a place to pour my time and money), and a great place to spend a sunrise with family or friends. This page will link to the good times had and the projects completed.

Fishing Fun

• A Salmon and a Dancing Hula Girl, September 20, 2008
• First Salmon Catch: September 23, 2007
• Labor Day 2007 Family Fishing
• Tricia’s Biggest Fish, 10 lb. Northern Pike
• First Fish Caught off the Fish Fry, May 2007

Boating Fun

• Thousand Islands, July 2008
• Erie Canal Boat Trip: Anniversary July, 2007
• Summertime boat ride on Conesus Lake, June 2007

Happy Boating!

Catching up on my HR Marketer reading, I found their post, Promoting Solar Toasters which touted this PR Web in Plain English video. It’s not often that my overtaxed brain gets enlightened thrice in one post, but today was such an occasion.

1. HR Marketer’s RSS Feed contained a little video icon next to the post in my Yahoo RSS Reader. I want to know how they did that. It seems to be a function only of the fact that the post had a video linked within it. This certainly caught my eye, and is something I’d like to have with my posts containing embedded video. I’ll have to look into it.

   

2. The lesson within the video of how PR Web works and the best way to spread PR online was enlightening. The fishing in the stream metaphor is brilliant.

   I’m definitely going to forward the video to our PR manager.

3. Which leads me to my third insight – the beauty of the work being created by commoncraft. They are the company behind all of these ‘paperworks‘ videos. Their seemingly simple technique to illustrate complex ideas is very cool. I’m sure this style of video is here to stay, and we’ll be seeing a lot more of them. I predict their viral factor will be inversely related to the number of times the technique is applied. For instance, I appreciate the illustration of new lightbulbs below especially because my wife just made me change over all the bulbs in our house. However, the technique loses impact in comparison to the illustrations of highly complex internet concepts.

Anyway, I consider myself enlightened today by the strong technique of a few good internet marketers. It’s time to go make icons show on my RSS feeds, send Hudson releases to PR Web, and make videos from scraps of paper and hand gestures.

You know those songs you can’t get out of your head? They’re called earworms. It’s only fitting that my severe earworm from Friday through the weekend was about a worm named Herme. This was a song brought home by Mason from Mrs. Sero’s kindergarten class. Herme…baby…what HAPPENED???

Tonight, Mason launched his first Lego creation from scratch that resembles something. He expertly attached the various pieces of spaceparts to the sand base from his Jack Sparrow Pirates of the Carribean set. The result is a flying garden with an aft tower for the captain to pilot the ship and avoid tractor beams. In honor of his feat I have christened his vessel the Arugula – an homage to the vegetable that forms Rocket salad.

We took pictures of his ship and Photoshop helped propel it to the outer reaches. We’re both excited for his next build.

Finally! The monkey is officially off my back. I have been hitting the salmon fishing hard off the mouth of the Genesee for much of late summer and early fall. Every time I’ve gone out, I’ve gotten closer and closer to getting a salmon. There were a couple of other occasions where I’ve been skunked, or blown off the lake. The other day we had a screamer shake a lure free right off the end of the pier after a 25 minute fight.

So, this morning was awesome when my Dad and I got into a hard fighting Coho right around 6:50am. The sun wasn’t even above the horizon yet. We got her on a black spoon with a green glow in the dark ladder-back. She fought for about 10 minutes. I had the net (which I bought for our Canada trip last year) poised. Now I know how big salmon can be, but I really thought the new net was big enough and deep enough. I swiped at the fish once, and she got out of the net. She took a quick dive, and then Dad horsed it back to the boat. I took a second swipe and missed again. I really do know how to handle a net, but it quickly became clear that this net is NOT big enough for Salmon fishing. Finally, on the third try, after I was sure my dad would push me over the side if I didn’t land the fish, I got her in.

We were psyched! It has been since probably 1990 since we’ve gotten a salmon. This one was only 11 lb 3oz, not very big by salmon standards – but exactly what we were hoping for. We put the lines in the water for another 3 hours, and there wasn’t even another hit. We were very thankful for the one fish that hit and we landed.

It was fun to come home with something other than an empty cooler, and show his grandkids why we spend time sitting on the water drinkineg coffee and eating donuts.

This is the first salmon that I’ve caught from the ol’ boat since I acquired it. I hope it is a sign of more to come.

I’m now officially an uncle. Lilyan Mae Short was born today at 8:58am, weighing in at 6 lbs. 9 oz., and measuring 20.5 inches long. My sister, Lindsey and her husband, Mike are in high spirits but tired. After a grueling early morning procedure to have the baby flipped from breech, the Docs decided to perform a C-Section. There will be plenty of new experiences for them as they enter into the adventure called parenting. Congratulations guys!!!

It was strange enough when I became a dad for the first time, but for some reason it seems even more strange to be an Uncle Kris. I’m very excited though. It’s wonderful to have a little one in the family again!

Of course Tricia scooped the story before I did, so check out her entries:

• The birthday party complete with video
• Our pre-birth bets
• ‘Cousin’s’ first announcement

Time for Uncle Kris and Aunt Tricia to start stockpiling the loud and obnoxious gifts. Children’s drumsets…the gift that keeps on giving. 🙂

photo by hallelujah.

Beginning in the first week of October, Tricia and I will be starting a brand new Small Group. This group of 3 to 8 couples (depending on how many are interested) will meet weekly for 6 weeks for about 2 hours to discover more about themselves, build deeper friendships, and most of all relax and have a good time together.

So here’s the scoop. The Rzepkowski’s: Kris, Tricia, Mason and Anna moved back to Rochester in 2005 after a 5 year stint in Chicago. Our life in Chicago began without kids, and without any relatives nearby. We found ourselves in search of a way to connect with others outside of our busy work schedules and make some new friends. We were barely Catholics at the time, but decided anyway that maybe Church was a way to fulfill our needs.

By chance, at one of those extremely awkward mixer/social gatherings we happened upon the most dynamic youth minister we had ever met. Jim Melton and his wife Kathy happened to be our same age and in nearly the same life situation as us. Very shortly thereafter, Jim proposed that we join them and some other couples in a Small Group. I didn’t even know what a Small Groups was, but I soon found it was exactly what I needed. Over two years these couples met and talked about faith, work, marriage, sports…whatever. The guys even shared – something I surely wasn’t used to.

Now, Small Groups were not something I was familiar with as a Catholic. But, I finally had found what was missing from church all along; community, friendship, challenging each other to grow. We grew so much in fact that we moved from the Catholic church to Community Christian Church where there was amazing worship music (most of which we heard on the radio all the time), and ministers who brought relevant messages to us instead of ritual.

Fast forward to today. Tricia and I now know that Small Groups are a great way to build lasting friendships in our new (old) home of Rochester. We belong to Browncroft Community Church and try hard to lead a Christian life to the limited extent that we understand what that means. I have never led a Small Group before, but I felt God call me to do so. I also have so many questions about life, love, faith that I’m just dying to get them answered with the help of friends.

OK, enough of my story. There will be plenty of time to share.

What is a Small Group?
Simple. A weekly meeting at our house where we will facilitate a meaningful discussion of life.

Do I need to be Christian, go to your church, or even attend church regularly?
Nope. Everyone’s Walk is totally different. You don’t need to belong to Browncroft Community Christian either. Just come because you’d rather spend more time with other humans than you do with your DVR.

Is this a Bible study? What will we be doing?
We will be doing a DVD based Small Group program called “Beginning Life Together”. It follows the principles of the best selling book “A Purpose Driven Life” by Rick Warren. There is more info about the content of the study, including a video preview on the website lifetogether.com. There is a study guide that each couple will purchase for $8 which will help lead our exploration. There won’t be any homework. You’ll come watch the DVD, chat, snack, and go home. In my mind, this really isn’t “Bible Study”. That’s way too hard-core for me 🙂

When will this be?
Wednesday evenings from 7:30-9:30. The first meeting will be October 3rd.

What about childcare?
The Small Group should be uninterrupted by kids. We would therefore hope that you could arrange babysitting. However if childcare is the one thing that is preventing you from joining us, let’s work as a group to come up with a solution. Some options include:

1. Group members with kids could bring them to our house. One of the parents would skip the Small Group on a rotation every week to watch all of the children.
2. All parents pitch in on a sitter
   There’s other ideas, but we can work together to figure it out.

I’m really looking forward to building a group that everyone points to as a great part of their life.

This weekend I took some time to be with my parents and enjoy two of their favorite hobbies – classic cars and vintage racing. We participated in what amounts to a public holiday in the town of Watkins Glen, NY – the Grand Prix Festival. Plus, my dad was racing in the SVRA Zippo US Vintage Grand Prix up at the Watkins Glen International race track.

Friday morning I got my Pit Pass and helped prep my dad’s 1967 MG Midget race car for his first qualifying race. The bad news from the previous day had been that he was disqualified at the tech inspection for illegal coil-over springs (his vintage car is supposed to have leaf springs) and therefore couldn’t place in any of the races. They still let him race though as ‘Racer-X’, which was nice of them considering he paid for the privilege. The other bad news from the previous day was that he only made it through 2 laps of his test before blowing a rotor. A rotor, as I learned after hearing the story MANY times, is a $3 plastic part that spins under the distributor cap delivering spark to the plugs. He changed the rotor and the car was now ready to go for the day’s qualifier.

My mom and I accompanied dad down to pit row where they ‘grid’ the cars for the start of the race.

Friday was beastly hot, with highs in the upper 90’s. Our job is to keep the driver cool while he awaits the start of the race. .

It is especially hot after he puts on the fire resistant hood and the helmet. That’s a lot of gear to have a good time.

Finally, they are ready to roll. What boy doesn’t dream of having his Hot Wheels cars on a real track? These big boys with their big toys must have a lot of fun.

The qualifier was exciting…for the first 2 minutes. He got one and a half laps into the race and blew another rotor. Dad got on the radio and said that the tow trucks were towing him in (it’s a free ride no AAA needed). All he needed though was one timed lap, a 2:35 for officials to determine where he would start in the feature races.

In the afternoon, my mom and I went to downtown Watkins Glen to see exactly why the kids have a day off from school for the festival. Apart from the concours d’elegance (a car show featuring the best of the best) and the terrific local beers (with no open container laws) I could see why.

Many of the local roads were shut down completely to re-create the old 6.5 mile road course the went right through the heart of town. The place was buzzing with energy as wave after wave of vintage cars ran the track. The special marques for this year’s festival, BMW and Bugatti, were especially cool to see.

As far as experiences go, all of this paled in comparison to the highlight of my day. At 6pm my dad, along with all of the other SVRA racers brought their cars down from the track. I donned a helmet and took my place in a makeshift jumpseat beside him as we readied for the grand prix race reenactment. I had pretty low expectations as officials intend to keep the “race” at low speeds. I was shocked at how much fun I had though as the green flag waived.

My dad took his little roller skate around the first corner at 35 MPH with crowds of people cheering as though we were doing this for real. Then in a heartbeat we climbed the hill to the top of the Glen at 80 MPH.

From that point onward, the smile never left my face. He drove us through winding turns, over a stone bridge, and down into the Glen with a spectacular view of the south end of Seneca Lake. I’m not sure how my dad was able to concentrate through my obnoxious YEEEEHAWWWW’s and thumbs up to the crowds, but he handled it like a pro.

When I saw the checkered flag I was disappointed that this was not a 500 lap race, but alas we needed to give the streets back to the town again. Now I understand why everyone gets so stoked for racing. Our enthusiasm must have shown through our helmets because the local paper picked up the story of the race. There we were on Saturday morning with our picture on the front page.

I’ve got to thank my mom and dad for an awesome time together. It really was a weekend of memories. I also need to thank my bride for taking care of the homefront so that I could go off on this racing adventure.