A Wonderfully Busy Weekend

I hope you had a great weekend and that you enjoyed the awesome but probably short-lived "heat wave". I am not quite ready for grandkids, so it was great to get down to Cincinnati to visit with my brand new niece. I forget just how small and soft new babies are, but they sure are relaxing to hold!

When I hit the ground and hopped into an Uber on Friday, the streets were like a ghost town. I asked the driver what was going on and he said that the 1" of snow they had gotten had closed most everything. Could you imagine if we closed schools every time we got 1" of snow!

Keeping Busy: We had an extremely busy weekend back here and it was nice to have Twitter to keep track of it all. Our Academic Decathlon team placed third and earned another trip to the state championship which was exciting, and we had several students compete and find success in the written portion of The Post Standard/Syracuse.com/WCNY Spelling Bee. The Academic Decathlon Team competes for the state title on February 23-24 and the next round of the Spelling Bee is on February 10. Congratulations to all, and I am looking forward to following their successes.

We also had all kinds of sports in competition over the weekend so my phone kept blowing up with scores and highlights. Wrestling, Track, Boys Basketball, Girls Hockey, and Cheerleading all had some very exciting moments; and Girls Basketball, not afraid to play anyone, fought hard against the sixth-ranked team in the state. Good stuff!

Skating with the Team: The Boys Hockey team did not play over the weekend, so I took the opportunity to skate with them at a practice late last week. Now, mind you that I do not skate really well, I can't "chop stop", and I can't skate backwards, but the kids asked me to come and skate with them and I did not want to miss that opportunity.

Let me tell you that I was pretty terrified. Those kids are good. They are fast, skilled, and strong. Coach Colabufo kept me out of harm's way by having me help with some drills. I had a blast. I did tell the boys in the huddle that I wanted to be with them because you have to follow through on what you say you are going to do in life, and every now and then you have to get out of your comfort zone in order to get a new appreciation and perspective on life. Check and check.

Set, lighting, and sound preparation continue for the high school musical Anything Goes, and music students continue their preparations for college entrance. On Thursday, I visited with students in the music wing and as we entered the auditorium, there were about 50 students in the seats. As I spoke with them and asked them why they were there, the students told me that they wanted to support their classmates who were practicing their college auditions. How cool is that?

An Important Message: My message of the week? You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Where did I get that? In a Lyft on the way to an SU game when I asked the driver, who told me he was a motivational speaker by day and Lyft driver by night. He said it again, and it started to sink in. He got it from world-renowned speaker Jim Rohn and basically it means that we are (no matter how type A we think we are) influenced by the people around us and the more time we spend with people, the more their values and ideals and character seep into our thoughts and actions.

I really had to think about the five people I truly spend the most time with, and what influence they have had on my personal and professional development; both positive and negative. While my "five people" are all generally like-minded to me, some have traits and backgrounds that I don't have. I learn from them, and I think that helps me to be a better person (with plenty of room to grow) every day. Very interesting stuff, and as I reflected on my life, a few of those "five people" have changed over the years, and now I really understand why. Here is a link if you would like to read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/tim-ferriss-average-of-five-people-2017-1.

What is also interesting is our new website, which will be launched later this week. Huge thanks to Bonnie Russell for her work in helping us to make the upgrade. The new site will work much better on ANY device and we worked hard to ensure that the pages are accessible by the visually and hearing impaired (a tougher job than you might think).

Let's hope we can keep some of this warmer weather around for at least a few more days.

Thanks for reading and enjoy the week!

Chris