Author: drewmillikin

Our boss was in the hospital last week having hip replacement surgery. We thought it would be funny if the Purple Knight delivered a gift basket that we put together for him.

When the word “mascot” comes up in the admission office, I’m using the first to be volunteered to wear the costume. I actually have a lot of fun wearing that thing – despite how much it smells and how hot it is.

After delivering the basket, we thought it would be fun to visit some of the kids in the oncology ward as well. I put this little video of the day together. I was definitely having too much fun.

We had a staff retreat today. Typically I dread these things, and i was certainly not looking forward to this meeting.

As we got into it though, I didn’t seem to mind it as much as I did past retreats. I think this is because it was the professional staff only.

It will sound elitist I’m sure, but it’s tough to bring the two groups together for one meeting. We have such different jobs that it is very difficult to get things done when the two groups are together.

Today, we had an agenda, stuck to it, and were able to get quite a bit accomplished in a relatively short amount of time. Everyone was involved with the conversation, and there was not a lot of excess opinion blabbering. Everyone was able to stay on task because they had a better understanding of what we were covering.

It was definitely a good meeting. I came out with the feeling that we had accomplished something. A rare feeling in higher education.

Been too busy to blog. We hit the ground running yesterday. Well, actually we were biking. Tim and Christina lent us their mountain bikes and we bike 16 miles along the bay, over the Golden Gate Bridge, into Sausalito and ending in Tiburon. It took us a bout four hours because we kept stopping in awe of the sites.

(the photos may look different because I’m switching back to Picasa from Flickr. Flickr is a pain and I’ve finally decided I don’t like it as much. You can click on the slide shows to see the individual photos)

Today was equally busy. Tim lent us his car and we headed for Tiburon at 8 a.m. We drove to Muir Woods and walked around there for an hour and a half or so. It was incredible. The trees are enormous and average between 500 and 800 years old.

After the morning walk we went to three different vineyards in Sonoma. We started at Vianis where we bought a bottle of wine and a couple of delicious pizzas for lunch. We then moved on to another which I won’t try to spell. It sounds like, “gun lock bun shoe.” The wine there was great. Finally, we headed to Larson Family vineyard. That one was much more whimsical that the other two.

After the vineyard trips, we dropped Kris, Spunk and Liz off at there hotel and met Tim and Christina for burritos. We then headed to the Oakland Colosseum for the Red Sox vs A’s. Sox ended up losing, but it was a better game then the score tells.

Not totally sure what tomorrow holds for us. It’s the last day of this West Coast swing. We may do some more vineyards, maybe stay in the city, who knows.

First day in San Francisco. The flight down was a piece of cake. Maria fell asleep before we took off and didn’t wake up until we were preparing for landing. I slept for most of the flight as well. We took the BART from the airport to the financial district and a quick cab to the hotel.

The room wasn’t ready at the time so we walked down to the water, had lunch and walked around and saw some awesome views of the city and the Golden Gate Bridge. We also walked up to the famous Lombard St. It was incredibly steep!

We’re meeting Timothy and Christina for dinner tonight and Micah may meet up with us as well.
You can click on the photo to see more.

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