The Abbott Family Blog

It happened at around 10:30pm last night, just after hanging out a bit with a friend at Lulu Carpenter’s, a coffee shop downtown on Pacific Ave. I (Luke) was parked about a minute’s walk down a somewhat dark and deserted street, in the (likewise deserted) bank parking lot. I had some Smarties in my pocket from a jam-party I was at last Saturday, so as I approached my car in the deserted parking lot, I popped one in my mouth. Immediately, I got that nasty sensation of strong sour flavor mixed with a lack of saliva—I don’t know if other people have experienced this, but when this has happened before I’ll get a really terrible feeling in the back of my throat. Almost like some super-concentrated sour syrup getting caught back there.

The difference this time was that something got stuck back there. Suddenly I found I couldn’t breathe. … Continue reading ‘Near-Death Experience’

The thrilling conclusion to an epic five-part series. (See also parts one, two, three, and four.)

Part of the frustration with the stack of meeting notes from the past meeting was that I wasn’t clear how processing and recording them was helpful. Personally, I find it helpful to review projects and priorities regularly—helps keep me on track—but four weeks is too long a gap between reviews. So I started doing weekly reviews, which was very helpful to me. The problem is, if every project I was keeping track of was more-or-less “current” in my own system, what was I doing expending all this energy to keep it current in another system which I don’t use?

Moreover, what’s the point of having a regularly-scheduled meeting if we see each other all the time? Most of our most productive collaborations happen spontaneously anyway. Those are what I need to keep notes of—for myself. So why have a monthly meeting at all?

Papa was very helpful here. He helped me remember the true purpose behind the meeting:

Yeah, that’s right. There’s a reason I chose donuts for the masthead of this blog series.

So what was the solution to my dilemma? I fired myself from the job of Secretary. Kyle’s taking notes now. We’ve yet to see what his minutes will look like. Though I’m pretty sure they won’t have as much detail as mine—after all, I had to remind him several times that “You should be writing this down!”—I don’t care. I keep my own (very brief) notes now, and while the meetings are still kind of long, at least when it’s over, it’s over.

So we can enjoy our donuts.

Part three of an epic three-part series. (See also Part 1, Part 2.)

We left off in this series as I, Luke, had just seized the throne of “chairman of the board” at Abbott Family Music. My first order of business was to revamp the way the meeting was conducted. I was going to prepare a detailed agenda, like my friends over at the CBA do, and to make it complete I was going to ask for agenda items before the meeting. So, three days beforehand, I pulled the following card out of my tickler file and distributed it to my fellow Abbotts:

As it turns out, Kyle didn’t even read it. Why? The writing. It was so fancy, … Continue reading ‘Abbott Family Meeting Drama, Part 3′