Newcott Blog

February is already gone. What is up with how fast everything seems to be moving? It’s already March 2007. I feel super-busy. At least this weekend I got to surf twice. Erik and I went out on Saturday morning and caught a few fun waves down at 32nd street. Then yesterday afternoon we went out again at the Newport Pier. It was pretty windy and blown out, but there were some nice waves if you looked for them. We were the only ones out and even though we only stayed out for an hour, we caught about a dozen waves each. I caught a couple of nice rights and my last wave was a solid left. I dropped in on this 4 foot wave and grabbed my right rail and rode down the line until it closed out. Fun. The water was a “warmish” 65 (warm in a full suit) and sun was shining brightly. Erik and I were joking about how bad the conditions were. No pro would have been caught dead out in the same chop. We started thinking about making a spoof surf movie about two bad surfers who only go out in crappy conditions. We’d call the report and if it were 2 foot and poor conditions, we’d round up the crew and start shooting. The whole thing would be set to some wicked death metal. We’d paint our faces and be super intense when we caught tiny little waves and stage violent whipe outs. The video would only be available on VHS. I was laughing so hard I swallowed about a gallon of sea water. I guess you had to be there.

Bronwen, Beret, and I saw Music and Lyrics on Friday night and had dinner at The Cannery. Jet Blue unexpectedly cancelled Beret’s flight home on Saturday so we had a little Oscar party last night. To cap the weekend off, I smoked cigars and drank red wine around a camp fire at Alpo’s last night.

Bronwen took this the other rainy day.  She was in Laguna eating lunch.  It was rainy and foggy.  After lunch she drove up into the hills and found herself above the clouds.  Laguna is so cool.  People live in houses with this view.

Silas loves airplanes.  When he hears one, he looks up, gets really excited, and points at it.  He does this EVERY time.  It's very cute.

Just got back from our yearly sales meeting.  This year, it was in Palm Springs.  I gave an hour long presentation to about 200 reps and led 5 hours of workshops for 100 reps.  I presented on competivite products and led workshops on our key product messaging for 2007.  I had the normal jitters, but I think I did a good job — hopefully earning some respect from the sales force.  Bronwen and Silas met up with me the day after I finished.  The day we drove home, I got sick and have had a head-cold all weekend long.  Apparently something was going around and a bunch of people, including my boss, got sick.  I kept thinking about when I was a kid and learned in science class about Legionnaire's Disease.  I could picture someone sneezing and the bacteria traveling through the resort HVAC system, infecting the hundreds of people at the meeting.