This week at work has been all about consolidation. We learned a number of lessons during our European sojourn that we are presently implementing. We continue to tighten our availability in order to improve our productivity, energy, and focus. We are making our intake process more standardized so that there is less slippage. We are building out improved documents as we learn best practices through doing more deals. We are consolidating relationships that we have made over the past few months that should prove fruitful for all involved. While we are taking a bit of a pause to incorporate what we learned into our working procedures, it isn’t much of a pause as we are moving towards what may be as many as seven or eight closings before the end of May. It is an exciting time for the business.

Over the weekend, I was also reminded of how important family and friends are. This is a different form of consolidation of some of the ideas I had while abroad but no less important. I was in Kentucky for a wedding-retirement-Derby party. On the drive, I picked up my brother and sister-in-law at the airport and was able to spend some time alone with them over dinner. On Saturday, a large number of people gathered at my parents’ home for the party and I was thrust back into the social life of a small town. This meant a great deal of talking about the business and of what has been recorded in these newsletters as many of my most faithful readers were in attendance.

It was decided that the most fun way to handle the horse race itself was to have a random drawing for horses in two pots. I did much the same once in college and hilarity ensued as everyone yelled at the television for two minutes, but this crowd was more educated about horse racing and more sedate. Well, most of the crowd was more educated about horse racing. I spent the race giving a running commentary to two of my young cousins who had never seen a horse race before. They were transfixed by everything going on around them during the race but I’m sure they will need further instruction. Everyone at the track was stunned by the result, so much so that you could almost hear the silence through the television, but somehow no one at the party was surprised when I won the loser pool. Yes, it may have been a random drawing, but I drew the horse that came in last place and so won the whole pool. Because of course that’s what happened.

The weekend was a marked contrast to much of the time I spent in Europe over the last month alone. This provides yet more fodder as I continue to think about how I want to live this phase of my life now that we have proven to ourselves that we can work from elsewhere.