The Gamble Family Day of Good Deeds

(A few people have asked me to share my list from last weekend’s Day of Awesomeness, so here it is.)

Last Friday, I asked both the Adult Spouse and the Busy Teenager if they had big plans for Saturday.  They both said no—if cautiously.  I asked them to give me four hours, and wouldn’t say why, but I promised it would be worth it. I could tell they weren’t all that interested in whatever I was cooking up. But they soon would be.

We were going out to Be Excellent to Others.

Lately, we’ve all had a lot of distractions: work, travel, school, did I mention work? We needed a recalibration. Inspired by this blog post, written by a lady who decided to spend her 38th birthday doing 38 nice things for other people, I knew exactly what my family needed in order to get out of our own heads and get focused on what the holidays are truly about.

I took some ideas from Robyn’s post, and then asked close friends for a couple of ideas, and then also asked G. and K. for some of their thoughts too.  We wanted to do 25 nice things for other people, in honor of 25 days of Christmas.

First, we had to do some prep work: some baking, drawing a few note cards, shopping for a few things, and stopping by the bank for coins.  While we got ready, one of K’s friends decided to join us.

Then, we were off.

•  We bought two cases of bottled water, and put stickers on them that said “Merry Christmas from a Neighbor”.  As we drove around town, we gave water to people who looked like they could use one… some volunteers standing on Preston who were waving drivers over to see Santa… some Boy Scouts who were selling Christmas trees… we just walked up and said, “You look thirsty! Here you go!”

•  At the grocery store, we loaded up the little toy machines by the front door with quarters.

•  We delivered a big platter of warm chocolate chip cookies to Fire Station #2.

•  We let in every single car that needed to merge or enter traffic. On a sunny December Saturday on Preston Road, let me tell you… this was a lot of cars!

•  At Starbucks, we paid for the two cars behind us. The drive-thru lady said, “Really?” and then we handed her two cards to give to the drivers, on which we’d written “Merry Christmas from a neighbor.” K waved at the car behind us as we drove away.

•  We went to Target and returned shoppers’ carts to the corral for them.

•  Inside Target, we bought a $50 gift card and put it in an envelope that said “Happy holidays from a friend”. G. spotted a family that seemed to be doing a lot of window-shopping but not much buying, and handed it to the mom and walked away.

•  We drew big notes that said, “Merry Christmas from your neighbor! Have an amazing and blessed day!” and put them under windshields in parking lots all over town.

•  Left a Hershey bar (in Wren’s honor) in our mailbox with a note that said “Thanks for being an awesome mail person!”

•  Our cats wanted in on the fun. We collected some canned cat food and new toys, and made a bag up for the Frisco Humane Society, which was having an adoption event at PetSmart. We bought a $20 gift card to PetSmart (the Humane Society uses pet gift cards to buy supplies for its foster animals), and slipped it in the bag, along with a note “from our cats” that read, “Merry Christmas to all the pets at Frisco Humane Society. We hope you find your forever homes soon. Love, Larry and Sebastian”. We gave it to the adoption lady and then scritched a few kitty and chihuahua heads.

•  At Nordstrom, the four of us held all four doors open for shoppers. The ones with strollers and arms full of packages were especially grateful.

•  At Sugar Queen, we pre-paid for the cupcakes of the little kids who were waiting in line behind us.

•  At Barnes & Noble, we bought several $5 gift cards and stuck notes inside that said “Merry Christmas! Keep Reading!” Everyone picked their favorite authors in the children’s book section and tucked cards in.

•  We bought a book for the Big Brothers Big Sisters Holiday Book Drive. We also made a donation to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

•  We got $20 in brand-new shiny gold dollar coins, and spread them around. We put five each around the playgrounds at Preston North Park and First Street Park. We set a couple on shelves at Target, and on the stacks at Barnes & Noble. Kylie set one down on a table right in front of a bemused 10-year-old at Pottery Barn, just to see what would happen. (He stared at her quizzically and she finally said, “It’s a dollar!” and he retorted, “Um, I know!”)

After our second or third act, K. mentioned how much fun she was having, and how fun it was to surprise other people by doing nice things for them. I told her that I absolutely understood, and that some people even argue that because it feels so good to do good for others, it’s impossible to ever do anything truly selfless—because the giver is receiving a benefit too. (I implied that this was some famous philosopher’s position, when really I’m pretty sure it was just Phoebe from Friends)

At the end of the day, there may have been some Life Lessons Learned. I’m not sure. There were definitely some little lessons learned—like how utterly simple it is to suddenly, unexpectedly, for no reason at all, do something kind for another human being.

I do know that, in the end, nobody regretted having humored me with their Saturday. I do know that we aren’t going to forget the day we went all over our town doing nice things for strangers.

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Hypermobility*

*but were afraid to ask.

Last Saturday, I was at Grand Lake in northeast Oklahoma with my family. There was an incident on a boat, which can be blamed neither on alcohol nor weather nor some reckless yahoo on a Ski-doo. Sadly, there is no one to blame but me… but I stepped down off the dock crookedly, and I twisted my right ankle. It just rolled outward and popped, and I went down like a sack of concrete.

I’ve had ankle sprains before, but nothing ever like this. Within minutes, it was swollen to the size of a softball. I was able to climb to a sitting position, but just barely; mostly, I spent the day lolling on the aft seat while people brought me Advil and cold beverages and ice packs wrapped in towels. I didn’t swim, I didn’t go on the Waverunners, I couldn’t go up and down to the docks like everyone else.

Soon, the swelling got colorful. It’s been a fine rainbow of bruises, from aqua and blue to purplish-red. I hobbled around the rest of the weekend, doing the PRINCE treatment and trying to stay off it. By the second day, it didn’t seem to be improving, so I made an appointment with my family physician in Dallas. Read more…

Where They Came From

Migration into Collin County in 2008

Take a look at this interactive infographic from Forbes compiling where Americans are moving, by county. I’ve linked to the map for Collin County.

Black lines show people moving into Collin County and red lines show people moving away. If you mouse over a blue county, you can see how many people moved, and what their median incomes were.

It looks like the majority of the relocators were coming from Texas, Southern California, Southern Florida, and the Northeast. Interestingly, those few who were leaving Collin ended up in other Texas metroplexes like Austin, Houston, and San Antonio.

By comparison, Detroit's residents are fleeing in droves. We have been fortunate that North Texas fared comparatively well during the recession.

The map application is fascinating to play with for other counties too. For example, check out Wayne County, Michigan, where Detroit is located; what a sad state of affairs.

This is all based on IRS data for 2008, and is a neat picture of how diverse Collin County has become.

It has always seemed like everyone here is from somewhere else, present company included. Now we can see it in black and white (and red).

States Turning to Last Resorts

The NYT has a story today about just how dire the situation is for the U.S. states.  There are many unusual measures being enacted in order to scrape up revenue: releasing prisoners early… closing state parks… Maine is going to tax candy. Kentucky is going to tax cell phone ringtones.

“Legislators have never dealt with a recession as precipitous and rapid as this one,” said Susan K. Urahn, managing director of the Pew Center on the States. “They’re faced with some of the toughest decisions legislators ever have to make, for both political and economic reasons, so it’s not surprising that the environment has become very tense.”

The hardest part is that it’s going to take a while. If you believe the analysts who say we have indeed hit the bottom of the market drop, we’ll still have a long while to wait before unemployment turns around and the housing market picks up.  And both of those things have to happen before consumers are back to work, and will start spending again — in turn creating the boosts to sales, property and income tax that the states will require in order to see revenues return.  So there’s still a very long way to go.

“How to develop leaders and not managers”

In a March 14, 2009 New York Times article called “Is it Time to Retrain Business Schools?“, author Kelley Holland has a new take on the “where did this all go so wrong?” autopsy that everyone is performing on the current economy.
Read more…

State Economic Stimulus Plans

From NCSL.org:

A number of states have proposed, designed and enacted state-level stimulus plans in response to the current economic recession.  Public spending on infrastructure projects is perhaps the most common component of state stimulus plans.  Other elements include small business development, increased capital in local financial markets, job creation incentives, and investments in green energy and health technology.

The [chart at link above] shows stimulus plan details for 16 states.  Investments from these selected states add up to over $10 billion.

This bit from Indiana is especially interesting: “The proposal also clarifies that the legislature, not the governor, is to distribute future federal stimulus funds.” In other words, the Indiana General Assembly has ruled that any money coming to the state from the Congressional stimulus package will get appropriated by the legislature.

And yet, the Indiana General Assembly must adjourn no later than April 30, 2009. I expect the governor will have to call a special session in order for the Assembly to meet to appropriate these funds.

So, in a bit of wonkish irony: the legislature made a rule calling dibs on doling out federal stimulus money… but existing rules will likely mandate that the governor gets to decide the mechanism by which the lege will do the doling.

BreakingPoint

On Friday, US News & World Report ran a piece that has the internet abuzz.

In “15 Companies That Might Not Survive 2009,” Rick Newman opens with the recent demise of big-box retailers Circuit City and Linens-N-Things. From there, I expected to see the list populated mostly with similar retail operations — companies that sell consumer goods at a time when consumers just aren’t consuming. (It’s not a trick of the crystall ball to speculate that long-troubled BlockBuster likely won’t last the year. They weren’t doing well before the bust, and haven’t significantly changed their product offerings or business model in any meaningful way since. Chrysler was another no-brainer for the list.)

But I wasn’t expecting #15:

BearingPoint. (BGPT; about 16,000 employees; stock down 21%). This Virginia-based consulting firm, spun out of KPMG in 2001, is struggling to solve its own operating problems. The firm has consistently lost money, revenue has been falling, and management stopped issuing earnings guidance in 2008. Stable government contracts generate about 30 percent of the firm’s business, but the firm may sell other divisions to help pay off debt. With a key interest payment due in April, management needs to hustle - or devise its own exit strategy.

What especially surprised me is the idea that if BearingPoint survives, it will be based on their substantial pile of “stable government contracts.” Read more…

One Year Ago Today

I was preparing to travel to Bonita Springs, Florida for a legislative leadership conference. It was wintry and cold in Dallas, so it was difficult to pack light, warm-weather clothes — even though I knew the temps in southwest Florida were in the 70°s.

I had just been interviewed by the New York Times (who made me sound a little ditzy).

I was planning a vacation with my brother and sister-in-law, who figured on having a last hurrah before they started a family.

The US states had just started to get an inkling of the budget trouble that was coming down the pike (PDF).

We were still in the midst of primaries for the US presidential election. Neither party had a nominee yet.

Doesn’t it feel like one hundred years ago?

The Fall Was Fast

I recently worked for an Irish company, so I am more interested in American perspectives on Irish business and culture than others might be. This NYT article “The Irish Economy’s Rise Was Steep, and the Fall Was Fast” (Jan 3, 2009) offers a snapshot of the current condition of the Celtic Tiger.

“This place missed out entirely on the moment,” says Stephen Kinsella, an economist at the University of Limerick. “There has been no accumulation of wealth here.”

Walking through the garbage-strewn, empty roads on a cold, misty afternoon, Mr. Kinsella points to the shuttered houses and the mothers still dressed in pajamas taking their children home from school. Social workers in Moyross refer to the “pajama index”: the more men and women one sees who do not take the time and care to dress for the day, the worse the economic situation tends to be.

The “pajama index” is well-articulated — although not just as an Irish phenomenon, because I’m sure that it’s a symptom in other Western cultures as well. Just as England is more than London, Ireland is more than Dublin.

A big pie makes lots of slices.

California’s budget problem has been common knowledge for some time. But at a press conference on Friday, Governor Schwarzenegger stated that the situation is basically on the verge of disaster — and that CA legislators should plan to stay in Sacramento for Christmas, in order to work, rather than going home to their families.

Sure, a Republican governor comments that his Dem-majority legislators should stay in the state capitol and do their jobs, because they refuse to pass his pet plan; actually, this sort of thing happens a lot. But, at this point, it’s beyond partisan gamesmanship; the financial stakes are incredibly high in California.

I suspect that we’ll see the Governator go to DC in January after the inauguration, and ask President Obama to help him convince Timothy Geithner to release some of the $700B Paulson-led bailout money, in order to aid California. The state is the eighth-largest economy in the world, and they are flat broke… something has to give.

People have recession fatigue. Now that Americans have swallowed (however reluctantly) giving almost a trillion taxpayer dollars to the U.S. government to distribute however it sees fit in the name of financial rescue, getting them adjusted to the idea of giving some of it back to beleaguered state governments is an easy sell. Getting Congress on board to give help to the most populous state in the Union is a no-brainer too.

Just have to wait and see!