February 28. Tuesday Night.

Hi Journey.

Good team meeting, almost no bickering among the staff. There was certainly our share of lively discussion, of course, but not any real biting comments.

I hope that doesn't mean they've all stopped caring.

Bloom Team meetings are usually pure discussion. Getting a sales-oriented team to even sit still for a half hour let along keep still during that time is no small challenge. Today felt more like class. We handed out the SelfScore. I asked everybody to fill it out--and no cross-talk with their neighbors thank-you-very-much.

The staff didn't grouse about it at all. Once we were done Joni collected them up, we had a short meeting on the newsletter, decided to shoot for a mid-April launch date, and then everybody scurried back to work.

Scratch that, Journey. They were already at work; the “back to” part is my own vestigial thinking that meetings aren't really “working” somehow. Probably leftover from some of the meetings I used to go to for my part-time job at the library at Smith when all we did was gossip and short-shrift other people.

Half an hour, overall—not bad after last week's marathon. Maybe there's hope. Still, I'm feeling discouraged. Nobody even brought up Brentwood or the B-B initiative. Either they're apathetic or so busy they just don't want to think about it.

But dammit, we have to think about it. Am I the only one that worries about the direction the shop is going in?

Memo to self: Make sure to phone Mattie this week.

Did have a great, short chat with Casey. She's got her tickets to the States locked in. United, of course, which means her upgrade to business class is a cinch.

She gets into San Francisco late on Sunday, the 12 th . She'll stay out there with Mattie for a few days, and then fly to New York on that following Friday. Dad's Birthday is the 19 th , and we'll all go home on the 20 th . Casey will probably fly back via SF, but might try and finagle her way through South Africa on the way back…maybe even Cairo .

“I saw on the news they found some big new statue of Ramses II,” I said.