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.

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.

They took one look at it and sent me for x-rays. The x-ray technician took…well, three very radioactive looks at it, and referred me to an orthopedic surgeon—for the x-ray revealed “a tiny chip suggesting avulsion-type fracture of the lateral malleolus.” But whether or not the ankle was cracked or broken was inconclusive on the films.

Without the ortho opinion, all they could tell for sure was that I was not allowed to go down to Fair Park last night to see Wicked at the Dallas Summer Musicals. (And I had so been looking forward to it. I was invited by a colleague to a private dinner at the Music Hall before the show, with a themed menu. Wicked Wedge of the West with blue cheese crumbles. I promise I’m not making this up.)

So I stayed home, sulking on the couch—Ace-bandaged and ice-packed and elevated. I played Dr. Google while looking over the x-ray report, and I learned that the lateral malleolus is the bottom-most point of the fibula (leg bone) and it makes the outer bony protusion that you think of as your ankle, and that fractures to it are fairly common. I learned that ankle sprains are the most common injury that basketball players experience.

In fact, I read so much last night that I was sure I knew exactly what would happen in my exam today. (Cue foreboding music.)

So today, I saw a very nice orthopedic surgeon specializing in foot and ankle, and an orthopedic PA. They reviewed my x-rays. And they wiggled my right foot around, and poked and prodded it in ways that were clearly very scientific. They appreciated my Technicolor cankle to appropriate degrees.

And the diagnosis was that I do not have a fracture—just a severe sprain. Which was the good news.

The bad news is that I have ligamentous laxity or hypermobility— the clinical term for a life-long condition that in the olden days we called “double-jointed.”

Which I had always believed was a good thing. When I was a kid, it was a cool trick that I could bend my fingers from just the top knuckle, or bend my thumb back to touch my forearm. When I was in dance and gymnastics, it was an asset that I was so flexible. As an adult, it has impressed my stepkid that I am still closer to doing the splits at 30-something, with no practice, than she is at 14, with weeks of stretching.

I’m bendy. Always have been. It impresses people in gym class. More limber. More flexible. What’s not to love about that?

But as Dr. D. was asking me pointed questions about what kinds of joint injuries I’d had as a child (loads of them), and did I notice my joints clicking and popping in normal range of motion (yes!), and how far back I could bend my fingers (freakishly far)… the light bulb was slowly dawning. When I showed him the bizarre way I can rotate my elbows, he was sure.

There isn’t a lot of research in the U.S. on hypermobility. It’s a very prevalent diagnosis in the UK and Europe, but allegedly American doctors don’t diagnose it or pay much attention to it. (Which I believe, since I’m a textbook case of it and yet it took my first adult visit to an orthopedic specialist at age 36 for anyone to notice)

Every major injury I’ve had in life can tie directly back to this hypermobility: The hamstring tear in 10th grade. The broken wrist in 7th grade. The shoulders that I can dis- and re-locate á la Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon. And the near-annual right ankle sprain (although never this bad).

And there’s the rub: it’s never been this bad before. But those loosey-goosey joints that were fun when I was young and springy are now just… loose. The doctor described my right ankle ligaments as stretched out and not keeping my ankle in place as designed. In fact, in two weeks, if my ligaments haven’t done a suitable amount of internal repair work, the ortho wants to talk surgery.

My hypermobile ligaments are not snapping back like a fresh rubber band. They’re lying limp, and I’m injuring myself.

If there is a silver lining to the rainbow sprain, it’s that I got examined by this orthopedic specialist and got a reality check about my ligaments and joints. I have to change a few things in my life, if I don’t want hobbling and aching to be the new normal.

Very simply, I have to build up my muscular strength, so that my muscles and bones can do what my worn-out ligaments apparently cannot: protect my joints.

Otherwise, I’ll be dooming myself to a life of missing out on fun like family lake weekends, and the “Wicked Wedge of the West.”

And I think we can all agree what a tragedy that is.

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).

“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.

The master’s of business administration, a gateway credential throughout corporate America, is especially coveted on Wall Street; in recent years, top business schools have routinely sent more than 40 percent of their graduates into the world of finance.

But with the economy in disarray and so many financial firms in free fall, analysts, and even educators themselves, are wondering if the way business students are taught may have contributed to the most serious economic crisis in decades.

“It is so obvious that something big has failed,” said Ángel Cabrera, dean of the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Ariz. “We can look the other way, but come on. The C.E.O.’s of those companies, those are people we used to brag about. We cannot say, ‘Well, it wasn’t our fault’ when there is such a systemic, widespread failure of leadership.”

Cabrera’s quote is the gist of the article: We the Business Community encouraged this to happen, by institutionalizing and placing extremely high value on an educational program that rewards that behavior which prioritizes shareholder return above all else, including responsibility and risk management.

As someone without an MBA, my inclination is to file this nugget away for future reference. What a timely response I could provide if asked whether an MBA is in my future.

But as someone who works alongside MBAs — and has seen first-hand the commoditization of that degree, and how it can serve as a license for managers to behave badly and to operate without conscience — I have to say that I am glad that thought leaders in the business world are finally realizing that “we have seen the enemy, and he is us.”

Manager ≠ leader.

NB: For the record, I riffed on the MBA in my About page months and months ago. It wasn’t an opportune update sparked by the NYT article!

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.

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.”

I can tell you first-hand that providing professional services to the public sector can be challenging, and that engagements are prone to bumps and hurdles. But those are a common element of public-private relationships. What separates the wheat from the chaff among government contractors is how those inevitable bumps and hurdles are handled.

And from what I’ve heard and seen, I’d be hard-pressed to say that BearingPoint has always risen above to triumph:

• In 2007, BearingPoint had to abandon a multimillion-dollar technical contract in Florida, to privatize the state’s accounting services via a project called “Aspire,” after significant technical failures (“$89M down the state drain”, St. Petersburg Times, May 18, 2007).
  
  

  To be fair to BearingPoint, it does sound like the state of Florida had equal culpability in this one. Still, why was the situation allowed to get this bad? Over three years and ~$90M, the project shouldn’t have devolved into “he said, she said” on a public stage. That’s an embarrassment to both parties — and worse, it erodes the public’s confidence in the state’s ability to oversee high-dollar appropriations.

• In 2004, BearingPoint was removed from another multimillion-dollar contract in Florida, where they were contracted to “maintain and improve services delivered through the State Technology Office’s data center, desktop management, and e-government services.”
  
  

  The contract was retracted due to what were spun by state officials as “procurement irregularities”… but “unfair advantage” by losing bidders.

  State auditors allege that [then-state CIO Kimberly] Bahrami did not use the same requirements for all contractor proposals that were evaluated. Bahrami chose BearingPoint as the lead contractor amongst top firms such as Accenture, and three other bidders that did not make it to the final cut. After Bahrami’s decision, the State gave BearingPoint extra perks such as additional work and compensation which was not part of the original blueprint. Florida audior general, Bill Monroe, stated that according to Florida law, competing vendors did not have an equal opportunity to make proposals. (Law & Entrepreneurship News, 8/28/04)

  And a few weeks after presenting BearingPoint with this $126M contract on a silver platter, Bahrami resigned from the state, to “pursue other professional opportunities”.

  At BearingPoint.

  This affair cast such a pall over the Florida State Technology Office that then-Governor Jeb Bush put Simone Marstiller in place, presumably with a directive to clean house and restore public faith… but to no avail: the STO was defunded by the Florida State Legislature in 2005.

• In 2001, BearingPoint was selected to serve as the systems integrator for a software system called CoreFLS, in a project intended by the US Department of Veteran Affairs to improve health services for veterans — with a price tag close to $500 million (BearingPoint’s cut was $117M).
  
  The prototype was to be built at the Bay Pines VA Medical Center in Florida, then rolled out nationwide, but CoreFLS was riddled with problems, throughout the multi-year engagement. CoreFLS eventually had to be abandoned, at a loss of ~ $300M. BearingPoint spokesman John Schneidawind said that BearingPoint believed it had complied with the CoreFLS contract, and that the system exceeded VA requirements.
  
  

  Criminal and civil investigations were launched (though, I can’t find where — if ever — there were criminal findings). A post-mortem assessment by Carnegie Mellon University called CoreFLS “an exemplary case study in how not to do technology transition.” One U.S. Senator wanted BearingPoint banned from bidding for all government contracts, over the Bay Pines disaster.

This is just three — of the dozens of big contracts that BearingPoint has landed with state and federal government agencies since leaving KPMG. And apparently, ethical issues around “procurement irregularities” aren’t that unusual when BearingPoint is involved.

Now let’s say you are one of the US states experiencing fiscal recession right now (which is most of them). Can you afford — especially in this economic climate, when taxpaying voters are being asked to tighten their belts at home — to earmark even one dime for a company that has a demonstrated history of spectacular expensive failure on government projects?

16,000 employees is a lot of jobs — and for the sake of those workers, I hope BearingPoint hangs on. But it’s got to be an uphill climb to win public-sector contracts… at a time when corporate waste and greed are taking a shellacking in the public sentiment, and every single government appropriation is being examined with a fine-tooth comb.

I just don’t see how it can be enough to pull beleaguered BearingPoint out of the hole.

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?

“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.

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!