Halloween Night

The boys really enjoyed the trick or treating this year and we must have hit a dozen or more houses. Our favorite spooky house was in rare form with fog, graveyard, dozens of spooky creatures and a ghost. I think we are all recovered from Saturday's party and I'm going to load a few more pictures to flickr. You can get to them as always at www.durpenters.org The boys are three in a few days and presents are arriving by the dozens.

So the halloween party was a lot of fun but I've been a little sluggish all day. Go figure. Here's one of the guys in his Twins costume. We all wore them but I don't have a picture of the whole team. Tomorrow night, we go for candy. I'm going to bed now... 

Monster

Monster
Originally uploaded by homerclees.

Spooky

We've been busy this week with work and getting ready for our Halloween party. Decorating, buying stuff, carving pumpkins and creating kick ass itunes party mixes. I just haven't had the energy to post but thought I would sneak one in with a picture of the boys lounging in the mini van. I should have some good shots of all the costumes showing up Saturday. More soon... 

Dylan on the left marching through the patch and Sam on the right busting a move. We went to the local pumpkin patch on Sunday to pick up a few more of the little orange gords for carving. Our annual halloween party is this weekend and we have to have a bunch of spookies to adorn the haunted graveyard.

Here I am in front of the Toad Hollow tasting room in Healdsburg. Like I said in the last post, good times. The flight home was easy but I was tired when I got back to the housed at 6:30am. Slept until noon, got up, ate a bagel with the boys and went back to bed. Got up again at 3 and took the boys to get some more pumpkins. I'll post some of those pictures tomorrow. 

Sonoma wine tour

Good stuff all around. The day was beautiful and the company fantastic. We visited a few spots in and around Healdsburg and I bought a couple of cases of some really good wine. Some Pinot, cabenet, Zin, sparkling and even a couple Pinot Rosa's. Oh yeah and some really interesting Zinfandel Ports, dessert in a bottle.

I'm at Oakland International waiting for my red eye to Dulles. I got upgraded so I will hopefully be able to get some sleep but then again, maybe I'll drink some wine and listen to Green Day. Hard to tell at this point.

I got some picture of wine country that I'll post to flickr and the blog but didn't get the quantity I got last November when Nicole and I spent a couple days in Napa. I really like wine country. The weather, vines, mountains, trees and the wine. Its all good.

Mark Carpenter
General Manager
Web Strategy and Operations
www.aarp.org
--------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld (www.BlackBerry.net)

Aging By Design Article

Here's a link to an e-week article about Aging By Design conference I spoke at earlier this week. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1872349,00.asp

My quote is on page two.

Customer Experience Council Meeting


It's been a good couple days here in Napa. Caught up with a number of old friends and met some new people. The interest in the customer centric marketing world view continues to increase with over 200 people at the dinner last night. Their are now 5 councils and will be 7 by this time next year. I have to say the Phil picked a good spot for this meeting but this place may not be big enough next year.

Sat with BJ Fogg from Standford University's center for Persuasive Technology Lab and Rick Smolan, photographer and author of the recent America 24/7 in which WSO employee Mike Lee got the inside cover shot. It was a really nice dinner and a fairly late night. Met all day today with my council and am going to light a fire, open some wine, order room service and watch a movie tonight. BJ and I are going to do a little wine tasting before I head back to the boys and Nicole. More soon..

Silverado

Silverado
Originally uploaded by homerclees.

Customer experience council

Conversation with Sam

I came home in the afternoon from work to get ready for my council meeting and Blanca, Sam and Dylan were out. They came home about a hour later and Dylan had fallen asleep in the car so Blanca carried him to bed. Sam was wide awake followed Blanca and Dylan upstairs. He saw me and wanted a big hug, which of course I gave him. He then followed me into me room as I was getting dressed and offered to help me get my belt on.

The strangest thing was after that he hopped up on the bed and sat toward me to tell me where he had been with Blanca, what they did and then asked if I was going to go in a taxi car. After I said yes, he said, "then to an airplane?". I said yes again and he told me he made an airplane at the library today.

It may have been my first conversation I've ever had with either of the boys. He understood that I often take a taxi to an airplane and that you can ride in and airplane and make one out of paper at the same time.

He rolled my bag out to the taxi car when it arrived and waived good bye when I left. They seem to be growing up fast and are very happy little guys. I hope they can stay happy little guys as they grow up. I think that will be my priority for the forseable future. Keeping Sam and Dylan laughing.

Mark Carpenter
General Manager
Web Strategy and Operations
www.aarp.org
--------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld (www.BlackBerry.net)

Got back from Boston this afternoon and worked from home the rest of the day. The conference was a success but I was happy to see the boys. I heard Sam tell Blanca "that's my papa" after I came in hugged both of them and started upstairs to drop my bags off.

Kumie posted some pictures from Saturday's pumpkin fun on her site. http://www.tighttrousers.com/gallery/PumpkinPatch05

Enjoy...

This is the view of the center aisle of the Aging by Design Conference I spoke at today. It was pretty full with about 100 attendess hearing about issues around aging and the Internet. I started out with a request that everyone smile for my blog and nobody complained about not signing a release. More soon... 

Pumpkin Patch Pictures Up

Check out www.durpenters.org for the 40 shots of this weekends trip to the pumpkin patch. I took a 175 photos but the 40 I added to the site seem to be the best. Thanks to Kumie for updating the home page with the link. I need to work on my coding skills.

Just finished my speech at the Aging By Design conference and am now just a audience member for the rest of the day. Good to have that behind me. More soon.

Mark Carpenter
General Manager
Web Strategy and Operations
www.aarp.org
--------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld (www.BlackBerry.net)

Bentley college

Bentley college
Originally uploaded by homerclees.

Aging by design conference

I got some great shots today at Summers Farms Pumpkin Patch. Kumie and Joe joined us for the third annual pumpkin romp and I got some really good shots of the boys. I've uploaded them to Durpenters.org but have not added the link yet. I'm hoping Kumie will do a little coding magic and get the shots on the front page sometime on Sunday. This patch was pretty good compared to the last two. I would say we'll go back next year but I think we need to keep looking for new ones. Nicole and I are watching Sideways again. It's making me thirsty. 

Golf tournament

Golf tournament
Originally uploaded by homerclees.

Augustine

It's Thursday and I'm playing golf tomorrow. It actually looks like it isn't going to rain either. Jud is having his annual Dynamic Business Interiors golf outing at Augustine and I'm looking forward to hitting the little white ball around. I haven't been out for almost a month now, so I hope I won't suck but it really doesn't matter. The pumpkin patch outing is Saturday so I should have a ton of new pictures to share Saturday night or Sunday.

It's starting to look a lot like fall out there. We sent out our annual Halloween party invitations a couple hours ago. I apologize for missing anyone who reads this. It's very hard to remember everyone we should invite. More soon..

Here's Sam styling in his red hood. Btw, it's still raining here. It's been raining on and off for 6 days. 6 weeks of no rain to 8 inches in 6 days. Go figure 

We came home today as the boys were walking back from the park. I guess it looked like rain since they were decked out in their fireman raincoats and boots. This is Dylan lookning pretty dry.  

Forgot

Nickel Creek reminds me of Thom Househlder. Thom is from Tennesee and would have loved the show. I hope they have bluegrass up in Maine Bob.

Mark Carpenter
General Manager
Web Strategy and Operations
www.aarp.org
--------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld (www.BlackBerry.net)

Nickel Creek

Just saw Nickel Creek at the Rams Head Live in Baltimore with Kumie, Jud and Joseph. Fantastic show! If you don't know Nickel Creek, they are a funky little bluegrass band with a ton of great music. Rams Head Live was a cool little music bar as well. I haven't been there before, in fact its been a couple months since I'd been to Baltimore. It reminded me of when Jud and I used to spend every weekend in Baltimore with our friends Randy ad Steve. That was quite a few years ago but some good times.

No picture of the show. Forgot my phone and small camera.

Mark Carpenter
General Manager
Web Strategy and Operations
www.aarp.org
--------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld (www.BlackBerry.net)

I love Halloween. I think it's my favorite holiday. I got out some of the spooky stuff to hang around the house today. The boys seem to like it and are asking for more stories about spooky pumpkin, scary skeleton, goulish ghost, wacky witch and wiedo wolfie. They almost always go to spooky mountain on spooky train and go in a spooky tunnel where barney bat lives. I can tell these types of stories for a long time.

More decorating later this week and we will do the annual trip to the pumpkin patch on Saturday assuming we get some nice weather. It rained almost 7 inches on Friday and Saturday. The first time ever in the records books of two days of 3 inches of rain in a row. The basement stayed dry to whole time. I heard the pumps working on Saturday, keeping my technology investments nice and dry.

More soon.....

Dylan with his new pumpkin specs. Pretty hot for the season. We picked these up at the Airport today. Just did a little Metro trip to Washington National to shop at Brooks Brothers, get some coffee, walk around and buy pumpkins glasses. Grandma Linda went with us and she just left California an hour ago. Back to work tomorrow but I do have a golf game set up for Friday. More soon... 

This is the Columbus Circle fountain where Mike was taking some portfolio shots last night. If you look at this sleeping gentleman, he's not a bum. Nice suit, nice watch just really messed up and needing to take a nap before going home.

The trip to New York yesterday went really well and we had a number of really productive meetings and a lively dinner with some of the publications advertising sales staff. Mike Lee, being the blogger that he is mangaged to cronicle the trip with some good photos. You can see them here

http://hiptop.bedope.com/?FILTER=zyrr@gznvy.pbz&

I took some pictures last night too and will see if I got any good ones today.

Hey, I'm still here just been busy. Work is busting my butt right now in so many ways. I think G. Gordon Liddy said "Whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger" Heading to New York for the day tomorrow. Have some cool meetings set up with with some major players in the interactive marketplace and I get to spend some time with my friends in the AARP Publications Sales office. Linda is in town and the boys have started ignoring me and paying attention to Grandma. More soon...

Lake accoteek

Lake accoteek
Originally uploaded by homerclees.

More lake fun

Stump

Stump
Originally uploaded by homerclees.

Lake accotink

10-02-05_1230.jpg

10-02-05_1230.jpg
Originally uploaded by homerclees.

Boating

Morning run

Morning run
Originally uploaded by homerclees.

Lake accotink