My Place of Birth

Janna and I flew to Omaha last week for 2 days of meetings. Kiewit has their annual District Meetings during the month of February. Each of the 22 Districts hold their own meetings throughout the country. Last year our meetings were here in Denver with Kiewit Western. Since the Nebraska Area Office has considerably more employees, the meetings are held there. That is sad considering we have area offices in both Hawaii and Alaska. Even if they just had it every 4 years in Hawaii it would be worth sticking around for.

My mom flew in Monday afternoon to watch the boys for us. Van hasn't been feeling well lately, he had a bout with the flu and is teething heavily. Between the two he is having a hard time keeping anything down. What he does keep down races through him and tends to leak out his diaper. Poor kid.

Tuesday night we got there on schedule and after checking into our room at the 4 star Hilton, we went and ate with our friends Brice and Chelsey at the Mattress, a bar and grill about 2 blocks up the street. These were the coldest 2 blocks I have walked in quite some time. It was in the single digits and there was about a 20mph wind. It literally felt like knives were slicing your face open. The food was excellent, the weather wasn't. The next day school was cancelled throughout Omaha due to the cold temperatures.

My meetings were ok. Most of them the first day were general sessions. There were about 300+ people in attendance. Fortunately they were good about having 15 minute breaks every 90 minutes. I brought my journal along and was able to catch up my writing and take a few notes. If I didn't have that I could have slept through a lot of it.

The meals were not great. It was edible. Lunch left me hungry. Dinner was okay. Breakfast was probably the best but I only got it on Wednesday because Thursday morning both Janna and I woke up with the flu. We weren't sure at first if it might be food poisoning, but later that afternoon I called my mom and she had woken up sick that morning as well. I puked about 5 times with mine. It was pretty.

We were both feeling slightly better by about noon and Janna went to the spouses luncheon and I got dressed but couldn't shower because they had shut off the hot water for maintenance work. Again, perfect timing. I wanted to catch the meetings that afternoon because they were the breakout sessions and usually better. One of them was on Leadership taught by the District Manager, the numero uno of the District. He taught a good session and had several good thoughts and ideas. His leadership style is pretty hard-nosed and he isn't afraid to call anyone out. It seems to work for him.

They didn't serve dinner that night, just Hors d'oeuvres that night which would have probably been much better had I not been sick. They had a DJ blasting music and casino night on the far end. I spent most of my time playing Texas Hold'em and did okay at that. Janna made friends with a few tipsy folk and played craps and blackjack. Unfortunately just when the night was starting to get fun, around 8:30pm, they shut down the casino and had the grand prize drawings. DONE BY 9PM???

I work for the cheapest of the Kiewit Districts unfortunately. Their margins aren't as high because they don't self perform as much. We did have a record year though for profits both in the district and company as a whole. We spent 2 days hearing about our record revenues and profits and they couldn't spend a little extra on the very employees making it. Seriously. It's hard to feel loyal to a company when you see all of the profits on paper only. I heard Kiewit Western had John Elway speak at their meeting a few weeks ago. It's too bad because a lot of employees were frustrated with the meetings. Everyone I have talked to about the meetings was highly disappointed. KBG can learn a lot from Kiewit Western when it comes to throwing a party. I guess when you are comparing it to previous ones you remember the good ones so easily. It was nice to get away for a few days though, despite getting sick. Getting sick always distorts the way things seem, especially when you aren't in your own bed.

We got back from Omaha Friday afternoon and the boys were glad to see us. They had a fun time with Grandma though. In fact most of the afternoon they were upstairs with her. I think she must have had some candy, sugar is always a strong pull for those boys. Thanks mom for coming to visit, getting sick, and watching the boys. We sure enjoy your visits.