Start of Last Training Week

Our overnight stay at the Community performing our e-call duty was uneventful - thank goodness. The room was lousy and the bed was small but we made it through for one night.

The day was filled with special duties for us. We started the morning in class by leading our "Take 10" exercise which is a rah-rah session held everyday by a different couple. It covers different aspects of the Holiday Communities and is intended to get everybody psyched-up for the events of the day.

Our next duty was to act as coffee/tea servers for the lunch hour in the Community dining room. That went well and gave us an opportunity to have lunch with the managers in the Community and gain some valuable insight into their experiences in the 4 months they have been here. They are a very nice couple - Mike and Giana Norman - that came from CO to work in this Community. They said nothing that would dissuade us from continuing our adventure. They said some things that scared us a little bit, but we feel that experience will eliminate those concerns.

The final big "event" for us was a conference call with our Regional Director - Randy Perras - at 2 PM. The purpose of that call was to finalize our Community assignment - still Vista - and talk about the training and time frame for beginning work at the new location. We will start work on Friday, January 27 at the Arcadia Place Community in Vista, CA. We will be working with temporary Managers there for awhile while we learn the operations side of the business. He indicated that we would also, eventually, be utilized as part time "floaters" in some of the Communities in the Region where help is needed to fill-in for short periods of time. The indication from him was that he thought we would become Managers in a short period of time. That scared us a little bit since our goal is not to move up in this Company, but to put in 2-3 years as Co-managers to solidify our retirement. Most people going into these assignments are looking for new careers. Not us. The big advantages though of moving into the Managers' job is a larger apartment (2 BR) and more money. We'll see, if and when the time comes.

We all went out to a sandwich shop last night for dinner - Togo's - in Corvallis. It was much like a Subway and I have this shot of the group:

Notice that everybody is bundled up for the cold weather we've been having. It is snowing again this morning and we expect a worse day, weather wise, than yesterday. We'll be glad to get back to warm weather in AZ.

Today should be a fairly easy day for us since our main assignments are now completed for the week...