Executive Council - Day 3

Wow, what a day! Easily the best day of the week thus far. Today we listened to Sy Sternberg say farewell to the Executive Council Agents. I sat in awe of such universal approval and adoration by such an expanse of agents. To be so popular among a group of this size in today's business climate is clearly a very notable accomplishment. It was interesting to hear about the insurance industry and state of the company when Sy took the reins of the company and how it has changed to what it is today. Knowing what I know now, it only adds to my respect for my Dad and his notable and exemplary career. Essentially the decision to remain a mutual insurance company, remain primarily a life insurance company with an career agency distribution, though contrary to the trends and admittedly more conservative approaches, really is the reason New York Life has remained the industry leader in life insurance. Today pride swelled within because of the company I represent that I have never before felt. I think there was a switch within me that changed today, and I truly understood things that were told to me many times before.

While enjoying the morning meetings, Shanda and the kids visited the Pacific Science Museum. The kids began to show the wear and tear of the week, and Shanda was very excited to have me join her at the Museum later in the day.

After the morning business session, I got some hot chocolate and began walking toward the Monorail. As I turned the corner of Pike and 5th Avenue, I recognized a girl that looked a lot like my cousin Justine. Not being 100% sure, but figuring a slight embarrassing moment would be better than not saying hello, I called out "Hey Justine!" She turned and looked at me rather perplexed and then recognition dawned that her cousin was greeting her. She was hustling back from lunch, so we weren't able to talk much, but I was rather pleased to see her like that. Imagine, in a city as large as Seattle, with thousands of things that could have interrupted such a chance meeting, there two cousins were able to meet each other like that! Justine of course will be getting married in 3 weeks, so I wished her luck with all the plans, and gave her my congratulations.

The Pacific Science Museum was really neat. We spent the balance of the day looking at all the exhibits. Joseph was obviously taken by the mechanical items. He had a good time playing a giant mechanical arm a game of tic-tack-toe. Matthew seemed to be curious about everything and I'm certain he read every sign/description he could. Andrew was a good sport most of the time, though he did his best to torment his older brothers. He is really good at that. Maleah, not to be out-done by Andrew, put a great deal of effort into getting under Andrew's skin. The end result was a frazled mother and a tired father and 4 rather contentious kids. On a side note, I had a constant reminder of my previous day's run.

Given the fact that we don't often visit this fair emerald city, we decided to unload the remaining portion of the family gold and visit the Space Needle. It was somewhat painful to turn over the plastic card to be charged such a large sum, just so we could ride to the top in order to see a bird's eye view of the place. We could have gone into the gift shop and purchased a couple hundred post-cards of the very same view. But alas, we forked over the change, and we can now say that we have been to the top of the Space Needle. We took lots of pictures and even though the contention climaxed while atop the large structure, nothing could take away the overwhelming feeling that we got cheated... ;)

Tonight we were treated to another top of the line dinner, further tributes to Sy and a show with the guy that does the Billy Joel musical "Movin' Out." The kids got restless so we weren't able to see the whole show, but I think Maleah enjoyed the signing and dancing the most.

Here we are again, exhausted from the day and ready to turn in for another night of sleep.