Dear beloved friends and family,
I can't believe the year is already winding down! For Jaiman, Carly and I, this has been another year of big changes and big blessings, through another fantastic international vacation, a big move, new jobs, a hundred-year hurricane, and the outpouring of support to recover.
We started the year off still living in Stamford, CT where Henkel had moved us to in June 2017. From our nearby train station, we were able to get into Manhattan in about 50 minutes on the express train. We took full advantage of our proximity to the Big Apple, from seeing Broadway shows including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Dear Evan Hansen (not to mention off-Broadway shows like Spamilton), to taking in the sites (and eats!!) of New York City. We also used our location in the Northeast as a launching point for some fantastic 
road trips, including a very cold Ice Wine Festival in Canada in January! In April, we road tripped up to Bethlehem, New Hampshire for a maple sugaring experience that was truly magical, swinging through Vermont on the way back to stop by a favorite brewery of mine (Magic Hat) and a little ice cream maker called Ben & Jerry's.
We weathered the cold for maybe a bit too late into what should have been spring, but enjoyed walking around downtown Stamford, and we made some good friends through our Pokemon Go community. We had a great time when both my sisters and all three kids came to visit, treating them to the amazingness that is hot oil pizza (a CT special), doing Tim Tam Slams, visiting Stew Leonard's and a daytrip to NYC for off-Broadway shows and other touristy adventures. We also hosted my parents and took them to both Yale and NYC, although I think my Dad's favorite two things were the Black Raspberry Ice Water ("It's the perfect drink!") and hot oil pizza ("This is the pizza I always dreamed of but didn't know existed,") we introduced him to. We definitely made the most of our time in CT, and dearly miss a few aspects of it (like said hot oil pizza), but we knew long ago that we'd be moving back to warmer climates as soon as the right opportunity came.
In May, I had two such great opportunities presented to me. I first flew to Dallas to interview with a dairy processing company for a job very similar to what I was already doing (Demand Management). I got to have dinner with Jaiman's sister, ReAnne, and we talked about the possibility of us moving to Dallas. I already had a flight booked to Florida when the offer came, but I was able to put making a decision off at least long enough to see what the aerospace company in Florida was all about. I flew to Panama City, Florida and interviewed with a VP whom I had enjoyed working with 10 years ago at Honeywell, and a GM who also had come from Honeywell. The job would be a HUGE challenge - building and managing the entire end-to-end supply chain for a greenfield site (basically, there was nothing in place yet). Panama City was not exactly the location we had in mind when we considered moving to Florida, but it had some beautiful beaches that won me over. On my way home, I sat next to a local on the plane, and asked him about hurricanes. His words assured me, "That 
devastation you see on the news, that only happens to that area once every hundred years. So unless you plan to be here for a hundred years, chances are you'll never see that." Without a second offer yet, I turned down the offer in Dallas. My risk was rewarded, I got the offer from GKN Aerospace Florida, and the gears started turning.
The timing of the move was a bit awkward, because we had planned a European cruise and vacation with my sister and nephew. So Jaiman flew to Panama City Beach to look for our new home while I wrapped things up at work, and I ended up leaving my job prior to the vacation. The realtor loved the worksheets I sent Jaiman with based on my initial search online, but ultimately, it was Jaiman who did a great job finding a beautiful new construction house for us in a private beach community very near where all the action is.
Jaiman and I met up with Matthew and Christy in Venice, Italy. I think Venice was my favorite European city; it just seemed like every direction you can look is a fresh, picturesque view. We took a train from Venice to Rome where we stayed a night before checking into our cruise. The cruise took us to a number of other Italian cities before heading to France and finishing in Barcelona, 
Spain.The highlight for me in Spain was La Sagrada Familia, it was absolutely breathtaking! From there, we flew to Paris and really nailed the tourist thing as well as visiting Disneyland. We checked a number of things off my Life List during our trip, including a gondola ride, walking the ruins of Pompeii, going to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and visiting the Coliseum. It was my and Jaiman's first time in Europe, and Jaiman's first time on a cruise.
Back in CT, we made our final preparations to move and had a few goodbye meals with our friends from Henkel and the Pokemon Go community, before making our way down south. I started my new job at GKN as Supply Chain Manager on July 16, and was already flying for work the following Monday. In 
fact, because I was traveling when our new house was ready, Jaiman got a great hand workout as he signed the closing documents for our house!
Since being in Florida, we've enjoyed not only swimming at the beach, often accompanied by the friendly fish, but also having dinner regularly at the many beachside restaurants, watching the sunset over the crystal clear water and clean, white "sugar" sand. Most places have some kind of a sunset celebration, either a sunset cannon or sunset bell, etc., and I like that they find a reason to celebrate something as regular as a sunset. It feels worlds away from the chaotic, maddening traffic and honking and screaming from downtown Stamford, and while work is hard, I can come home to a beautiful home and a beautiful beach.
Of course, you already know that our beautiful home and beautiful beach were threatened by what started as a tropical storm that was vaguely on my radar as I prepared to travel again. It became a hurricane with mandatory evacuation for our area while I was on the plane in Atlanta waiting to take off towards Kansas for work, and I was frantically trying to figure out what to do to help. It was terrifying and crazy stressful, but I did what I could to get organized so Jaiman could evacuate efficiently. I felt awful that I wasn't there to help him put up the hurricane shutters and secure our things, but he managed it and got out in plenty of time. He ended up evacuating to Mississippi, and my plant in Florida was shut down while I continued working in Kansas and bracing to see what would happen to our area. I was mentally preparing myself to have lost everything other than our lives, as our family and the whole country seemed to be anxiously watching the news of Hurricane Michael. When I was done in Kansas, I couldn't fly back to Panama City because the airport was closed, so I flew to Mississippi and joined Jaiman and Carly. The devastation was terrible in some parts, but within about four days I was getting info from our beach community about our neighborhood specifically, and it seemed as though we were very fortunate. The power provider map showed that our neighborhood had electricity!
So, we loaded up with supplies in Mississippi, and made our way back, ensuring we kept our tank pretty well topped off with gas. We took the route recommended by my neighbors, and after checking our IDs at the checkpoint, the police let us through to get home. We got home with plenty of sunlight to inspect things, and were relieved to see virtually no damage. We took the hurricane shutters down, and called it a night. We had power, but no cell service, internet or TV, and the water was about half-on and non-potable. When our Publix grocery store re-opened, they had trucks in the parking lot loaded with bottles of water and ice and were encouraging people to take as much as they wanted for free. Things started recovering slowly in the following days, but we continued under curfew and boil water notice for weeks.
We re-opened my plant, and most people returned to work, the remaining few were dealing with more severe personal situations. Many of our colleagues were displaced or living with no running water, and we offered hot showers, our guest rooms, food and bottled water and gas. FEMA set up near my work with camp sites, and the school across the street from our house became a shelter with mobile laundry and mobile shower units. In November, things started to get back to normal, but here I am a couple days into December, and I feel like it's still October because we lost so much time recovering. What continues to impress me, though, is the absolute outpouring of support from our global GKN family, from local businesses, from visitors, you name it. We were well prepared when we came back, and we didn't need anything, but we could have gotten whatever we needed. We were blessed, indeed!
One of the major reasons we wanted to move to Florida was for all the theme parks, especially Disney, in Orlando. So not too long after the hurricane, we decided to get out of town for the weekend and visit Disney World for the first time - for both of us - since we each had been in high school. We got to go to EPCOT's Food and Wine Festival, ride Space Mountain and get a lift on the monorail. It was a short but productive first trip, and we're looking forward to many more!
Well, that about wraps up our year to date! We are looking forward to having Christy and Matthew come to Florida for Christmas, hitting the parks again soon, and starting another year of adventures in 2019. We hope you have a very Merry Christmas and wish you the best in the New Year!
Most people cannot afford to redecorate their homes for every change in season and for every special occasion. If there is one thing in the home you can customize for a big impact, it would be the centerpiece at your table, and centerpieces can be as creative as your imagination allows!
One piece every modern entertainer should own is a plain, clear, cylindrical vase. I would recommend one with a four to eight inch diameter, depending on the size of the table, and at least a foot tall. These are great because you can easily fill them with seasonal icons to make stunning holiday centerpieces. For
Halloween and Thanksgiving, you can fill them with small pumpkins, and for Christmas you can fill them with ornaments. For a baby shower, use rubber ducks or pacifiers. Small balloons can be used for birthday parties. There are dozens of objects that can work, but as a rule of thumb, stick to items that approximate a ball shape so the centerpiece is interesting from all angles. Three to twelve items of the same size, shape and theme are optimal, and should be big enough to almost fill the vase.
Using what you have around the house, a cluster of decorative items can be an inexpensive route to an expensive look. Place several candles in a circle on a decorative plate. A larger candle or a small vase with flowers can be placed in the center, or it can be left empty. For special occasions, a sprinkle of confetti can really bring the look home, or rose petals (real or fake) can be scattered underneath the candles, and even along the length of the table. Alternatively, as with fillers for the large vase, small pumpkins or Christmas ornaments can be placed on a decorative place surrounding a large candle as well.
Shabby chic centerpieces can be created with some paint and natural elements found outside. A shallow bowl of pine cones, for one idea, are great for the fall and winter holidays. Pine cones can be left alone, sprinkled with glitter, or painted in seasonal colors to match your holiday décor. For winter holidays, you might even try painting them white and sprinkling them with silver glitter, for example. Likewise, gathering twigs and spray painting them, setting them upright in a small vase can add a quirky, wild twist to the common centerpiece. If you have fruit that has fallen from your trees, instead of tossing them in the garbage, paint them in shiny metallic colors or bright summery colors to fit the occasion.
For wedding showers, reunions and birthday parties, photographs can be utilized in centerpieces. Consider making your own memo holder by partially straightening large paperclips and sticking the end into a piece of decorated Styrofoam. Or, print pictures on thin paper, wrap them on an empty food jar and make a paper mache collage.
Still not sure what to do? A trip to your local crafts store is a great source of inspiration, especially for seasonal events. Browse through the various sizes of vases, buckets and containers, and see what you can find to fill them with, from artificial flowers and plants to crystals, beads and feathers.
For more craft and design hacks, check out my book, Design Hacks for Disney Themed Rooms!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084H5SK33
Even if you don't have a canopy bed, there are many ways to get the luxurious look of a canopy over your bed. Whether you are after a ring canopy, bed curtains or a full overhead canopy, it can all be done with a few simple tricks. The best part is, because you make it yourself, it is a custom piece and point of pride.
For a ring canopy, first find a piece of sheer fabric or mosquito netting, and cut it vertically into four equal sections, leaving the very last inch or two uncut. Fold the edges around a plastic hoop, and stitch along the edges below the hoop. Tie one end of fish string to a hoop, and the other end directly across on the hoop, with enough slack in between the knots to hang the canopy at the desire height. Do the same at a right angle to the first string. Then simply hang the fish strings on a garden hook in the ceiling, and adjust the leaves of the netting to drape around the bed.
Instead of a headboard, you can frame a bed with a European bed canopy. Start with three wooden dowels or curtain pullbacks attached to the wall in a triangle pointing up, with the top point about 6 inches below the ceiling, and the corners a little bit wider than the bed. Thread your choice of fabric through the dowels or pullbacks, leaving a little slack to for a swoop between dowels or pullbacks. Alternatively, use only two dowels or curtain pullbacks, closer to the ceiling, and let the fabric swoop down in the center.
For dramatic overhead canopy, use about 10 to 12 yards of fabric and two curtain rods. Attach one curtain rod just above the head of the bed, and the other curtain rod about towards the end of the bed (use ceiling fixtures for one or both curtain rods). Drape the fabric over both rods, leaving enough fabric against the wall to reach just below the bed (you can tuck it behind the mattress to give the appearance that it goes all the way down and is part of the bed) and some slack in between the rods to creating a swoop over the bed.
To add a sense of privacy, use bed curtains instead of a canopy. Using ceiling fixtures and corner segments, you can make a U shape around your bed with curtain rods. Put fabric on each corner of the bed, and tie it a few inches above the bed to give the appearance of a canopy bed.
Canopies and bed curtains are an easy and fun way to make a dramatic improvement on your bedroom decor. You can use bold colors to really make a big visual impact, and live in luxury for close to nothing! My last piece of advice: don't be afraid to try something. Once you have the design down and the hardware in place, it is easy to change the fabric, and fabric is relatively inexpensive, so be experimental and stretch your comfort limits.
For more craft and design hacks, check out my book, Design Hacks for Disney Themed Rooms!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084H5SK33
Think of the last time you re-decorated or re-designed a room in your home. It may have been a new home, simply updating an outdated style, or for a new purpose, whether that be a nursery for a new baby, updating a kid's room to their changing tastes, creating a study for your new work-from-home lifestyle, putting in a dream man cave, game room, or craft room, or making a space more usable. You may have chosen a generic theme: seashells in the bathroom, abstract zoo animals for baby, Disney princesses for your pink-loving toddler, chefs in the kitchen, etc. You may have gone down the aisle at Target and bought everything that matched the theme, and cleverly added a few touches from Home Goods or bought something on Amazon to fill the gaps. You may have re-painted the walls, adding cohesion to the theme. And maybe you were underwhelmed by the results. 
Now think of the next time you re-decorate a room - it will be a completely different process with completely different tools and completely different results, at least if I have anything to do with it. We now live in a world where millions of talented artists are within our reach, tools to create the perfect pieces are at our fingertips, niche interests are celebrated, and hacks are abundant. And these tools, resources, and the gig economy are only going to get better, more helpful, more accessible and more powerful as time goes on. 
Chris Anderson's "The Long Tail" rightfully predicted that niche markets would become more accessible. In that book, he says, "It is when the tools of production are transparent, that we are inspired to create." That is one of my favorite quotes, because I truly believe that we now live in a world where we are empowered to make our dreams come true, big or small and everything in between.
To best understand where we're headed, we need to take a look at where we've come from. Big Box Retailers dominated consumer's wallets, capitalizing on economies of scale, utilizing cheap labor in China, and knocking smaller shops and artists out of the way. It seemed like there was nothing that would hinder the growth of mass produced, ever cheaper products for us to buy, buy, buy! When ebay started to get a spot in the lime light, consumers turned their interests into not just buying but also selling, the Big Box Retailers saw a small threat on the horizon, and economists wondered if auction pricing would take over the world. Amazon was a much bigger threat to the Big Box Retailers, first single-handedly killing my beloved Borders, and quickly expanding beyond books - Circuit City, anyone?
Between ebay and Amazon, it seemed that we could buy EVEN MORE! But there was another trend sneaking into the interwebs, and that was a growing crafters and artistic community. Enter etsy, the ebay of craft supplies and finished crafts and art. Social media grew up in this environment, and along came Pinterest, a beautiful blend of social media and the modern Good Housekeeping. With seemingly endless recipes, design hacks, crafty ideas and clever tricks, Pinterest went beyond the pin-board functionality and created a culture of aspirations in the kitchen and in the home. YouTube also plays its part here, with lots of tutorial videos about how to make or fix anything.
Fast-forward to today. Etsy and Amazon are still a great places to buy niche art and products, but there are even more ways to do it yourself. From Spoonflower, which prints custom fabric and wallpaper, to fiverr where you can pay someone to do something creative for cheap, and from 3D printing to maker spaces with laser cutters and decal tools, the home decorating space is ripe with opportunities to create whatever you could imagine. No longer do we need to stick with common themes: if you like a specific scene in a movie, a song, a game, or a book, you could build a whole room theme out of that. You will be able to do this, not necessarily by buying more finished goods, but by creating custom products. Craft stores have been around since before the likes of social media and etsy, but they unlike the Big Box stores, craft stores will become more relevant as YouTubers and Pinterest pinners promote more crafts and hacks that can be done with the same old craft supplies. Craft supplies are also evolving, though, too, making more accessible kits for amateurs, so you don't have to be an incredibly crafty person to create amazing things.
This will be the topic of my upcoming book! I will be focusing on creating a themed-room of Disney inspiration, and will discuss some principles to execute these amazing themes, even if you don't consider yourself terribly crafty or artistic. My main principle is to go for big, bold elements, and I will talk more about what that means within different themes and different rooms and functions.
Update! The book is here! Check it out on Amazon Kindle!
Design Hacks for Disney Themed Rooms
Let's play a game of what if. Let's assume that newspapers can no longer make money covering the news. The world expects free information at its fingertips via the web - if you make me pay for this article, I'll go get my news somewhere else for free (and either assume it's just as good, or I don't care about the quality as much as the price). Online advertising is not making the return on investment it once promised, with ad blockers in high use. Environmentalists have pushed to reduce the amount of printed newspapers, and the market for the physical copy was dwindling anyways.
Now, take each of these questions one by one, and consider the implications before moving on to the next.
Do we let newspapers go out of business?
Let's say that the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and The Wall Street Journal are all that remains of a once highly-penetrated news media market. Would we consider government loans to keep them alive? Are they, either collectively or individually, too big to fail?
What if it was down to just one remaining publisher? And what if that last one standing announced it would be letting go of 90% of its reporters?
What if it files for bankruptcy and makes plans to close shop for good?
And what if we let it?
We demand information to be free, accepting ads as a sort of coverall for our distaste of paying for things we find of value, but also using ad blockers because, well, who wants to look at ads? Yet a quick informal poll confirmed for me that we deem it absolutely necessary that reputable news coverage is available on an ongoing basis. How do we ensure that reports keep reporting and that news is held to some kind of a standard?
The worst case scenario (in regards to news) might be the following:
All reputable news publishers shut down, and give way to rising crowd-publishing sites of supposed and unverifiable eyewitness testimonies with no professional filter or attempt at eliminating bias, and uninformed articles that would be considered opinion pieces today but are touted as fact instead. Boycotts and fake news accusations fill our lives like the Salem Witch Trials and consume our news feeds rather than focusing on the things news should be covering like the economy, business, politics, culture, etc. Articles written by robo-journalists are also prevalent, a practice that started with the coverage of local sports and less popular Olympic games when the money-making reputable news organizations were still up and running, but has long been bastardized into a way of automatically filling the internet with propaganda about whatever it's originator wanted to promote. Some sites will tout their efforts to stem the auto-propaganda while others will embrace it as an intelligent technology that is only feeding off our data of what we click on to give us more of the same crap it thinks we want based on our usage history. We don't know what's real and what's fake anymore, and really, it's all fake to an extent because the coverage is so slanted and misrepresented - like when you played "Telephone" as a kid and the message got skewed the more it was repeated until it is completely unrecognizable and absurd.
Articles written by robo-journalists are also prevalent, a practice that started with the coverage of local sports and less popular Olympic games when the money-making reputable news organizations were still up and running, but has long been bastardized into a way of automatically filling the internet with propaganda about whatever it's originator wanted to promote. Some sites will tout their efforts to stem the auto-propaganda while others will embrace it as an intelligent technology that is only feeding off our data of what we click on to give us more of the same crap it thinks we want based on our usage history.
We don't know what's real and what's fake anymore, and really, it's all fake to an extent because the coverage is so slanted and misrepresented - like when you played "Telephone" as a kid and the message got skewed the more it was repeated until it is completely unrecognizable and absurd.
The loop of misinformed news becomes so overwhelming that we just shut it all off, unsubscribing for all alerts, disliking all articles on social media, and we stop searching for answers about current events or topics we care about because we just don't have a reliable way to determine what is fact and what is fiction. We give up on understanding the world around us, and try to content ourselves with living our day-to-day lives and just generally trying to tip-toe around anything that could possibly happen.
The richest 1%, of course, will hire a new kind of private investigator of sorts to research what is real and definitively advise on what their employers should be concerned about. They will have a huge leg up on the other 99% who can't afford to pay these premiums and have to suffer through misinformation or pay specialists for the specific kind of advice they need at the moment without learning about anything else that is really going on. These specialists will make it their business, literally, to be in the know about changes in law, the economy, culture, finance, etc., and will charge by the hour for doling out the same advice to 50 different clients per week, where they could have lowered their costs by publishing it to a subscriber base that would reach a much larger audience - but that wouldn't bring in sufficient profit, we tried that, remember?
Maybe, as the circular thinking above suggests, it will be an issue of supply and demand, and as supply for reliable news coverage diminishes, the market will step up and become more willing to pay for their news, and the news market will find a new equilibrium in a purely-online basis.
Maybe the use of automation will instead improve the efficacy of the human reporters, exponentially shrinking the number of reporters and editors needed while still sustaining our beloved reputable sources of news at a much lower cost. Then, do the remaining reporters get paid really well, like millions, because they are the remaining hold outs who have successfully navigated the layoffs and learned to collaborate the most effectively with the robo-reporters? Or do
they get paid minimum wage because there are 100,000 other unemployed reporters who'd happily take their job (and could do so easily because of the brilliance coming from Artificial Intelligence rather than the employed reporter)? Either way, this might feel like a small victory for society, but if this happens to 99% of jobs in America, or even 50%, we'd be looking at the highest unemployment rates in history, far worse than the Great Depression or even agricultural days.
I've been reading a lot lately about two related up-and-coming topics: technological unemployment and the universal basic income. By my casual definition, technological unemployment is basically where robots or artificial intelligence-powered computers either replace or greatly subsidize the jobs most people do, diminishing the need for human workers in potentially drastic and devastating waves until maybe 30% or maybe 1% of what used to be the work force have traditional or non-traditional forms of paid work. What to do with all those unemployed people is the paradox that only seems to have one answer in my research: a minimum payment regardless of employment status or contribution to society that is capable of keeping all citizens (just barely) above 
the poverty line, a universal basic income, or UBI. Sound expensive? I thought so too! But then, we also spend unimaginable amounts of money on programs like welfare, and you hear anecdotes about people cheating the welfare system and living better than people who are working. Then there's all the bureaucracy and administration of such programs, people having to accept and evaluate application forms and determine which cases are worthy, and then having to follow up with people on welfare to make sure they're fulfilling some pre-determined obligations in order to maintain their welfare status. Sure, by having all this administration, we're giving government employees jobs, but we're also maintaining a system that keeps people down and discourages getting better jobs or working harder.
Previously calling myself a Republican, and then changing my tune to economic conservative with liberal views in other areas, it's been a tough internal battle for me to see universal basic income as anything but a communist fairy tale, but I do now, and I would caution any skeptic not to dismiss it casually as well. I'm still not completely sold on the idea myself, but it's the best alternative to our current path that I've found. I could be persuaded of a better alternative, in fact, I'd prefer one, I just don't know what that would be. So for now, I'll use UBI as a possible solution that we should consider.
But before we jump to the solution, let's start with the problem which stems from technological unemployment. If it wasn't a concern, then UBI has a lot less to stand on. But I'm pretty convinced that it's already a little problem, and it's going to be a bigger problem in the future. I think the biggest counter-argument to technological unemployment is that, in the past when technology replaced human power, we were freed up to do other things and created new jobs that couldn't have been envisioned previously, and so the expectation is that as robots and AI replace current jobs, new jobs will be created that will require the human touch. A TED Talk I recently listened to disspelled this and a couple other myths in a way which I had also been thinking and agreed with. Mainly, the key for me is this: past technological advances were still below human ability, but we're talking about computers that are SMARTER than people, far BETTER at tasks than people, and more SENSITIVE to situations than humans could possibly be. So my answer to that argument is that I think this time is different.
Don't think your job can be automated? "The Future of The Professions" details a long and well-thought-out research study that shows that most people see how every other profession could be automated, except their own. Maybe that's simple naivety regarding the complexities of other people's work, or maybe it's a little bit of ego that in fact gets in the way of seeing a realistic possibility. It also shows how even the most reputable and highest-paying jobs are being broken down into chunks that can be outsourced, off-shored or automated. This is the path towards technology unemployment.
Andy Stern, the former president of the Service Employees International Union, researched and wrote perhaps one of the best pieces on the future of employment and UBI called, "Raising the Floor: How a Universal Basic Income Can Renew Our Economy and Rebuild the American Dream." In his book, he takes the skeptical reader through the evidence that is pointing towards technological unemployment, and focuses a lot of his attention to the rapidly growing "gig economy," where people are now subsidizing their incomes or making their complete incomes via side-hustles like online stores and services and one-time jobs. I knew about some of the things happening in this space, having a small side-business of my own and having exposure to other areas like the sharing economy, but I was greatly impressed at the breadth of opportunities and functions that the gig economy now covers. Yet these things, too, can eventually be commoditized and automated to the point of being practically worthless to the gig workers.
So my ultimate challenge is this: How do we handle all this unemployment in the future, if not with universal basic income? In his dystopian fictional book "Manna: Two Views of Humanity's Future", Marshall Brain paints a picture where the welfare system just grows in efficiency and volume, absorbing more and more people as each job and profession become automated, making the welfare people's lives more and more miserable and giving them no way out of the system. And that does, indeed, feel like the inevitable future with the path we're on. He then poses an alternative which is a bit too sci-fi for my taste, but ultimately feels a little bit like a UBI-driven utopia.
I think my bend towards the belief in both technological unemployment / underemployment and UBI stems from a vision of a more balanced life. I've long been convinced that shorter work days and shorter work weeks was not only inevitable but highly desirable from both the employee and the employer standpoint. Namely, workers aren't really productive for 8 hours straight, or even 4 hours straight with a break. This has been proven time and time again with no contradicting data to my knowledge, yet we continue to act as if working longer hours means we're working harder or that we're more dedicated. This is absurd! When I hear of someone working 12 or more hours a day consistently, or working for 8 or 10 hours on the weekend, I shun them.
Dedication to your job should be defined by your ability to manage your work time appropriately and then to shut it off and do things for yourself. Overworking yourself, working off-hours, working when you're tired could all lead to mistakes. In an office environment, if you're not sure of something, you can often ask a co-worker. But if you're working when everyone else has gone home or when you're supposed to be relaxing on the weekend, you have nobody to ask. So for the sake of getting something done, you go ahead and do it even if you're not sure. Then you find out on Monday morning you did it wrong, and have to undo or redo your work anyways.
And it feels like weekends are always too short. Friday night I'm just completely exhausted from the week and don't want to do anything productive, I barely want to do anything entertaining if it requires effort, or, you know, putting a bra back on. Saturday I'm still recuperating, wanting to do something fun and relaxing. I sleep in a little, we go for a walk, we eat good food, I clear my head. Sunday I start being productive, but before long, it's time to go to bed or I won't get enough sleep for my oh-so-important Monday. If only I had one more day to finish whatever I started on Sunday and get a little more rested before having to go back to work.
Some have argued with me that if I had a 4-day work week, I'd get used to it and think that a 3-day weekend was too short, and then if we had a 3-day work week, I'd again want it to be shorter. I agree that greed is a real thing and presents such a danger, but I adamantly disagree with the principle that we'd never be content with a work schedule. I think highly-motivated individuals want to work, at least in a place where they feel both challenged and valued, but that over-working people causes these otherwise ideal employees to burn out.
I don't know exactly what the "right" work schedule is, but I believe that there is a balance that can be struck somewhere that optimizes human productivity (and I believe it's less than 40 hours per week). Maybe it's four 8-hour days, or maybe it's three 9-hour days. Maybe we ditch the 7-day week schedule, and go to a three day on, three day off schedule. Maybe, it's variety that we need: we work a 9-hour day in one job one day, the next day go to a different 9-hour job, repeat each once more, than have a three-day weekend. Maybe one of these jobs is analytical, and the other is creative. Maybe one job has more physical activity embedded in it, and one has more brain-power requirements. Maybe we rotate between three jobs: physical, analytical and creative. Going down this path starts to look more and more like making a living solely via the gig economy, and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't an appealing idea.* But then there's the uncertainty of the gig economy, and the certainty of a paycheck and healthcare. So I do my best to keep myself to a 40 - 45 hour work week, and do not permit myself to work on the weekends or on vacations, and I call that the best balance I can do for now.
Regardless of what the "right" work schedule is, we're clearly not there right now. I've always felt that by the time I got home from work on a typical week day, I was too exhausted to do things like exercise, cook a healthy meal, read, write, take a class, paint, etc. In fact, often times I felt like the only thing I was capable of after work was watching TV and eating junk food on the couch. Sound familiar? I know for a fact that I'm not alone in this notion. No wonder America has an obesity problem! So I said, okay, I need to get up earlier to go for a run in the mornings. Cool! I did this. But there's only so much you can cram into your morning before your boss expects you at your corporate job. It felt like I was constantly faced with a choice: do I want to work on my physical health, my mental health, my side business, my artistic side, or my education? 
Because I couldn't do all of them, nor could I even do more than one at a time. I went back to school, and gained weight. I started working out consistently, and didn't write for three months. I started working on a book I wanted to write, and fell behind on my reading. There's just NOT enough time in the day if I have to work 40 hours per week (which is really 45 - 50 hours in a typical week) with a typical hour of commute time minimum unless I forgo sleeping and showering altogether.**
So there I was, already feeling like my corporate work schedule was far too overbearing in my life, not willing to take the plunge into the gig economy or some semblance of entrepreneurship without a steady paycheck, but still also believing that a good education, hard work and dedication is what was needed to succeed in this world. After all, I did work hard to get to where I'm at. I also do not take for granted the fact that I had the opportunity to go to college full-time, and that I was able to get a student loan to fund grad school as well. I am grateful for those and all the many other opportunities that helped shape my intelligence and academics, my creativity, and perseverance and my personality. So my success is a combination of opportunity and seizing it, executing my dreams with hard work and perseverance, and making good decisions that have opened up other doors of opportunity.
I held a bias against homeless people that they just want handouts without working for them, that they made bad choices over and over again to have gotten to where they are, or that they are mentally ill. For all of these reasons, handing them a couple bucks or giving them my leftovers never felt like it would do any good. I always had a small, deep desire to help them, but to actually help them, not to just get them through the next hour or the next day. I envisioned something of an educational shelter, like a rehab but for job training and personal finance skills, with the hope that they would leave the program better people and not return to poverty. But the cost would have to be astronomical, I thought. So I continued to work hard and climb that corporate ladder in hopes of maybe one day being able to afford such a program. I guess it wasn't a novel or original idea - as soon as I found a charity that does much of this, I immediately started donating a good amount of money to that charity and still do to this day. This, to me, was helping the poor and homeless.
It was within this backdrop that the concept of UBI struck a chord with my initially. I thought education, work ethic, intelligence and creativity were basically a formula for success - that you could always find a job if you had these things. As a conservative, I believed in a smaller government, less handouts and taxes, and letting the market determine the economic value of labor and things. At first pass, UBI sounded like a ridiculous liberal pie-in-the-sky pipedream.
Perhaps one of the most compelling points in favor of UBI was an idea from a TED Talk that first really turned my head on the topic, that "the effects of living in poverty... [is] comparable to losing a night's sleep or the effects of alcoholism." It's not that poor people are stupider or lazier than middle-class workers, or that they have bad luck. They make bad decisions because it's like they're too tired and dazed to see the long run - they're so overwhelmed with the burden of this financial hardship that they are unable to make the decisions that would get them out. I may be explaining that poorly so forgive me for my errors here, but that's how I understood it. And I get it! This makes sense to me - I have seen it all too many times with people who are really struggling financially. The poorer they are, the more short-term thinking they apply to get themselves out of this immediate problem without considering the long-term, assuming they will find a way to make it work in the long run, but then they don't, and they have this vicious cycle. Or maybe they know they won't be able to get out of the long-term problem, but they are procrastinating on fixing it because they feel pressed by the urgency of this short-term problem.
The conclusion of this TED Talk was, "Poverty is not a lack of character. Poverty is a lack of cash." An example I've heard somewhere, anecdotally as it might be, was of handing homeless people $1000 each, and that little bit of seed money was used to turn their lives around. If an average panhandler is given just enough to buy food for the day, maybe get a motel room a couple times a week to shower and sleep and wash her clothes, she'll never get ahead. But give her $1000 all at once, and she can rent a small apartment for a couple months, buy nutritious food, maybe a new outfit, maybe a bike to get to work in, and could get a job that would actually allow her to support herself on an ongoing basis. It's not a case of giving a man a fish versus teaching him to fish, they know how to fish, it's about giving the homeless and poor the fishing rod and a place to store and cook the fish. Don't give them fish, give them the ability to fish themselves!
Let's not worry about how to fund a Universal Basic Income just yet, and instead just assume that everybody in America got a minimum $11,490 per year, or $23,550 per 4-person family (if you're wondering where these figures are coming from, I just googled poverty line in America and am using that as the minimum). There are no conditions other than being an American resident, no requirement to work or contribute to society or have a basic education. Some people would inevitably choose not to work, and that's okay. A single mother might use that money to quit her second job and spend that much more time with her family. Someone else might go back to school instead of working his second job. That writer who felt stuck waiting on tables might finally quit her job and write that novel. A woman with an aging mother might retire early to take care of her mother and spend more time with her kids, now in college and starting their own families. An aspiring entrepreneur might use the extra bump to invest in the startup he's dreamed of getting off the ground while maintaining his full time job. Corporate employees might use the new bump towards their kids' college education or for better vacations. A person feeling burnt out in her job might use the extra income for more massages, or maybe it gives her just enough of a cushion to seek out a better opportunity. All of these options are okay.
And yes, there may be some people who use it in ways we think are bad - an alcoholic may buy more booze, a prostitute might be pressured into giving up her share to her pimp, I'm not even sure I can think of the worst case scenarios, but I don't want to pretend that it's all sunshine and rainbows. That's the thing with having no conditions on it, its use is based on free will. Generally, though, I think it would be good - it gives people opportunities to take risks, to better themselves, to spend more time doing what they want and less time making a buck, and it can open doors for the entrepreneurs and dreamers and artists to create new innovations and works that will ultimately make society a little bit better in their own ways. Imagine eradicating poverty and homelessness - now that's helping the poor!
Let's go back to our newspaper scenario from the beginning. Newspapers could be free and still maintain reputable journalists if the journalists wrote not for money but because they loved their jobs. Editors could still edit, because they have a UBI to fall back on, and maybe they do other things that make more money but they also spend some of their time editing. The key to accepting UBI as an option, I think, is separating livelihood from holding a job. Healthcare, too, for that matter. For so long it's been engrained in our thinking that if we get a good education and work hard, we will be successful. But college grads are finding fewer jobs available to them, and having to settle for jobs that don't require degrees. Young adults are moving back in with their parents to save money. Raising the minimum wage curtails retail stores and restaurants from hiring younger people with no experience.
If we take technological unemployment or underemployment as a reality, then as jobs disappear, we need to separate a living wage and basic healthcare needs from doing low-paid jobs. This is not a redistribution of wealth like in socialism, nor is it a welfare system where only the neediest get money. This is an unbiased payment to all that will open more doors and provide opportunities for people to better themselves, whatever that means to them. The capitalist economy will still work on top of the UBI - the middle-class can still make money to keep them well above the poverty line, and the top 1% will still be rich. The title of Andy Stern's book is exactly what it is, it's "Raising the Floor," not lowering the ceiling or putting everyone on the same level. I don't think we'll ever be 100% unemployed, I think we'll do fulfilling job and gigs and combinations of things that make money, but that those earnings will sit on top of the minimum UBI instead of being the only money we have to live on.
Funding a UBI seems daunting at first, but rest assured, there are a lot of people much smarter than me thinking about these things and running real numbers. But for the sake of accountability to show this line of thinking isn't completely cray-cray, I did some of my own math. I googled the population of the US and got 325.7MM people in 2017. Since I gave two figures earlier, one for a single person and one for a family of four, I'll average those two per person figures together.
($11,490 + $23,550) / 5 = $7,008 per person (Kids need less money than a single adult because they don't pay rent, those darn kids!)
Multiply that figure by the number of people in America in 2017, and rounding up, we get $2.3 trillion. That's an astronomical figure. But what do we spend today on other programs?
According to a quick search I did, I found that the Obama budget proposal in 2017 included $1.39 trillion in Social Security, Unemployment & Labor, $1.17 trillion in Medicare & Health, $179 billion in Veterans' Benefits, $109 billion on Food & Agriculture, $109 billion on Transportation, not to mention $303 billion on Interest on Debt. Let's assume that the UBI replaces Social Security, Unemployment & Labor completely - that takes care of more than half of our requirements, bringing the balance down to $910 billion that we need to cover. For the sake of this exercise and without knowing any detail, I will assume some of the Veterans' Benefits could be taken care of with UBI, so let's chop that in half, bringing our need to $820.5 billion. Under a long-term UBI society, we will have opportunities to take better care of our mental and physical health, so let's say we chop the Medicare & Health budget by 25%, bringing our total down to $528 billion.
Automation should make transportation and food & agriculture more efficient, so I'm going to take 50% from both of those budgets, bringing us down to $404.5 billion. I'm not sure what goes into Housing & Community, but I would think the UBI would cover some or all of this, let's assume all for this purpose, bringing us down to $314.5 billion. That's less than half the military budget, but I'm not going to chop there (although it's definitely a possibility), and it's just a hair over what we were going to pay in interest on our debts in 2017. I feel like we're so close here, we can taste it. Maybe we raise a little bit in property taxes or a little in corporate taxes or tariffs or something. As a conservative / kinda Republican, I hate all of those options, by the way, but they are a reality, since I hate a growing national debt even more.
All this to say, I don't have the complete picture or all the answers, but it's not as unyieldy or unreasonable as a number as it may seem. If we cut the benefits in half, it would be more than covered by the Social Security, Unemployment & Labor budget alone, with no other changes to the budget or taxes or anything else. Maybe we start there and see what we can do about the debt interest and other areas where efficiency and automation could help, to get us to the full benefit I proposed.
Alright, so we've played out a lot of hypothetical scenarios here, and I know you've had to suspend some of your beliefs or concerns in order to play along. I will ask you now to suspend nothing - question the math, question the theory, question why poor people stay poor, question why the rich get richer. I've linked to a number of great resources that I've found, and here's perhaps one of the most compelling findings of my little research: I've not found anything to persuade me that this is wrong. I want these things to be proven wrong, both technological unemployment or underemployment, and that a Universal Basic Income would work. But the arguments against them that I've found are so weak and unfounded, almost laughable. I can find more compelling "evidence" that you shouldn't vaccinate your child than evidence or arguments showing that UBI won't work. Maybe it's not big enough to attract the naysayers yet, I'll buy that for now. But it's gaining momentum after hundreds of years of idlely hanging out on the fringe, and this may be the generation to see it happen.
One more thing to think about; I briefly alluded to the minimum wage earlier. While I think UBI or something very similar could be a solution to technological underemployment, I would differentiate it vastly from the minimum wage. People fight for a livable minimum wage, and I think this is the wrong approach. A minimum wage, by definition, is the minimum a person could be expected to be paid. A teenager living with her parents and with no kids of her own, working a part-time retail job with no previous experience does not need to make enough to support a family of four. That is to say that if you are supporting a family of four, you should not be making minimum wage. Now, I get it, there's a cycle of poverty that keeps that working single parent down or whatever the case may be. But I believe teenagers have a right to work for crappy, non-livable wages to gain experience. Hell, some college grads take unpaid internships for experience. By raising the minimum wage, I believe we are only depriving these inexperienced young people the experience they need to get the next job up. This is where the "magic" of UBI comes in to play - if we instituted UBI roughly as outlined here, we could actually lower the minimum wage and let market forces do more of the driving on hourly rates. This is because that minimum wage would no longer be the sole income of any adult, ever! Every adult would get enough to stay out of poverty without working. They should be able to afford minimal housing, three meals a day and clothes and supplies. That means if they want to take a minimum wage job to make more money, to live in a slightly nicer home or eat slightly more interesting food or have slightly nicer things, they can, and if they want to go to school in hopes of maybe getting a better job in the future, they can, and if they want to stay home with the kids, they can. Then those poor teenagers can go to work for their crappy pay and get that experience while living with their parents and not having kids of their own, and I think that is a damn good thing indeed.
*Footnote:
I've criticized myself harshly at times for being too unfocused - I love so many things, from crafting and interior design to finance and economics, from technology and entrepreneurship to language and culture and travel. Imagine if I actually quit my corporate job and worked in the gig economy: spend an hour designing a logo for a client, then an hour teaching English via video chat to a student in China, take a break to work out, and then spend two hours writing a report for the Associated Press, and call it a day, or work on something else. If it weren't for the uncertainty of the gig economy and the certainty of my paycheck and health insurance, I'd do this right now. It sounds so much more fulfilling than my 9-to-5 that's really 7:30-5:30-ish-with-a-half-hour-lunch-break-if-I'm-lucky-instead-of-the-hour-lunch-break-we're-supposed-to-have. The path to this type of gig-based lifestyle just feels so risky still, but maybe it will be less so in the future. Or, maybe I'm delusional, and the cost of burn out from my corporate job is much higher than I know, and I could be spending my time better in the gig economy. How does one know?
**Footnote:
I
took my recent job relocation as an opportunity to change my lifestyle
such that it naturally incorporates more physical activity and minimized
my commute. Specifically, I live so close to my new office that it
makes no sense to drive, so I walk to work and also to shopping and
restaurants for the most part. Thus, I naturally walk a lot more than I
used to without having to think about traditional exercise. Plus, I
have about an hour back each day from my commute, which helps with the
balance of my personal time. It still takes monumental efforts, at
times, to do things like coursework, reading, writing, art, and actual
working out, but those other steps have given me more time to motivate
myself.
Dieters and New Year's Resolutioners and impulse buyers beware! The season of Girl Scout Cookie sales is upon us once again! And if those sweet little girls (or their pushy helicopter parents) knew anything about Robert Cialdini's Influence, the authoritative book on influencing people to get your way, we wouldn’t stand a chance at resisting those Thin Mints and Savannah Smiles. Luckily, most of them don't know the secrets I'm about to reveal below. But if you are one of those little girls looking to earn your Entrepreneurship Badge, or just get a leg up on the competition, you'll
want to read on. Below, I outline some of the applicable weapons of influence that you may want to utilize in your selling activities, with some examples of how they would apply to the sales of seasonal, well-loved Girl Scout Cookies.
If you accidentally found this page while looking to buy Girl Scout cookies rather than sell, check out my niece's page!
Reciprocity - Give a Little, Get a Little (but more)
The principle of reciprocity says that when you give something to someone or do something for them, they are inherently put in a place of being indebted to you, and are then more willing to do something nice for you in return. The funny thing about this is that the magnitude of one favor doesn't have to balance with the magnitude of the next. Monks employ this by presenting a small flower, or bracelet or coin, and in return ask for a sizable donation, which is much greater than the value of whatever trinket they "gave" to you for free.
The application is pretty straight forward here: One approach would be to buy a box of cookies yourself, slice them apart if you can, and then offer passers-by "free samples" in hopes that they will buy a full box (or three). This may be especially useful when you have a new flavor to push, or a flavor that is not selling as well that you may need to get rid of faster.
If they don't buy, don't worry, there is still a secondary use of your apparent generosity: You can do them another "favor" by making a concession, and instead asking them to spread the word or share a link to your online store, etc.
The second approach, if buying cookies for the purpose of free samples is off the table, consider instead making small crafts like bracelets or paper origami you could hand out as free gifts. The goal of course is to ultimately spend far less on the freebie then you get in return on your sales. But getting more sales will be addressed in some later tactics.
Scarcity, or in today's terms, #FOMO
The good news, my Girl Scout friends, is that the wares you're peddling are truly limited-time, at least for the year. Use this to your advantage! Long before the notion of the Fear of Missing Out was put to a meme-ified acronym, people have always had a notion of not wanting to miss their chance. It's what drives our very biology - we prefer rest because we don't know when we'll get more of it, and we like to eat more than we need because the caveman versions of ourselves didn't know when their next meal would come along.
Anyways, there are two very easily implemented strategies in this category. A medium-size white board may be the best tool for these strategies. As you run out of a popular flavor, such as Tagalogs, write on your board, "Only 5 boxes of Tagalogs left!" The Tagalog lovers will have an increased sense of urgency to buy, buy, BUY! Then, as you get close to the end of your selling season, make a sign or write on your whiteboard, "Last chance to get your Girl Scout cookies!"
Make them like you
There are a lot of elements that make a person like another. To maximize your sales, start with your physical appearance. Younger Girl Scouts can play up the "cute" factor with pigtails, sweet outfits and lots of energy. However, the feminist in me cringes a little bit at this, so I will at least offer a more woman-forward alternative: think about dressing up as your future career aspiration. If you want to be a business woman, wear a sport coat and a classy necklace, and pull your hair back. If you want to be a scientist, see if you can get your hands on a research lab coat and safety goggles. Dress as a doctor, or religious leader, or zoologist or whatever it is you may want to be. This not only addresses the immediate benefit of looking attractive, but it also has a secondary benefit of reminding your customers that they aren't just buying cookies, they're helping you become that amazing woman you aspire to be.
Next, use compliments on potential customers. Compliment the shirts or shoes they're wearing, tell them their kids are cute. If you can figure out what they're making for dinner based on a cursory glance at their purchases outside the grocery store, tell them, "I bet you're a great cook! Wouldn't you love some Girl Scout cookies for dessert to go with that meal?" Compliments have a little bit of the reciprocity principle at work as well, but are best utilized to increase your likability.
You can also be likable by doing something unique in a fun way. You could advertise "Free Hugs" in big letters, and "Girl Scout Cookies $4 per box" in smaller letters below it. Use current events in memes or puns in your advertising, or parody a popular song.
Another idea that utilizes both reciprocity and likability is to throw a "Girl Scout Cookie Kick-off Party". You can partner with a restaurant as a fundraising event and a cookie pre-sale, which is both charitable and helps to kick-start your selling season.
Social Proof - "Everyone is doing it"
This principle is another predecessor of #FOMO. They say that if you stand on the corner of a street and look up at the top of the building nearest you, not much happens. But if you get a group of 4 or 5 people to stand on the corner looking up at the top of building, then everyone who walks by is going to look up. Likewise, if possible and if sales are slow, arrange for some of your loyal customers to come physically to your booth to show that people are buying cookies. 
Remember those signs under McDonald's logos that listed the number of millions of burgers sold? You could also use your handy whiteboard with a "Number of boxes sold" to give social proof that people are buying. Once you've sold at least 40% of your goal, you could also list what your goal is so that potential customers can see that they can help you reach your goal.
One final strategy I will leave you with will help you "upsell" your customers, potentially turning a sale of one or two boxes into several. This will take a little bit more work on your part, but it is also a great way to develop your statistics skills. What you want to do is collect data on not just how many boxes you sell, but how many each customer buys. Then calculate (and re-calculate as you get more data) what the average number of boxes is. For the following examples, I'm going to assume the average is 4 boxes because I don't have data to work with. When a customer says she wants 3, you could point out that the "typical purchase is 4 boxes." If a customer just wants 2 boxes, you might say, "The
average customer buys 4 boxes, are you sure you don't want at least 3?" If a customer asks for 4 boxes and gushes about how she loves those Thin Mints, you could say, "The average customer buys 4 boxes, but I don't think you're an average buyer. Are you sure you don't want one more for the road?" You should also calculate the median and the mode and you can use those interchangeably depending on what those numbers are.
Conclusion
Selling is an art and a skill, and like so many things, you get better with practice. Hopefully you'll be able to employ some of the above tactics and share with your troop what worked well for you (or not, if you want to secure your spot as the top seller). You're not just pawning sweet snacks off on unsuspecting passerbys, you're developing valuable skills in selling and influencing that will help you in your life and career.
Also, this author accepts gifts of gratitude in the form of Thin Mints.
Happy selling!
I can't believe the year is already winding down! For Jaiman, Carly and I, this has been another year of big changes and big blessings, through another fantastic international vacation, a big move, new jobs, a hundred-year hurricane, and the outpouring of support to recover. 
road trips, including a very cold Ice Wine Festival in Canada in January! In April, we road tripped up to Bethlehem, New Hampshire for a maple sugaring experience that was truly magical, swinging through Vermont on the way back to stop by a favorite brewery of mine (Magic Hat) and a little ice cream maker called Ben & Jerry's. 
devastation you see on the news, that only happens to that area once every hundred years. So unless you plan to be here for a hundred years, chances are you'll never see that." Without a second offer yet, I turned down the offer in Dallas. My risk was rewarded, I got the offer from GKN Aerospace Florida, and the gears started turning. 
Jaiman and I met up with Matthew and Christy in Venice, Italy. I think Venice was my favorite European city; it just seemed like every direction you can look is a fresh, picturesque view. We took a train from Venice to Rome where we stayed a night before checking into our cruise. The cruise took us to a number of other Italian cities before heading to France and finishing in Barcelona, 
Spain.The highlight for me in Spain was La Sagrada Familia, it was absolutely breathtaking! From there, we flew to Paris and really nailed the tourist thing as well as visiting Disneyland. We checked a number of things off my Life List during our trip, including a gondola ride, walking the ruins of Pompeii, going to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and visiting the Coliseum. It was my and Jaiman's first time in Europe, and Jaiman's first time on a cruise. 
Back in CT, we made our final preparations to move and had a few goodbye meals with our friends from Henkel and the Pokemon Go community, before making our way down south. I started my new job at GKN as Supply Chain Manager on July 16, and was already flying for work the following Monday. In 
fact, because I was traveling when our new house was ready, Jaiman got a great hand workout as he signed the closing documents for our house!
One of the major reasons we wanted to move to Florida was for all the theme parks, especially Disney, in Orlando. So not too long after the hurricane, we decided to get out of town for the weekend and visit Disney World for the first time - for both of us - since we each had been in high school. We got to go to EPCOT's Food and Wine Festival, ride Space Mountain and get a lift on the monorail. It was a short but productive first trip, and we're looking forward to many more!
