So now I'm starting...

To get a little excited about next week's trip. I've tried hard not to get myself too worked up about the trip, but Suzy is really excited, and it's starting to get me as well.

I helps that it's Friday and my busy-ass week, with some uncertainty in the workplace (not my uncertainty, I know where too many bodies are buried) is coming to a close. As the end of the year rolls around, this is the one time of the year when I think a lot about sales numbers and shit like that. We have a profit-sharing program at work, and all the divisions need to hit their goals for us to make their profit share.

In other words, no matter how good you do, if the organization as a whole sucks the big one, no X-mas bonus.

Not unfair. And I don't mind, as it's a quantifiable amount coming, and a target to shoot for, rather than some type of voodoo bonus thing that no one can figure out. But as the year draws to a close, we're going to be a close thing to make our nut to get a profit sharing check.

Really, if you structure your goals right, along about November it should be a close thing every year. If you set your goal too low, then people work hard for half the year, get to the goal and fuck off for 6 months. If you set the goal too high, people realize by summer that it's unattainable and fuck off for the rest of the year. If you set the goal right, at the end of Q3, you're probably +/- 2% of goal. Which we were.

Now my group is probably going to miss our goal by 10% this year. That's due in part to the vagaries of construction scheduling, with over $500K of projects that I expected to bill this year getting pushed off until next year. It takes a long time to build a church or a school, and the lighting and rigging is one of the last thing in, so if the project is delayed, we're delayed, and our billing gets pushed. That's just the way it works.

But that just means that I'm a little more focused at work lately, as the year is drawing to a close and I have to focus on things like profit sharing, projections for 2008, wrapping up 2007, and shit like that. Not to mention long-range planning for myself and my team. God, I sound like middle management.

God, I am middle management.

Anyway, nobody who reads this stuff is at all interested in any of that, other than to say that it's why I've been able to put off getting really psyched about next week until now. But now that it's on the horizon, I'm getting stoked. There are a bunch of new people that I'm looking forward to meeting, and of course old friends that I can't wait to see again.

7 Things I want to make sure I have time to do in Vegas -

1) Buy Pauly a drink of seven. He put in a good word with Schecky for me and that led to a nice gig. I owe him one.

2) Buy Schecky and Linda a drink or three. Linda took a big chance on me a couple years ago and actually started paying me to write about poker, and now she and Schecky fund these trips to Vegas through PokerWorks and PokerNews. I'd buy Haley a drink too, but she's wussing out on the trip, so it'll have to be a rain check.

3) Listen to Johnny Hughes. I'm really looking forward to meeting this dude, and watching him play. I don't know that I'm in the right league to play with him, but I'm really grateful that Iggy has brought him into our fold.

4) Ogle Carmen. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

5) Buy Al a birthday drink. Since I couldn't make it down to Key West due to rehearsals for a play that was cancelled before it ever saw the light of day (not only did I kill the play, the whole company is now defunct. I rock!), I owe the man a shot.

6) Karaoke with Gary. Just for the entertainment value alone, this drunken hillbilly doing karaoke is not to be missed.

7) Meet new people and have fun hanging with old friends. It's typically unavoidable, and some of my most memorable moments from past trips have been spontaneous, unplanned events. Like a quick dinner with California April and Shelly in 2005, a really ridiculous breakfast at 4AM last year with Penner and Biggestron, playing Badugi with Karol and Dutch Boyd at the IP, random events like that are the special moments.

I'll see you all next week, I'm looking forward to it. I'll be easy to find, I'll have my Full Tilt jersey on Thursday night, and Saturday I'll be the guy in the kilt. There might have to be suspenders, but I promise to wear the kilt!