Morning all I successfully managed to evade the wasps while picking the blackberries from the bush in my yard this morning so I am feeling a bit victorious. I’ve learned I have a better chance of not getting stung if I go first thing in the morning. It is adding a strange pre coffee excitement to my mornings. But for now, the coffee is brewing and we have a prompt. So timers set and off we go.
You have to love a situation with a built in time limit.
Thursday, July 2nd: They agreed to stay out of each other’s way.
They agreed to stay out of each other’s way. Normally they both worked for different branches of the family company, the branches on opposite sides of the trunk by design. They had different skills and each were successful in their own particular field, but they did not get along. They never had.
Dennis wanted the whole company to himself and resented anyone else in the family who had a stake in it, and Kevin wanted to run his won department rather than suffer Dennis as a tin pot dictator. As far as Kevin was concerned Dennis was inept and power hungry while Dennis considered Kevin to simply be in his way.
Their grandfather mistook this rivalry and dislike for competitive business practices, refusing to see the genuine break that occurred years before and had little to do with business. Pointing it out to him was impossible so when he requested they both shift their offices to the main office instead of residing in their own branches, they had no choice but to comply. It was after all his company.
Dennis thought it was his chance to prove himself the supreme commander and Kevin wondered if this was a way to get him out of the company. He knew there was only a limited window where he would tolerate Dennis. They agreed to give each other space and to try to work in the same area without issue, but he knew that Dennis would not keep to that. While Kevin thought Dennis inept, Dennis believed that all of Kevin’s dislike stemmed from their childhood disputes.
Kevin couldn’t dispute the fact that those events colored his opinion, but only because the behavior in them was consistent and showed Dennis’ character far more than any board room speech. Kevin didn’t like him but had he been actually good at his job then he would have simply ignored him. Instead many of the problems Kevin had to face on a daily basis were caused by Dennis.
‘Maybe I ought to just leave.’ Kevin thought. It was not a new thought. He had this fantasy where he bought a boat and sailed off into the sunset. He would sail from island to island across the globe and never have to darken a boardroom again.
The fantasy was always killed by reality. Despite liking the boat as an idea he knew it was the escape it represented more than an actual plan. He saw hurricanes and typhons on the television, both on weather and news reports and in movies. They did not feature in his fantasies. Nor did sunken shops or pirates although both were in some of his favorite films and books.
Those ideas crept in any time the urge to buy a boat and sail off became too strong and he wondered if he was self sabotaging himself.
‘Maybe I need a non-water based escape plan,’ he thought as he pulled up the report on his laptop screen. He thought of mountains and hiking. His brain immediately hit him with rockslides and bear attacks. The bear attacks were fueled with cocaine as in the last movie he saw. While he didn’t think coked out bears were a common occurrence it ruined the wilderness fantasy.
‘Maybe something city based,’ he decided.
Ten til Midnight 