I was chatting with Steph on the phone this afternoon, as she fueled up at McDonald's for a night shift at the Dollar General. She said she won the employee of the month award for the region, a nice gift basket and a weekend off.

We reminisced about the time back in 1997, twenty six years ago, when I won the very first Employee Of The Year award with the largest ParaTransit outfit on the West Coast, ATC/VanCom. It was a great honor and ultimately earned me the lead supervisor position.

Steph was the front office receptionist and that's where everything started. She told me today that I got pissed off somewhere, sometime, and threw that award in the trash. She talked me down from that, and I still have it today.

Do you realize that I dragged myself up from a homeless ex software genius, washing dishes at a hotel for years, to get to this point? Life is amazing, and I am grateful!