Happy Birthday, Matrix Group!

Last Friday night, Matrix Group celebrated the company's 9th anniversary at Continental, a pool hall in Rosslyn, VA. Matrix Group turned 9 back in May, but we were too swamped to celebrate, so we waited until after the end of our fiscal year to celebrate.

What a fun time! We had the purple room (fitting, no?), which had a (blue) pool table and a Wii. We had between 30-40 people at various times and it was great to hang out with staff and their SOs (significant others). I had never seen Andrew and Deb so relaxed, and it was fun to socialize with my siblings (Alex and Patricia) and hubbie.

One downside: the bar was super smoky. I was overwhelmed by the smoke when we walked in, then grew accustomed to it, but four hours in a smoky bar with bad ventilation was sure to catch up with me. All weekend, I felt like I had smoke a pack of cigarettes. Ick. My chest feels awful. And today, I have a cough. New rule: all company events that I sign the check for are going to be in non-smoking establishments.

The highlight of the evening was the pool tournament. Who knew that Matrix Group had so many pool sharks? James, Ben and Trevor are excellent players, and Elyse, Maggie, Alex and Brad were very good, as well. James even stopped drinking while playing coz he was in the finals! I played with Alex and didn't sink one ball. Oh well, my goal was to just hit balls. Patricia and James won the tournament, each taking home a purple iPod shuffle with www.matrixgroup.net engraved on the back.

Emi even ordered a birthday cake for Matrix and we sang Happy Birthday to Matrix Group around 9:00pm. Nice touch.

We had a bar tab minimum of $1,000, which we were not close to reaching by 8pm (the party started at 6pm and was supposed to end at 9pm), so I asked everyone to order expensive drinks. Tanya was drinking Kettel One cosmopolitans, and Dianne's sweetie was drinking Grey Goose martinis. Thank goodness Patricia sweet talked the manager into giving until 11, without charging us extra for the room. That gave us plenty of time to finish the pool tournament, meet our bar tab minimum, and let everyone sober up before going home. I even made sure we had DDs (designated drivers) for those drinking the most. Fun times!

Joe Dillon comes to Matrix

I was so inspired by Joe Dillon when he came to speak at my Vistage group meeting in January that I invited him to come to Matrix to present to my staff.

About half of the staff attended -- not bad for a Friday morning when a bunch of people were out. Besides, not everyone wants to be lectured about diet and exercise.

Joe did exactly what I expected him to. He was informative, motivating, outrageous and pedantic. His presentation about diet really makes you sit up and think about all the junk that we put into our mouths each day. It makes me feel bad about all the chocolate around the office, and the birthday parties when we serve nothing but pure sugar and more sugar.

But Joe makes an amazing case for healthy living. He is in his 60s and he looks amazing. I guess the bottom line for me is that I want to grow old and live a good life. When I retired, I want to be in good health so that I can travel and keep doing the active things that I do now.

I had skipped my power walking for a week because of a cold, but I'll be back on the treadmill this week. Even Maki wants to get in on the program. At Harris Teeter yesterday, we got a bunch of raw nuts, egg beaters, and lots of chicken. So far, I have lost about 5 pounds and I feel great. The walking with weights really makes a difference and I can feel myself getting toned and strong. Stay tuned for more progress reports.