The WestermaNation

6,495 – The miles we’ve traveled since June 1. Highlights: Visiting with the kids in Jacksonville, celebrating with Kevin and Rowena Smith at their wedding in San Francisco. Traverse City, Houghton Lake, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Lake Geneva.
2,743 – Cell phone minutes used this summer
499 – What Scott spent on his iPad
210 – The final page count for Scott’s new book, “The Spartan Life”, due out this fall!
137 – What we spent at Amazon.com for summer reading on our Kindle apps
95% – The humidity when we were in Jacksonville with the kids for the 4th of July
77- The number of walks Colleen and Tanna have taken together so far this Summer
65 – Movies currently in our Netflix queue
48 – Days with sunshine in the forecast since June!
37 – Apps on Colleen’s iPhone
17 – MSUAA speeches given this summer
8.5 – Miles across the water from Mackinac City to Mackinac Island (our August getaway vacation)
4.5 – Colleen’s latest CA125 numbers (that’s very good!)
3.7 – The distance from our house to our workout gym in miles.
2.3 – Scott’s daily commute to work in miles.
1 wish for you: That you had as great a Summer as we’ve had!

For all of us at Comcast, Earl Chavez’s passing on July 14, 2010 is a highly personal loss.

I knew Earl well as his co-worker and friend during my tenure as the Vice President for Comcast’s Southwest Region. He was, in every way, a total gentleman and the essence of what we all admire in a businessman, leader and friend.

Earl was tasked with growing our Grants. New Mexico business in an environment that would have overwhelmed anyone else. Grants had been continually left off the list as we upgraded the technical capacity and product lines of our major market properties in the Southwest. So Earl had to compete with a much more robust satellite competitor, without the High Definition, without digital television, and without the Internet or telephone products the rest of us had in our toolboxes. At the same time, it was his job to attract and retain a first rate employee team of a half dozen people to do everything from balancing the books to responding to cable trouble on nights and weekends. Read the rest of this entry »

The Detroit Tigers / Cleveland Indians game of June 2, 2010 is turning out to be the game of the century. And it can be the catalyst to restore our faith in The American Pastime.

I admit it. In 1968, I was addicted to Tiger Baseball. That was the year that Denny McClain, Mickey Lolich and the bengals won the pennant from Bob Gibson and the St. Louis Cardinals. At Slauson Jr. High, our principal piped the WJR audio from the day games over the PA. And the entire state of Michigan rejoiced when Detroit prevailed. Read the rest of this entry »

By Scott Westerman
I first got behind the wheel at age 10, sitting on my dad’s lap and steering our car down the sandy road that lead to our Lake Michigan cottage. Back then, there were railroad ties that kept the erosion in check and I still remember the bumpy feel, the smell of the trees and the sound of waves that whistled through the open windows.

At Ann Arbor Pioneer High School in the 70s, the road to your license required enduring Driver’s Education. It was a program staffed mostly with varsity coaches and their support staffs, with uneven results. My classroom instructor was the team trainer and it was more our determination to succeed than his teaching ability that got us through the curriculum. Read the rest of this entry »

By Scott Westerman
(Most of what follows it true. The names have been changed so that the real people will still talk to me.)

These were the dog days of an Ann Arbor summer in 1969.

In August, little league, swim team and band are over.  The Michigan summer camps return a legion of sunburned, bug bitten, poison ivy pocked kids from extreme structure to no structure.  The heat can be stifling one day, sending inhabitants of un-air conditioned homes to our basements. And the next day we can be totally soaked by perpetual, ice cold, monsoonal rain. All the cool movies have been seen, the new kids who moved in during June are no longer interesting and all that remains is the monotonous count down to the first day of school.

Such was our mindset as Mark Maynard and I pondered how to pass the day. The Hendersons, leaders of much of our neighborhood kid activity, were all at the country club. We couldn’t find Tom Reis and the rest of the neighborhood rug rats were either too young or too old for our society.

We sat on the big sedimentary boulder that Mark’s dad had put at the edge of their corner lot to keep the hill traffic on Ivydale from cutting across their front yard. That’s when we saw Charles Kernaghan. Read the rest of this entry »

By Scott Westerman
31 years. 11 moves.

Early in our marriage, I flirted with a career in the Air Force. We decided against it because we didn’t want to constantly uproot our family. “Life is what happens when you make other plans.”

Our travels have taken us across Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Florida and now, New Mexico. Each stop has challenged us and enriched us.

When I first set foot on desert soil here in the Southwest, I was immediately captivated. Read the rest of this entry »

What a difference a year makes!

Our annual holiday missive is late this year because several of our adventures were under the radar until just recently. Here’s a quick recap of what will go down as a pivotal year for the WestermaNation.

The most wonderful experience was Shelby’s wedding. In November, She and Mike Brethour certified their partnership in an exquisite event in Jacksonville. Like Brandon’s union with Stephanie, it was a moment that was absolutely perfect in every way. Brandon was Mike’s best man and his wife, Stephanie was the maid of honor. Shelby’s favorite high school teacher officiated at the ceremony and Gracie, Shelb’s puppy, was a full participant. It was wonderful to see so many of our friends and family, too, including Colleen’s father, who took his first airplane ride in many years to be present. We’re delighted to connect with the Brethour family, just as we have thoroughly enjoyed the Vutera clan. Read the rest of this entry »

It feels like yesterday.

It was a Sunday in August when we met, Steve Schram’s birthday. Laurie was already in his life and I was happy to sub for him at WVIC so that they could celebrate.

I was a Spartan, working my way through Michigan State University as the utility guy at the station. That meant I helped John Hanley on engineering projects, did a lot of commercial production and filled in for whomever had the day off, while holding down evening shifts on the weekends. Read the rest of this entry »

By Scott Westerman

My official duties as a Comcaster in New Mexico came to an end on October 31. Looking back, New Mexico has been one of our favorite stops. Here’s something I wrote two and a half years ago, not long after arriving.

There are no ordinary days in New Mexico. The view from Academy and Tramway is an exquisite panorama that splashes a palate of earth tones more than 40 miles distant on a clear day. Its noon, and I’m watching a thunderstorm form far off in the desert. When the pressure systems that blanket the earth collide, storms are the inevitable result. Sitting in the Albertson’s parking lot I can see their confluence. Dark cumulus clouds slowly build. In time, rain will obscure the long dormant volcanoes that mark our western horizon. Read the rest of this entry »

By Scott Westerman (scott@scottwesterman.com)

NOTE: My Monday Motivators have moved to their own site. Catch up on the latest over at www.scottwesterman.com.

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou

One of my proudest small contributions during my three year Comcast adventure has been my relationship with Frank Eliason. Frank and I were kindred spirits from the start, passionate about improving the customer experience and laser focused on finding root causes, broken processes, and areas for improvement. We often talked late into the night on our Instant Messengers about how to take our care efforts to the next level. Read the rest of this entry »