Getting back to normal – I think that is what all of us want in the tri-state area. For some of us like me that will be easy to do – for some 40,000 others in this area; what is normal? What will their futures be? Will they continue to live in this area? I have been working from home for the last two weeks, as a result of this I have not experienced sitting in line for hours to get gas. I had filled up my tank the Sunday before Hurricane Sandy hit and in these past two weeks I drove to the gym and the grocery store; along the way I would stop at the cleaners, bank, Post Office and Home Depot. Today I topped off my tank although I was only at half a tank – I am so glad I have a Honda CRV which is excellent on gas. I have been able to work from home these past two weeks; projects are on schedule, meetings have been held and daily I have spoken to my team. But, tomorrow it is time to get some normalcy – I will go into the city for a meeting, Tuesday I will go into the office and then on Thursday back into the city for another meeting. I will only need to drive out to Long Island for one day and this will certainly be easy for me on gas since it is over 100 miles roundtrip. Do you realize that in 11 days it will be Thanksgiving? As a family we have chosen a day to celebrate it – this year it will be on the actual day, Thursday. It will just be the family as we are a small group it will only be 9 of us at the dinner. As always I will buy the pies, the Godiva turkeys for the family and I am thinking of baking a couple of bread loaves to bring.

My gym, Club Fit is collecting coats and food for the Thanksgiving season. I brought a coat in last Monday and tomorrow morning I will drop a large shopping bag full of food. This is the time of year to acknowledge how fortunate we are – and to help others have a good holiday season.

I am expecting that when I get back into the office we will have notification on the family we will have adopted for the holidays. We will receive an email with what they need and what the children would like for Christmas – as usual I tend to go overboard and will look to buy them everything on the list. I can’t state enough how much the holidays especially Christmas is for children and there is no greater joy than to see them get excited when they receive a present.

This year one of our hospitals was chosen by Cisco, one of our vendors for their Santa Program. We are all excited about this – on December 10th Santa will come to the hospital, we will stage an area for him and then he will video conference with the children at the hospital. We will look to set up a small video conference system in the play room where the children who are active can sit down and chat to Santa; for those children who are bedridden we will bring an iPad into their rooms and they will be able to chat with Santa from the iPad. Every single one of us are excited to be working on this program – it again personifies the holiday season and I have been told that there will not be a dry eye amongst us. This is normal – to be thinking of the holiday season, of Thanksgiving dinner with the family and how to help others who are not as fortunate; but, who are entitled to a wonderful season also.

I hope that for most of you – you are back to normal. At this time, please think of those that normal is an unknown.