Personal Life gets better meeting Linda #243

Blog #242 I talked about the Private label team visits Ha Long Bay. In this blog I want to talk about how My personal life gets better meeting Linda

James had been living with me for a while now. He briefly went back to the Bay area to patch up his relationship with his mom but found his way back to Vegas. I talked to someone I knew at work and her husband was the Director at Levis so he interviewed James and hired him. It was a factory type job and James did quite well. He earned employee of the month a few times. He was working alot of overtime and earning good money. It was exhausting for him though and I rarely saw him as he was sleeping when he wasn’t working.

Jennifer was coming out for her monthly visit this month in June so we all decided to do the Hoover Dam tour. We did the big tour that explained the whole process and history. It was really interesting especially the engines that powered the whole thing at the bottom. I would always buy a bunch of dvd’s and we would have a movie fest when she came out. She was into the scary type movies at this point in her life as was James. We watched alot of movies I probably wouldn’t watch alone lol.At one point I had over 800 DVD’s. Most of them I bought dirt cheap though.

The next week at work we had our “Bald and Blue” event. You had your choice to shave your head bald or tint it blue. Tony would usually shave his head bald while Fred would just tint his. I did something in between, I buzzed my hair with a number 2 blade and tinted it blue afterwards. I had just broken up with someone I had been dating for 6 months so I didn’t care at this point lol.

We also were planning our skits for the next recognition meeting. We used to do the skits live but now we decided to do 3-5 minute videos and had to go along with a theme. This one was super heroes. We decided to do “The making of a super hero suit” to go along with the private label theme. It started off with me talking and showing everyone I was really superman in disguise. Next scene we had Charles in the suit we were testing. The buyers had things we were testing the suit on, bullet proof and fire proof. Neither one worked out too well for Charles, he was a good sport. The movie team even figured out how to make him look like he was on fire. Still one of my favorite skits and it was one of the first ones we did. We doused him with water, sprayed him with a fire extinguisher and put black marks all over him to look like he was burned in the process. He was a good sport.

This whole blog I’ve tried to keep to My work life and how experiences shaped me into who I am as a person and a leader. I feel compelled to open the window a little bit to share how I met a very important person in my life now. She has helped me grow even more in both aspects of my life and feel very fortunate to have her in my life.

I had been single now for 3 years. I could write another blog about my experiences trying the online dating sites but that could be an entire series of blogs as well. All in all it wasn’t bad but definitely a learning experience. The funny thing was how you would talk to someone on line and view their pictures then when you met them sometimes they would look completely different. This happened to me a few times. I had a few different girlfriends since my divorce but each of them lasted about 6 months to a year. I think part of it was me too because I would often compromise my wants to be in a relationship. I think I was in love with the idea of a relationship which can be dangerous. The other thing was I realize now I wasn’t ready for a serious relationship at that point in my life.

I was dating a girl in town that didn’t have many common interests with me and was talking to two people online that were from southern California.  I was ready to call it quits with the dating scene and just focus on career and my children. I had tried a few different sites but had the best success in matching up with people from E-Harmony. I met this person from LA named Linda and we really hit it off. We had so much in common it was amazing. She had this thing though that she wanted to actually meet me before we got too involved over the phone. So I decided to go to LA for the weekend.

She suggested the Standard hotel which was a hip place with live music and a cool bar. I decided to get a hair cut as I got into town really early. I had been dying my hair too, so I decided to do that as well. The guy made it way too red which I thought was comical and hopefully Linda wouldn’t think I was a weirdo who didn’t look like “his” picture. She suggested we meet at a place called the “Little Door” in Hollywood. Of course I was early and waited for her and when she arrived she looked fabulous. And like her picture! She thought it was a plus that I didn’t “order” for her and let her choose her own meal. The funny thing about us is we usually order the same thing and have to try to mix it up a bit. We had an amazing time at dinner and bar hopped a little afterwards. We we left each other for the evening we had a very nice kiss goodnight. The whole evening was something from a fairytale. We go back and forth today on who wanted to kiss who the most lol. I think it was a tie.

We decided to meet up the next day for breakfast. She suggested this place in Malibu overlooking the ocean. It was perfect. The place was called Geoffreys and everything was perfect. The breakfast was fabulous and we each laughed quite a bit that morning. We said our goodbyes and could hardly wait to see each other again.

She decided to come out to Vegas so I set her up at the Ritz Carleton at Lake Las Vegas. We had an amazing weekend going to Alize restaurant and the O show, which was a Cirque Du Solei show. The show was a little weird for me but she loved it.

We capped the weekend with a hike to Mount Charleston. She was very much into fitness and loved to hike. She lived near the Griffith Park Observatory and there were some great hiking trails going up to the Observatory so this seemed like a thing we could do in Vegas. 

She had her own Interior Design Business and was quite successsful at it. She was very well known in the design circles. She also was a Professional Figure Skater in her earlier life and skated in the Ice Capades in the early 80’s. (She arrives in the video at 3:59)She seemed too good to be true. I decided to just focus on this relationship and see where it may go. Turned out, it was the best decision I’ve ever made.

This is how our romance started and have many more great times to share. But back to work…

I Failed to mention around blog #233 that I was promoted to Director of Brand Development in 2006. Steve sent this email out to everyone in August about me moving up to Sr. Director which was a great honor:

CONGRATULATIONS MIKE!

[Posted Tuesday, August 12th, 2008]

[by Steven Hill]

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  Please join me in congratulating Mike Normart on his promotion to Senior Director! 

  Mike has been a key member of Zappos for over 5 years and has spent the last three years building our Private Label business.  In addition to leading the private label team Mike has agreed to work with our juniors, moderate and bridge teams!  Awesome job Mike

It was a great honor, My life was pretty much perfect now. Work was great and so was my personal life.