Good morning Path to Warren podcast. This is Matt Warren. Today is Monday, February 7, 2022, its Episode 337 Hope you’re having a great day so far. It’s a rainy Monday morning on the way to work. I showed up at Toastmasters this morning at my buddy JB’s place called Crave showed up this morning. He and I both thought it was today, but nope, the Toastmasters’ is actually next Monday. So I was scheduled to speak and also be the Toastmaster of the Day so it helped me prepare my talk and get that ready to go. I’ve really gotten to where I like the Toastmasters a lot. I spent some time this weekend going through the website, learning the different paths and what I need to do to prepare for speech number three. Speech number three is about vocal variety and body language. So getting out of my comfort zone with body language and trying to speak with your highs and lows and quiet and with very good tone. Speaking with a lot of variety creates interest and keeps the listening. So I worked on a good speech all day yesterday. Well, most of the afternoon yesterday. It was really quite cute. Around 4:00pm, Maddie was wanting to get out of the house and she really wanted me to take her to Tractor Supply. So we took the old truck, the old F-100 Ranger, and we went to the Tractor Supply, just her and I. But beforehand we rode around and dropped off China that we were trying to get rid of and decluttering our house. We dropped off the plates over to Brook’s house, Meagan’s cousin and we also dropped off Valentine’s gift for about ten of Maddie’s little friends. I pulled the old truck up in front of the house and she would jump out and go deliver the little gift. Little gift bag. Such a great productive weekend though, and I’m glad all that happened happened on Saturday. Meagan had a wedding all day so I took the kids, I took Maddie and we invited two of her friends. We went to Altitude, which is like a trampoline park near our house. We had a really good time. I was able to work on my Google drive while they played so I got my Google drive all organized with the files and the right folders, but it’s not 100%, but it’s a lot further along than it was. They played for about 2 hours and then Maddie was able to go play at a friend’s house and I went home and worked with Mario for another hour and a half or so till about 5:00pm and Mario helped me cut back the Liriope. For those that don’t know, now is the time. February is the time where you cut back your ornamental grasses like your monkey grass as they call it, or Liriope. Now’s the time to do it. Don’t ever cut back Mondo grass Your Mondo stays evergreen year round and I would not recommend ever cutting it back. However, your Liriope really produces sprouts and new grass. These shoots start coming up around March. We had a couple of days where it got warm, and I knew it might trigger these grasses to start coming up. Right now it’s 35 deg outside, so it’s not warm at all. But once they start coming up, there’s nothing stopping them. So that’s my tip of the day is to take the time in February. At the end of February, you might be asking, why would I not? Why would I not cut it back in the fall? And the answer is you want them to live and you want them to look good as long as you can. You want them to look green and provide depth in the yard, a little bit of height, color. You want them to stay as long as they can, but you want to make sure that you get them cut back before that new growth comes. If you don’t cut them back and you try to cut them back when that new growth starts to come up. If you cut off that top, what happens is for the rest of the season, all season long, the top of that Liriope will look like you came and cut it off with scissors. At the top, it’ll grow about twelve inch long or so and then stop. But if you nic that top of the blade, it’ll have this point that’s cut off and it looks horrible for the whole year. So it’s so much easier. For example, Mario and I were able to use the weed eater to cut down these Liriope, and we got them down to like three or four inches. You don’t want to get lower than that. To get lower than that, you risk nicking the top of the grasses, but it’s always important to get in there and look and see how tall they are. To begin with, we also completed this weekend the clean up of the two pecan trees that we had in our backyard. I don’t know what will happen with these big trunks on the street. I did have a neighbor stop by who said that the city. They’ll take everything, but they won’t take these big trunks. Okay. I didn’t know that. I thought they take everything. I mean, they take mattresses, they take refrigerators, they take everything. But I didn’t know that. They don’t take trunks of a tree. They take branches of all sizes and links. I think it’ll be fine. I’m confident that that machine will just come around with the big scoops, scoop it up and put it in the back of the truck and roll them down the road. It’s a lot don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of big trunks. So we’ll see. I’m really excited about today. We’ve got a new engineer starting. His name is Bob. Bob is a mechanical engineer. He’s going to work under Jeff. He’s got 25 years of machine design experience so excited about that. One thing that I know I need to work on is and I shared this with my accountability partner on Saturday morning. For some reason I didn’t tell Jennifer until the morning of when I was going to be working from home. I told my boss, John, I told him two or three days in advance, but for some reason I just didn’t tell Jennifer. And then the morning of she asked me, she said, did you just find out about this today? Obviously knowing that I didn’t find out about it today, I knew about it a couple of days. So I need to work on that. I have a new bottom line of I’m not going to wait more than 24 hours from the time that I know that I need to ask off or work from home, I’m not going to wait more than 24 hours. From the time I find out the time I let them know. So my challenge today for myself is I’m going to go inside, I’m going to look at my calendar and I’m going to write down and get on my calendar and on their calendars anytime when I know I need to work from home or I know I need to take off. JB and I had this rule about six months ago, but I never I don’t know, I fell back into old ways. It just helps because I’ve thought about it 20 times this weekend about how gosh Matt, why didn’t you just tell her? Why didn’t I just tell her that I have to be home? Because she’s got school. That is only a half day on Friday and I need to be home because Meagan’s got three events. Why can’t and I just talk about that. So I’m working on that. I hope you have a wonderful day. And remember mom always says make your contribution. Have a great day. Thanks for listening. Bye.