Folena Family 2011

I’ve kept myself busy doing free-lance teaching of Neonatal Resuscitation and Basic Life Support classes at the Heartshare Training Center. Heartshare is just around the corner from our home so it is very convenient, plus I really enjoy teaching these courses so it’s a win-win for me. I also started teaching Infant Care and Infant CPR classes for parents at Mission College Community Education – specifically for sick and/or premature infants. In the spring I was contacted by one of my old bosses at Kaiser about a possible part-time on-call position. The position consists of abstracting information from Pediatric Intensive Care patients and updating a national pediatric data base that is used to analyze quality and mortality. This allows Kaiser to compare themselves with other PICUs across the nation. The position materialized in late summer and I accepted. I end up commuting to the regional office of Quality and Utilization in Oakland once a week or so and then do most of my work in the Santa Clara facility. I really enjoy working with this team – great, hard-working people.

Amanda and Justin are as busy as ever. Some hi-lights include Amanda performing in the Lesher Center of Walnut Creek production of Blues in the Night where she got the chance to sing and tap. She directed the Broadway By The Bay production of Gypsy that received very positive reviews as she did a great job casting the show. One bit of very good news was that the Artistic Director for Broadway By The Bay announced her retirement at the end of 2011 and Amanda was selected to take her place. Starting in January Amanda takes over as AD and she is super excited to get this type of position this early in her career. This musical theater company is based in Burlingame and their performances are held at the Fox Theatre in Redwood City so in preparation for the position where she expects to put in many long hours, Amanda and Justin moved up the peninsula in September to an apartment in San Mateo. They have a 2 bedroom place and they just love it.

Justin has a little bit of a commute now down to Sunnyvale where he works at the California Theater Center. He takes the train most days and bikes to the theater when he’s not on tour. When touring, Justin goes all over northern California, and up into Oregon sometimes, southern California and into Nevada. Touring is very demanding and it takes him away from Amanda of course, but he’s performing and that’s his joy. He taught a conservatory over the summer for kids and that seems to be something else he really enjoys – and the kids love him. He certainly has a knack for it.

Robbie has also been very busy with work and part-time graduate school. It looks like if all goes well, he should be graduating with his MBA at the end of 2012. This year he changed jobs from working at the media company to moving over to being an Account Executive at the NBC affiliate in Denver. In his new position he’s on a team that’s responsible for acquiring new business to advertise on television and online. It’s very challenging in this economy to convince customers to spend money on any marketing initiatives, but he’s done pretty well and is leading his team in new business acquisitions. He enjoys what he does and that’s all that matters. He also moved in the summer to a nice, spacious 2-bedroom apartment in downtown Denver with his longtime girlfriend Desta. Amanda flew out to help Robbie move as Desta was studying for the bar exam and Robbie needed the help. Brother and sister got the job done without inflicting bodily harm – I was impressed.

Paul and I were in Colorado to spend a long weekend with Robbie and Desta. We saw the Botanic Gardens, visited the Molly Brown House and went to the Colorado-Oregon football game in Boulder. In fact, we attended 2 college football games this year – Colorado-Oregon and Colorado-Stanford when Robbie and Desta flew out to California for the game – and the Buffs were outscored a total of 93-9 (ouch!). Oh well, the Buffs will rise to prominence again someday and we’re not fair weather fans. GO BUFFS!