{"id":10259,"date":"2024-11-01T10:00:05","date_gmt":"2024-11-01T10:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silveridge.com\/?p=10259"},"modified":"2024-11-07T22:23:34","modified_gmt":"2024-11-07T22:23:34","slug":"november-2024-newsletter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silveridge.com\/?p=10259","title":{"rendered":"November 2024 Newsletter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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Activities and \u201cThe face of fun\u201d<\/h1>\n

A Visit with Assistant Director Silvia Osborne<\/h3>\n

By Dale Dauten<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cWhatever you do, always give 100%.<\/p>\n

Unless you\u2019re giving blood.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bill Murray<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
That line about giving 100% came back to me when I recently had the chance to sit down with Assistant Activities Director, Silvia Osborne. As I got her to reminisce about her career, I knew I was talking to someone who knows plenty about hard work.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
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Silvia grew up in Colorado Springs, with parents who both worked for the Tumac steel company — her mom an accountant, her dad a welder. (Her dad wasn\u2019t an ordinary welder: he worked on major construction projects, traveling to places like Dubai and Saudi Arabia to put his skills to work on massive irrigation systems.) Tumac eventually agreed to move the family to the smaller city of Grand Junction, Colorado and that\u2019s where Silvia spent her teenage years. She married right out of Grand Junction High and soon had two daughters. She settled into a job at a convenience store and that\u2019s where her steady rise began: Clerk, Assistant Manager, Manager, then Manager of two stores, then seven stores and eventually she got hired by major corporate chains to manage giant truck stops \u2013 first Love\u2019s and then Pilot.<\/p>\n

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If you\u2019ve ever stopped at a Love\u2019s or Pilot, you\u2019ll know that they\u2019re plazas with restaurants, lounges, showers, sometimes mechanic shops. And they are 24\/7 operations, with drivers sleeping in their trucks in the parking lot. Picturing all that, I asked Silvia, All this was certain to create challenges for management, right?<\/p>\n

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\u201dI hired and fired hundreds of people,\u201d she recalled. \u201cI handled calls from law enforcement, sometimes warning us that they were doing a sting operation at our store. And trucking companies would call and ask us to check on a driver who hadn\u2019t reported in. One time a truck had been in our lot for two days and I went to check — the driver had died there in our parking lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Despite the problems, Silvia had a rewarding career, especially with Pilot. That\u2019s her posing with a champion\u2019s belt over her shoulder that her team had just been awarded, and the second photo is her being singled out for her store\u2019s performance by Jimmy Haslan, the Chairman of the Pilot Corporation (and owner of the Cleveland Browns and the Columbus MLS team).<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
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Corporate life has plenty of advantages, and for Silvia that included events like the time the company arranged to take over Universal Studios: \u201cWe had the place to ourselves, no lines, just walk onto any of the rides.\u201d And when I asked Silvia my favorite question, the one about the best advice she\u2019d ever gotten, she smiled and said, \u201cWe got to meet Warren Buffet — he invested in Pilot \u2013 and he told us, \u2018Keep it simple, stupid. Stay with what you\u2019re good at and don\u2019t complicate things.\u2019 That advice keeps coming back to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The big advantage of a career with a major corporation is, of course, financial, including retirement savings. Although Silvia hadn\u2019t reached retirement age \u2013 and still hasn\u2019t — the stresses around the Covid pandemic sapped her enthusiasm for the work. She recalled the decision: \u201cI didn\u2019t plan on retiring, but Covid broke me. We kept the stores running, but truckers didn\u2019t take to the rules for dealing with Covid — I got insulted and even spit at. It broke me.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Her daughters were grown, she had long been divorced from the husband she married out of high school, and by the time of Covid her partner\/wife, Brenda, was urging her to retire. She finally said, \u2018Let\u2019s sell everything and let\u2019s go.\u201d<\/p>\n

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So they bought a fifth-wheel and hit the road. Their first trip was eight weeks to the East Coast, hoping to find a spot to spend winters. But, as Silvia soon discovered, \u201cI\u2019m not a wet-heat kind of girl.\u201d So they turned their attention to warm weather locations in the West, and that eventually took them to Arizona and to Silveridge. They still spend summers in Colorado, where they have five acres near Grand Junction for parking the fifth-wheel, and where Silvia\u2019s favorite activity is taking her five grandsons on week-long camping trips.<\/p>\n

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Photos: One of those Western trips took Silvia and Brenda to Seattle and to a visit with the \u201cFreemont Troll,\u201d public art that lives under the Aurora Bridge; and that\u2019s Silvia and Brenda with two of Silvia\u2019s five grandsons<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
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Although Silvia retired from corporate life, she wasn\u2019t ready to give up on working: last season she worked with the maintenance team at Silveridge, specializing in the park\u2019s flowers. Then, this season, she moved indoors to work with Activities. Asked how it was going, she smiled and said, \u201cI love talking to people and here in Activities we get to be the face of fun.\u201d<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
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FROM THE ACTIVITY OFFICE<\/h4>\n

We are so excited to have the resort filling up! The buzz of friends connecting, laughter in the air, crowded courts and pool decks fill our hearts with joy! We love seeing those we met last season and look forward to meeting our new friends. We had a blast at our Halloween dance. Harry Mathews is an incredible musician.<\/p>\n

BREAKFAST!<\/p>\n

They say it\u2019s the most important meal of the day. We hope you come and join us for a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausage, and your choice of plain pancakes, blueberry pancakes, or biscuits and gravy. Breakfast cost is $7.00. We prefer you purchase a breakfast ticket in advance at the Activity Office BUT you can also pay cash at the door. We have many activities coming up this month in November. One of November\u2019s most important events is our<\/p>\n

Veterans Day ceremony. Veterans Day is an important day to honor and show appreciation for ALL who have served in the military\u2014in wartime or peacetime. We show appreciate to all veterans US and Canadian. We also honor our Gold Star families whose loved one died in service to our nation. Every year, the ceremony has touched my heart. We will also have a light lunch again this year. Lunch tickets are $10 or free for Veterans. (Veterans need to pick up a ticket at the Activity Office.) We hope you\u2019ll join us on this very special day to show your appreciate for those who have served their country.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
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Line Dancing!<\/p>\n

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This year Bill Bjorkland will lead line dancing lessons for anyone who needs a little refresher. He will be in the ballroom on Mondays from 2:00-3:30. These lessons are free and no experience is necessary. Come join the Boot<\/p>\n

Scootin\u2019 fun!<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
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We know there are a lot of Yellowstone fans out there. Come watch the Premier with us in the ballroom. It will be shown on 4 large tvs and a drop down screen. Bring a snack and join the fun. There\u2019s sure to be a little Rip excitement as the final season kicks off.<\/p>\n

Stay tuned for even more fun in the sun at Silveridge.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n

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-LU & Sylvia<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Activities and \u201cThe face of fun\u201d A Visit with Assistant Director Silvia Osborne By Dale Dauten \u201cWhatever you do, always […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/silveridge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10259"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/silveridge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/silveridge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silveridge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silveridge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/silveridge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10260,"href":"https:\/\/silveridge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10259\/revisions\/10260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/silveridge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silveridge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silveridge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}