Some Jazz and a new friend.

There. I am officially off work until next Thursday. Thank the good Lord.

What a week! I wanted to sleep like a log last night, but we had an incredible storm roll through our area, with near-constant lightning, torrential rain, and near 100 mph winds. So I kept waking up and wondering if the roar was just a storm or if a tornado was tearing through the neighborhood. We’re still standing, but there’s a lot of damage all over town and our house has a couple of leaks that need to be addressed. Nothing major, but annoying enough to Calvin, who is the Designated Mister Fixit.

My business trip to Oregon was, I think, only about fifty percent successful. We still have a LOOOONG way to go and didn’t accomplish nearly enough of what we went there for. But still, at least we’re headed in the right direction, project-wise. I think.

I had a lot of fun on Tuesday evening. One of the team members decided at about 2:00 in the afternoon to pull together an impromptu trip into downtown Portland to visit a jazz club and have a nice meal. Fourteen of us ended up going – quite a crowd to travel on the MAX light rail system together from Hillsboro into downtown Portland. THAT was an experience – I’ve never traveled on light rail before, and I was grateful that one of the guys was a “local” who understood the nuances of the transit system. I stood the whole way – about a half-hour and three train transitions. Keeping yourself upright on those trains is good for core strengthening, I discovered. And it’s also not conducive to taking pictures while in transit, so the only pic I got was this one of the platform:

We got off on the 11th Street stop, walked past several of the landmarks Calvin and I had become familiar with during our trip to Oregon last year (including Jake’s Grill and POWELL’S, where I stopped all too briefly to ooh and aah and text message Jen with an “ohai guess where i am?!?”), and ended up at Jimmy Mak’s.

Now, I’m not a huge fan of Jazz music, but I discovered that I really REALLY like listening to it, and watching it, live. This band was AWESOME, and they allowed several music students in their late-teens to sit in with them. One boy was on the piano and another took a turn at the bass, and they were seamless and incredible. I asked if I could take some pictures, and wandered around the club taking shots (and getting teased unmercifully by my co-workers for being such a shutter-bug).

The venue was very dim and I was not allowed to use the flash, so some of the pics ended up getting blurry (and hence Photoshopped in an “artsy” manner to make up for it) since I most certainly did NOT tote my tripod all the way to Oregon.

So! Dinner was a lot of fun and very tasty (Greek-themed menu, and their grape leaves are to DIE for). I sat next to this guy:

He’s in his late-fifties or early-sixties, hails from England, had four beers and four glasses of wine and a whisky throughout the course of the evening, and slurringly flirted with me. I commented to another co-worker there that someone needed to drive him to his hotel, and he volunteered me. Said he was staying at the Ritz and had an incredible white marble bathroom to show me. And then he said, “So, what was your name again?”

Yeeeeahhhh… everyone cracked up, and he was all, “What?” I didn’t feel too special, since he was also flirting with this guy:

Heh. I kid. He sure was one of those, “I love you, man!” guys, though.

We left the club at about nine, and three of us girls decided to ride back together in the car that the lady on the very right drove in, instead of taking the MAX back.

I’d met her for the first time the day before, on the first day of the conference. She and I exchanged a couple of funny comments to one another, and I started to suspect she might be a kindred spirit. Then, on the drive back to our hotels, she and I gabbed NON-STOP the whole way (the other lady, sitting in the back seat, hardly got a word in edgewise. Poor thing.) We dropped the other lady off at her car, then drove over to my hotel, where we proceeded to just sit in her car, in the parking lot, and talk for nearly another two hours. Calvin called twice while we were gabbing, and was completely baffled at how we could hit it off so well after having just met.

After Calvin’s impatient comment, “You know, I’d like to know you’re safe in your room before I go to bed,” she and I finally said goodnight. Calvin and I talked for a little while longer, and I finally went to sleep.

The next day, Wednesday, passed in an uneventful manner. My new friend and I IM’ed throughout the day (she was in another room with another testing group), and I informed her that she was now My Friend, with all of the benefits and responsibilities implied therein. There was more conferencing and more systems testing, and we all (over thirty of us) went to a local Old Chicago for dinner. Then Thursday I attended the conference until eleven, managed to find my way back to the airport all by myself and with no wrong turns whatsoever, not even one, caught the 2:00 flight back to Phoenix, and was back at home by 5:30.

I unpacked, bathed, ate, and went to bed early. I worked from home today, have Monday off as a company holiday, and am taking vacation days Tuesday and Wednesday. You can be rest assured that I ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT think about work until next Thursday morning at the earliest.

I have SO MUCH blog reading to catch up on (my Google Reader currently has over 200 “items”), so sorry for my silence for you bloggers who are used to me commenting. I’ll be stopping by soon!

(If you’re interested, all of the photos from my evening in Portland can be seen here.)

Takin’ what I’m given…

Aaaaahhhhh.

I LOVE staying in hotels. I love unpacking and putting everything away. I love how everything is tidy when I arrive, and gets tidied when I leave, and I come back to tidiness. I love going out to find the nearest grocery store, stocking up like a squirrel preparing for winter, and creating a little sanctuary for myself.

I got up at 4:30 this morning. The shuttle picking me up to take me to the airport was due between 5:30 and 5:45. So of COURSE the doorbell rings at 5:00. The shuttle was early, I had to rush to finish doing my hair and brush my teeth (subsequently leaving my toothbrush behind – force of habit caused me to toss it back in the drawer rather than pack it), and hope that I’d remembered to put everything in my suitcase the night before. I didn’t have the leisure to double and triple check what I’d packed, like I usually do, so I spent a few minutes while sitting in the shuttle stressing that I’d forgotten something (which I did, but easily remedied).

Plus I had to make due with a peck on Calvin’s cheek while he was 3/4 asleep, as a goodbye. Not good.

I was at the airport at 5:30, and through the check-in and security check in no time at all – there were no lines to speak of. I had a cup of oatmeal for breakfast, perused the news stands for a bit, and boarded at 6:45. The flight was very quick and uneventful, though my bladder INSISTS on needing relief twice an hour. It’s completely ridiculous. I swear when I fly out again on Thursday I’m not drinking ANYTHING for at least three hours before my flight.

I claimed my rental car (a Toyota RAV 4) and a kind co-worker rode with me to direct me to the AcronymCo site. I got there at a little after eleven, called Calvin, hunted and gathered some lunch, and then settled into the conference room for the first hour of our “face-to-face”.

Oy. There’s tension in this team. BUNCHES of tension. Lots of bickering (I even asked the lady next to me if two of the bickering people were siblings, or married – they weren’t, but they sure as hell ACTED like it). I have a complete lack of enthusiasm for the success of the remainder of the week.

I got out of there right at five, and after a few wrong turns (natch) I found my hotel. I offloaded and unpacked, then went back out to find the nearest grocery store to procure some juice, water, snacks, and a toothbrush. I grabbed a sandwich at Subway – I don’t have the energy to meet folks for anything fancier tonight. Then I figured out the room’s internet connection, called Calvin again, took a couple of pics, and here I am typing this entry.

My room:

The weather is just LOVELY – high 60’s/low 70’s, and the sky is full of puffy white clouds. I drove around with the windows down and have my hotel room window wide open to the fresh air. I plan on doing a bit of exploring and taking more pictures in the evenings after my meetings – there’s a cute little village of shops and restaurants just up the street from my hotel. So tomorrow night will be the night of my fancy, on-the-company dinner, I think.

I’m going to curl up now and read a bit and maybe watch some TV. More updates as the situation warrants!

Heading West

AcronymCo is sending me to Oregon for the week, next week. While I’ve travelled plenty in my life, I’ve never travelled on the company dime. I asked my boss what the per-diem was, and he was all, “Well, don’t buy a bottle of Cristal every night; other than that, have at it.” My corporate AmEx works, thankfully. I never activated it last year after my trip to Shanghai was cancelled.

This trip is for one of the two projects that I’ve been testing on for the last several weeks. The leads of the other project are irritated that this conference was scheduled when it was – several people are like me and are trying to support both. So there’s been some politicking and some whining and some arguing, which I’ve come to expect with these two projects. We’re all adults, and yet we can’t, apparently, play well together. Since I’m the only representative from our particular organization for BOTH projects, I’ve been a busy, busy bee.

Of the last three weeks, I’ve been to my office maybe three or four times. I’m out all next week, then on vacation for half of the week following (Labor day and two days following), and THEN probably going back to the testing “brickyard” for the remainder of that week. Hopefully by that time we’ll be out of testing (for now, anyway – “user acceptance testing” starts up again a month or six weeks after the end of “cons” testing, which is what we’re in right now).

I am Really Fucking Tired.

It’s hard to pay attention to your health when you’re this busy. I need to get back on track with South Beach (I’ve never felt better or seen better results than when I’ve stuck to the South Beach program) and will try to be disciplined while travelling, but I’m sure I’ll be tired enough and busy enough to just eat whatever’s available. I’m also, optimistically, bringing workout clothes with me to take advantage of the hotel’s gym. Again, I am skeptical about my own ability to stay motivated and work out while away.

I’m really, REALLY looking forward to the return of my regular routine.

Double take.

My nineteen year old daughter is listening to the Culture Club. On purpose.

Satisfaction is…

… closing three $0 balance credit card accounts, cutting up the cards, and throwing them away.

Oh, the places we would go!

So, I watched this.

And then I contemplated the absolute and unadulterated MAYHEM Calvin and I would commit to the Internet specifically and the WORLD in general if we had one of those from-our-livingroom-to-You-Tube-in-2.5-seconds handheld camcorder thingies.

MAYHEM. Of the unadulterated kind. People would flee.

And then, randomly, I thought about how Miss Britt has seen her boss’ balls (click that link at your own risk people! I mean, it’s Mr. Avitable, after all). And I contemplated what I would do if a) my boss had a blog; and b) he posted a picture of his balls.

And then my head exploded all over the damn place.

Thank you, and good night.

I can has feed.

I never really posted about this, figuring it would probably be intuative to most… but then I remembered that I knew nothing about this crap, like, five minutes ago. So! If you guys prefer to use a feed reader to subscribe to this website, you can. Over on the left hand side, right below the “Listed At:” header, there’s a link that says “Subscribe in a reader”, which links to feedburner. That will get you all hooked up regardless of the type of feed reader you use. It looks a little something like this:

I personally use Google Reader and I’ve subscribed to the majority of my “regular reads” (most of whom are listed under my blogroll to the right). I also installed the code plug-in that Britt recommended, to view the original site content right in the reader frame. Only works in Firefox, though – the plug-in, that is. Google Reader works just fine regardless of your browser, of course.

It’s teh awesome, to borrow an apt phrase most recently used by Taoist Biker. I have no idea what viewership via feed readers does to ones stats and hits counts, but eh. That’s not what I’m in it for.

It’s you guys that keep me coming back. You know that, right? ~smooooch~

This one’s for you, Grammy!

Seven years ago today, my dear Grammy passed away. Her loss is still such a painful thing, but along with the sadness are the good, happy memories, and the thoughts of her that make me smile. I love preparing her recipies from The Book. I love using the little sayings that she used to use. I catch myself humming while I’m doing my “chores” and think of how much I am like her. I’m so glad that Calvin got to meet her on a couple of occasions, so that we can remember her together.

I loved all the things that made her HER. She was my Grammy and she wasn’t like anybody else, ever. I came across something tonight that just made me laugh out loud. You see, OH how that woman LOVED Tom Selleck. My Grandmother did oil paintings as a hobby and she did several of “Magnum”, and even painted a full-sized portrait of him and hung it over her bed.

So, this one’s for you, Grammy. Miss you. Love you.

Miss you guys! Mean it!

Okay, I totally could have written an entry or three this weekend, but we were FRAUGHT with laziness. I cooked a little, I cleaned a little, I worked out once, and I took a nice LOOOONG bubble bath (I got all pruney). But for the most part, Calvin and I sat our asses on the couch, watched the Olympics, watched Harold and Kumar (the unrated version, oh my stars and garters), Calvin spend many hours conquering Bad Company on the Xbox, we took naps, and I read a couple of books.

We did have one AWESOME stretch of time one evening during which we tried to figure out what was on a few random and un-labeled mix CD’s in our possession (as an aside, I think the number of mix CD’s we’ve made over the years rivals the number of actual purchased CD’s). That was one of those times that I wish I had a video camera that easily translated to You Tube so you guys could see a typical evening in our household. Someday, I might translate that mix CD into words for you. Suffice it to say, once we were done perusing it we ejected it from the tray and promptly labeled it, “Because we got high (seriously).”

More testing testing testing this week, but I’ll be gosh darned if I don’t have lunch with Jen at LEAST twice this week. I’ve got three or four more weeks of this away-from-my-desk-and-routine nonsense. And for some reason, sitting on my ass testing these new systems wears me out more than sitting on my ass doing my regular job.

Clearly, I am a wussy.

What I’ll be watching…

Bones – September 3

True Blood – September 7

Terminator – September 8

Fringe – September 9

Big Bang Theory – September 22

How I Met Your Mother – September 22

Two and a Half Men – September 22

The Mentalist – September 23

Criminal Minds – September 24

Grey’s Anatomy – September 25

Californication – September 28

My Own Worst Enemy – September 29

Pushing Daisies – October 1

Private Practice – October 1

Life – October 3

CSI – October 9

Coming back in ‘09 – Dollhouse, Medium, Reaper, The Tudors (gotta watch Season 2 first, though), and Battlestar Galactica.

I know I’m forgetting some. And I don’t know if I should give Heroes a chance this year – I’d have to rent Season Two, since I didn’t watch it. We watch SO MUCH TV. Damn you, inventor of the DVR! DAMN YOU.

(Edited to add, this is a very handy website when obsessed over what’s going on with “your” shows and when they’re coming back again. Go here specifically for a night-by-night breakdown of what’s on when.)