Last Night
So tonight's my last night in town - tomorrow I fly back to Blighty and return to something approaching normal life. I'm looking forward to sleeping in my own bed, with The Mrs and Gramsci close at hand, and reconnecting with all the people I've been disconnected from for so long.
This last week has been crazy, hence the lack of updates, but I wanted to round out my time in San Francisco by reflecting back to one of my relatively early posts, about how I have not the worst view in the world to wake up to.
Well, it's certainly not a bad one to go to bed to either:
As Weeks Go…
.... this one's been a bit rubbish.
It's been disrupted by travel, and also by dealing with some very frustrating people along the way. It's also yet another thing that's got in the way of me getting everything done that I wanted to during this stint overseas. I'm very very frustrated that I'll be leaving this task less than 100% complete.
I've also been thinking long and hard about this here blog and what i want to do with it going forward. Further thoughts to follow.
Things I Have Learned Today:
Middle aged men with entirely grey hair should not affect a soul patch.
Another Day, Another Town
In another State in fact, and one that's completely new to me. However, it's one where I have 24 hours, most of which will be spent in the airport, a hotel, and an office next door to the hotel. Sightseeing, it isn't going to be.
If it's Wednesday, this much be Ohio.
A Random Act Of Kindness
On te cable car home just now, a couple asked a woman if she knew where they should get off to go to a restaurant that had been suggested to them. The were tourists, and clearly a bit lost. The restaurant was Italian - it's in my neighbourhood; I've looked at it a few times in passing, but I like my Italians rustic, and it always looked a bit too polished for my taste.
Clearly the woman they asked wasn't a fan either. She said she could point them at a much better one if they wanted great Italian food, then proceeded to ring her favourite neighbourhood place (number in her speed dial - as she said "that should be a good sign") and prevailed upon the person answering to hold a table for her 'friends'. Then she gave them careful directions to the place and told them which stop to get off at.
I'm just not seeing that kind of thing happening in London, somehow.
Countdown
I'm now safely into the last two weeks of my time in the US, and starting to feel like I'm gathering speed towards the bottom of the hill. There's *so* much I still need to do, and so little time in which to do it.
And that includes some down time that I could do with having to unwind a little from the crazy schedule of longhaul flights and all night working. This past weekend was a complete, wasted, crash of a weekend. Note that between getting up at 4am on Thursday to going to bed after midnight Friday I finally went to bed just as The Mrs was coming online) I hadn't slept, so my ability to do anything at all was pretty much non-existent, which is a pity as that leaves me with only one weekend left to do anything I feel like fitting in for myself. I tried to do some clothes shopping on Saturday and ended up just standing in shops looking vacantly at things - this will have to change this coming weekend.
ZOMG!
For reasons that will become apparent, I just delved back into the archives, to discover when I first mentioned World of Warcraft in this here blog. Brilliantly, it was exactly three years ago today. Quite the coincidence.
The reason for looking was to try and create a sense of occasion (though I wasn't expecting to do so well at that) around the announcement that in a mad burst of "If you can't beat them..." I've started a WoW Blog just like The Mrs and Nora. Why?
Why not?
Mike, look on this as all being part of an education for you. And give it a go - you can get trial accounts.
Which now I think about it is of course how other dealers of dangerous addictions snare you...
Electin’ Again
So I watched primary results being discussed on Tuesday night with interest. McCain was never really a question, but Hillary dragging herself back from the brink was gripping. I'm very conflicted about the Democratic contest. Like many people, I don't wholly trust Hillary C, though I do tend to think that she's a relatively safe pair of hands. Mr Obama on the other hand, I'm still not remotely sure of. I can see what people say, that he's a great speaker, and he sounds persuasive and confident. It's just that at the end of one of his speeches, stirring though it may have been, I really never have the faintest idea what he actually stands for, except his own highly polished personality.
It's quite like listening to Tony Blair. And we all know what a disappointment that turned out to be....
Mental
I was accosted on a bus this evening.
Not violently or anything, but quite intensely. The guy sitting across the aisle was reading a book and noticed that I was reading a comic. Suddenly he went off, telling me (and everyone else listening) that I shouldn't be wasting my time on fiction; I should be changing my life!
And so he went on to explain the virtues of his book with increasing energy and volume. And so, dear reader, I share it with you; It's The Amazing Power of Positive Intent, and astonishingly Amazon don't list it. In fact, more astonishingly still (and that one's not sarcastic), Google only contains one site in its index that mentions it (possibly now there'll be two). It's this blog posting, in which one of the commenters refers to the book and others by the same author.
To be honest, the ludicrous title put me off in the first place, but when my bus neighbour started waving it under my nose and I noticed he was in the middle of a chapter called Vibrational Relativity and Energy Balance I had to excuse myself and get off the bus two stops early to avoid laughing out loud.
Marching Onward
March already? I started out this month with a real aim to blog something every day and here we are on the 4th with nothing done. I've been globetrotting again, including flying a new airline again for the second time in a month. Silverjet are an all-business class airline flying between London (Luton), New York and Dubai. It's an odd experience being in a plane that's all one class and that class not being economy. Good service though, and cheap for it, but the big downside? The four hours it took me to get home from Luton airport on Friday afternoon.