'Allo Cleveland!!!

Another packed weekend has come and gone: Bella is back in her room, and Isaac is adjusting: He liked having Bella in his room! Isaac is in that horrible period where the nap may or may not be necessary on a given day... he's been VERY tired by the end of the day, and has had some days where that Didda has stayed close at hand all day. He's completely addicted to the Pixar CARS movie, and asks to watch it every day. Lightning McQueen's voice is always in the background it seems these days. Even Bella is getting tired of it, but Isaac can't get enough. HE IS A BOY.

On Saturday, an neighbor had a birthday party at a community center gymnastics room, and Isaac and Bella were incredibly happy, running around, doing somersaults, walking the high beam, bouncing on trampolines... it was a great day. Bella asked to do more gymnastics in the future, so we'll have to see where we can wedge that in! Isaac was fun to watch - he was a total professional with everything, getting a very focused look and determined to do the exercises QUICKLY. We all gasped when he leapt up and grabbed a horizontal bar and swung himself back and forth before jumping off onto a mat... it was quite the show of strength and fearlessness.

Technology News:
Allright, I did it. I got an AppleTV. And I love it... and more importantly, BELLA loves it. She is completely comfortable navigating it, and it's nice to have all of our movies, shows, pictures, and music from the iMac available on the big TV downstairs. And Bella's proud of the fact she can run it all by herself. I was close to just getting a PC for downstairs for this purpose, and I'm glad I went the AppleTV route: Much less expensive and it does what I want it to do.

In other technology news: I have replaced my dead Kindle with the DX model: The bigger screen and support for PDF files is going to be great, especially since my new gig will require that I review huge PDF files filled with Finance-Talk and Technobabble: It'll be much easier to read them on Kindle format than to stare at a computer screen.

The New Gig:
I'm on the final countdown in Philly: I canceled my Zipcar contract, the hotel knows I'm only here for one more week, and I'm making the final rounds of my favorite haunts. After this week there's just 3 more days next week and I'm done. I'm having breakfast with my local friend to see about coordinating some work in mid 2010 perhaps - IN A DIFFERENT AREA.

My first meeting in Cleveland went very well: The sponsors are very engaged, and while we only had an hour on the schedule, they cleared 3 for us so that we could really get into depth. We worked hard this past week to deliver a "straw man" presentation to give them something to react to: The final deck was 50 pages, and they had not only reviewed it, but had great comments on every page. Actually, there was a section I had just fleshed out lightly as a "this is the sort of info that will go in here" framework, with some temporary details that weren't entirely correct, and they latched onto them, until I re-explained that the whole section will be nuked and replaced with the "real" info.... I actually got a little worried... but it ended well. They were very complimentary of our effort, and now I have a big thing to whip up by Tuesday, so I'm getting down to bidness.

The Finance area is in a nice part of town. The IT area, on the other hand, is in a less friendly part of town. A massive converted warehouse that looks like nothing from the outside, but lavishly retrofitted inside with high ceilings and open work areas. But on the way, my partner (the driver) misinterpreted a hand gesture from another driver and cut in front of him... and the gentleman decided to follow us for a few blocks, rolled down his window, and with a disturbing stillness, asked why we had cut him off: We apologized profusely. He stared for a while... then drove off slowly.

And 3 blocks from that very incident, there was a shooting that evening.

But I'm not going to worry (and don't you worry, Mom): There are hundreds of people working at that site, and people take care of each other. And I'm not really working on that site anyway: We established that my work really WILL be done from the home office!!! Yes, I'll be parking on the 3rd floor. We're all very excited. So when I do visit, it'll be for a day of meetings, then back home.

So back to work for me now.