More like FART Lauderdale

Traveling to Fort Lauderdale tonight – I’m spending the week at the first hospital we’ll be implementing. And no, there's nothing stinky here, I just wanted to say Fart. MOVING ON. It’s a political mission to build relationships, which is a funny thing, since we’re actively trying to get me OUT of this client, so any relationship building I’ll be doing will have very little benefit to anyone. But it gets me out of Cleveland. And if you’re wondering, the reason I’m doing this is that we needed SOMEONE down there, and I already travel. Sending one of the rest of the team would have required travel authorizations and budget scrutiny. I’m the easy option.

(And yes, there is movement on the “getting Jim out of Cleveland” front – the client has crossed over from total denial of my ever leaving to provisionally thinking about a replacement… It is movement forward. Stay tuned.)

I’m flying on a “real” airplane for this trip. I’m in the big dog, a 757, up in First Class, enjoying a ginger ale in a glass made out of glass. It’s the little things. It’s a million times better than the little regional jet that I’ve logged almost 50,000 miles on this year so far.

I had an hour to kill in Atlanta, so I loaded up the iPod with the new Devo album: I remembered they had a new one because they were on Yo Gabba Gabba and the kids were shouting “Hey, look! It’s MARK!” – Mark Mothersbaugh has a recurring guest role on the show doing artwork, and they were thrilled to see him with a flowerpot hat singing “This is how we work it” (edit: original post had "This is what we do" - different song!). Anyway, the album is very throw-back and fun to listen to. And the 135 bpm tempo is good work “purposeful walking”.

(And if you're tracking the meta here: My children informed/reminded me of the existence of a new album by an 80's band I loved. The torch is passed)

I took a moment to sit in a bar to do some emails, and turned the music off to concentrate… there was a TV blaring, and I heard superdramatic music, with a voiceover “We’re taking detective drama to the next level”.. and assorted other dramatic hard-ass talk – I looked up and saw a soft focus girl riding an escalator, all smiles, looking at her phone… it took a while for me to figure out there was ANOTHER TV behind me that was the source of the cop show talk, and what I was watching was a cellphone ad. But for a minute, the juxtaposition was pleasantly jarring.

It reminded me of once when I came home in college to find my roommate Erik with a glass of bourbon, blaring Throbbing Gristle “Hamburger Lady” (industrial noise if you aren’t familiar) while watching The Dating Game with the sound off. I just looked, shrugged, and went to bed. In retrospect, Erik may have needed a hug at that moment. I let him down.

Oh, family updates: Bella and Isaac are back in school: Bella is my big Second Grader now, and she’s very happy to be back in her “zone”. But she’s tired and crabby at the end of the day too. Ship her off to bed with a full stomach and move on. Isaac is back to several days a week of preschool, and he’s full of stories about his classes too. He’s overtired too, and every single night at 2am sharp he wakes up, walks into the bedroom, and kicks me out so he can cuddle with mommy. I’m getting pretty used to comfort on an Ikea twin mattress.