Well, turns out that even
if one practices moderation in drink and bedtimes, being in smoky environs and
yelling at parties (with the music so loud, the default conversational tone is
"yell") and excessive schmoozing were enough for "The Ick"
to re-enter the body, and by Thursday I was back on my back feeling terrible.
My sensible and lovely wife Pamela reminded me that it is not actually
NATURAL for a cold to last for over 3 weeks, and for heaven's sake will I just
go to the doctor?
A quick visit later I had
a Z-Pak in hand and was starting the powerful antibiotics. The doc had a
good idea that while this might have started viral, it's likely that it went
bacterial, so let's try to kill that. And 5 days later, I am thrilled to
say I really really feel better. My guts are turned inside out due to the
Z-Pak's power, but acidophilous you are my friend and you will rebuild my
flora.
Bella had a swim meet this
weekend and she's getting better and better all the time - it's fun to watch
her getting the choreography and hitting the marks on the music. And
she's just so good in the water... But of course Isaac and I didn't
spend the whole day at the meet - we had a Dad's Day together, with me back at
Lifetime Fitness for the first time in 3 weeks, then some Pei Wei, and a bunch
of great quotes which I posted to Facebook... but I'll repeat here
because Facebook is temporary and this blog is forever: I actually used
the blog to help me remember something from 2009 (about the bird sanctuary and
aquarium I visited on a business trip...) So the quotes please:
Isaac held his arm up to
the brown wood wall at the restaurant and said "look - I'm blending
in" and yes the color was pretty close. I said that was so cool and held
my hand up and said "look - I don't blend in as well as you
do".
He said "don't worry dad. I know what you can
blend in with: a light bulb!"
AND:
I was waiting for Isaac to finish a drawing at
pickup today and he said "I'll just be a minute - why don't you check your
phone while you wait?
Anyway.
I'm back in Jersey for part of the week: Tricky travel day: Started at 4:43 (2 min before my alarm) when the airline texted me to alert that the flight was delayed for 90 minutes. So I reset the alarm for an hour later, got up, had a leisurely morning until the airline texted me with a "never mind, it's only delayed 60 min" which had me bolting out of the house with my toast half-eaten and my coffee sloshed into a travel mug. I pounded the coffee on the way, and discovered that a fair amount had dribbled down my chin onto my shirt.
I'm TSA-Pre now, so I don't wait in lines that mortals do anymore, so I breezed past, got some club soda and worked the stain. With 5 days on the road, I really don't have a spare shirt, and was hoping to make this work. In the end, the tie covered the remnant of the stain well. Got into Newark in just enough time that if I got into a car and hit the road immediately, I'd be 5 min early for the meeting (of course I had planned on a hour of cushion in travel, but we know where that went).
I didn't plan on missing a fork in the freeway and being taken 15 miles off course... so I did make the meeting but was 15 minutes late. GOOD TIMES. At least I was only attending, not leading.
It's
a strange project where I have been brought in to sort of provide oversight as
two vendors actually provide the services - I'm supposed to keep the two
vendors from getting in each other's grills, and make sure there's a
coordinated plan across the 6 months... but I'm not sure if I'm actually
superfluous or not. We'll see. In the meantime, I had some goooood
New Jersey Italian: A slice of pizza and a dish of penne and red sauce
with sausage... it was entirely too much food, and incredibly delicious,
and it came to about $10. RIDICULOUS.
The Boston meeting will be interesting - Another sales guy in our company made the contact, and it turns out that the guy (Arvind) is a fellow I've run into many times in the past 12 years, and we've always got along. So they got the meeting on the condition that I come along. I'm bait. But I'm ok with that, because I have an evening in Boston now, and I'm going to USE it. Maybe go to Panera, YEAH.
Circling way back: There were two additional details from the show:
1) One of the tech blogs made a big deal about complaining about being ignored by vendors in their booths who seemed more absorbed in their smartphones than looking for customers. One of the companies he called out was a Minneapolis company and I know the guys. And they are totally chuckleheads who were immersed in their phones when I dropped by too. It was just funny.
2) Turns out after I got that great demo of Epic tools, another of my team got asked by JUDY what we thought about what we saw - I wasn't there. Apparently my colleague said something like "meh, it's ok". And then she told ME she said that. I almost died, and wrote Judy a note to relate my own thoughts about the tool - I was just mortified.
I understand sometimes wanting to play it cool, but this was seriously cool stuff: I had written up a full page email to our whole company explaining just how cool it was. I don't know why we wouldn't just tell Epic they had done a great job. People are just so... so... frustrating some days.
Ok, that's the update for tonight. Off to bed - got a long day of meetings on deck tomorrow.
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