QOTD: "Ask people to tell you about their most significant learning, and they will tell you a story." - Michael Umphrey
Reading: Nancy J. Cohen, Hair Raiser
Listening to: Brazzaville
Decluttering accomplishments: none
It was bad enough that I had to travel on the President's Day holiday. I didn't really need the two hour delay in my flight. Part of the delay was because of a mechanical problem and I do want them to fix those. But then they had to take off the checked bags of three people who hadn't gotten on the plane. That's legitimate enough, but we had the impression that they discovered these one at a time, so had to go through the entire cargo hold three times. Mary Joan and I were sharing a car and settled on eating boring chain food (Bennigan's, which has adequate but unexciting fish and chips) because we had no idea what was open that late. We did better the next night at Dandelion. Mary Joan teased me about ordering ahi (she got scallops which came with intensely colorful purple mashed potatoes), while I teased her about ordering creme brulee for dessert (I got apple crisp, which was okay, though not as good as my own, which has a lot more cinnamon in it). The meeting we went out for was reasonably good, largely because the guy who is now heading the working group in question is energetic and trying hard to make things happen. I stopped in briefly at another meeting, which was a disaster. Why anybody would think it made sense to have an interface meeting without people from either side of the interface there is beyond me.
The United mechanics didn't go on strike, so we had no trouble getting home on Wednesday night. Then I had to get up at an ungodly hour on Thursday morning to go up to Sunnyvale. The only thing that actually happened because I got up there that early was getting my expired badge replaced - quite useful, as there's nobody in the lobby there, so it saves you having to call someone to get you. The entire morning was wasted, though, since the contractor had ignored what we told them we wanted to see. Around two in the afternoon we ended up sitting down in some side sessions and going through actual data for a couple of hours. I was glad that there wasn't much traffic getting to the hotel. Suzanne and I had dinner at the Malaysian restaurant in Milpitas we had found the last time. The place is called The Banana Leaf and the malaka eggplant is incredible. I like spicy food, but I like it to have flavor beyond the heat and this qualifies well. We also got a tuna sashimi special that was a bit odd, slightly on the sweet side.
I fell asleep watching the women's figure skating. Then I woke up about 4:30 a.m. coughing violently. Obviously the stress and sleep deprivation had their usual effect on my immune system and I'd gotten a cold. I dragged myself through the day and was glad to leave for the airport. We actually managed to make stand-by on the flight home before the one we were booked on. I forced myself to stop at the supermarket and pick up a few things, but more or less collapsed when i got home. I ate dinner and got straight into bed. And, aside from dragging myself to the bathroom or to the kitchen for an occassional cup of tea, I stayed in bed for about the next 30 hours. Being sick when you live alone is especially miserable as you have to heat up chicken soup yourself and make tea yourself and so on. I feel somewhat better today. At least I'm no longer thinking about how many people died in the flu epidemic of 1918. But I'll probably still stay home tomorrow
Copyright 2002 Miriam H. Nadel