Monday,
November 26, 2001

San Francisco bound

Daily word count: 2,201

Word count for the month: 26,395

And that was on the plane. Have I mentioned how much I love having my m505 with collapsible keyboard?

Anyway, the flight out to SF started out rather hair-raisingly, since I wound up shutting off the alarm and waking up a half hour after I was supposed to be at the airport (thank Boombah I packed the night before, otherwise I would have been seriously screwed). As it was, I think I set a new land speed record for getting from darkest northern Plano to the check-in counter at Terminal A -- 32 minutes flat. Of course, I can attribute this to meditation on the magic thought WWST -- What Would Steve Do?

Drive like a maniac with a lead foot and nothing to lose, as it turns out. But I got there in time to have my luggage x-rayed and put on the conveyor belt, then walked past Security where they were wanding and patting down grannies to my gate and four hours of blissful peace and quiet with my muse for company.

Have I mentioned that I love business trips? I love business trips.

We landed in SF and I caught a cab to the Hotel Palomar, this gorgeously renovated hotel on Fourth Street. Apparently it's the favorite place for visiting rock stars, and you can tell -- Japanese-style decor, nice TV and sound system in the room, huge beds, rather plush accoutrements, everything you could conceivably want from the honor bar/stock. The folks in the office seemed astounded that I was staying there -- I had to explain that it was a vacation package deal, and the only reason I was able to get that was the lack of people willing to travel by air.

The other nice thing about the hotel was its placement -- across Market street, up Stockton, turn left on O'Farrell and I was at the Client's offices in under five minutes. Damn, but that was sweet (even sweeter is the fact that a Ghirardelli store is two doors down around the corner and FAO Schwartz is right below the Client. Chocolate and toys -- what else does an overgrown kid want out of life?). Once I dragged myself away from the display windows and actually made it into the office, I got to meet (and re-meet, in the case of the nice marketing guy) some of the people I've been talking to via conference call for lo these past three months, at which point the thought, "Can I move here, please?" immediately came to mind.

Erm, let's just say that it's a great morale booster to work with cute, dark-haired guys and leave it at that, shall we?

On a more business-like note, I'll start training tomorrow with Len and Mahesh on one of the tools I'll be documenting, which is a goodness. I've reviewed all of the support documentation I've been able to find, and I'm still relatively in the dark about what this thing does, so having two experts sit down with me and talk me through it will be muy useful.

And now, my sweeties and darlings, I'm one tired puppy, so it's off to bed for me. Night-night from the Hotel Palomar!