Wednesday,
February 13, 2002

Wending my merry way west

I'm sitting in the food court in Terminal C of DFW Airport, waiting for my plane to start boarding and my Advil Cold and Sinus Formula to kick in and stop my nose from running like a tap straight into my lungs (thank you, MfM). I've also made the discovery that Dickey's Barbecue makes quite possibly the greasiest breakfast I have ever encountered -- I could lube the Hoosiermobile with a quarter of the oil running out of my eggs. But at least it contains some semblance of protein, and I need something in my stomach to help dissolve these Advils before I get on board the plane.

Yes, I'm on my way to San Francisco. For three (well, four if you count Saturday morning) days, I will be training, liaising with folks, absorbing material and generally being a sympathetic ear to the folks out there.

Oops -- my plane is boarding. More later.

She soars through the air with the greatest of ease

As far as I can tell, I'm somewhere over the west. I can tell this because the ground is cinnamon-colored and covered with mesas and canyons -- this usually indicates the west, at least until you hit the Sierras, at which point it tends to get a lot greener.

I think it's Arizona. Or maybe Nevada. No, it can't be Nevada -- there's no speck on the landscape waving a bag of baked goods at me while cologne wafts off him in visible waves.

This is a marvelous flight, by the way -- half-full, and I have my row to myself, which means I can take photographs and nobody is looking at me oddly. I did some work on POP for a bit, then stretched out and listened to "Zoolander" (Blue Steel, indeed) before switching over to the music channel and catching a retrospective of the B-52's. Why did nobody tell me that they just released an anthology, "Nude on the Moon?" And there's a Virgin Megastore a block from the office, too -- whee!

Well, I need to go down there at some point anyway, because I just realized that I forgot my headphones and I need them if I want to listen to CDs at work. I could just play them over the computer speakers, according to some of the SF transplants in Dallas, but I'd feel odd blasting the Dave Matthews Band or the Barenaked Ladies in the middle of the office. Besides, I usually wind up chair dancing at some point -- it might be nice if I don't advertise that little fact by blaring the music, too.

I left my umbrella at the Dallas airport. . .

Naturally. It's raining here, so where's my sporty little red miniumbrella? Sitting in the trunk of my car. *sigh* I never learn. . .

But I'm in San Francisco, in an almost European (read: tiny and odd-smelling) hotel four blocks uphill from the office. Great for walking down to work, sucky for walking up from work. Well, they don't have a fitness room here, so I guess this is going to count for my cardio -- wonder if I could use the water bottles in the honor bar as dumbbells.

Despite the rain, have I mentioned that I love San Francisco? I love San Francisco -- it's just such a cool city. Between the beautiful hills, the bay, the mix of people and the generally laid-back atmosphere, it's a great place to be. Maybe someday I'll even live here, who knows?

(And at this point everyone in Texas is saying, "NOOOOOOOO!" Don't worry, it's not going to be anytime soon.)

As for work, I got hugs from EVERYONE when I walked in. Talk about a nice surprise -- I know Stephen said that they were looking forward to seeing me, but I didn't know they were looking forward to it this much. Warms a girl's heart, it does.

After chatting with the liege and the Marketing Angel (who started laughing in disbelief when I said I hoped I wouldn't be shunted into training because I wasn't good at talking to people. Okay, yeah, I'm the type who would talk to a tree if it stood still long enough, but that's different. Nobody's expecting me to make sense when I chat -- there's a reason why I'm a technical writer, after all. . .), I settled in with the Kick-Ass Trainer Chick to talk about life, work and how I was going to liaise between the company doing our tutorials in SF and the main office in Dallas. I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to get a connection to the Dallas server and my mail, before Stephen swept me off for some Valentine card shopping at Macy's and dinner at Blondie's, where we got into a long, involved discussion about family, relationships and other stuff.

At this point, I got one of the nicest compliments I have ever gotten in my life. Earlier in the conversation I had told the liege about spending the first 24 years of my life being informed by my parents that I was fat, unattractive and would never find a man -- we'd segued off onto another topic when an extremely cute man stopped by our table. "I'm very sorry about intruding on a personal conversation, but I couldn't help overhearing what you'd said earlier," he said in a very nice English accent. "And I just have to tell you, you're not ugly at all -- in fact, you're absolutely lovely."

Awwwwwwww. . . If my smile had gotten any wider, I would have looked like Terence or Phillip.

And now I'm back in my tiny /c/a/g/e hotel room, with plans to stick my head under a stream of hot water until my sinuses unseize. Later, taters.