not quite the wrap up to the weekend

TH is sick and is still in BRU. I think she tangled with something and honestly, it was better she just stay in bed today. I am quite used to travelling by myself, sometimes I prefer it. However,when I left her feeling miserable in the hotel room at 6:45 this morning, it felt strange, as if I was leaving part of me there.

She'll be flying tomorrow if she feels up to it. I can't thank the change desk in BRU enough for making some changes and getting her out tomorrow without the tortuous four hours that I have in JFK right now. It is too short to go anywhere and too long to sit here. The flight across was gorgeous - sunny across Belgium and France and England and beautiful when we made landfall in Canada. I got some really nice views of Long Island which is great since I'm currently working with that data.

The best thing is that I will finish that darn book before I leave here. Oops, I better go find something else to read.

Later.

nm

It's Saturday, I know I'm in Brussels

Oy, what a day.

Off to a cafe I know of near the canal and rue antoine daensaert. They have some really good hot chocolat and decent coffee.

Sunny and cold here, better than cold, sleet and grey of Paris...

More later.

travel necessities

travel necessities
Originally uploaded by flora and flying.

Here in the ORD Flagship Lounge, the second time in two weeks. I was supposed to go through New York today, but the ever vigilant TH check the weather report for JFK and we rearranged our flights. I tried using the superduper premium line and was told I could buy a new ticket. TH went the not so super duper route and they rebooked us, retained our domestic upgrades and got us the bulkhead in coach. Good thing, because our original flight to JFK was cancelled this morning.

So, the lounge is starting to fill with VIP (in their own mind) types doing important things and chowing down on chicken skewers, scallops wrapped in bacon and strange triangle shaped things of which I am afraid of.

I'm hitting the DD for a nice big coffee (decaf) preflight and a half an ambien.

I have noted some of David Lebovitz's favorite chocolate places to try on this trip. The weather appears to be defective, so me thinks we'll be visiting Christian Constant for a TH chocolat chaud tasting.

A bienot.

I'll be blogging remotely. I think.

nm

70K and counting

The Falls available at your local bookstore.

I have been carrying this book back and forth in my laptop bag for the last five months. I am giving it one more chance and if I doesn't move me, its going to be let free at a nice little English bookshop near Jardin de l'Odeon in the 6th.

I do this, buy a book and it doesn't move me to read it, it taunts me, it makes me feel guilty and then I either leave it at home or at my last destination. TH is a big believer in bringing as many books as possible, she reads voraciously and is always fearful that she'll run out of things to read en voyage.

So, her bag is laden with books that will soon be jettisoned and replaced with ballotins of chocs.

Sounds like a fair tradeoff.

nm

another pathetic evening chez ff

JK says her life is pathetic. She went to a show last night. I bored my seminar with my discussion of mapping flood markers in Rome and now at 11:30 pm, I am downloading data onto my laptop to take on vacation.

WTF?

No worries, TH is right with me, working on her talk for a meeting on Wednesday.

Very PoMo here. Dueling laptops with external harddrives. Me thinks next we need a roomba and an espresso machine.


nm

one more time with feeling

God, its nearly midnight and TH and I have dueling laptops and are working from home. I think I may have to divorce my laptop and consider that life is much more interesting when you don't spend it working.

Then again, if I spent time at work working instead in meetings or on the phone about a meeting I would have time to work.

Later.

nm

Pancake Gals

I'm sorry I won't be in London today for the great Pancake Race. Its Shrove Tuesday to some, Mardi Gras for most and all I care about is TH's pancakes for dinner with a bit of lemon and sugar. Yum.

Its a tradition that I'm all for keeping up with.

nm

It doesn't really matter what day it is

Me, sometime in my infancy, I believe in Chicago, 1965.

I was on the phone with my mom yesterday morning and we talked for about 10 minutes about this and that and finally I said - "aren't you going to wish my a happy birthday?" She said "Your birthday is tomorrow, the 26th". I told her today was the 26th. Anyways, no matter what day, you have to be in the mood to celebrate. This weekend was not it.

Like last year, I have a major work crunch, a paper for my seminar and too much on my plate to even enjoy dinner out. I fell asleep reading about landscape and memory last night.

So, I'm celebrating my prime birthday (you figure it out), in Paris on Friday with dinner at Cafe Cassette or maybe somewhere swankier like Violin d'Ingres and a brief shopping excursion somewhere interesting.

TH consoled me with the fact that until his dying day, her father was convinced her birthday was six days later than it was, her first due date.

nm

the love boat

I had a moderately sheltered childhood. I'm not saying it was a bad thing, in fact, I think it was good. My parents were very social people and every other weekend would find us at the home of an Iranian friend who was hosting a "mehmooni" or party that usually started around 7 and went until 11 or 12. There weren't that many Iranians in the Pacific Northwest in the 70s, so we stuck together. The kids grew up together and we are all still pretty close. If the family hosting the gathering was further than our watersheds (Redmond, Medina, Three Points, Bridle Trails or Seattle), it would make for a long day. We would start early and make a trek to Centralia (god, we didn't know about Burgerville back then) or Olympia and it seemed so exotic.

In any case, it was good clean fun. Our parents would talk and laugh. It would feel like a salon after dinner where they would discuss politics or poetry. Before dinner, it was typically gender segregated with the women in the kitchen talking and prepping the food and then men in the living room usually talking shop (most of them were doctors). The girls would usually help set the table with the chafing dishes and all the large silverplate platters for rice, stews, salads and greens. The guys, probably were outside rough housing or inside playing foosball. It was well before dvds, Playstations or easy availability of recreational drugs. Dinner was served with great fanfare and as with all Iranians, you just can't have one main course, so there was lots of variety. I think this gene has skipped this generation. The kids would come in and get food and go eat at the kids table and the adults would get food and then find places to sit around the table or in the living room. Iranians are not big on sit down dinners. Go figure- generation skipping gene strikes again.

When dinner was done and some sort of sweet was served, the parents would go on saloning and the kids would all gather up around the tv in the rec room for the Saturday night line up of the Love Boat and then Fantasy Island. I learned to love the Love Boat and looked forward to the guest stars. It kept us happy for a few years, until we discovered boys, rock and roll and that there was life outside our happy clan. I still think fondly of that show and look forward to a few snippets I see when I channel surf on travel. I never got into Fantasy Island. I'm not sure if it was Herve Villechaise or the sinister plotlines, but it always felt so desperate.

I also was so tired from figure skating practice that I conked out sometime after the plot was outlined for FI. I would be happy when I woke up with a quilt draped over me and my parents gently nudging me off the couch to say my blearly farewells to my friends and our hosts and popped into the car for the drive home.

Tonight as I sit at home with dueling laptops crunching data, I wish I could be 11 again, watching the Love Boat with my friends and having not a care in the world.

nm

numb and whatever

Mmmm. Donuts. February 2006.

I really needed to go back to work this evening to see if my data had transferred to my latest trinket from TH. It is pictured here. I wanted something in a red box for my birthday, but as excited as I am about this, I was hoping that it would come from another company famous for its red boxes, not Lacie in Hillsboro. I guess that is the cool thing about being an adult, you can make your purchases if you wish. As for going back to work, I just couldn't do it. It was too cold. I was exhausted, both emotionally and physically. Today, I left at 5:30, that is the earliest I have in weeks. It was light when I got home, that was wierd.

I did succeed in getting the USGS to cooperate tonight. I have lots of data now and we'll see if I can make it all work this weekend, my deadlines keep getting moved up!

later taters.

nm

gobsmacked

TH and I received emails today inviting us to the Memorial Service of a friend we had no idea had passed away. She was only 46 and though we had not been in contact in years, we had both thought of her in the last few days. She was a great friend, mom and all over good person. We tried to keep in contact, but for some reason, they pulled away from us. After a while, its just not any fun to even try to keep in contact via christmas cards or birthdays.

I can't believe she's gone.

I was going to spend my tomorrow morning putting back my study, but I guess I'll just go to a Memorial Service instead.

nm

truly getting back to normal

Crocuses, Front Lawn, February 2006.

Dinner was delightful and knife and forky. Thin cut pork chopped dredged in flour and herbs, sauteed in a pan with shallots and sliced mushrooms and finished off with some marsala. Artichokes and herbed spinach pasta for sides. It was definitely yummy and normal.

Spitting now and cold and raw. The garden looks like it miraculously made it through the worst of the cold weather. There is a forecast of below freezing for the next few nights, so we'll be covering the citrus again. I can't wait for the fucshias to make it back out. I love them, but not in my front hall.

I think I lost two small hellebores that were in pots, at least their flower potential. Me thinks the plants are okay. I'll miss the first great plant sale of the year next weekend, but there will be more to come. I noticed today that the first of the peas are starting to break through the ground. I'm going to read the forecast discussion before I make the first few rose prunings.

nm

network issues

from: seamless.usgs.gov

"System Status:
Network Outage: Thursday February 23, 2006. The system is down due to network issues. We expect the system to be available again this afternoon. Thank you for you patience and we apologize for any inconvenience."

Yeah, right. You have been down all week and I can't get dick done.

Thanks.

feeling like a truck ran over me

Flood Marker, Rome January 2004.

Half our developers are sick, I'm all blurry and really feeling nasty. I will chug down vitamin C today, but right now the idea of spending three hours staring at slides does not excite me. I am happy to report that we did find somewhere to stay in Rome for March and D. has graciously offered to bring his camera for me to test this week. It will be interesting to stay somewhere different. I wanted to stay on the other side of the river, but the place we wanted was not available. This is close to TH's favorite gelateria, some grocery stores and our coffee place of choice. I am planning on spending some quality time on the streets looking for signs much like the one you see in this entry. Katherine Rinne, an architect, who started the Aquae Urbis Romae: The Waters of the City of Rome project which I am building some of my own work on. As long as the apartment has a moka, a good bed and some light, I should be happy. If I'm desperate for a computer I know where to go.

I need to start looking for a GPS now.

nm

defective

My Nikon D50 crapped out this weekend, right when I was going to take some pics. It was flashing some errors and when JK and I got back from erranding etc. I spent some quality time on some message boards trying to figure out how to troubleshoot from 5500 miles away. I shot off some nice pics on Saturday, which I would love to share, but sorry, you'll have to wait. I took the camera back to the store (local chain) and they said it had to be fixed by Nikon. I bid a sad goodbye to my most favorite camera and hopefully they'll either replace the body or fix it. Its under waranty and TH was smart enough to buy the extended waranty when we bought the camera in late September. I'm bummed since I have an upcoming trip to Brussels and Chicago and in less than a month I go to Rome. I have grown quite dependent on the D50 and I can't go back to my 5 megapixel camera now.

TH mentioned that it bummed her that something so technologically advanced could peter out in 5 months of use and wasn't sure we could trust it in the future. The manager of the store said that they would probably replace the body,which though I appreciate makes us realize that there are no longer craftsmen/women who take care of these things. Everything gets shipped off to the factory and more than likely, it will get trashed and a new one sent. Just like the Ipod, just like my first portable CD player, just like the hundreds of VCRs and DVD players that end up by the side of the garbage dumpsters or in landfills.

In the meanwhile, I'm without my D50. I did ask a friend if I could borrow or pay him to use his SLR Pentax for the next few weeks, he just replaced it with a D200, so I have that option, but I'm just bummed.

Other than that, a bit tired, but not jetlagged. I made dinner tonight and though it was basic, it was all done at home in a kitchen with without boxes everywhere.

nm

stygian darkness

Nothing like flying across the Atlantic without a window and stygian darkness. At least I finished my netflix, worked and watched 8 episodes of that adorable Jason Bateman in AD. At least I got out for an hour or so this morning, walking towards Holborn and through back streets to avoid the hustle and bustle that is Oxford Street.

Back home now. Cheese is in fridge, rollaboard unpacked, clothes in hamper, chargers accounted for and presents presented to TH. We have dueling laptops right now and I'm about to wash off 5500 miles of jet fuel and go to bed. God, I get to do it again (Paris and Brussels in 10 days).

Later taters,

nm

sunday lunch

Actually, brunch at st. john with JK and E. and it was yummy. Great room and definitely will return for lunch, other than that, picking up some books for TH and some club bars as well. Visited my aunty in Finchley and realize that I'm due for a Ground Force weekend in April. Other than that Now, just hanging in the room and about to hit the club for a decaf cappucino to warm up with.

Tomorrow a few errands and then back to the airport. I'm glad I came, TH has kept herself busy with fun projects and hopefully I can convince her to return with me in April.

nm

things that require thinking

How many masters degrees does it take to send a text message?

Three, one for JK and two for me.

Had a nice day puttering about picking up cheese, fighting crowds at Borough Market, lunch at Roast, dinner at wagamamas with crazy Flyertalkers and then drinks at the Groucho Club and a visit to a Crapper Toilet.

Will post pics when I get back. That is the only cord I forgot.

nm

off like a herd of turtles

Bank for notary and then off to the airport where my flight is already listed as late out of Seattle, giving me a tiny connection time in Chicago. I think I may pick up a sandwich just to be sure that I dont' starve to death (never really a problem.

I have data to test for my beta and that should keep me busy for a while.

Yes, it is the first time since 2003 that my upgrade has not cleared.

Talk to you all from London.

I think.

nm

baby its cold inside

The freezer that is. I was rifling through the deep freeze today looking for my will and power of attorney I realized that first, you should put in in the freezer because its a fire proof place. However, its cold and honestly, its a stupid place when you are a hurry.

However, the next few weeks we'll be eating a lot of white salmon, blueberries, tomato sauce and lamb.

Its cold out as well. Many of the neighborhood plants are covered in blankets and sheets. The cold snap is not as severe as first thought. The forecast discussion sounds dissapointed. I'm not.

nm