next time, a Saturday

[sergebroom]

Remember my saying how my flight to the Bay Area had been delayed by one hour, which meant that it was close to midnight when I was able to hit the sack? Southwest did it again for the flight back last night. Next time I go to the Bay Area, I’ll fly back early on a Saturday morning instead of Friday night. That way, Sue won’t have to stay up so late to come pick me up. And I’ll get to spend one more evening in the Bay Area. I normally try not to outstay my welcome with my in-laws, but I’ve come to the conclusion that this concern of mine is unfounded – as are many others, I know.

That being said, I had a great time overall, especially on Tuesday. That’s when I met our users in the morning, after which the team’s programmers spent the rest of the day in the Golden Gate Park for some time off. We had a tour of the deYoung Museum, where my favorite moment was taking the elevator to the top tower. Yes, that is the Golden Gate Bridge in the upper right corner.



After that, I figured out that there are worse rowers than yours truly, who does this once every 20 years. We were not last in the team’s sort-of race around the park’s Stowe Lake. Mind you, we’d have arrived earlier except that my passenger wanted to try her hand at the oars, and spent many minutes sending the boat in a very tight circle until she gave up. Oh well. It was fun, and the weather was gorgeous the whole time I was there, after many rainy days.

I spent the evening at the house of one of my sisters-in-law, where Sue’s youngest sister was also visiting with her 6-year-old son. Much to my relief, he still thinks I’m the coolest uncle. Not only did he give me a drawing of Tom and Jerry as musketeers (with Tom wearing a red outfit of course), but, when we had supper, he spontaneously raised his glass to my health. Mind you, a few minutes before he had drooled into it in an attempt to (successfully) gross out the adults. I love my nephew, in case you didn’t know. It was great how, when his uncle put on some African music, the kid started dancing, and really getting into it, and not caring that this was a dance traditionally done by women. He later encouraged his one-year-old cousin to join and the little one sort-of did until he stopped and stared at me because everybody was dancing but me. I had to put the bowl of chips down and join in. Rest assured. I’ll spare you photos of me doing an impersonation of a dancing Toulouse-Lautrec.

Wednesday wasn’t too much fun at first. That’s when I got my yearly review. It wasn’t a bad review, but I got dinged for my Project from Hell. That’s the one I had spent nearly one year on in 2006, and which I had turned in late, just before last year’s yearly review. The funny thing is that, one year ago, my manager’s review had included some congratulations for all my efforts on that project, even though we all knew by then that it’d have to be thrown out and replaced by something that a contractor eventually put together much more quickly and much more efficiently. Bah… I also got chastised for an recent incident that occurred when, during a staff meeting, I publicly aired my annoyance with a co-worker whom everybody finds difficult to work with. It felt quite unfair because our users enjoy working with me, but that counted for nothing. Sure, I got a bit of a bonus, but I was in a very deep blue funk the rest of the day although nobody could have guessed. Luckily, that evening, I spent the evening with my friend Yoko. We went to the Dark Carnival F/SF store where, alas, I couldn’t find the Iain Banks novels that had been recommended to me, but I was able to indulge a bit of splurge, acquiring three Modesty Blaise novels. After that, we went to her place, had dinner, and talked about all kinds of things. One of them was a story she’d been wrestling with for quite some time, and to which I found a solution. After I helped her rearrange her place’s furniture, she drove me to my parents-in-law.

Thursday and Friday, I kept so busy that I never had time to stop and chat with my buddies and buddettes. There’ll be other times. Besides, that allowed me to resolve quite a few things on my task list, or, if not that, to the point where they showed noticeable progress. By the way, I figured out by myself what my laptop’s frequent boot-up problems were caused by – it’s was its darn docking station. Even the tech-support expert had been stumped.

One more really neat moment of the trip... At the deYoung, I overheard a guard, a black man in his late sixties, having what sounded like a pleasant conversation with an elegantly dressed white woman in her early forties. When he said something about a shore leave, I immediately thought of the original Star Trek episode, and berated myself for being such a trekkie. Until I heard him say "Beam me up."

The present is catching up with the future.

Comments

[sajia.livejournal.com]

No! We want photos of Uncle Serge dancing with his nephews to put on Cuteness Overload! And videos!

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Are you sure? Yes? I was afraid you'd say that. I'll have to ask my sister-in-law to email them to me. You have been warned. Enter at your own peril, mortal fool!

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

There are worse rowers than you: me, for instance.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

That bad, eh? On the other hand, nobody who's been on a canoe or a row-boat with me ever fell into the drink.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

That bad!