Getting ready...

Ming woke me up at the usual time (5:45), which is good, as I had a few last-minute things to do before departing for the airport. The only thing left right now is to take the cell phone battery out of the charger, and then pack the charger. That, and select a book from my "to-read" pile for the plane.

I've slimmed down the stuff I'm taking with me, and it turns out there's less stuff in my luggage now than I took to Kazakhstan for half the stay. It reminds me of my friend Zack U., with whom I worked at Borland, who once undertook an effort to make his travel as efficient as possible, at least as far as luggage was concerned.

Not only did he pack light, but he always managed to deliberately get rid of stuff along the way, returning home with less than he departed with. I'm not sure I was ever able to achieve such a pinnacle, except perhaps for the time my luggage was rifled and made considerably lighter while at Stapleton airport in Denver.

This is the same itinerary down to Houston as last time, and as is usually the case, I fully expect to be selected for the special security treatment, since my client bought the ticket (one of the flags, apparently, that makes the TSA want to turn their attention on you... which makes me think that no professional baddies will ever not buy their own tickets, but I digress...)

The report (or perhaps I should refer to it as The Report) is done for today. I hope nothing delays Drew in returning, else I shall have to spend time tomorrow morning trying to walk Galina through the process, which I anticipate would be a painful process, as there are many arcane details involved. I spent a little time yesterday, after finishing The Report for today, setting up the paperwork to minimize any fuss and bother, but I really hope my efforts will not have been necessary.

I must admit to looking forward to watching some films that look promising. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comes to mind here, as does Terminator 3, which I've heard good things about (not to mention the draw of the "continuing story"). I shall have to leave some recent releases alone, so as to have something to watch a few months down the line on DVD. :^)

Otherwise, I anticipate a productive time in Houston, as well as a veritable rain of incoming client checks as soon as I depart. :^)

My, but I am in a good mood.

Time to probably get off the computer, shut everything but onegin down, grab the cell phone battery, and then go upstairs and make some coffee for Galina, and maybe some Postum for myself.

See y'all on the other end.

Cheers...

Surprisingly smooth...

Mike, who works at the store, picked me up on time this morning, which surprised me a little, as his reliability lately has been in the "flaky" category. The plan as of yesterday was that he'd pick me up at 8, take me to the airport in Durango, and then come back to Pagosa, take The Report downtown, pick up mail, and so on.

Unfortunately, he had his girlfriend in the car, which in itself is not a problem, except she was there to drive Mike's other car back from Durango. This implied that he was going to go somewhere else in Durango after dropping me off, which implied him getting back to Pagosa somewhat later than we had originally planned.

Everything went well until about noon, when I called the store to see how things were going. Galina told me Mike was not back from Durango. I called Mike on his cell, and to make a long story short, he was still in Durango. Something about his other car.

There was nothing I could do, so I calmed down.

The flight out of Durango was about 35 minutes late, which was okay, since there was originally a two-hour layover in Phoenix. My choice to take along a light jacket paid off as the environment in the plane to Houston was near frigid, and the jacket helped make it right.

On and off, I read my takealong reading, A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge. While I cannot say that the writing was compelling enough to keep me from putting the book down, it's a fairly interesting read. The bad guys are surpisingly bad, without exhibiting the brutality of, say, the Draka from Steve Stirling's Under The Yoke. Deepness is a prequel to another Vinge tome in my "to-read" list, but I figure I won't harm anything if I read the prequel first.

Upon arrival in Houston, everything went smoothly with baggage pickup and the rental car. I even had an opportunity to stop at the one-and-only Fry's in town, where I picked up a couple of items, one of which was a blood pressure monitor that fits around one's biceps, which my doc says is loads more accurate than the wrist-mounted monitor I now have. The other was a pocket-sized summary of HTML published by O'Reilly (their summary of Perl was just handy enough for me this past week).

The only fly in the ointment came when I pulled into the house in Pearland. Natalie's car was not there, and in attempting to look around the porch for a hidden key, I ran into a man-sized spider web (no kidding!). Fortunately, there was no man-sized spider in the vicinity, and I found the key in a strategic spot.

Natalie just came home and is returning calls as I type this. As for myself, I've eaten a can of soup and one-third of a slab of Spam, all chased down by the remaining sake in the house.

Outrageous.

Cheers...