The plan had been that I would fly from the client location to Jacksonville and spend a few days with Jeanie, meeting with potential home builders, visiting with Mom, driving to visit Jeanie's parents, reacquainting myself with my wife...

Jeanie had booked a room for us at the Best Western. Not the Ritz (which there is on the Island, btw, not that we could afford it), but it is close to Mom (walking distance), inexpensive, and allows dogs.

Being that Best Western is positioned in the "affordable accommodations" segment, rather than a more up-scale segment, of course there was no high-speed Internet connectivity or even two lines on the phone. No biggie, right? We weren't planning to spend much time in the room anyway, right?

Well, fate had other plans for my time...

The oral presentation generated as many questions as it provided answers. The client gave us six days to address the questions, which in some cases required significant research or re-solutioning. This meant that I needed access to work systems, would have to do a bunch of writing, and would be spending significant amounts of time with a phone glued to my ear. I tried working from the Best Western, but it just wasn't working out. I couldn't even be online at the same time I was on a call, and with only 28.8k connectivity, system and e-mail access was glacial at best.

So, we decided to check out the Hampton Inn which was literally right next door. Seemed like a good idea... they also allowed dogs, provide a complimentary hot breakfast every day, had complimentary hi-speed Internet access and had dual line phones. Even though it was going to be another $15-$25 per night out of our pockets, and would require another $25 non-refundable pet fee, at least I could work.

Yeah, right...

The wireless worked great in our room - as long as I stood right next to the door. As soon as I moved into the room, I lost the connection. I had experienced a similar problem in an Embassy Suites (also a Hilton property) and found that if I used one of the hotel's wireless cards, I was able to maintain connectivity. So, I went to the front desk and borrowed a card (well, a wireless bridge actually). No luck, still dropped the signal a few feet into the room.

So, I broke down and called the help desk for the wireless provider. Seeing as I've done this dance a few times now, I was prepared... Yes, it works fine in the lobby, no, I don't have any special network configuration settings, yes, the laptop is plugged in to external power, blah, blah, blah. Bottom line... there must be a hole in our coverage where your room is.

So, I go to the front desk, not to complain, just to inform (and to return their loaner wireless bridge), and plop down in the lobby to start working.

A few minutes later, the hotel general manager comes out to the lobby to apologize for my problems, and to inform me that she considered the answer from the help desk to be unacceptable, and would I mind talking to a senior technician at the wireless provider to try to resolve the problem.

Sure, I said.

A few minutes later, I got a call from the technician, who also apologized for the help desk's answer. As I was talking with the technician, I mentioned that I had done a site survey, and the signal seemed fine in the hall, but just dropped off as I walked into the room. I also mentioned that I thought part of the problem was related to some DHCP flakiness. The tech confirmed that there was a known problem with the DHCP that could be fixed by a firmware upgrade, and that there had been other complaints about signal strength and that the wireless company had started thinking that they might need to replace some of the 20mW access points with 100mW access points. Unfortunately, until he could get out to the hotel the following week, there really wasn't anything he could do to help me with the signal in my particular room.

So, just trying to be a nice guy, I gave the front desk an update, and figured that would be the end of it, and sat back down in the lobby to work.

About fifteen minutes later, Ava, the best front desk clerk I have ever encountered at any hotel anywhere, walks out to the lobby and hands me a room key. She explains that because they only have a few pet rooms, they can't move us, but that this other room has better signal, and I am welcome to use it for the duration of our stay!

Now that's what I call customer service!

Needless to say, my loyalty to Hampton Inns just went up an order of magnitude.

So, the good news is that I've been able to work effectively for the last few days. The bad news is that I've spent the majority of my time that was supposed to be spent meeting with potential home builders, visiting with Mom, driving to visit Jeanie's parents, getting some rest, having some fun, reacquainting myself with my wife... sitting alone in a hotel room working.

Oh well, all things considered, things could be much worse...

It had been about a month since I had last seen Mom. As you might remember, my last visit was pretty upsetting. Mom was pretty much totally out-of-it, and could only stay awake for a few minutes during my visit.

What a difference a month makes!

At the moment, it appears that moving Mom to Florida is the best thing we've done in a while.

Shortly after Mom's arrival, per regulations (I'm not sure if the facilities or Florida law), Mom was examined by a physician. The physician felt that some changes needed to be made with Mom's medications. I saw her a day or two after the medication changes, and the changes appeared to have made things worse rather than better. Unfortunately, it was a weekend, so we weren't able to contact the physician, but the facility assured us that they would contact the physician first thing the following week. After talking to the physician, we were assured that the reaction was temporary, and things would be better in a few days. Sure, right...

Well, it appears that the physician knew what she was talking about.

I can't express how (pleasantly) shocked I was when I first saw Mom. She appears to have reversed time back around three years! She is able to carry on a conversation, in which she not only responds appropriately, but initiates topics! Her mobility is better than it has been in years. She is remembering things that I thought were locked away in her mind forever. And, she is being just as sweet as can be.

Jeanie and I took her out to eat a number of times (pretty much the only break I have had from work), and the meals were a pleasure.

Mom even likes where she is living. She is participating in activities, likes some of the other residents - at least three of which are 96 years old, and loves the food!

Mom was thrilled to learn that she is only three blocks from the beach.

Even though this trip to Florida hasn't been nearly what I had expected, this one "expectation variance" has truly been a ray of sunshine.

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.

He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open spaces between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course the sand filled up everything else. He once more asked if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous "yes."

The professor then produced two cans of beer from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the open space between the sand. The students all laughed.

"Now," said the professor, as the laughter subsided, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things - your family, your children, your health, your friends, your favorite passions - things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, your car. The sand is everything else - the small stuff. If you put the sand into the jar first, there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take the time to get medical check-ups. Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean out the garage, fix the disposal, or shampoo the carpet. Take care of the golf balls first, the things that really matter. Set your priorities... everything else is just sand."

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the beer represented.

The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of beers."

Rather than limiting it to a single event/topic, I am going to recap my week...

Work-wise, last week was a week from hell.

It seems like everything -short of the deal just dropping stone cold dead - that can go wrong, did.

The proposal was due last Wednesday at noon. Granted, I have yet to work a deal where the week before the proposal deadline hasn't been long and tough, but this one took the cake. And this is by far the smallest deal I've worked - actually below my threshold of $100 million. I had been told that small deals can actually be harder to work than mid-size deals. Well, seeing is believing. Every time we thought we had the solution nailed, we hit another pothole. We were supposed to have the proposal in production by Sunday night, but as we were reviewing the final pricing on Saturday, we uncovered an aberration. After a bunch of digging, and some mild panic on my part, we discovered that there was a flaw in the RFP. It took quite a bit of scrambling on our part to arrive at what we considered to be a reasonable approach to addressing this in the proposal. It took a bunch of work to translate this approach into pricing / writing - causing me to have to move my return home to Monday.

While it is never fun to delay my return home, this week was especially disappointing because Jamie had come home, and was only going to be home for a week. But, I figured at least once I got home, I'd have a really slow week so I could spend some quality time with Jamie. Well, the fates had other thoughts in mind...

On Wednesday, we called the client's consultant to ensure that the proposal had been delivered on time, and to give him a "heads-up" regarding the issue we had encountered. Imagine our surprise when he asked us why we had not used the new "part 3" template he had sent us the prior Thursday. What new "part 3" template we asked. Turns out he had emailed us a change to the RFP which we had never received. The good news was that the client/consultant were understanding about not having received the update. The bad news was that we were only given a week to update our response, and the update would require significant re-solutioning. So much for my few days of quiet time, and unstressed time with Jamie.

I was fortunate that I remembered my regret for having allowed my work/life balance to shift much too far to the work side when Jamie was young, so I did take a stand and made some time to spend with Jamie. Not as much as would have been ideal, but not so little to make me feel horrible either. We were able to spend a couple of evenings together, and we had a nice lunch at the little Mexican restaurant at the little shopping center just outside our neighborhood.

I also finally received my letter from the FAA informing me of the additional hoops of fire they would require me to jump through to continue evaluating my fitness to operate an aircraft as a solo pilot. While they could have made it much harder, they didn't make it easy either. I am having to gather medical records from three different physicians to submit. I was just plain lucky that I had a few days at home to frantically call doctors and fax release forms. It really gets my goat - they took three months to get around to sending me my letter, but if I don't provide all of the required information within 30 days, they will automatically issue a denial for my medical certification. Needless to say, this continued subjection to bureaucratic hell, combined with work stress, led to a less than ideal mood on my part.

Mom is doing much better. When we moved her to Florida, she had to be examined by a doctor affiliated with the assisted living facility in which she now resides. The doctor made some changes to her medication, which has resulted in a significant improvement in Mom's cognitive functioning. Unfortunately, now that she is more lucid, she is more aware of missing us. And to boot, her TV died. So, even though I am happy Mom is doing better, now I am feeling really guilty that she is down in Florida all alone, without a TV, and that we haven't seen her since she moved. No good deed goes unpunished...

As challenging as the week was, Saturday was a real highlight. Jamie and Jeanie had let me know earlier in the week that Jamie was going to have some of her local friends over for dinner. We had done this last time Jamie was home, and it was very pleasant. The folks who had come to dinner were people Jamie had been friendly with for many years. People that had been to our home many times when Jamie lived with us, and whom Jeanie had carted around countless times. It's cool to see these people now that they have grown up and have kids of their own.

What Jeanie and Jamie had failed to mention was that in addition to Jamie's friends, they had invited a number of our friends to celebrate the recent passing of another anniversary of my birth. Imagine my surprise when out of the blue, Bob and Wendy were standing on our front porch knocking on the door! In addition to Bob and Wendy, Dave and Peggy (our next door neighbors), and Dave and Burnie came by. Oh, and Andrew, Laura, and Hannah. I left them for last, because they are a sneaky bunch...

Andrew had asked that if I happened to be in the area, that I drop by his house to take a look at a wireless LAN extender that wasn't working. Well, just so happens that I was in the area on Saturday afternoon, so I called and told him that I could drop by if it was convenient. Well, long story short, I spent about an hour and a half with Andrew and Laura, and neither said a word about the party. In fact, as I was leaving, Andrew asks, real casual like, "doing anything interesting tonight?" To which I tell him about Jamie's friends coming over - Andy doesn't even twitch! With skills like that, Andrew could join the cast of Alias!

So, by this point, you might be wondering, why was David in the vicinity of Andrew's house (which is about 1/2 an hour away from our house) and what's with the title of this entry?

On Saturday afternoon, I went flying!

I had been waiting until after I got my medical certificate to make arrangements to fly. Initially, this was because I didn't realize that I could fly without a medical certificate. Turns out I can, as long as I am with an instructor. I had always planned to spend a number of hours flying with an instructor, as it has been 23 years since I last flew a plane. And, as Jeanie and I talked more about me starting to fly, I realized that I might not even like it any more. Why not go find out, since if I didn't like it, I would no longer need to subject myself to the horrors of my quest to regain my medical certificate.

I had decided that I would either go to Empire Aviation at Lake Ridge Airport in Durham, or go to Lee County airport in Sanford. Jeanie was kind enough to make some calls for me to try to line up an instructor, and Empire was able to squeeze me in on Saturday, so off I went to Durham.

I have been studying for about three months now, trying to get back up to date. I have also spent quite a few hours "flying" on Microsoft Flight Simulator, going through the simulated flight school. While I realized that I would still have a lot of work to do to get back up to speed, I had hoped that this might serve to knock some of the rust off.

I didn't quite know what to expect as I pulled up to the office at Empire. I had expected that I would actually get to spend some time in an airplane, but I had thought that for the most part, I would just be a passenger who happened to sit in the left seat. I also didn't have any idea how much time I would have to spend talking with the instructor before we would head off to the airplane.

After introductions, Brant and I spent a few minutes talking about my experience and what I had been doing on my own to study. I told him that I had read "Stick and Rudder" and that I had been through the entire Jeppesen computer based private pilot course. After reviewing my log book, Brant said - okay, let's go flying!

We walked over to one of the school's Cessna 152s, and Brant said, okay, here's the preflight checklist - get to it. Brant did a masterful job of letting me lead the preflight, while ensuring that he stop me whenever I needed a little more coaching to shake the cob webs loose.

After the preflight, we pulled the aircraft out of the hanger, and after giving me the engine start checklist (and a little more coaching) I had fired up the engine and was taxing to the end of the active runway. I was very pleasantly surprised how much came flooding back to me. Although I can't say for sure if Brant didn't provide a little "help" unbeknown to me as I taxied out, I think I might have done it all on my own. At the end of the runway, Brant handed me the pre-takeoff checklist, which I managed to get through with only a little more coaching. Brandt then said - okay, taxi onto the active, and take off. And, believe it or not - I did!

I actually managed what I believe was a not totally horrible takeoff, in a cross wind, from a dirt strip, on a slightly gusty day. I managed to climb out while maintaining an airspeed that didn't deviate too badly from the 67 knot optimum climb speed while mostly maintaining heading. We climbed to 3000 feet, and then flew the short distance to the practice area where we practiced turns, a simulated trip around the pattern, slips, and slow flight.

Then Brandt said, okay, let's head back to the airport, enter the pattern, and land. Brandt did provide a fair amount of verbal coaching, but I think I did most of the flying. And guess what? I managed a landing that we were able to walk away from! Brandt asked if I was up to another trip around the pattern to which I offered a resounding "yes!"

We taxied back to the end of the runway, performed a less than perfect short/soft field take-off (I dragged the tail a bit because I maintained too much back pressure, then let the plane touch back down briefly when I lowered the nose) and climbed back out. I ended up high on my second landing attempt, so we did a go-around. I realized that I needed to take a deep breath, relax, and talk myself through the next landing attempt, which I did, resulting in a decent second landing.

There is no doubt in my mind that it will take a number of hours for me to get to the point where I am competent to operate an airplane solo. Brandt had to keep reminding me to pull on carb heat when I reduced power, and to retract flaps after we had established a stable climb for example. I know that I will need a fair amount of drill regarding emergency procedures, as well as lots of practice with the radio (Brandt handled all of the radio work on Saturday). But, I was flying again! Woohoo!

I really did enjoy my hour of flying. I was absolutely exhausted at the end of the hour, I don't remember flying being that much work, but I was also totally "pumped." I can't wait until next week when hopefully I'll have the opportunity to spend another hour in the air.

A few months ago, I decided that I needed to get back on the wagon and arrest the gradual regaining of much of the weight I had lost the prior year.

I had seen an interview with Renee Zellweger in which she was being questioned about her weight gain / loss for Bridget Jones's Diary and its sequel. When asked how she did it, she had a very simple, logical reply: "it's really just simple math. You know, calories in and calories out. If you need to lose X pounds in Y weeks, you just calculate how many net calories per day you need to eliminate, and then adjust your intake and exercise to achieve that amount."

So,

I have endeavored to reduce my daily intake by going back to a eating lifestyle that favors lean meat and minimizes simple carbohydrates.

I have also endeavored to increase the number of calories I am burning each day, in an effort to increase my overall daily calorie deficit.

But, how to accomplish this, especially given the amount that I have to travel for work?

My solution: walking. You can do it pretty much anywhere, at any time, with no special equipment other than a good pair of shoes. But, it can be soooo boring!

My solution: books on tape!

I got myself some books that have fast moving plots that keep you at the edge of your seat. The kind of books that "are hard to put down."

Then, I made a rule for myself: no listening except when I'm walking.

Guess what? When I can't wait to find out what's going to happen next... I get motivated to walk! All of a sudden, rather than dreading exercise, I look forward to my next opportunity to listen to my book. And rather than counting every step and every second, the time just flies by!

So far, I've listened to three Dan Brown books: The Da Vinci Code (quite good), Deception Point (pretty good), and Digital Fortress (okay); one Tom Clancy book - The Bear and the Dragon (okay), and my favorite so far, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (really good, although I found the ending a little abrupt - guess JK wanted to ensure folks would buy HP6).

Anyway...

I've been working some brutal hours lately - averaging about 3 1/2 hours sleep per night. The other day, I was just dragging by around 3:00 PM, but still had heaps of work to do. So, I went back to the hotel and took a two hour nap - what a concept! After the nap, I felt (more) alert and refreshed, and was able to knock out another 8 hours of work before taking another break.