Useless Blogging

The restroom of the Phoenix airport smelled like Pez. This was pleasing, until a coworker pointed out that such a similarity can make you wonder about one of two things: what’s in the air freshener that is Pez-like, or (more chillingly) what’s in Pez that is restroom-like?

“It’s a dry heat” is surprisingly valid*.
*offer not valid in your car

With great determination, people can overcome their natural tendencies. It’s hard though, when everything in your brain screams NO WRONG BAD. I’ve great confidence in the staff at ACA, but their brains are not wired to do what I was sent to help them to do, which will make the process more difficult than it probably should be.

I ate BBQ ribs for the first time.

An in-car GPS is the key to wandering an unknown city by car (Mesa is not packed tightly enough to travel far on foot).

I bought Wii Fit from a mall store in Mesa, mainly because I had yet to see a copy in the wild anywhere. Luckily it works, because returning it would’ve been rough. It just barely fit into my luggage (a carry-on bag gifted to me by a former boss [if you're Skwid: it was Jud]).

My posting has gone down a bit, to be certain. It’s weird: I’ll look at the Write Post link, or my front page, or sometimes even the link in my bookmarks, and I’ll wonder to myself “Do I have anything worth saying?” Sometimes it’s “You have more important stuff to do, slacker!” The gists are remarkably similar, as are the net results.

Surely there are noteworthy things…

1. Emma scoring a perfect 100% on her first math test of the year
2. Sara running home from daycare
3. Juniata College off-campus interviews (followed by Mountain Day the next day)

Maybe I wonder how to say them. Maybe it’s that they’re never big ENOUGH events to warrant a few words. Maybe I’m just jaded.

In my junior year of college (like some readers) I went to Germany for a year of having my academic ass kicked in a foreign language. During my time there, I also spent three weeks wandering Europe by rail, rarely spending more than one night in any one place. When it comes to Europe, I’ve been around, if only briefly.

The United States are another story entirely. I’ve not really gone too far abroad in my own country (though I HAVE been in Canada, courtesy of Niagara Falls). Work apparently seeks to change that.

A little over a month ago, they sent me on a jaunt to Columbus, Ohio. It was exactly as thrilling as you expect “Columbus, Ohio” might be, made even more jaw-slackenly fun by the fact that I was there to listen to an Ohio Department of Education presentation on their data system. Don’t get me wrong — data is my life, and I dig it plenty — but this is the government we’re talking about here, and “entertaining” isn’t high on their list of traits to work into a presentation.

Now I come to find out that by the end of next week, I’ll likely have been to Mesa, AZ and back. Getting data out of our system and into the state system is an ongoing concern for our Arizona school, and as much as I can automate, there’s still got be some brainpower applied (correctly!) at intervening points in the process, and my boss and I don’t think that we can convey that well enough over email and phone calls.

If you’re keeping track at home, the furthest south I’ve been for pleasure is Orlando, and for business is Tampa. To the north, the aforementioned Niagara trip takes the cake (I’ve never really been north for work, aside from a class in Philadelphia). To the west, the limits are St. Louis for pleasure (for Ian’s wedding) and Dallas for work (HI SKWID). Next week will shatter that record, if things go according to plan.

And if you’re wondering, though odds are against it, I could end up in the following also-new-record places under the guise of legitimate work:

• Boise, ID
• San Clemente, CA
• Appleton, WI
• Reno, NV

Having won Jason over, my need to crosspost has waned. Back to reality, slackers.