November 1, 2012: Everyone Is Back Home

I am alone this morning, it is Thursday.  Dominica and the girls will return from Houston this afternoon, working around the rush hour traffic as best as they can.

I went into the office today.  I have barely been in the office but I have been really sick for a week and was kind of sick before that.  I am still sounding sick today but as of yesterday I am more or less able to talk normally.  So I seem to be getting better at this point.  I’m not concerned.

I went right home after work.  We spent the evening as a family catching up and talking about all that we did in Chicago and in Houston and just hanging out and watching shows together.

October 31, 2012: Chicago

I woke up a few minutes before six on my own this morning.  Minutes later there was a knock on the door as my breakfast was delivered.  As I am up north I am taking advantage of the local bagels and lox that you cannot get, at least not of the same quality, down in Texas.  It is pretty cold up here today, just over forty degrees.  Quite a shock coming from Dallas.  Nothing unreasonably cold, but quite a bit colder than I am used to these days.  The weather, though, is pretty decent.  We had really been worried that Chicago was going to be drowning in rain from the hurricane that is still pounding much of the northeast.

I ate breakfast, it was delicious, and set up the laptop and got to work.  I put in several hours working from the hotel room.  It was really productive time, actually.  For more productive than normal.  Doing super early mornings is a great time to get caught up on things because no one is interrupting you either locally or with a constant stream of requests via instant messenger so you can focus and actually accomplish things.  So I did well and was very productive from my little HP Folio 13.

I dropped off my bags with the hotel.  Easier just to keep them there and grabbed a cab to take me out for the day.

It was a busy day and went pretty well.  I was happy with it.

I ended up getting back to the airport much earlier than I had planned, around three thirty rather than more like six thirty or seven.  So I changed my flight and zipped back to the DFW in time for dinner, which was nice.  Unfortunately Dominica and the girls are in Houston trick or treating so there wasn’t very much reason to be coming home early.

The flight back went pretty smoothly.  The people on the plane with me were pretty boring so mostly I just sat and read the in-flight magazine.  Normally I am able to strike up a conversation or something but not tonight.  Ugh.  It was not a long flight, though, so whatever.  It was smooth, at least.  I had flown United up to Chicago yesterday but am returning on American.

I got into DFW very early and got my luggage and was out to the car in no time.  I had a little panic when I got to the car because I could not find the car keys and had this fear that they had fallen out of my luggage while I was packing it in the hotel.  But after about ten minute I found them buried in an obscure pocket of the luggage that I had checked several times but they were pressed beneath something else that had kept me from finding them.  With Dominica out of town until tomorrow evening I wasn’t in total panic but I was rather concerned for a bit.  Digging through luggage in the airport parting garage kind of sucks.

Since I had absolutely no one to go home too I texted Dan and he met me at Redneck Heaven which was, conveniently, on the way home from the airport now that I know how to use Texas Route 121 to get around a bit better.  So we hung out and had drinks there for the evening.  They were surprised to see me since I had been expected to be out of town tonight.

I got back to the house at a pretty reasonable hour and I was off to bed all alone.  Strangely I don’t mind being alone in hotels (maybe because they are so small and because there are people sleeping and awake in the rooms right around me) but sleeping alone at home I find very unpleasant.  I always have.  That is probably why I’ve never really lived alone.  I much prefer at least having someone in another room.

Dominica said that the Halloween activities went well down in Houston tonight.  The girls were dressed up as NASCAR Race Car drivers and the older girls as pit crew.  Luciana spent almost the entire night in the stroller but Liesl enjoyed herself.  She loves the entire Halloween experience and no one scared her this year.

October 30, 2012: Off to Chicago

The Ripple Effect of Windows 8 was published on Datamation this morning.  This is the first article that I have had published for a while.  Like everyone else, my publishers have been hit by hard economic times.  I am really feeling the ripple effect of the economy now with every aspect of my professional life slowing down.  Not stopping, no work as ceased, but articles are requested less frequently, I haven’t done any certification writing in a long time (although that has come back now I am months away from seeing the revenue from that activity, ) etc.  Just everything has been “slower” than before or “less frequent.”  I’m not really concerned, but it isn’t fun to have income and activity decrease as you mature in your field.  I’m looking forward to the upswing, is all that I can say.

I got up this morning to find that my flight, according to US Air, had been canceled.  That lead to about an hour of running around trying to figure out what was going on and if I was really changing my travel plans or if US Air was just all messed up.  That the flight might have been canceled was a real possibility since the storm yesterday was so big that flights all over the country are delayed or canceled.

Eventually I got to the bottom of things and discovered that US Air’s website was all wrong and that my flight really was still scheduled for tonight.  What a pain.  I almost skipped a flight because US Air had reported it incorrectly.  It clearly stated that the flight was canceled on their website.  When I called them they acted incredulous and said that their website couldn’t say that as this wasn’t their flight and they don’t report on the status of their partners’ flights.  Right.

I worked from home for a few hours while Dominica and the girls got ready for their Halloween trip down to Houston.  They are leaving this morning to go down there until Thursday evening.  There was stuff to do to get ready for my trip.  Not a lot, but there is absolutely nothing going on at the office.  The office is empty, the market is closed for the second day in a row (first weather related closure of this magnitude since 1888) and we are under a change freeze.  So other than watching for disasters, there is nothing, whatsoever, to do.  I am flying out tonight after work so there was no point to them spending the day in town while I was not around.  So I stayed until mid-morning when they left and then headed into the office.  Dominica had to leave in time to avoid Houston’s evening rush hour.  Dominica and the girls left for Houston mid-morning.  They are driving down for Halloween festivities tomorrow.

I stopped at Subway on the way into the office to pick up a late lunch.  I’ll be in the office until six thirty when I will head to the airport so that I can spend a few hours sitting there waiting to get on my flight.  It is going to be a pretty boring evening for me.

I stayed at the office a little late this evening and then drove the few minutes that it takes to get to the airport. That is one handy thing about the new office location, I am right down the street from DFW.

I got the airport and parked the car there. It is just one night and the parking is covered so no big deal. I got checked into my flight, and through security in a matter of minutes. I had to go through the pornoscanner for the first time. But that wasn’t very interesting at all.

I had some significant time to kill while at the airport. I had given myself some crazy buffer time just because I had it to spare so I was at the airport with two hours or more to kill. I hit the bar and had a few drinks while waiting for a more appropriate time to head over to my gate. It was a quiet crowd tonight. I talked to a few of the late night bar flies but mostly it was quiet.

The flight from DFW to Chicago was smooth. Flying into Chicago at night was a first for me, at least in my memory. Just approaching the city drove home that I really have a bad impression as to the size of Chicago. It is so much larger than Dallas or Houston.  It feels more like New York City than it does like Houston, the next largest US city in terms of downtowns.  It is just massive.  I don’t know why I had forgotten that.  For most of my life Chicago was America’s second largest city and, in terms of traditional city centers, it really still is.  LA doesn’t feel like a city in any way like Chicago does.

Getting from O’Hare to downtown was easy.  Just took a cab and zipped downtown.  I am staying at the James Chicago which is a really great, upscale, urban hipster hotel in the heart of the city.  Very swank.  I didn’t want to deal with going out so I just hit the hotel bar for a drink and talked to Dominica on my iPhone.  I didn’t stay up for long, just enough to wind down then head up to the really nice room and get some sleep.

I ordered breakfast in the room at six in the morning before drifting off to sleep.  I figured that that would be a good way to start the day and it would guarantee that I was up and working early in the morning.  I sure don’t want to be wandering around in the morning trying to figure out food options, that will just be a pain.  Well worth getting food in the room, I think.

October 29, 2012: Hurricane Sandy

I stayed home from work today because I am recovering from laryngitis.  Every time I speak the house rumbles, my voice is so low.  All day we watched the news to see what was happening with the hurricane approaching New York City.  The predictions were that this was really going to be something.

It was pretty much a really slow day at home.  I got a lot of time to play with the girls.  They are always so happy whenever I am home.

After work we had to head over to Willowbrook Mall to pick up my one suit that was ready just in time for me to travel.  Then, on the way back from there, we stopped by Denny’s to have dinner since it was handy and on the way.  We had tried to find something else but between everything being closed and almost all of the restaurants either being too fancy for how we were feeling or not having good vegetarian options or, in the case of the dinner that we were interested in, being closed we just decided to do what was easy.

This evening we just got ready to be able to travel.  Dominica got me all packed, all I have is a single rolling bag, and got her and the girls packed up and ready for their trip down to Houston for Halloween and trick or treating.

The hurricane hit New York tonight and we are getting spotty updates from Katie who is way up north and more or less spared from the actual disaster.  She had power for most of the evening and knows that she will not be going back to work for a while.  The reports that we are hearing is that the city  and the New Jersey coast are actually getting hit a little harder than the estimates had guessed and it is really quite bad.  Eleven feet of water was the highest end of the range that we had heard but before the end of the night we were hearing thirteen feet was in Manhattan.  The entire region is just getting destroyed.  And the storm is one of the biggest ever.  Not the fastest, not the strongest but one of the physically largest with its center in New York City and its out rim hitting the Midwest!  Really something incredible.

Our house in New York is very far up north and is not, from what we hear, being affected in any significant way, from the storm.

We are all set for tomorrow but definitely wondering what the chances are that my flight is going to be canceled.  With this much storm going on and so many US airports closed and the storm impacting all the way into the midwest I might easily be grounded.

October 28, 2012: Last Normal Day This Week

Just a relaxing Sunday at home with the family.  Like yesterday, we are watching Dr. Who and hanging out on the couch with the girls.  Nothing exciting but these days are the best.  Just relaxing, doing nothing strenuous and snuggling with my girls while we watch our favourite show.

Put everyone to bed this evening and headed over to Redneck for drink before turning into bed and getting ready to start my crazy week.  Tomorrow we need to be all packed up and ready to go because once we all leave on Tuesday morning we are gone for the bulk of the week.