And finally we've come to the end of the insanity that's been the first third of 2008. Got back into town Thursday evening, after sneaking onto a slightly earlier flight home from Dallas.

( Drives, Dandelions, and Dinners )

( On To Dallas )

So, with these two trips done, it now looks like I won't be on the road for anything other than a con until late in the summer. Yay!

So far a good conference. The standards committee meetings that were the main reason for my being here were reasonably productive, I think. Nothing too hair-raising, earth-shattering, or spine-chilling. (Corresponding to any developments in wind loads, earthquake loads, or snow loads, respectively...*grin*). Thanks to jet lag, I woke up before the alarm yesterday, so I took a quick stroll along the Seawall. Found a nice pub/steakhouse next to the hotel for dinner last night and chowed down on a prime rib.

There was a reception this evening on the top floor of the Hyatt to kick off the conference. Nice views of downtown and the harbour. Can't say much for the food, which mostly involved either pasta or pork. The conversation was much better. I encountered two former JHU civil engineering grad students whose time overlapped my undergraduate studies. One of them introduced me to a colleague as "the best student I ever had." I managed not to dissolve in laughter. Apparently he managed to forget in the 18 years since I graduated Hopkins that I was at best a C+ student. Also had an interesting conversation with a guy from a company called Flextegrity, that's apparently hawking some sort of scalable, bucky-ball-like system that can be used for everything from walks to walls to (scaled up fully) entire buildings.

After the reception I was still hungry (just having nommed on some cut-up melon & pineapple, and a small piece of overcooked wild salmon), so I strolled down to Gastown. Found an Italian restaurant and had a nice dinner of veal medallions in a wild mushroom sauce. I did get to see the Steam Clock in action.

Arrived safely in Vancouver, with luggage. The Hotel Le Soleil so far seems to be a lovely boutique hotel. I have a suite--sitting room, bathroom, and bedroom. There are bathrobes in the closet, and the wireless is free. I can see the Hyatt (where my conference is) from my room, a very short two-block stroll. I'm betting my room is nicer than my colleagues' rooms over there, and I'm paying less. (Aside to daisy_knotwise & billroper: John Duntemann was on my flight along with another guy from WJE.)

The desk pointed me at an IGA supermarket a few blocks away. Unfortunately they were sold out of Passover stuff for the moment, but I found a fruit salad and a package of Mott's Fruitsations (like applesauce, except this has mango & peach too) that'll do for a snack tonight and breakfast tomorrow (along with the fruit slices and mandel cuts I brought along) until I can get back to the IGA tomorrow.

Surprisingly I'm not completely falling over, considering it's almost 1:30am back East. Maybe it was the brisk stroll to the IGA. But I've got a long day tomorrow, so I should go to bed.

Back from San Francisco. Actually, got back Saturday night. But didn't get around to posting Sunday and was busy yesterday.

The meetings were long, mind-numbing, and accomplished very little. Luckily, the host organization paid for free wireless in the meeting rooms, so I was able to get some actual work done (or at least keep pace with my work e-mail). They also fed us breakfast and lunch.

But you don't want to hear about the boring details of a standards committee. You want to find out how many filkers and relatives I can manage to see in a 4-day trip. The answer, in this case is many. Of course, it helps that the trip fell across a Wednesday night. So, with the help of a convenient Caltrain station I rode south to Sunnyvale where I had a nice dinner with Bill & Carole, then headed for the Starport to see mdlbear, flower_cat, chaoswolf and the usual Wednesday night gang. Among the folks hanging out were figmo, capplor, the visiting pocketnaomi, and the visiting-from-Israel moshez, who I was delighted to finally meet in person. Also hvideo stopped by with a DVD of chaoswolf and selkit's wedding, so at least I got to see that part of the Consonance festivities.

Thursday I managed to catch up with mysticfig and the rest of Team Bohnhoff for dinner. Yay again for Caltrain! Yay for cities with real mass transit and real commuter rail! I got to see Mystic Fig Studios in all its glory and drool at Jeff's guitar collection. (I did manage to keep the drool off the guitars and the recording gear. Barely.) They took me to an Indian place for another fine dinner.

Friday evening I got together with most of my Bay Area family at my uncle's house in Haight-Ashbury. In addition to Don & Marcia, my aunt & uncle Karen & Jim came up from Santa Cruz (and gave me a ride), and my cousin Talia, her husband Mike and their little one came over from Oakland. Not surprisingly, there was much levity, much cooing at the baby (also much raising of arms and shouting YAAAAY!, which the tyke seemed to enjoy), and yet more good food to be consumed.

Now I actually get to mostly be home for several weeks before the next time I have to play road warrior again. (The exception, of course, if FKO. Definitely not gonna miss FKO!)

Watchin' the planes fly away...

Yep, here I am back on the road again, this time to an engineering design standards committee meeting in San Francisco. Just a quick post so my readers know I arrived.

The weekend was fun. We saw Jonathan Coulton + Paul & Storm at the Birchmere on Friday. The JoCo/P&S shows appear to be getting to be like Clam Chowder concerts, where the audience plots get stranger and stranger. This particular show featured the tossing of panties onto the stage during the appropriate point in Paul & Storm's "Opening Band", followed by a barrage of stuffed animals during JoCo's encore. (The latter appears to be a running plot related to "Code Monkey"). Much good music was heard, and we saw partiallyclips and scifantasy. Then on Sunday went to Jen & Steve's wedding shower, which was also fun.

After tomorrow's meeting I'll be having dinner with Bill Laubenheimer & Carole Parker (who may or may not be on LJ), then heading down to the Starport.

Home. Tired. Braaaaaaaains.

Taking comp day tomorrow to recover.

Yesterday I went downtown to check out the Solar Decathlon, a biennial competition run by the U.S. Department of Energy and co-sponsored by a number of organizations including my humble employer. The competition involves 20 teams of college students designing solar-powered, energy- and resource-efficient homes. The teams are graded in 10 categories including architectural & engineering design, marketability, interior comfort (temperature & humidity), and of course, the amount of solar power generated and used.

The architectural styling varied. A couple of the homes appeared to be no more than an RV with solar panels slapped on the roof. Others were considerably more attractive, appearing like a typical ranch home. At least two homes incorporated greenery into portions of the exterior walls (the "hanging gardens" style). One home featured small ponds and gardens as part of an exterior deck.

Many of the houses were designed with large windows or double doors on opposing sides of a room. This is to facilitate cross-ventilation for cooling off a room, rather than resorting to air conditioning or electric fans. One observes that such natural design strategies are nearly a lost art.

Of course, I also must observe that few of these homes would work for the average fan. Most had either large expanses of doors and glazing, and a couple were constructed from translucent panels. The interior spaces were also open-plan, an additional aid to ventilation. Unfortunately, this leaves little room for bookshelves or CD/DVD racks. OTOH, I suppose a book and music collection consisting almost entirely of eBooks and MP3 downloads is "greener" than the alternative...

Long day today; the 2nd of my two meetings today ran late since they decided to tack a presentation on the end of today's session instead of starting with it tomorrow. Then the ATM at the branch of my bank across the street from the hotel wasn't dispensing cash, which left me in Leesburg with not enough cash for White's Ferry. Oops. Found an ATM at a Wal-Mart that was happy to disgorge a few $$$. With all that didn't get home until after 8pm, which meant dinner was a reheated plate of chicken and veggies. Pretty much just staring at LJ tonite. (Pretty much just stared at LJ last night too...)

Suppose the meetings have been productive, if a lot to digest. Still have tomorrow and half of Friday to go. Need braaaaaaains...

Going to see the Austin Lounge Lizards at Wolf Trap tomorrow, which will be fun even if "Old Blevins" will remind me of Dave. It was a regular part of the DQYDJP(*) sets, which is where I first heard it.

Time to go catch up on a few more newspapers before bedtime.

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One of the things I get to do in my job is participate in the development and updating of various design standards. A packet of information for one standards committee arrived today with a list of suggested items to pursue and topics to discuss at the committee's next meeting.

One of the suggested items was "Correction of typo's in document"

D'OH!

Catching up on pre-Xmas stuff and the weekend before the holiday weekend...

( Party Time! )

( Jammin JoCo, Now With 50% More Paul & Storm )

Now on to our Florida trip...

Most of this post was written during my much-delayed flight home. Talk about insult to injury; a flight scheduled to leave San Francisco at 3:15pm and arrive in Baltimore at 11:16pm gets delayed almost 2-1/2 hours by a medical emergency, two mechanical problems (one on the original plane, one on the plane they changed us to), late-arriving pilots from another flight, and then a line of heavy rains that moved through the area.

(Note I said rain there. I know what some of you are thinking. Insert glyph of middle finger here…)

( Rockin' In The SF Bay )

Now I get a week-and-a-half to enjoy life at home before we head to Florida for the holiday weekend.

Yes, tonight I'm reporting from the lovely Doubletree Hotel here in East Denver, where I'm in the middle of the first of two work-related conferences. Had a nice dinner tonight with kbeader and hubby at local institution Sam's Diner #3.

( Meanwhile, we've been folkin' around )

And Denver too...

Starting to gear up for next week's business trip to Denver and San Mateo. I'll be in Denver from Monday evening (the 4th) through Wednesday afternoon (the 6th), then continuing to San Mateo where I'll be through Saturday morning (the 9th). At the moment, I've got plans with kbeader on Tuesday, and I'll be dropping in on the usual Wednesday gathering at mdlbear's and flower_cat's. I'm open for suggestions to fill the rest of the evenings! 8-)