doubting thom

And if the scary drive home last night weren’t bad enough, today was a typically stressful day back at work, almost extraordinarily so, though what I used to think extraordinary in terms of pressure and workload sadly here has become commonplace, for all of us. A few of the contractors are having a mock pool about whom in the department will be the first to suffer a nervous breakdown. Apparently I’m one of the more likely contenders.

Oh, and it turns out that while I thought there were only two to three people here who know about the blog, there actually are quite a few more than that who know about it and read it at least occasionally. Thank goodness I haven’t said anything bad about any of them… in a while.

While Jeff was in California visiting his folks, I decided I’d go see my family over the weekend, which also marked my sister’s 40th birthday. Normally I try to leave from there early Sunday afternoon–no later than 2 or 3–so that I still have some time Sunday evening after getting home to recover from the visit, to do household chores, and in case traffic ends up being particularly bad.

Because Sunday was my sister’s birthday, though, the family decided to mark the occasion with a cook-out, which wasn’t scheduled even to begin until 4:00. Mom agreed that I didn’t have to stay long, but could leave after about an hour. By 5:00, it was starting to rain and get quite windy, so I said my goodbyes and headed back.

Before I’d gone 30 miles, the rain and wind had increased to storm intensity, and continued to worsen for the next few hours; traffic also was very heavy. There were stretches of travel that were as bad weather-wise as anything I’ve encountered in 25 years of driving, and the fact that the intensity was sustained for nearly the entire trip home definitely made it the most nerve-wracking drive of my life. For much of the trip it was difficult to see vehicles three to four car lengths ahead, and almost impossible to see anything beyond that, even with nearly every driver having their hazard lights on. Sometimes the wind drove the rain so strongly into the windshield that there were near white-out conditions. As I approached northwestern Virginia, the radio station began interrupting its programming with frequent updates about severe thunderstorms in the area that included inch-diameter hailstones and the possibility of tornados, recommending that folk find shelter. By this point, there was really nowhere else for me to go, so I just continued onward, continuing to make calculations in my head as to whether I was going to stay ahead of the path of the worst weather (the weather alerts would give the position, bearing and speed of the storm systems, so I would calculate my own position and bearing in relation to these). Fortunately, I didn’t encounter any hail or tornados, only some pretty serious rain, wind and lightning, and by the time I reached Manassas I was coming out the worst side of the storm and made it the rest of the way to Arlington in relatively lighter rain, having added about 50% to my travel time.

I was white-knuckled much of the way, but the car handled well. Many times a dashboard light indicating for the traction control system lit up, indicating that the car was doing its magic to keep from skidding or sliding, but I never lost any control of the car even when other cars were clearly hydroplaning. I was quite glad to be home, finally, and felt suddenly drained when the adrenaline rush subsided.

Not even a month ago I posted about my frustrations with the cafeteria at my agency. Since then I’ve continued to try to stay away as much as possible, though it’s hard to avoid for lunch since it’s the only place on-campus; unless you bring your lunch, you have to drive off-site if you want to forego the “privilege” of eating in the cafeteria.

Recently I’ve been away a fair amount–in training, and then at the conference earlier this week–so I’ve had a reprieve. Today, though, I made the mistake of going back and, worse, actually engaging the manager in a conversation. She was standing next to me as I was in the cashier’s line, so I asked if I could pose a question. “Is there a difference,” I asked, “between the regular turkey sandwich on the menu at $3.60, with a slice of cheese for 25 cents more, and the ‘special’ of the day listed as turkey sandwich with a slice of cheddar for $3.99, which is 14 cents more?” She exploded at me and abraded me for the next five minutes while I waited to pay for my food; she said that the selection of cheeses available in the first sandwich is American, provolone or muenster, and that the cheddar is “special” and therefore more expensive. She then raised her voice even more, claiming that their prices are far too cheap in any case and that they intend to raise the price on all the sandwiches and additions–like a slice of cheese–in the next week. She told me I had the choice not to eat there–a true statement, though not exactly a stunning example of customer service or sensitivity.

Over the past few months, my colleagues have been sharing their own stories with me of rudeness, incorrect or misleading prices, mislabeled foods, etc. There’s one cashier I discovered that we all avoid unless absolutely necessary, because she speaks rudely, rolls her eyes and audibly sighs when having to make change from anything larger than a five-dollar bill, or when providing change even from a quarter when one just wants a cup of hot water, for which they charge 19 cents. The manager has been observed berating other customers similar to the haranguing she gave me today.

Unfortunately, it turns out that we don’t really have any recourse. I’ve just learned that the contract to the catering company isn’t awarded even by my own agency, but is mandated for us by GSO, so we can’t even elect to recompete it. Oh well, I love driving the Prius, so maybe this will encourage me to get away from the facility at lunch altogether.

Within seconds of posting the previous entry, the phone rang. When I picked it up, the caller ID showed Jeff’s last name and for a moment I was confused, since he should be in the air a third of the way to California. Then I realized that the name following the last name was not Jeff’s, but his father’s. His mother was on the phone; this was the first time I’d spoken to either of his parents. She was worried and wanted to make sure he’d gotten to the airport and away on time, since this was the first time, apparently, that he hadn’t called just before his flight took off.

Jeff had been running late at work today, to finish up before heading out of town for the rest of the week. By the time I picked him up and we got back home, that only left us 15 to 20 minutes before we’d need to leave if we were to get him to the airport 90 minutes before its scheduled departure. So he fixed himself a quick snack-like dinner, and then finished packing. We didn’t end up leaving until more like 40 minutes later, which put us at the airport just about an hour before his departure time. Checking the JetBlue site, I see that the plane actually took off 10 minutes early (and when does that ever happen? I always get the reverse, at best), so he was probably scrambling to get checked in and boarded, in the process not having a chance to call his parents before take-off this time. Jeff was also musing in the car on the way to the airport that this was the first direct flight home he’d had in a while, so that he wouldn’t have a layover this time–and it was often on the layovers, I suspect, that he would make the phone call.

I reassured his mother that I’d left him whole and well at the airport and that I’d heard nothing since so I was certain everything was fine, and also let her know that Jeff had worked late and that in turn we’d been running late to the airport. She thanked me for the flowers I’d sent them and we chatted for a few more minutes, which was very nice. I told her I hoped to come out to the Bay Area to meet them, and she agreed that she was looking forward to that.

After I got off the phone, I went to the JetBlue site–to check the flight information, as noted above–and was intrigued to find that in addition to the data about actual take-off time and estimated arrival (35 minutes early is the current estimate) the flight info also includes regularly updated information about the plane’s altitude and ground speed (35000 feet and 402 knots) as well as a graphic showing the route and the current position of the plane. As of 11:03 p.m. EDT when I was checking the site, Jeff’s plane was approximately near the border of Indiana and Missouri, with some possible light rain as he approaches Utah and Nevada later. It’s cool to be able to keep tabs on his progress like this (though I’ll be in bed well before he arrives at the Oakland airport, just before 3 a.m. my time).

Just a little while ago, I dropped [my] Jeff off at Dulles; he’s on his way out to the Bay Area via JetBlue to spend the next few days with his parents. Having been away myself this past Sunday through Tuesday afternoon, this week we’ll only have spent a few hours together yesterday evening (during which he was packing and talking on the phone, and I was catching up with email and other tasks) and only about an hour again this evening (during which I was distracted by a near-blinding headache), as he’ll now be away until Monday morning.

We’ve actually spent very little time apart since he moved in last fall. And, though I’m looking forward to having some alone time (though it turns out there won’t actually be much of that, since I had promised my Mom I’d visit this weekend, which really only leaves me this evening before bed and then tomorrow evening), I find myself already very conscious of his absence–missing him already, as it were.

As [the other] Jeff points out, he (as well as others) had been holding off on upgrading Movable Type to version 2.661 because of the new feature in comment pages that hides the URL of the commenter within a redirect. This had the effect of making it no longer possible to see the home URL for a given commenter merely by rolling over the name; so, when several people with the same name (like, say, Jeff and Jeff, or Thom and Thom) commented, it was no longer easy to see which one had left a given comment since the redirect URL always was the same. For that reason, I too had delayed in upgrading Movable Type. But when I moved my sites to a new hosting provider earlier this month, I no longer had a choice since the old version wasn’t available for download.

Fortunately, a plugin solution–Optional Redirect by David Raynes–exists. Now those pesky redirects are a thing of the past. Thanks for the pointer, Jeff.

Day two is over, and I’m beat. I ended up skipping the “networking dinner” because I didn’t have the energy to schmooze any more after breakfast, lunch and nine half-hour one-on-one meetings with vendors, along with the plenary sessions. While exhausting, it wasn’t as bad as I feared it would be; a few of the one-on-one sessions were a complete bust, but a couple of them were promising. I also met someone else from the Department of State at lunch, and we had a great conversation, and may try to pull together a joint pilot project. The day as a whole, though, wasn’t helped by the steady rain outside.

I did get a little bit of cool schwag, though. One vendor provided a really nice portfolio, another a weird rubber mat that somehow sticks without adhesive to your dashboard and can grip a cell phone, PDA, sunglasses or the like, along with a great little optical travel mouse (which I’m now using on the laptop), and a third provided their materials not on a CD-ROM but on a 32kb USB key disc. And at one of the breaks, the conference organizers had Haagen-Dasz ice cream bars and cans of Diet Vanilla Pepsi (my favorite).

Tomorrow morning I only have two more one-on-one sessions, and then lunch. I should be back on the road for home around 1:00. I may even have time to stop by the outlet center I saw on the other side of the road just on this side of the bridge and still make it home in time to pick Jeff up at the Metro after he gets off work.

I’ll be so happy to be home.

I got your messages. That was certainly an ingenious way to reach me. Thanks for the kind words. I hope you’re well.

Last Tuesday I posted about an upcoming trip to a conference in Cambridge, Maryland. The conference is now underway, and I arrived around 1:00 this afternoon after a pleasant drive (averaging 50mpg, thanks to the Prius!) from Virginia.

My boss’s boss told me the other day that I “would owe” them for their having let me take this trip, the implication being that this was potentially a boondoggle (though not especially at government expense, since the conference, hotel and all meals except today’s lunch were comped by the conference organizers), conjuring images of me lying by the pool or receiving a hot stone massage at the resort’s spa while they remained hard at work back at the Institute. Well, they couldn’t have gotten it more wrong.

For starters, they had today off. I, however, spent my Sunday morning traveling here, having time only for lunch on my own before the first session started at 2:30. Between then and 9:30 this evening, when I finally got back to my room after dinner–where I was sandwiched between two vendors, so it wasn’t the most relaxing time of the day–the conference provided for only a half-hour of free time. So I’ve spent 6-1/2 hours of one of my weekend days, plus 2 hours of travel time, attending sessions and that “networking” dinner.

And tomorrow it gets worse. The day begins with breakfast at 7:00, at which point we’ll be given our schedule of one-on-one meetings with vendors that take place at various times between plenaries and workshops. Throughout the course of the day, we’re given only one hour of free time–lunch and dinner again being “networking” events that are part of the conference rather than on our own–with dinner not ending until 10:00 tomorrow night, for a total of 14 hours of sessions and meetings. And, when I say only one free hour, I really mean it; there aren’t even any 15-minute breaks, as sessions and vendor meetings are scheduled completely back-to-back throughout the day.

So even if I wanted to pay the absurdly expensive $175 charge for a massage or $110 for a facial, I wouldn’t have the time to indulge in them, since the spa closes at 5:00, which is before our one free hour comes around. The hotel grounds look beautiful, but my only exposure to them will be the views through the windows as I move from one session to the next.

In the earlier post, I talked about the expensive Internet access–$30/hour–the hotel charges in its business center. I’ve ended up connecting via low-speed dialup from my room; a $1 connection fee for a local call, but at least they aren’t charging per-minute rates after that. The high prices for Internet service, though, have been mirrored throughout the hotel, as the spa prices above also indicate. In the gift shop, a 16-ounce bottle soda costs $2.50 and a candy bar $1.50, the vending machines on my floor charge $1.50 for a 12-ounce can of soda, and the medium-size bottles of water on display in the room itself bear little signs nothing that they cost $3.75. During my half-hour break today, I drove to the Wal-Mart out on the main highway and bought a 12-pack of Diet Dr. Pepper, a bag of popcorn and a 10-pack of small candy bars for a total of $5, what I’d pay over here for just two bottles of soda.

I figure I’ll need the candy bars just to get through tomorrow’s 14 hours of meetings. Truth be told, perk though this trip might have seemed, I’d really rather be back home with Jeff, vegging out in front of the TiVo, and going to the office for just my usual eight hours of work.

And now I should get to bed. The long Monday starts very early.

Jeff has reported over at Rebel Prince about our outing last night to see the Washington Opera production of Rossini’s La Cenerentola. It was a very enjoyable evening, even though it appears that we differed somewhat in our reviews of the performers. He said:

…I wasn’t familiar with La Cenerentola–though it’s basically the Cinderella story–so it was interesting to hear the music for the first time and be carried along by a plot that takes some departures from our well-known version of the tale. An excerpt from the program notes:

Audience members unfamiliar with the opera may be surprised to find the more fanciful elements of the fairy tale, as immortalized by the storyteller Charles Perrault or animator Walt Disney, completely missing. There is no fairy godmother, no pumpkin carriage, and even the glass slippers have been transformed into a simple pair of bracelets.

In another departure, this production gives the opera a mid-20th century setting. The prevalent formal attire is a suit and tie, Cenerentola is carried off to the palace in a luxury car, and the chorus often takes the form of camera-wielding papparazzi. The set, which a Post critic wrote looks like John Waters’ Baltimore, is bright, and a little surreal, I thought, given its extreme forced perspective. (It has such a steeply raked floor that we feared one or two of the singers might come rolling into the orchestra pit if they leaned too far downstage.) Some of the staging, especially during the inner monologues, bolstered the surreality, comically so at times, with the actors seeming to wander about confusedly in a kind of daydream.

The singing was rather good; everyone ably took on the trademark Rossini vocal acrobatics, and Sonia Ganassi’s (Cenerentola) voice sparkled, though her facial contortions (or supposedly comic mugging?) was a bit distracting. The smoldering Jesús Garcia (Don Ramiro, the prince), whom I saw previously as Rodolfo in Baz’s La Bohème, did a good job, but was overshadowed by the affable Simone Alberghini (Dandini, the prince’s valet, with whom he exchanges identities). And the singers who played Cenerentola’s family were all good comic foils to the lovebirds: Hoo-Ryoung Hwang and Ann McMahon Quintero (stepsisters Clorinda and Tisbe), and Alfonso Antoniozzi (Don Magnifico, the stepfather). …

And I commented:

Interesting. I wasn’t as impressed by the singing, which I thought on the whole was merely satisfactory (I saw Tosca in Tucson last year, and it featured some awe-inspiring performances, especially from the lead; I guess I had even higher expectations for a city like Washington). I also didn’t find Alberghini overshadowing Garcia notably, though admittedly that might have been because I found Garcia much more physically attractive, so I was probably cutting him some slack without realizing it at the time. 🙂

As for Ganassi’s “facial contortions,” I found them wildly distracting; if they were meant to be a comic affectation rather than an unfortunate natural characteristic, they seemed out of place with the rest of the cast’s more understated comedic turns. I kept expecting her to suddenly start shouting out obscenities to match what I almost took to be the physical manifestations of Tourette’s.

I don’t mean to sound overly negative, though. I thoroughly enjoyed myself last night. I just think my expectations going into it perhaps were higher than perhaps they should have been; this was, after all, my first attendance at the Washington Opera, so I should have gone in with no preconceptions.

The renovated Opera House certainly was gorgeous and spectacular, though, ne?

Hm. We live together. Is it weird that we’re having a conversation, of sorts, through our blogs?