I'm sitting in the international departure terminal in Newark, N.J. In a little more than two hours, I'll be leaving United States airspace for the first time in my life.
I'm going to Denmark, home of the company for which I work. I'll spend a week meeting my Danish co-workers on their home turf and learning more about our product from the people who actually assemble it. I'm repeating the phrase Jeg taler ikke dansk (I don't speak Danish), which in my southern U.S. accent comes out sounding more like "Yay taylor iggy dance." They tell me that's how I'm supposed to say it. The fact that I taylor iggy dance is OK; most of the Danish are conversant in English; many speak it better than you or I.
The Airbus A330 on which I'll spend the next eight hours is parked right outside the window by which I'm sitting. I'll land at 7:35 a.m. in Copenhagen, which will be 1:35 a.m. EST. Another 45-minute flight to the city in which I'll be staying, and I'll be a foreigner for the first time.
I have three books, four magazines, a digital camera, this machine, 900 songs in my iPod, a bottle of Dasani and a bag of miniature Reese's peanut butter cups. I have a passport, a boarding pass and 1,000 Danish kroner in my back pocket which I purchased for 202 American dollars. The femte kroner note features a picture of a fetching woman in a hat, the first time I've ever seen a picture of a woman on money. The woman's name is Karen Blixen. A quick Google reveals she wrote Out of Africa, among many, many other things during her 70-year life which ended in 1962. Imagine the Americans honoring artists on their money. We're stuck with #$#*(ing politicians.
It's going to be an interesting week. Check back for updates.
Saturday, February 26, 2005
Sunday, February 20, 2005
Time again to talk music
A long-overdue discovery and a rediscovery ...
The discovery: My heart is still seared from listening to Eddie from Ohio's Julie Murphy Wells sing "Oh My Brother." Oh my God, what a voice, what a delivery. I'm embarrassed to have not discovered this Virginia-based fusion of folk and bluegrass and soul -- i.e., music -- 10 years ago. They've been around since '91; I've known about them since '01, thanks to RER; yet I didn't give them a serious listen until a couple of weeks ago. They're more than worth your time. A good portion of their catalog is available on iTunes. I'm currently listening to their two live albums, Portable EFO Show and Three Rooms. I'm told they're way better live than in the studio. My next task: Hope my travel schedule and theirs converges at some point.
The rediscovery: Growing up in Springfield, Mo., I always kind of took the Ozark Mountain Daredevils for granted. A pretty good country-ish rock band, kind of like a hillbilly-flavored Eagles. I found a few of their songs on iTunes not long ago, and am reminded that my dad's former high school classmates were actually a helluva band. Recommended cuts: "If You Want to Get to Heaven," probably their best rock-'n'-roll song; "Jackie Blue," which had a run at Billboard's Top 5 in 1974 and was, I learned, remade by Smashing Pumpkins; and "Homemade Wine," off the best album you've never heard, Men from Earth. Some of the ex-Daredevils, including Michael "Supe" Granda and Ruell Chappell, are still hanging around Anytown making music. One, Steve Canaday, died in a plane crash in 1999 after a stint as Lee Roy Parnell's tour manager. These guys were probably the biggest stars to come out of Anytown before Brad Pitt. Worth a listen.
Your turn; tell me what you're listening to these days.
The discovery: My heart is still seared from listening to Eddie from Ohio's Julie Murphy Wells sing "Oh My Brother." Oh my God, what a voice, what a delivery. I'm embarrassed to have not discovered this Virginia-based fusion of folk and bluegrass and soul -- i.e., music -- 10 years ago. They've been around since '91; I've known about them since '01, thanks to RER; yet I didn't give them a serious listen until a couple of weeks ago. They're more than worth your time. A good portion of their catalog is available on iTunes. I'm currently listening to their two live albums, Portable EFO Show and Three Rooms. I'm told they're way better live than in the studio. My next task: Hope my travel schedule and theirs converges at some point.
The rediscovery: Growing up in Springfield, Mo., I always kind of took the Ozark Mountain Daredevils for granted. A pretty good country-ish rock band, kind of like a hillbilly-flavored Eagles. I found a few of their songs on iTunes not long ago, and am reminded that my dad's former high school classmates were actually a helluva band. Recommended cuts: "If You Want to Get to Heaven," probably their best rock-'n'-roll song; "Jackie Blue," which had a run at Billboard's Top 5 in 1974 and was, I learned, remade by Smashing Pumpkins; and "Homemade Wine," off the best album you've never heard, Men from Earth. Some of the ex-Daredevils, including Michael "Supe" Granda and Ruell Chappell, are still hanging around Anytown making music. One, Steve Canaday, died in a plane crash in 1999 after a stint as Lee Roy Parnell's tour manager. These guys were probably the biggest stars to come out of Anytown before Brad Pitt. Worth a listen.
Your turn; tell me what you're listening to these days.
Once, it's a tragedy. Twice, it's a crime
A school district in Florida has suffered the deaths of two children in the last four months because of a bus driver's incompetence. That's two too many.
It's time to start holding some people criminally responsible.
It's time to start holding some people criminally responsible.
Saturday, February 19, 2005
Wait ... um ... hey ...
God, it just got a little crazy there for a while.
A co-worker's death. A business trip extended by the flu. The Young Daughter's dread disease rearing its ugly head. A little too much reality to digest all in one month.
A couple of weeks ago in New Hampshire, my new co-worker and I didn't feel very good. I plowed through the workshop we were conducting; she curled up in a fetal position in her hotel room for most of the trip. We somehow made our way back to the airport Thursday morning. She resumed the fetal position at the gate. I went to the bathroom to throw up.
When I came back, I decided I wasn't quite ready to fly just yet and went to tell the gate agent this, so she could put me on a later flight. Then I discovered I was using the gate agent's counter to hold myself up. I told her, "I think I need medical attention." Next thing I knew, I was in an ambulance.
I called The Wife. I didn't tell her much. She, of course, went into an utter panic. Early the next day, she found herself in New Hampshire, too, sitting beside me while I grumbled in my hospital bed about being hot, then cold, then hot. The Company was kind enough to fly her up there for me. It was a lifesaver.
I was kicked out of the hospital Saturday morning, with a diagnosis of flu and pneumonia. The Wife and I spent the next two days in a hotel room in Manchester, N.H., where I, well, slept from Saturday afternoon until the kickoff of the Super Bowl.
It was the next Friday before I felt like I was back at full strength. Basically, flu sucks. It's the first time I've had it in probably five years, and by far the worst that I've had it. Damn that shortage of flu shots. Next year, I'm getting in line.
-----------------
How about this lede: My kid has a brain tumor.
OK, it's a very small brain tumor. As yet, it's not threatening anything. It's something that bears watching, say her doctors, but nothing more than that at present.
Benign tumors are a symptom of neurofibromatosis, a mysterious genetic neurological disease. Of course, best we can tell, it's nowhere in our genetics; we're not comforted by the fact that 50 percent of the cases occur spontaneously, with no genetic basis.
The tumors don't cause any serious medical problems, unless they get too close to a vital organ, or the brain. That's why this bears watching.
Right now, everything's fine. She's 100 percent fully active and healthy. We check it again in a couple of months. Researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center are working on a cure. We root for them like we've never rooted for anybody in our lives.
--------------------
I shook off the flu just in time for my brutal travel schedule to resume. This gave me the opportunity to visit California for the first time. Not just California, mind you: San Francisco, California, which is my new favorite city, based on only four hours there. My God, what a beautiful place. Water, mountains, the Golden Gate, great restaurants every-friggin'-where you turn. I can certainly see the appeal, and why people are willing to pay five times what they'd pay to live anywhere else.
The co-worker who was in Montreal urged me to eat dinner at a delightful downtown restaurant called The Crustacean, which, as you might suspect, serves seafood. It's seafood with a Vietnamese twist, however, I had a whole dungeness crab simmered in a three-wine sauce with black pepper and scallions, with garlic rice on the side. It was fabulous, and worth almost every bit of the per-diem-plus that I paid for it.
I drove over the Golden Gate Bridge, just to say I did. Dipped down into historic Sausalito, and racked my brain trying to think of that sticks-in-your-head-like-glue song, "Sausalito Summer Nights." (Answer: The one-hit wonder Diesel, in 1982.) We drove to Frisco in the Rambler/The radiator running dry ...
Next week: New Hampshire, again, reluctantly. I get home Friday with enough time to do laundry and sleep before boarding a plane for my first-ever venture off United States soil.
I'm headed to the home office in Denmark for some training. I'll spend a few days with a customer in Copenhagen, and a few days at the company's Scandinavian headquarters in a little North Sea town called Aalborg.
Then, back to New Hampshire. Then Minnesota, then Dallas for a big trade show. It'll be my first time back in the Very Large Metropolitan Area for something other than an airport layover since leaving in 2002.
All the time on the road is good; it means The Company is prospering, which means The Family and I are prospering.
But it also means an awful lot of stuff is whizzing by at 542 mph. I'm moving, as Seger once sang, eight miles a minute for months at a time.
I'm going to go take a minute I have now to go hug some people I love. You go do the same, and be thankful you can.
A co-worker's death. A business trip extended by the flu. The Young Daughter's dread disease rearing its ugly head. A little too much reality to digest all in one month.
A couple of weeks ago in New Hampshire, my new co-worker and I didn't feel very good. I plowed through the workshop we were conducting; she curled up in a fetal position in her hotel room for most of the trip. We somehow made our way back to the airport Thursday morning. She resumed the fetal position at the gate. I went to the bathroom to throw up.
When I came back, I decided I wasn't quite ready to fly just yet and went to tell the gate agent this, so she could put me on a later flight. Then I discovered I was using the gate agent's counter to hold myself up. I told her, "I think I need medical attention." Next thing I knew, I was in an ambulance.
I called The Wife. I didn't tell her much. She, of course, went into an utter panic. Early the next day, she found herself in New Hampshire, too, sitting beside me while I grumbled in my hospital bed about being hot, then cold, then hot. The Company was kind enough to fly her up there for me. It was a lifesaver.
I was kicked out of the hospital Saturday morning, with a diagnosis of flu and pneumonia. The Wife and I spent the next two days in a hotel room in Manchester, N.H., where I, well, slept from Saturday afternoon until the kickoff of the Super Bowl.
It was the next Friday before I felt like I was back at full strength. Basically, flu sucks. It's the first time I've had it in probably five years, and by far the worst that I've had it. Damn that shortage of flu shots. Next year, I'm getting in line.
-----------------
How about this lede: My kid has a brain tumor.
OK, it's a very small brain tumor. As yet, it's not threatening anything. It's something that bears watching, say her doctors, but nothing more than that at present.
Benign tumors are a symptom of neurofibromatosis, a mysterious genetic neurological disease. Of course, best we can tell, it's nowhere in our genetics; we're not comforted by the fact that 50 percent of the cases occur spontaneously, with no genetic basis.
The tumors don't cause any serious medical problems, unless they get too close to a vital organ, or the brain. That's why this bears watching.
Right now, everything's fine. She's 100 percent fully active and healthy. We check it again in a couple of months. Researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center are working on a cure. We root for them like we've never rooted for anybody in our lives.
--------------------
I shook off the flu just in time for my brutal travel schedule to resume. This gave me the opportunity to visit California for the first time. Not just California, mind you: San Francisco, California, which is my new favorite city, based on only four hours there. My God, what a beautiful place. Water, mountains, the Golden Gate, great restaurants every-friggin'-where you turn. I can certainly see the appeal, and why people are willing to pay five times what they'd pay to live anywhere else.
The co-worker who was in Montreal urged me to eat dinner at a delightful downtown restaurant called The Crustacean, which, as you might suspect, serves seafood. It's seafood with a Vietnamese twist, however, I had a whole dungeness crab simmered in a three-wine sauce with black pepper and scallions, with garlic rice on the side. It was fabulous, and worth almost every bit of the per-diem-plus that I paid for it.
I drove over the Golden Gate Bridge, just to say I did. Dipped down into historic Sausalito, and racked my brain trying to think of that sticks-in-your-head-like-glue song, "Sausalito Summer Nights." (Answer: The one-hit wonder Diesel, in 1982.) We drove to Frisco in the Rambler/The radiator running dry ...
Next week: New Hampshire, again, reluctantly. I get home Friday with enough time to do laundry and sleep before boarding a plane for my first-ever venture off United States soil.
I'm headed to the home office in Denmark for some training. I'll spend a few days with a customer in Copenhagen, and a few days at the company's Scandinavian headquarters in a little North Sea town called Aalborg.
Then, back to New Hampshire. Then Minnesota, then Dallas for a big trade show. It'll be my first time back in the Very Large Metropolitan Area for something other than an airport layover since leaving in 2002.
All the time on the road is good; it means The Company is prospering, which means The Family and I are prospering.
But it also means an awful lot of stuff is whizzing by at 542 mph. I'm moving, as Seger once sang, eight miles a minute for months at a time.
I'm going to go take a minute I have now to go hug some people I love. You go do the same, and be thankful you can.
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Sharon, 1966-2005
She didn't make it. Dammit.
Melanoma. Fought it like hell for two years before finally turning away Sunday.
Dammit. 38 years old. Two children, one born the same day as our son, one born in late 2002. Two little girls.
Madison, Hannah, Brian, peace to y'all. I don't know what would bring that peace; something much stronger than all of us. Peace to y'all.
Melanoma. Fought it like hell for two years before finally turning away Sunday.
Dammit. 38 years old. Two children, one born the same day as our son, one born in late 2002. Two little girls.
Madison, Hannah, Brian, peace to y'all. I don't know what would bring that peace; something much stronger than all of us. Peace to y'all.