Day: January 5, 2004

I'm glad to be home. A simple sentence, that understates a 28-hour day, the last half of which was hellish. Maybe an hour after writing the previous entry, all hell starts to break loose. I won't go into the details, as they're not relevant, but suffice it to say that my travelling buddy seriously felt under the weather. Things rapidly got from bad to worse. A snow storm in Chicago meant that they cancelled the flight prior to ours, which meant that ours was overbooked with people trying to get in on standby. There was only one guy at the United counter, so people were lining up all over the concourse.

We almost lost our seats to a standby pair, as I wasn't sure if my friend was up for the flight. We boarded the plane a few minutes before they were going to release our seats. We weren't next to each other, and we couldn't get someone to switch, so I ended up being in front of him, in the same row. I'd planned to sleep throughout the flight, my normal defense mechanism for any kind of travel. This was no longer an option though, as I was worried about Mg. I read throughout the entire flight. Things go ok.

At O'Hare, we walk a gajillion miles to get ready to wait for our connection to Montreal, when I ask Mg to use his palm to check for the availability of a wi-fi network to pass the time surfing online. He doesn't have it. In fact, it's in the plane. Since I know he's not up to the task of dealing with bureaucracy, I offer to go get it. Long story short, I had to go back and forth between terminal buildings a grand total of 5 times, and waste 50 minutes to get someone to tell me which gate we got in (the computer had the wrong info, turns out, and of course you know that computers are always right). Finally, a nice lady decides to go check it out for herself and walks to the gate I'd been telling her I thought I landed at. I was right. Whoopee. She went into the plane and, miracle of miracles, found it.

The rest of the trip was ok, I guess. At that point, we were both exhausted, mentally and physically. We got into Dorval without a problem, but of course we had to putz around to get off the plane and then wait for our luggage. Got in, unpacked, did some laundry, did some groceries. I've been up for more than 30 hours now. I can't really go to sleep as I'd love to. I just found out I'm giving a demonstration tomorrow morning. That's really pissing me off. My whole vacation buzz just went down in flames when I got that news by IM. So, if I want to have a semi-normal sleeping pattern, I need to go to bed at my normal time tonight, and hope I'm somewhat lucid tomorrow.

*groan*

Today was the last day of our trip. We woke up late, packed all the schwag we bought over the last few days and all the dirty laundry, gathered all the electronics and checked in our bags at the hotel after signing out. We went to breakfast at the little mom&pop place we went to a few times during the week and then took the bus to the Palace of Fine Arts. The parkland around it is very nice. I don't have any pictures, as we didn't bring the camera along, so you'll have to take my word for it. The duck pond around it is really nice. I'm impressed with the amount of green spaces in this city. The exploratorium inside the POFA was fun, but lost it's appeal after a few hours. It's somewhat akin to the museum of technology in Ottawa – with tons of hands-on demonstrations of physical phenomena.

I had a bit of a scare, in that I was carrying my laptop in my backpack and didn't realize that I was walking around rather powerful electromagnets. I think I got off lucky in that everything seems to work fine. We decided to walk back towards the wharf, as it was a beautiful sunny day and the scenery was pleasant. We passed through another park, where a bunch of people were playing with their dogs. That's another thing I noticed from SF, people have pets and the town seems quite pet-friendly. It was still early, so we had a beer at Jack's, a bit of dinner at the restaurant next door and headed to the hotel to pick up our bags.

As I'm writing this, I'm sitting in the airport lounge, waiting for my flight. Passing through security is always an exercise in pain. The amount of electronics I carry, combined with keys, change, glasses, watch, pen, belt and friggin boots inevitably means that I beep through a metal detector. One of these days, I'll warrant a strip-search from a disgruntled customs nazi. So far, so good, but I'm still dreading the words: “sir, please come this way….SNAP!” We have a solid two hours to wait. It's always classic. You get there early, things go smoothly and you have too long to wait. Get there a bit late, and all hell breaks loose. Better to wait a bit, and we have free wireless internet, yay!

So, this is the inevitable retrospective on my vacation. I achieved two goals out of three. I had fun, I relaxed, but I didn't get kissed on new year's eve. I did not meet the girl of my dreams in the hotel bar. Hyde_grrl, I'm sorry to say, my trip was quite boring by your standards. I did however discover a new city, and found that I did leave part of my heart in San Francisco. It's a lovely town, with interesting people and cozy spots. I could see myself living here if prices weren't so exorbitant and it wasn't filled with FDAs. Truth be told though, I'm looking forward to going home. I'm tired, my back hurts, and I can't wait to eat healthier food. That's the aspect that I least enjoyed of my trip: my friggin dietary restrictions. This is a city that loves its food, and I would dearly have loved to participate. Can't do much about that though, and bitching is no use, but still, sometimes, you can't help but gripe a bit.

Finally, gentle readers, I'm signing off for the next little while. Between jet lag, air travel and forecasted lack of sleep, I'm going to be out of it for the next little while. Toodles to all of you. I'll be in back in town in less than 12 hours, barring any unforeseen events.

Bye now, can't wait to see you, my friends.