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Showing posts from January, 2008
I know that people (Mrs. H., Jean, St. Louis office) who are all buried in snow right now and dealing with fog, ice, and winter. But as I look out the window at the sunset over the ocean it’s hard to think about anything but California living. I got up early this morning and exercised at the beach and enjoyed the sun, sand, and sound of the surf. I came back to my office and had all the sunlight coming in the windows. Tomorrow it’s supposed to rain again but for today, Carlsbad was the best place on earth.
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The Oregon Snow. This photo is courtesy of Jean, who snapped it from inside the warmth of her Mom's house. (Mrs. H. for you bloggers) They are snowed in and the big fluffy stuff keeps coming down. It looks like ski time or if not, at least hot toddy time!
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It wasn't until the Guinness was almost gone that we remembered to take the beer photos on Sunday! The beer was good, the food was better and it was a relaxing afternoon.
Saturday morning I woke up with a mystery on my mind. Where was the alarm clock and why was it going off? In my foggy state of too much airport I could not figure out why the alarm noise was coming from the wrong place. I came too and remembered I was at home not at the hotel. Location firmly in my brain I then had to wonder why I set my alarm for 5:00 am on a Saturday. No answer there at all so I returned to sleep. The planned homework weekend was pleasantly broken up by lunch and beer at an Irish pub before returning to this week's paper. At last, after 5 hours of on-again, off-again focus, the paper is done and I can relax before attempting to get an early start on next week's paper.
The airport tried to keep me. I went downstairs at 6:00 am to check-in for the 9:00 am Mexicana flight. The agent is looking and looking and asks, did you change your ticket? "yes." More looking. "Your flight to Dallas is tomorrow, go to the office." I wander over to the office only to be told "I have to charge you for the change." I'm all, you already charged me, here's the receipt. "Go see my boss. I will get in trouble if I do anything." I wander over to the boss and explain. He looks at the ticket. "This is for Saturday." I'm all once again, "yes" and then explain that there was a mistake. We go back to the office and there is a whole bunch of accusations between agents. The agent wants to charge me $20, the boss says no. After a few minutes my flight to Dallas was set on Mexicana but the American Airlines segment from Dallas to LA showed as waitlisted . I was told to go to American to sort it out. Off I

Living at an Airport - Day 8

Wow. At this point I have entered a bubble zone where nothing else exists but the airport. I know what the major topics are in the world because CNN is one of the few English channels in my room so everything is in a loop. The restaurant is open and my job is done. A meeting or two today and then it's time to pack up for the flight out tomorrow. The day and trip are finally coming to a close. Most of today was spent in meetings, standing around, doing one last restaurant visit, and packing. Tonight it's off to dinner at the Italian restaurant inside T1. Even the people who work here are calling me Tom Hanks. 8 days and I never truly left the airport world. I had glimpses of the outside world from the bus and that was mostly of traffic and taxis. I have to return to the Mexico City airport late next month. I plan to limit that stay to 4 or 5 days. There is no part of airport life that I feel is undiscovered.

Living at an Airport - Day 7

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Transportation around the terminals isn't as easy as it should be. The Suburban fleet showed up a couple of days ago. Only 5 pesos for the ride but you don't leave until you're crammed in full. Below, the bus. 10 pesos to take the bus around but it leaves when it leaves and you don't have to worry about being squished. There is the passenger bus that charges 3 pesos but you have to have proof of travel. The free monorail is still only available once you have a ticket and boarding pass. But at that point, you're in the right terminal anyhow.

Life at T2 (airport side story)

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Here's where I work in T2. We were doing training on Sunday and fired up all the equipment and started cooking food. That's when we found out that the exhaust system was not powerful enough for us and we smoked ourselves out. Then there was an electical issue and the lights were going out, plus the broiler was running hot and the fire supression system wasn't installed. As a fire hazard, we shut down on Sunday and are still waiting to go back in. Maybe we'll open today. Only 1/2 a food court in T2. No heat and it's all concrete.

Living at an Airport - Day 6

This could be it ! I' ll know in about 8 hours or so if I get to go home tomorrow . I've got the routine down now . Wake up , shower , dress , take the elevator down to Starbucks . Return to room , work , blog, take conference calls . Take the bus to T2. Work . Sit around . Go to Starbucks . Work . Sit around . Take the bus back to T1. Eat . Work . Sleep .

Beer at an Airport

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At last!

Living at an Airport - Day 5

My fate of airport life is uncertain. I could go home on Wednesday or Friday and be done with this or I could go home only to come back next week. Even though Terminal 2 is brand new, state of the art it is not. Construction related issues may prevent the timely completion of this project. The wireless has been down at the Hilton for almost 3 days now. Business centers and trying to get a free signal in the terminal is a stressful task that is bordering on obsessive. Today I ate McDonald's so my stress must be rising. When there's no beer and only the Big Mac, the airport life gets to be less fun. As always, the UOP Learning Teams suck. Today though, the stress of work and the stress of school caused me to start some LT drama. I finally stated in the forum that I didn't trust the certain person to post the team paper correctly and on time. She resented that remark but at least I got my position out in the open. Everytime there is a complaint against a team member, the schoo

Living at an Airport - Day 4

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Here are elevators that you take to get from the airport to the Hilton. One simple press of a button and you're out of the freezing airport. 35F and no heater in sight. People are all bundled up. This has to be one of the silliest open air places I've been too. Oh well. I guess it's life as a polar bear for me.

Living at an Airport - Day 3

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Now I'm inside the airport at the Hilton. My view of the restaurant below. I can hear the planes but it's not too bad. Yesterday I learned how to take the airport bus from T1 to T2 and pay the 10 pesos for the ride. The people arriving at the new terminal didn't know they were going there and all their families are waiting for them at T1 and no one knows how to take the bus. It is so disorganized. I learned that the wireless signal is strongest in the morning because most people have already checked out to go on their flights. Few people spend a lot of time at this Hilton. So today it's back to the freezing terminal to work.

Living at an Airport - Day 2

This airport living isn’t as simple as it should have been. The Mexico City airport has a brand new terminal that just opened two days ago. There is no way to get to the new terminal from the other terminal except by a $8 cab ride. You can walk but it’s 30 minutes or more and no direct sidewalk or path. There is a monorail but it’s so busy that only ticketed passengers are allowed on. The hotel has a shuttle by appointment only. The new terminal is open air in the food court and outside of security. The outside air temp is on the cold side right now and there are no space heaters. This morning I walked back over to the airport for a Starbucks and returned to my room in less than 15 minutes. At least that part was easy! Next stop, move into the Hilton and relocate back inside to the airport to what is now the wrong terminal.

Living at an Airport - Day 1

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Mexico City Airport - here I am! The first night is going to be at the Camino Real, not technically in the airport but the Hilton was sold out for tonight. The picture shows the walkway that leads you from the terminal to the hotel. As usual, it took me forever to get through Mexico City customs. I don't know why but everytime I'm here I've filled out something incorrectly on the form or my baggage has to be rescanned. In the rush to get here, no one on this end informed me that the people I have to meet are out of town. This will be an easy first night! Oh and I have now learned that if you do the blogger spellcheck while in Mexico, every single word in English comes up mis-spelled.
6:21 pm. LAX hotel. Eating cold food because it’s free in the business lounge. So begins the start of the Mexico City trip. I have a 6:00 am flight so even though I’m next to the airport it’s still a 3:30 am wake-up to get to the airport by 4:30-5:00. My airport life will involve two hotels since the Hilton was sold out for Thursday. At least since the trip was so last minute, I cut off a day. Before I left I checked my wallet. Not a $1 bill in sight. Mexico City is the land of the tips and if you are not prepared your taxi, bellboy, doorman, whatever, will let you know about it. I now have 20 $1 bills in my wallet. At least I managed to get my paper written for school. I finished it about 60 minutes ago so that lowers the stress level. That’s it for now. Next stop – Mexico City!
I've spent the last 3 hours of the night arranging air and hotels for Mexico City. I hate last minute bookings. The hotels are either sold out or $300 and the only seats left are middle seats. Looks like I'm out of here Wednesday night since I have a 6:00 am from LAX on Thursday. First up in the morning is laundry and pack!
This has to be one of the slowest weeks of the year compared to the last week. I never realized how much goes on the first week of January once people return to work. So much happened at work that this Monday is dragging on comparatively. Today has been about finishing projects off and getting rid of them. As always, the one that I want to do the least is taking the longest. Who knew that coming up with 10 new food safety questions to revise a test could take so long? Did I really need to know about the different species of cockroaches once again, or how many ways there are to really get sick when eating out? I think not. Of course in school the person who copied and pasted from the text into the class is on my team. Go figure. She hasn’t even managed to figure out the simple instructions yet she tells us this is class #5 at UOP online for her. This is a team paper week which usually is a painful process and now the pain looks to be doubled. It’s worth noting that while the US and C
Homework day. Nothing exciting. One paper down and one to go!
In the tradition of delaying homework as long as possible, I turned to TiVo for entertainment. I was so ready for something different that I even read the TiVo ads. Turns out that I can rent movies from amazon.com and have them downloaded to my TiVo . Wonderful! I haven't rented a movie in years and never got in the habit of pay per view. I had this vision of all new releases just waiting for me this weekend. Instead the new releases are all the movies that I watched on the cruise ship and airplanes over and over for several weeks. Bummer. I still have hope for the amazon unbox but not this weekend.
More of the same from yesterday. Not one person has even commented on the textbook copy and paster. I guess I'm not surprised but it's strange. Mexico City has been delayed again so now I have to buy food. I've eaten myself out of all stocks in anticipation of being gone. It's a good thing El Pollo Loco is so close!
Got some sleep last night at last! Today was another long one though. I can handle a lot of crisis activity and there always seems to be some crisis going on in some country, somewhere. Today was spent finding solutions to rush an equipment order to Mexico, complete sourcing for a milk shake program for the Mid-East, misc. supply chain issues that needed to be swatted down before they became a crisis and then field the random obscure requests for information that came up. Of the 9 dedicated work hours , I think I spent 1 hour doing mindless document editing. The 10 th hour was my pre -dawn catch up on e-mails that don't count as work since I'm still sleeping while I'm drinking coffee and reading. None of that really bothered me or threw me for a loop. I'm used to it. What got me unhinged today was school. Now I take online classes so in the absence of a talking class discussion, we have to post responses to instructor questions on a message board. The general rule i
Insomnia again. I am going to turn into that person who is pale with dark circles under her eyes and looks like a total goth. At 1:45 am I woke up and at 2:15 am I gave up. Drinking coffee at 2:30 am and watching insomniac television is so not fun. The shows are repeats of what I had seen the night before on the endless 3 hour loop that CNN and Fox are so fond of. While I looked at e-mail and work early I didn't start working until 5:00 am. I have now been working for 14 hours except for the lunch break. Call it 13 and it's still too much. The sad part is that I was ready for a nap at 10:00 am but I've got a second wind now and I'm not sleepy at all. Thank the maker for spellcheck. I didn't know how to spell insomnia! I wonder what TiVo is doing?
Love is in the air again! Yes, it's true. My TiVo and I have been reunited after a long separation. That's not to say it has been missing but when I moved into the new house I didn't get a phone line so TiVo couldn't phone home. Everything had to be programmed manually and TiVo didn't like that. Well, neither did I. TiVo would give messages "haven't connected in 30 days" and I would pretend not to see them. TiVo would lose time, I would compensate on the programming. Then TiVo's parents got wise. They realized there were people like me out there who made the switch to mobile phones and tossed the landlines. We are the wireless homes. TiVo came out with a wireless transmitter to phone home. The only problem was, I was also too lazy to install wireless. That is, until the fire when 2 laptops arrived and were searching for a signal. So wireless was installed. Even then I delayed the trip to Best Buy. Then Ameoba was in town and as usual,
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Turf Supper Club - the place where you grill your own dinner and enjoy a good meal and drink with friends. This is our annual Christmas dinner although slightly late this year. Above with LG, you can see the abandoned salads as everyone made a beeline to the grill. Below, Mondo & me - cheers! Amoeba is eying both drinks as only a non-driver can do! The grill. It's obscured here but about 12 people can squish themselves around it at one time to hover over and protect their food.
Cyberspace sure is slow today! Almost every site I've been on has loaded at a snail's pace. It seems like more people were online than at work. Even school was slow to load up and that's usually the last web site that people flock to! The end of the work week finds me staring at a document and wondering why it won't format properly. Yesterday I worked with three graphics intensive documents and time and patience won out over Word and Adobe. Today, Adobe is throwing a virtual fit and not cooperating. Hence my blogging timeout. The $100 a barrel for oil sent me into a travel panic and I decided that it was better to buy Thanksgiving travel today than risk $125 a barrel fuel prices later on. Maybe this was a wise choice, maybe not but I am now locked into going to Rome! I'll see some of you tomorrow at Turf Supper Club. Everyone else, have a great weekend!
It was one of those days. After a full week of non-stop eating and drinking I had to pay the price of tight fitting pants. I deserve this for all I've been chowing down but it's not fair that it comes after Pilate's , the Firm fitness ball, and hitting the beach stairs. No worries though. I start traveling soon and my clothes always fit better when I don't have time to eat. Anyhow the tight clothes are nothing compared to me having to be the mean neighbor lady today. I'm ignoring the small children as usual when the gate starts rattling. The gate is locked from both sides so unless you have the key you have to climb. I look out the window and realize that there is a new set of small children playing that have not previously been identified. The gate is partially broken due to someone kicking it in and the small children were bent on destroying the remains. I couldn't take it. I opened my door and told them to stop kicking the gate and to call their mom if they
The first work day of 2008 went like every other day in 2007. Same projects, same follow up, and some new work tossed in the mix. My horoscope today said that I would have energy from my high work interaction. I'm not sure about that but I interacted with work more than normal on some things and did my best to ignore others. I was the document revision queen until I realized the formatting fell apart with the changes so I gave up. My laptop has only decided to freeze up and go to the blue screen of death once today (during this post) so it's been business as usual. At least this is a short work week!
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Broady - the newest member of the Hinman clan. Too cute!
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Barley & Hops Temecula
Happy New Year! The year has started out great! I was home and slept in, it's sunny, and semi-warm, and best of all I've been able to hang out with friends and family for the last week! I have hopes for 2008 that mostly involve things like peace in the Middle East and homes for stray cats and dogs. For myself, less craziness would be nice. Somehow I don't see any of those things happening this year but one can always hope. I have no resolutions. I have always figured if you want to do something, do it now. Why wait until a magic day? I do have goals that are set by annual timing - graduate school in October, maintain my frequent flyer and hotel status with United and Marriott, and get at least 4 new countries in this year. (Czech Republic & Malta are already in the works so finding 2 more should be easy!) Time to enjoy the day for tomorrow work waits once again!