It's six o'clock in the morning here in the lovely pacific time zone, and the sun has charred the other side of the world and returned back to us. As I sit here enjoying my lovely gourmet hotel coffee prepared in a nine dollar sunbeam coffee maker I can only hope for the aspirin to engage their mysterious benefits.

I am constantly reminded as to why I usually hate to travel, and it's not the slight case of agoraphobia, but rather I believe it's from a dislike of flight and the fact that most local cuisine (aside from my own) turns my lower intestine into a slip and slide. The most ironic thing to me still is that the trip to Denver we took a few months back for Jen's B-day/proposal didn't bother me at all. I even did all the driving in a Lincoln Towncar and it didn't faze me that much. Perhaps it's a mental thing, but honestly I think it's truly a reflection of the quality of a travel companion and my faith in them. Not that I'm traveling with bad people per say, but I know what skills Jen has, and honestly I just can't see anyone else being better. However I have learned that some people should not be trusted with rental car priviledges, but that's something I won't get into on here. On positive notes, I do enjoy actually putting faces to a lot of the people I work with every day (via email) and getting to interface with them directly, if only for a few days. Once thing I do miss about working in my old department in Arlington Heights was that almost everyone was in that office. Having a team spread out across the US really creates an unusual team dynamic. Some people aren't like others, and don't live to check their email, or chat via icq. That's why it's nice when you can just go track that person down physically. But that's an ideal situation, and certainly I'm not saying we should relocate everyone into one location or anything like that. Other positive things:
- Hotel has free beer from 5:30 to 7pm (miller light and warsteiner)
- Got a really cool wireless mouse from the vendor (finally...grrr)
- Enjoy the chance to be sarcastic and mocking to my team members in person As one of them said "it's so much better when you can see his face" Well, I really need to start getting ready for my free continental breakfast (although food....not so high on my priority list right now) and my desperate attempt to get to class on time today.