Lunch – last day of project

Early in the week the client invited me to have pints at lunch on Friday. Well today is Friday and I was quite looking forward to the pints after two very successful meetings where I discussed my findings from the week. As it turns out, I get quite a lot of work done in my hotel room when Joni isn’t trying to drag me to bars named “the bugle” every five minutes!
So they drove me to this small town called Sutton that is just east of Reading. We stopped at this old british inn that also has a restaurant and pub attached. It is myself and 3 other guys that work for the internal audit group for this client. They were gentlemen and asked me what I wanted to drink first. I tried to get them to surprise me, but they weren’t budging on that one. So I asked for a pint of Kroenenburg. Slowly the director who has taken us all there goes around the table – orange juice, tomato juice, and water were the other three orders. I was certain I was about to be fired. I think I still hear them across the way making fun of my reaction (and we’re back at the office now).
I can’t believe I got bamboozled like that! They distinctly said “pints” for lunch…and it was reiterated this morning. “are you still up for grabbing some pints for lunch?” Luckily one of the guys changed his ordered after he saw how big my eyes were. I’m not quite sure how the exchange worked…because I saw both of the other guys turn to him and then he changed it…I’m not sure if that’s some sort of british version of “not it.”
So all of the excitement this week is centered around the Tour de France starting in London. I should probably look into the logistics of this race, because last time I looked…England was an island of sort that is not connected to France at all. I wouldn’t want to sound silly in a discussion about how they will get from England to France.
The poor chap who lost the game of “not it” mentioned something about a cycling movie that was just made. He said it was about a guy who broke a world biking record with a bike that he made out of washing machine parts. He drew a lot of blank stares from the other brits, so I felt comfortable when I made fun of him once no one said anything in response. It went something like “Did you guys say you let him drink during lunch every Friday?”
He vowed to google the story when he got back to the office. I told him he was going to get a response from google’s search that says…did you mean…I have no idea what you meant!”
One of the guys piped in and said that when you type “French military victories” into the google search, it comes back with “did you mean…French Military Defeats?” So clever. I’m going to wrap this up quickly now, because I’m certain I just lost my audience to google!
Lucky for him though, he did just walk over to my desk with a story printed out. I will have to re-google it myself though, because it doesn’t have any markings as if he grabbed it from a website, and I’m fairly certain he might have just merged three different stories together. The story he printed doesn’t really flow that well…I’ll let you know what I find.

Vigilant

I haven't been very vigilant at blogging...but that's because i've been vigilant at watching for terrorists. That's what the british news keeps telling me, anyway. Here's a little story about my last day in London on Sunday...i'm in Reading, UK now which is a London suburb for the most part.

So I thought my life was over….
Of course we arrive in london right when terror plots are set to go off…I’d expect nothing different. I go back and forth between these feelings of “I’ve really taken a bite out of life, and any time is a good time to go” then I jump to “Something could really happen…oh crap!”
Those internal dialogues haven’t really mattered though, because deep down I’ve never honestly thought that I’d fall victim to something like that. I can say this with certainty after an experience I had on Sunday.
Security was ripe, especially since we were staying in the very area that the two car bombs were set to go off in. Those were discovered early Friday morning, and it was now Sunday afternoon. There had been another similar incident; however that happened all the way in Glasgow. You might venture to say I was a bit laxed by the time Sunday had rolled around.
We had just checked out of our hotel, but we were going to grab a quick bite before heading to Reading. We walked across the street at our hotel (Trafalgar square) at the cross walk with a bunch of other pedestrians. A car was approaching as the rest of us were finished crossing the street. As we step up to the curb to get out of this car’s way, we hear a thunderous explosion. My eyes pressed closed as a profanity spilled out of my mouth. My body was paralyzed by the sound of the explosion, and my mind was tingling as I processed other people’s screams around me. That round of thought process happened within 3 seconds perhaps. Next we started walking again, staggering as we processed that the car had merely backfired. We caught our breathes and took a few steps forward when we saw two foot police running frantically straight toward us. I still do not know what they were screaming, however I saw the look of terror in their eyes. They were pursuing the explosion they had heard from across the square, but they weren’t aware it was only a backfire. Kids were following the police screaming the whole time as well…I’ll admit that even though I knew what was going on…the look in those cop’s faces scared me to death all over again.
I realize now I was lucky to have been on the side I was on…because then at least I knew what the explanation was. I will say that while my eyes were pierced closed, my mind thought this “So THIS is it?” I honestly thought my time was up. I’m so glad I processed everything in 3 seconds!

Off to London

Alright...let's kick this blog back off right! You might be wondering what the hell that picture is. It's kind of what i envisioned Joni's underwear looking like when she said she was going to put on stars and stripes underwear, then drop her pants in a London pub on July 4th while yelling something about Old Glory...
Luckily, as of yesterday she had not been able to find a pair. And luckily Jenn didn't know in enough advance to help her try to pull it off.
Now Joni clames she will be hijacking this blog during the course of the trip...i assure you that i will have a counterpoint to anything she might try to post...so stay tuned. It will be interesting if nothing else!
bon voyage!

the beatles are HUGE!

Sometimes when i'm driving past Huntsville, TX i bury my head in my hands in disbelief of the monstrous statue of Sam Houston. Who would ever think it a good idea to make something so large and obnoxious. It plays right into the stereotype of Texans. Well yesterday I happened upon the Sam Houston statue artist's warehouse. He's currently in the middle of a 'president's heads' project that will be a part of a new master planned community.

I noticed all of the president's heads and decided to stop the car and snag a few shots. Well, I turned the corner once i entered the fenced area, and I was in awe of the site above! Yes, that is an extended crane resting right up behind Ringo on the drums.

I'll just say that i'm all for statues of the Beatles being this obnoxiously large. I guess my issues with the Sam Houston statue is something other than its size...

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tnews/NewsItemDisplay.php?Tip_AttrId==15173

Blood sausage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Blood sausage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Doing the Trick

I'm glad to see my blog is getting the job done...or is it? I found out last night that my friends thought I was in Barbados rather than Barcelona. I don't even know if I know how to spell Barbados...I have no business visiting there! I should have expected that my friends would get side tracked as soon as they heard the BAR part come out of my mouth. I'm certain that's where I lost them.

How did I do on the spelling?

While in Barbados...i mean, Barcelona I was bragging that I was being adventurous in the foods that I was trying. Well, I had no idea exactly HOW adventurous I was being. It seems that I have just been clued into what one of the items I ate from the spread of food from 4 different Spanish regions. I ate (and i'm having a little baby throw up in my mouth as I type this) something called Goat's blood stuffed sausage. Now if you're not sure what that is, it's a piece of sausage filled with goat's blood. Seriously.

I'm going to brush my teeth now.

Animal Kingdom

So the bats are back (as you may have read in one of the comments from my roommate below). I was jet-lagged Saturday evening when I got back to the states, so a bat could have been on my forehead through the night and I wouldn’t have cared. But now I’ve just spent the last two nights away from home because I realized I’m living in animal kingdom.

After observing the bats flying from my chimney at sundown, I proceeded to go sit out on my back porch. This is when I came face to face with one of the largest wood roaches I’ve ever seen. Now they aren’t unfamiliar to the area around my house…but usually they scamper off at the first sign of me. Not this one…he proceeded to make a straight line in our direction. We cut our losses and decided to go outside via the garage at the back of my house.

We walked around a bit outside to see if we could get some different angles of the bats. We couldn’t. So we walked back toward the garage to go back in. Right about the time we were approaching our garage door…my peripheral vision caught side of the largest wing-span I’ve ever seen (ever seen that close to my person, that is). It was coming from around the corner of my house. I shot off in the opposite direction, hoping my roommate would save herself. I could only think “that’s the largest bat I’ve ever seen!” It wasn’t a bat, it was our favorite local egret. Who the hell has an egret at their house? Huh? Can you answer that? And please keep in mind that we are not living in a bay house. It’s in the middle of one of the largest cities in the U.S.

I’ve named her Margaret.

Here’s where you gain a little knowledge in this story. If you ever need to get rid of bats…the very first thing you should do is call your homeowner’s association and whine. That’s step one. Hopefully you have a homeowner’s association in your back pocket. And hopefully you are not paying as much money for one as me. So after you do that, they will send a bat exclusionist over to your home. I would have preferred for this person to be called a bat eliminator or a bat extinguisher…as that sounds much more permanent…but no, they only exclude them.

When they come out (they will be at your house a few times, be nice to them) they will begin a 3 part process:
1. Seal the interior
2. Net the exit/entry point on the outside – this net allows the bats to leave, but not come back in.
3. Seal the outside after a week of the netting being up.

A few notes that can only be learned from experience – When they seal the interior, you make sure it’s the best sealant that has ever been known to man. For instance, the first time the three part process was started on my house, they tried to use chicken wire to seal the interior of my home with. This did not work…not even close to working. The reason why brings me right into the next tip.

When the netting is put on outside…the bats will go absofreakinlutely crazy. Crazy. Half of them will fly out and then realize they can’t get back in…then the others who hadn’t flown out yet are lunatics. Little bats will be dangling from the net, trying not to let go…as if about to fall from a 10 story building. The others shoot off into the interior of the home and look for a way out there. The chicken wire failed to save me at this point. Next thing you know, you have 3 bats flying around the inside of your home at once. The exclusionist came back out and used massive amounts of caulk at our request.

The last tip I’ll leave you with is this…continue to check the material that they’ve sealed the exterior with. It seems the expandable foam they used last time has a life span of about 2 years. And that’s what leads us to round 2 of the bat experiment.

Last One of PG

Another photo

Chairs upstairs in the open forum. This park is huge...it's so amazing that Sungard reserved the entire thing to ourselves. Local people that were strolling around the park were amazed as well. They were asking us what was going on there.

Park Guell

I wanted to post some pictures of Park Guell here. This is the park that Gaudi designed and it's undescribable. I'll try to get as many pics as possible on here. Gaudi was said to be a fan of Hansel and Gretel...you can see that the two main houses at the entrance captures what the homes may look like from the story. Gaudi was actually commissioned by a very wealthy man (who's last name was Guell...imagine) to build these homes. He wanted all of the most wealthy folks in Barcelona to move to the hills and be secluded in their wealthiness...and he commissioned Gaudi to be the architect that would make that appealing. His plan did not work out though...imagine, we could have had a reality tv series about this place, i'm sure.

Not A Princess

I'm not a princess anymore. Gone are the plush bath robes, slippers, free mini bar, panoramic views of the mediterranean sea...

Now i'm holed back up at the club quarters with tiny bathrooms, nothing to drink, and a happening view of a ton of pigeons on the top of a dirty building.

We had fun watching the football game yesterday - England vs Trinidad. England decided to make it a game in the final 10 minutes.

Yesterday I had about an hour-long discussion with a guy from India that wears a turban. Now I can only imagine that this is the first time i've had that long of a conversation in that scenario. I was enthralled with how it was so tightly wound...i just kept looking at the intersection point in the front. It reminded me of the tape we used to wrap our bats or tennis racquets. I guess I expected it to be thicker.

Now keep in mind, i'm in a full blown conversation with this person while i'm analyzing this. I'm certain I probably offended him...so halfway through i tried very hard not to look at the intersection point of the turban...well that's just hard to do. I resorted back to being 3 years old and seeing something different for the first time. Note to self: work on the basic skills of being polite.

Sweet Dreams

OK, I'm really done for the night. But once you start looking at pics of this guy...you just can't stop. Mommy.

World Cup

I'm studying up on soccer and all of the latest moves. Nah, just kidding...i'm really just pumped about staring at Beckham for however many hours one of their games lasts! YAY.

Sydney Bristow

My coworkers are calling me Syndey now...which makes me laugh because Robin, Jason, and Jerome say i work for Credit Dauphine (sydney's cover up bank she claimed to work at). I had to assume a new identity during the conference this week. I didn't have a badge to get around so i had to 'obtain' one. My name was Andrew Allwright (well Alright!) and I work for Reuters. I go by Andy for short.

Our VP of product development's wife name change to Jorg during the stay in barcelona. While in London, i plan on going by Phoenix (Sydney's APO name in the show). I sure am gonna miss that show.

I'll just leave you with the words of Sydney: "There's no drug like adrenaline." There's also nothing like drinking a lot of beer in a pub while the nation's team is taking on tobago in the world cup! yay.

Flying Dutchmen

I read back over the old blogs below and i chuckled at the part where i said i was going to miss my dutch friends. ha, see...chuckle. You use words like chuckle when you are sitting alone in front of a computer instead of talking to your friends who would call you an idiot and point and laugh for using a word like chuckle.

So the dutch folks I worked with were at the conference this week. 3 of the guys that work with our product and who are good friends with my old stalker. Although, i'm sitting here wondering how good of friends they are, if they didn't try to talk him out of that United States stunt. I wanted to ask them what the heck he was thinking, but i didn't bring it up and neither did they.

Point is...those three were fun here again too, so i was correct below in saying i would miss my friends. i'm glad i got to hang out with the normal ones again so that i don't have such a negative memory about that.

Picture this...

I'm sitting under and umbrella, snacking on fresh cheese and cured hams, drinking the most refreshing sangria (a glass that was about the size of a gallon of milk with an obnoxious straw hanging out of it - try not to picture that part because i ditched the straw as quick as possible), watching the people stroll by on the busy pathway, smelling the fresh flowers that are being sold, watching the street performers, seeing the police run down and tackle a man that's stolen a lady's purse (maybe try not to picture that one either...)

are you jealous yet?

Well if not, let me go on: Picture loading up in a bus and having a cheerleader at the front with a microphone...then getting a historical tour through the city of barcelona, while on the way to Gaudi's Park Guell. Then arriving and realizing that your company has reserved the entire thing. With performers everywhere...from flamenco music to very modern performing artists, light shows, a troop that builds human castles or something like that. Champagne flowing from fountains and food from 4 different regions. All while being perched above the city...with the twinkling lights (but not until sometime after 10pm...man it stays light late there).

I Feel Like a Princess

That's mainly because my hotel has Princess blazened across the top of it, as does everything else in my hotel room. I cannot even describe how awesome, beautiful, incredible it is. And that's only the hotel. This entire city is quite amazing. I'm considering never returning home.

I am surrounded by the Brits from our London office. As usual, they crack me up. Today's new terms include:
Casual Smart Attire
More Smart Attire
Smart Smart Attire
fits - as in football fits (translates to a soccer uniform)
tart tosser - unpleasant person...likened to asshole

I've decided to dive in and try any and everything in the way of cuisine. Today I had foie gras, laquered kid, and curd. My hotel has a pool pearched on the very top of the building (23 floors in the sky) it's directly under the Princess sign, very cool. My room faces the Mediterranean Sea with breathtaking views from both the bedroom and the bathtub.

Yesterday I walked a good 10 miles...the last 4 were by mistake. It seems as though the best time to get a taxi around here is 1am as opposed to 11:30pm. We walked for an hour and a half before we found a taxi queue to get back in, and it was about 20 taxis deep. We proceeded to drink again once we got back to the hotel to help us forget the pain in our feet. The first 6 miles were due to my inability to find the entrance to the subway. I now have the routes nailed down, however I'm sure i do not have the proper fare card. Baby steps.

I got to watch Nadal beat Federer in a bar full of Spaniards...it was quite exciting watching their countryman win the French Open. I haven't even started on all of the sight seeing...i'll have to fill you in on that later, as i'm headed off to dinner at a countryside farm!

Meerkats Make Their Mark

Finally...prime time television worth watching. Girls, I just might get the dinner group back together for this show. I mean it.

I'd like to direct your attention to Meerkat Manor on Animal Planet. I had the absolute pleasure of catching the series premier tonight, and I tell you what...I'm hooked! Good luck catching me out on a Friday night from now on.

I'll have to say, I was really questioning the writers of this show when they almost killed off my favorite character Shakespeare. I thought he was a goner. But nope...that resilient little meerkat stood tall (well, a while later). He took two bites from a snake that would have killed a human two times over.

I don't even want to talk about the teenage hoodlums who stole the baby kat mitch. They quickly got sidetracked and left little mitch defenseless against the evil birds. Guess who came to Mitch's rescue...that's right...Shakespeare. What a guy.

OK, so everyone crank up your tivo and subscribe to this series. It's worth it! In the meantime...stand tall meerkats! Woo!

warm up

OK, time to fire this back up. I'm leaving for Barcelona on Saturday and I plan on keeping everyone updated along the trip. Oh, I just glanced back over the resolutions I posted in January...maybe I should try a re-do for the second half of the year.

paying attention??

Just checking to see who's still paying attention. I've received some complaints when I stopped the morning posts.

Happy New Year!

Resolutions:
Back on the health wagon (yup, that means crown and diet coke instead of crown & coke)
carrying lunch to work
memorizing 20 phone numbers (this is probably the toughest one on this list)
one llu class per quarter
testing out a new investment strategy...i've already made $4. on it! Now that's what i call the fast track.

that's all i have so far.