Friday Five

The Excuse:

Laziness. That's basically it. Laziness. As I'll mention below I got stuck in Atlanta for an extra night, and just didn't feel like doing much of anything beyond watching football and playing The Sims when I got back to my room. To my loyal reader[s], I apologize.

The Week:

Atlanta this week. Always nice to have a little change of pace. Except for the part where I got stuck there an extra night. Due to hurricane Ike, the Houston airport closed on Friday at 2p. I was supposed to connect through Houston. Instead, it's a Saturday flight home for yours truly. Fun! I suppose I really shouldn't complain, though. At the end of the day this is nothing but a minor inconvenience. It would still be nice to be home, though. But I know that I still have a home at the moment.

For my Jewish mother - I was nowhere near Texas when Ike hit. Continental called me to let me know that even if the airport would have been open that I specifically wouldn't have been able to fly through Texas.

For my Houston peeps - I hope all is well for you. I will try and contact you some time next week when things settle down more.

I don't often post about a particular class, or a particular assignment, but I'm going to make an exception this time. This week was a big one for me as it was my first solo teach for Global Knowledge, a large training company I'd been trying to get hooked up with for quite a while. My class went very well, and I should be doing more work with them soon. (I'm actually rather jazzed about this...)

The Restaurant:

New feature. As I've mentioned many times before, I'm not much of a tourist when I travel. I'm just not big on going out to different sites by myself. Need my favorite travel companion (my wife) or a good friend or family with me. I like sharing experiences with others (probably part of the reason why I've managed to keep the blog up and running for so long). But at the very least, I have to eat. And I can easily make sure I visit one new restaurant per week.

For my first one, I'm going to review my favorite Atlanta area restaurant, which is Five Seasons. I visited the one before in Alpharetta, but this time I found my way over to the one in Atlanta as I was actually here. The place is in a shopping center that's undergoing a ton of construction, and was a tad tricky to find. The place is huge, but was empty the night I was there (Monday). Granted, I was there a tad early (5ish), but I think there were about 5 other tables collectively over the time that I was there.

In any event, the restaurant does some organic food as well as farm-to-market. They also do their own beer. This past time I tried their IPA (good, but not hoppy enough for this San Diego hophead) and their Strong Ale, which was a maltier version of their IPA (again, good, but not great). I had their pork chop special, which was a pork chop, on a bed of cheddar risotto with some mixed veggies. Outstanding. Highly recommended.

The Exercise:

Must get back into the swing of things still. I got in two workouts. One of those was a good 30 minute run, followed by a 30 minute walk back up the rest of the hills. Note to self: That hill that you run down when leaving the hotel is going to suck rocks going back up.

The Travel Note:

I guess sometimes life does circle back around on some level. When I landed in Atlanta (after being delayed) I made a beeline to the Hooters that was by my hotel (just needed a known sports bar that would have NFL Sunday Ticket and I knew they would). I wound up roaming around trying to find a TV with the Chargers game on, and wound up sitting at a long table next to the only Chargers fan in the place. When sitting down at a restaurant bar for dinner later I wound up sitting next to a Carolina fan.

The Five:

This week I want to try and answer five questions I commonly get asked.

1. What is it that you do for a living?
   This is probably the question I get asked most often, and by far the most challenging to answer. It's like trying to explain Chandler's job (Friends reference). I am a technical trainer. I teach people how to do databases, program things like websites, etc. Basically, my job is to teach the people that make sites like Blogspot and the like work.
2. How can you travel full time?
   This one is pretty easy - no kids. If we had kids then it flat wouldn't work. Karin and I are rather resilient, so we get along just fine. We've actually had many periods in our marriage where we wouldn't see each other, so we've got the system pretty well down. I'm not going to lie and say that there aren't times where it's a tad tougher on the relationship or me personally (such as on weeks where I get stuck in a city for an extra night), but you fall into a routine pretty easily.
3. Will you ever leave the travel behind?
   Maybe at some point. Right now being an indie (independent contractor, but all the cool kids say "indie") gives me quite a bit of freedom and opportunity to do things I normally wouldn't have been able to do. I appreciate that freedom and flexibility, so right now I'm very happy doing what I'm doing. That may change in the future, but for right now I'm going to keep on doing what I'm doing.
   
4. Have you ever contributed to Wikipedia?
   I have. Not much, but I've updated a couple of little things, corrected a couple of things, but that's about it. I've never created an article on my own, mostly because I find that idea rather intimidating. And your bit of "jersey trivia" for the day is the first article I ever updated was for the Double IPA, which has since been morphed and combined into the IPA section. (The reference to the San Diego IPA was my contribution.)
5. Why haven't you e-mailed me back?
   This one is just a mental block on my part. If I don't reply to an e-mail right away, it will take me days weeks months millennia to reply. It's something I need to work on. I try hard to reply right away - I really do. It just doesn't always happen.