Friday Five

The Excuse

I had most of this typed out last Friday. And then I got distracted by West Wing on the plane, and, well, yeah.

Then I had meant to post it on Monday, which became Tuesday, which …

The Weeks

It seems that my life has boiled down to two cities – Houston and Tampa. Well, San Diego, too, I suppose. Last week I was in Tampa. The week was a treat for me as I was able to see a few friends (although I wasn’t able to hook up with one in particular unfortunately), and even had a home cooked meal for a change. (When you eat out basically 100% of the time, a home cooked meal is quite a treat.) Outside of three ventures to the outside world, for the most part this week was just me, work and a hotel room. It’s a living, I guess.

Of course, this week I found myself in somewhere new – Frederick, MD, which is about an hour outside of Baltimore. That part of the week worked out real well, as an old friend of mine happened to be in town for business as well this week, and we went off to dinner one night. The part that I wish I would have planned out better is it didn’t dawn on me how close I was to Gettysburg; I wish I would have brought my camera with me and stayed an extra day. Next time.

The Exercise

I need to start coming up with clever excuses here.

The Restaurant

Last week:

Does it count if the place serves food even if I didn’t actually eat any? Well, seeing as how it’s my blog, I’m going to say yes. My friend Michael took me over to the International Beer Garten, which is north of Tampa. The place is very much a pub that focuses on having a huge beer selection. They’ve got 40 on tap and 300 bottles. While they didn’t have as eclectic of a mix as the Brickskellar in DC (and certainly not as divey), they did pretty OK for themselves. Very reasonable prices (the second night we were there we had 9 beers between the three of us and ran up a bill of just over $40) so it’s a great place to try new things (and isn’t that what being a beer fan is all about?) Oh – and they do serve pizza.

This week:

Jim (my old friend) and I found a place near his hotel called G & M Restaurant & Carry Out, which is a bit of a mouthful. The place isn’t much to look at from the outside – it’s just a warehouse, but inside it’s got a 70’s charm to it. They’ve got the old glass tower with the desserts, and, generally, that 70’s feel. We started out with a shrimp cocktail (very good) and I had to try the Maryland crab soup, which was outstanding. Jim went for the baked crab imperial (which was drowned in butter and cheese, but oh so good), and I did a stuffed rockfish, which was very tasty. Their core items (seafood) were all very good. The rest was pretty meh. The lettuce on the salads was pretty wilted, and the side veggies were Green Giant (or at least I’m pretty sure they were).

The Travel Note

After a while every rental car looks the same and, in turn, every car looks the same. I wound up sitting down in a car that wasn’t mine as a result. It was parked in my normal spot in the hotel, it was the same color and, as it turned out, it was unlocked. I’ve tried to open the wrong car before, but this was a new experience.

The Five

Let’s see if I can’t come up with 5 miscellaneous things about me.

1. The reason I had the courage to become a trainer was because of the mentorship of a professor I had in school. In an English class she had the class present and was wowed by my performance. She worked with me and helped me gain the confidence that I could indeed do this.
2. There was a time when I supported Mac OS – version 7 about 12 years ago. Fortunately I never became a member of the iCult. ;-)
3. One of my favorite things about being a trainer is always getting to learn something new. You can’t be stagnant in your education if you’re a trainer.
4. The best thing about being a trainer is that no matter what happens the class ends and you get to move on to the next week. If every demo that I attempt fails, every joke bombs, and I have a room full of problem students, the class will end and I get a clean slate the next week.
5. I write neater (and in the correct case) on a white board than I do on paper. I think the big problem I have when writing on paper is that I’m just trying to be done with the exercise as quickly as possible; it’s so much easier to just type.