The Scientific Method

Observation: General reduction in number invitations to socialize extended from single people to married people.

Hypothesis: Single people prefer to socialize with other single people.

Experimental Design: Analyze number of social invitations extended pre and post marriage.

Analyze Data: Sorry...not enough time...to be continued...maybe.

Observations about Orlando

1. There're a lot of chain restaurants - many I've never heard of and some I would never want to eat at. I think every chain known to man is in this area: Waffle House, Golden Corral, Cracker Barrel, Friendly's, Sonic, TGIFriday's, Tony Roma's, Hooters, IHOP, Denny's, Bennigans, Boston Market, McDonald's, and more.
2. There're actually some pretty good restaurants in Orlando as well. On Monday night, some of my co-workers and I had really yummy South Indian food. I know, I don't usually eat Indian food. But we had some vegetarians in our group and the Thai place we wanted to go to was closed for the MLK holiday. I thought it was a bit peculiar...maybe they were just closed on Mondays.
   
3. There're a lot of retired, elderly people working as van/bus drivers or hotel/conference support staff. My shuttle driver from the airport to the hotel was a retired gentleman who moved here from the northeastern US. He was fiesty and would say stuff like, "Come on, now. Let's get a move on." at traffic lights or other cars/drivers. I guess retirement hasn't mellowed him out.
4. There are a ton of hotels in the Orlando area. I think there were like 4 Hilton hotels in the area so when I'd get into a cab to get back to my first hotel, I had to be really specific on the name. And many of the hotels are over-done and border on tacky. They kinda remind me of the hotels on the Vegas strip, which are over-done...but in a slightly different way.
   
5. The water out of the tap tastes and smells a bit funny. No, I'm not drinking the water, but you can taste it when you brush your teeth.
6. The hotel rooms smell funny. In both hotels, I was in a non-smoking room, but they smelled like smoke or Febreeze covering up the smoke smell.

Looking Forward to Going Home

Tonight's my last night in Orlando, and I'm really looking forward to going home tomorrow. When I told people that I was going to Orlando for work, most of the reactions were, "How fun!" or "You get to go to such cool places for work!" There was a time when I really felt that way and looked forward to traveling for work. In fact, it seemed glamorous to be a "road warrior." It was a lot of fun to travel to new cities, stay in swanky hotels, eat at really nice restaurants, earn massive mileage or hotel points and party it up all on the company dime. Who wouldn't enjoy that life?

But lately work travel isn't as fun as it used to be. Maybe it's because I'm getting old and set in my ways. Maybe it's because getting through airports with all the security requirements is such a time-consuming, pain-in-the-a$. Maybe it's because I tend to travel to the same places, which makes it less interesting. (I've been to Orlando at least 10-12 times in my career.) Maybe it's because trying to find healthy and tasty food options while you're on the road is such a challenge. Maybe it's because I'm sitting in my hotel room alone watching TV instead of hangin' out with my hubby and our dog and/or our friends. I'm sure it's a little bit of all these things.

(sigh) I'm looking forward to going home tomorrow.

Cheryl's First Mobile Blog Post

I was messing around with my Moto Q9 at lunch today and discovered the mobile blogging capabilities for our site. Interesting...I decided to give it a try.

I've got a bit of a break until my next session. So I just took a picture of the fountain in the lobby on my device and am now sending it to our blog. Let's see if this is going to work...

Observation...

When Cheryl's gone, I have to turn up the thermostat a few degrees to be comfortably warm at night.

A Room with a View

So, I'm in Orlando for a conference this week. Everything went well with my trip until I arrived at the hotel.

I stepped up to the counter to check-in, gave the woman helping me my ID, credit card and last name. She types something on her keyboard and then informs me that my reservation was moved to another hotel. Excuse me? Can you repeat that? When I ask her why my reservation was moved, she tells me that the hotel was expecting me to check in yesterday and since I didn't arrive yesterday, they released my room. Uh...what? How could that have happened?! She informs me that the conference organizers have a hotel service next to registration, and I should check in with them to see if they can locate another property for me to stay at.

Fan-freakin-tastic! I've been up since 5:30 AM (California time) and have spent my entire Sunday traveling here for work. I'm tired, slightly hungry and a bit cranky about being here away from my wonderful husband, our adorable dog and comfy home.

So, I walk around the corner to registration and find the hotel service desk. There's an elderly woman sitting behind the counter on the phone and another gentleman in line ahead of me. I find out that he's in a similar position. Bernice, the woman behind the table, informed me that according to their records, I was supposed to have arrived yesterday and when I didn't show up, they released the room. All the conference hotels are completely booked, as are the nearest hotels. This is not making me feel better. I start having visions of me sleeping in some arm chair or couch in the lobby. While I'm getting more annoyed and frustrated that I have to deal with this, I'm trying to be polite. It's not her fault that my reservation got messed up.

She tells me the conference hotel has rooms available starting on Tuesday, but I'd have to call the 800 number to make a reservation. I should still be able to get the conference rate. That's great. I step away from the table and call the hotel. They do in fact, have rooms for Tuesday and Wednesday night. Great, can I get the conference rate? Hmm...the reservation agent doesn't seem to think so, but she'll check with her manager. Well, I was told that I could still get the conference rate. She puts me on hold and comes back with good news. I can, in fact, get the conference rate.

I'm feeling cautiously optimistic now. I've got part of my conundrum resolved. Now I just need to find a place to stay for tonight and tomorrow night. She makes some more phone calls while I ponder the idea of sharing a room with one of my co-workers for a few days. She's found a room, but it's off Disney property (read: I'll have to cab it to the conference hotel and back). It's a Hilton, so it's gotta be decent and have internet access. How far is it? She tells me that the hotel told her it was 2 miles from the Disney property. Umm...okay, that can't be too bad, can it? Maybe I can walk it?

So, I have a room for tonight and Monday night. It's nice. I have room with a view of the pool and there's free WiFi on the entire property. But it's not 2 miles away. It's more like 8 miles away or a 15-20 minute cab ride. It's also just a bit more inconvenient because I can't just "run" to my room to do some work, drop some stuff off or change. But it's definitely better than sleeping on a couch in the hotel lobby. And now that I'm here, it's actually kinda nice to be away from all the Disney-ness and in a normal room/hotel.

Body Worlds 2

We spent the afternoon at the Body Worlds 2 exhibit at the Tech Museum in downtown San Jose with some of our friends. I know some of our friends decided not to come with us because of the gross out factor. But we were intrigued. Apparently so were a lot of other people. The exhibit was packed with people - adults and kids.

The exhibit was really interesting. We spent quite a bit of time looking at the hip and knee joints. They had one that was healthy and one that had been replaced. I was especially interested in the hip joint display because my mom had one of her hips replaced a few years ago. And I got a glimpse into what my brother, the orthopedic surgeon, does. Kinda cool!

I was a bit surprised by the number of kids at the exhibit. I figured parents might think that this exhibit is too scary, graphic or intense for their kids. But most of the kids seemed really fascinated with some of the displays - mostly the ones of the human bodies in different poses. I think the fact that we were looking at real human bodies was lost on most of the kids. The kids at the exhibit did make some pretty funny comments though.

Inside one of the display cases was a sliced cross-section of the thigh. As we walked past this item, we overheard a young girl say to her dad, "Dad, it looks like ham!" We started to chuckle because it did look like a slice of prosciutto. And shortly after Greg said, "Too bad they don't allow food and drinks in the exhibit. It'd be pretty funny to walk around the exhibit eating beef jerky," we overheard another kid say, "Dad, I think I know why it looks like beef jerky." Nice to know that my husband and a 5 year old have similar thoughts!

Live Radio over the Internet!

I discovered live radio over the internet at work today! I was so excited about this discovery that I told one of my co-workers. He looked at me like, "Duh, where've you been?!?" Okay, I realize that this capability has probably been around for several years, but today's the first day I actually used it.

Really, why'd it take me so long? I vaguely remember trying to listen to live radio via the Internet several years ago, but I don't think the technology was in place to make that experience very good. Either the radio station website didn't even have the live stream available or if they did, it was incredibly bad with delays and drops. It must've been such a highly disappointing experience that I never bothered to try it again.

I think I also never tried to find live radio on the Internet because I had alternative sources of music at work. There's my trusty iPod, which is what I generally listen to when I'm working. For a while, I even tried Yahoo Music LAUNCHcast. I stopped because I hit my limit on free music, and the program wouldn't let me listen unless I subscribed to the service. So, I went back to my iPod, which is what I've been listening to since today.

I was so excited about my discovery today that I told Greg about it when I got home. And he looked at me like I had just crawled out from under a rock and said, "Where have you been? Live radio over the internet has been around for a while." Fine, I'm going to go crawl back into my rock now...

I'll Try Anything Once...

So I'll try anything once...skydiving, pig eye balls, rocky mountain oysters, stinky tofu...

So what's the deal with blogging. Everyone's doing it. I have to admit that it was sort of cool keeping everyone up to date with what we were going in New Zealand. Now that I'm back in the states...who wants to read about my daily boringness.

Okay...I've tried it. Not for me. Well...how about this. I'll post something here if I break something or do something really cool. I've done neither today...although about a week ago I broke one roller blade. How? I did a hockey stop at Rollin Ice and that split the hard plastic boot, causing the bottom half with the wheels to go sliding across the rink. Nice. And I didn't even get to play. Boo.

Another thing...if people don't comment, it feels like no one's reading. COMMENT DAMN IT!

The Dark Side

We have some friends who are always inviting us to "come to the dark side." What's the dark side? The dark side is when you live a more sedentary and sloth-like life. And it typically happens to many of our friends after they get married. Instead of going out and doing something active, you end up sitting in front of the TV with your wife/hubby watching the latest reality TV show, maybe snacking on ice cream, chips or something else along those lines.

We've been pretty good at resisting the dark side until this past holiday season. All of our volleyball leagues were on hiatus. The weather was gloomy, cold and wet. Throw in all the holiday eating and drinking. Whammo! We are on the verge of joining the dark side. I admit it's really nice being lethargic, sleeping in, taking naps, and basically doing nothing. I can see how the dark side can be oh so tempting.

But instead of succumbing to the forces of evil, we will wield our light sabers and fight! We will join the rebel alliance and fight the power of the dark side. Our volleyball leagues start this week. In fact, one of mine started last night. It's a new league that I haven't played in for quite some time. As I was walking out the door, I felt like it was the first day of school at a new school. I was excited, but also a bit anxious about what to expect. When I got to the gym, I realized that I new quite a few people in the league and it was like playing with old friends. It felt really good to be playing again (even though I was really rusty).

I also signed up to run the Napa Valley Trail Half-Marathon at the end of March with some friends. I started training today and had to run 3 miles. That was harder than I expected it to be. I'm not sure my knees, ankles and back can handle the training, but I'm gonna give it my best shot. I definitely need to find the phone number for that sports massage therapist who fixed me when I was training for the San Diego Rock n Roll marathon.

Stormy Weather

Ugh, the weather is horrible. It makes me just want to curl up in bed, drink hot tea and read a book or watch a movie. Even though my commute to work is less than 5 miles, I seriously thought about working from home today. But for some reason, I decided to brave the wind and rain and head into the office. The drive was okay. The worst thing I experienced were the pools of water by the side of the road.

So, I made it safely to work and managed to do some real work for a few hours. At about 11:10 AM, the fire alarm goes off. Seriously? A fire? In this weather? You have to be kidding, me. Luckily, I decided to grab my car keys. So a couple of my co-workers and I sat in my car until it was okay to go back in the building. We debated going to get dim sum for lunch or going to Starbucks for coffee. But I just wanted to grab the rest of my stuff, go home for lunch, work from home and go to the gym later in the afternoon.

None of the above happened. Instead, I ate lunch at my desk and stayed in the office for the rest of the afternoon. Thank goodness it's Friday.

Hello 2008!

If there was a theme for 2007, it was the year of weddings. Not only did we get married, but we also attended (and participated) in the weddings of several of our good friends. And our wedding-related activities still aren't quite over yet. We met with out photographer few days ago to look at the layout of our wedding album. And we still need to put together our guest book.

We also consolidated two households into one. That was no easy task! We had 2 sets of couches, 2 beds, 2 George Foreman grills, 2 rice cookers, and more. After giving some stuff away, selling some of it at a garage sale and storing the rest of it at our parents houses, we managed to combine our stuff into one townhouse.

What will 2008 bring? We know of at least three more weddings and one baby due any day now! Other than that, we'll just have to wait and see what the new year brings. Hopefully, it will be good health and loads of happiness for everyone!