Government Training Part One

Today was the first day of New Scientist Training. Leslie warned me that it was the three most useless days she spent in the government. As far as I can tell, she was right. We spent sessions teaching me stuff I have known from being in the agency for 9 years. I knew all of the speakers but the first one, who is one of the National Program Leaders (major program administrators in Washington) but I spent 2 hours at dinner with him tonight. The technology transfer presentation was painful since I am fairly well-versed in how screwy the office of tech transfer really is. The worst of all presentations was probably the one on publishing.....135 power point slides over 120 minutes, each slide was full of text with the same background and no graphics. The text was set to "fade in" on each slide. Copies of the slides were handed out before the presentation and the presentation consisted of being read the slides. Painful enough for you? Nope! When the presenter skipped a slide she did not go back, instead she ended the presentation, started over and then clicked through each slide until she caught up. FUN! The IT person did pretty much the same thing in her presentation.
Two more days to go.

Assorted goings on....

Chicago Food
My dad was asking if I had good food in Chicago....short answer is yes.

Saturday morning we had brunch at Blueberry Hill Pancake House....very tasty Irish breakfast of potatoes and corned beef hash. On Saturday night we went to get pizza at Aurelio's which was yummy pizza but not the traditional Chicago deep-dish. I had a very tasty Leinenkugel beer with the pizza. Leinie's is a good brewery that I try to enjoy whenever I see it. They have been brewing good beer in Wisconsin for over 140 years.
On Sunday night we ate at Goose Island and I had very yummy sausage (Bratwurst, Knockwurst, and Thuringer) and for desert a damn good creme brulee' from Alhambra which is a funny story in and of itself which involves missing our train back to Homewood and two wasted filet mignons. After missing our train by only a minute or two we headed to Miller's Pub to kill 2 hours.
Monday we had tasty polish sausage at the AWS trade show and then really good mexican food but I don't know where where it was. I did have a yummy Sol with dinner.
I grabbed a bite to eat at the airport before my flight on Tuesday and treated myself to a SuperDawg, it was good but the peppers were a bit much.

Back at Work
Wow! I did not miss anything. I got to work and dove into making the revisions on my Beltwide manuscript for the conference in January (editing on the plane makes the flight go by). I turned it into my boss and he told me he would get it back to me but not to expect it this week (and he knows I am off next week). Oh yeah, he did not have the paper I gave him last Wednesday read yet either.....SURPRISE SURPRISE! Same ole shit.

The good news is that tomorrow is my last day until after Thanksgiving week.

Greenville is too damned small!!!!
I woke up with a sore throat. I figure this has something to do with going from warm Mississippi to cold Chicago which became warm Chicago to Mississippi which now has a cold front passing through. I figured it was no big deal, I would just stop at the drug store on my way to work. There are two to chose from, a Walgreens and a CVS. Nope, at 6:45AM this morning neither was open! I stopped at Walgreens on my way home from work and got a couple of things but I decided to get a couple more this evening. That was not so easy, apparently CVS closes as 8:00PM in the Delta. Off to Walgreens I go! They are open until 10:00PM....woohoo! Big City time!

Returned to Delta

I got back from Chicago tonight. The flight from Little Rock to Midway was delayed by a half-hour (shocking that the flight might be late when the plane is not at the gate at the time you are supposed to be in the air) but the return flight left on time and even arrived early by 15 minutes. We must have had a heckuva tail-wind because the pilots kept apologizing for the turbulence. The drive back from Little Rock was uneventful.

Chicago was fun, but I am exhausted. I will just hit the beer highlights for starters. On Saturday night La and I went to Flossmoor Station Brewery. On Sunday night we went to Goose Island Brewery. On Monday evening we went to Brauhaus in Lincoln Park. It was all good (except for the Bourbon Imperial Stout at Goose Island, it makes my short list of very very bad beers).

If that list seems like a lot of beer it is not. There was more beer consumed at La's house as well as during dinners.....oh yeah a bit of bourbon was consumed as well.

More tomorrow. Time for bed.

Greetings from Little Rock

I am sitting in Little Rock National Airport. Yep, it is not an international airport, just a national airport. Arkansas is a strange place. This is a small airport and only a bit over 2 hours from Greenville (so comparable in drive as Jackson's and Memphis' airports are) and had the best price for a flight to Chicago. I have an hour to kill before my flight.
Security was a pain in the butt for such a small airport. One lady was checking IDs and she could not have worked slower if she tried (good federal employee). They had only one metal detector and one x-ray line running so it was also slow just to get through that.
On the bright side, they have free wireless throughout the airport!

I will be in Chicago until Tuesday afternoon. Many things are on the agenda, not the least of which is the AWS/FABTECH trade show (engineering geek that I am) and The Kiss at the Museum of Contemporary Art (the artist that La is).

Mardi Gras Po Boys

I tried out another restaurant in Greenville tonight. There is a relatively new place called "Mardi Gras Po Boys". I tried a muffuletta instead of a poboy. It was not a great muffuletta but considering that I am in the Delta it was not too bad. Oh yeah, if you don't know what a muffuletta is check here. The bread was not quite right, but close. The olive salad was the biggest weak link, not soft enough or enough oliver, more oil then anything else. Oh yeah, they needed more meat and cheese, but it was successful enough I might try a poboy from there soon.

Hot Tamale Heaven.........NOT!

I was driving home from work tonight and noticed a restaurant, Hot Tamale Heaven. The thing about this particular restaurant that caught my attention was that it is simply a portable metal building (like a construction site trailer) parked on a gravel lot with a drive up window and walk up window installed.
I guess I should explain that tamales are a big thing here in the Delta for some reason, not sure why, but you can check out Alton Brown's Feasting on Asphalt 2 for some information.
Anyway, so I was intrigued by this place and decided to give them a shot. The menu was interesting for a drive up shack: tamales, wings, burger, ripper dog, fish platter (it is the Delta), hush puppies (again, it is the Delta), country fried steak sandwich, fried tamales, and tamale pie. I decided to try some tamales and some wings. The tamales were ok, not too bad, the wings were just not worth a second try although they did smell really good.
I will probably go back and try some more items off the menu though. For those not familiar with a ripper dog, it is a hot dog tossed in a deep fryer until the skin rips open......mmmmm cardiologist friendly. I will also probably give their hush puppies a try because I still have not found any really good hush puppies here yet.

Weekend Update!

Just back from a nice 4 day weekend in NO. Four days flies by but was a lot of fun and I got a lot done. So we will start in a random spot:

Congratulations to Anna and Sean on their new marriage and very lovely wedding. La's singing was spot on. I need to thank Beau for the text message updates on the LSU-Alabama game during the wedding, because who gets married in NO during the LSU-Alabama game?

I did a ton of plumbing on the addition for the new bathroom and laundry room. Check out the newest pics on Picasa. Ron, I could have used your help. It is sort of like figuring out a big giant 3-D jigsaw puzzle. The vast majority of the DWV (drain-waste-ventilation) is done. I need to tie in the shower drain (need to buy it) and plumb the vent for the shower, which is also going to serve as the wet vent for the toilet. I also need to add a vent stack for the laundry room sink and tie all the vents together to go through the roof. The only other plumbing left for the addition is to do the supply lines, but that goes so much faster.

La has been trying to leave NO for 24 hours. I just got a text message that she is boarding the flight, so it looks like she will be successful. She was supposed to board a flight last night that was postponed and then canceled. La was rescheduled for tonight and when she got to the airport her flight was announced as being delayed. She needs to get back to work to keep Alcasco going, especially since I am heading to Chicago this Friday so she will be having a short work week anyway. Much beer is awaiting me in Chicago.