Prairie Landing
Thursday, October 20, 2005
So I'm still at work ALL THE GODDAMN TIME. I got through 3 horrific announcements, covered a medical meeting on the West Coast, and came back to find that a client publication that was slated to hit next spring, hits Sunday.
But going to the medical meeting wasn't all bad, not by any stretch. In the first place, I learned the reasons why San Francisco is really great (the weather) and really awful (filthy dirty, overpriced, full of insane people). Here is something interesting I saw when I was walking from my hotel to the train to Berkeley:
I also got to see my long-lost friends from B-more, then Seattle, now Berkeley, whom I will call by their professional titles, Dr. Ding-Dong and Bird Brain. Equally exciting, I got to meet their kids, who did not exist the last time I saw them. (Well, I guess one was about half-baked the last time.) I'll call them Horn (age 3 3/4) and Sushi Monster (15 months). These kids are hilarious. Also exhausting. I got there Saturday and BB and DD were completely beat by 10 o'clock, even more than me with my jet lag. By Sunday at 2 I understood. Horn and Sushi Monster get up at dawn and then run, run, run, run all day. They alternate between squealing with joy and screaming with annoyance. They get into everything, which is a cliche, but the part that isn't is that you the grown-up caretaker have to spend every waking minute getting them out of everything.
Horn is so named because he ran around the house with a cardboard rhino horn on his head shouting, "Daddy! I got a horn! I never got a horn before!" His parents were just about crying they were laughing so hard.
All in all an enjoyable weekend. And I haven't even mentioned the many fascinating talks I got to hear (and utterly revolting pictures I got to see) about fungal infections and MRSA!
But going to the medical meeting wasn't all bad, not by any stretch. In the first place, I learned the reasons why San Francisco is really great (the weather) and really awful (filthy dirty, overpriced, full of insane people). Here is something interesting I saw when I was walking from my hotel to the train to Berkeley:
I also got to see my long-lost friends from B-more, then Seattle, now Berkeley, whom I will call by their professional titles, Dr. Ding-Dong and Bird Brain. Equally exciting, I got to meet their kids, who did not exist the last time I saw them. (Well, I guess one was about half-baked the last time.) I'll call them Horn (age 3 3/4) and Sushi Monster (15 months). These kids are hilarious. Also exhausting. I got there Saturday and BB and DD were completely beat by 10 o'clock, even more than me with my jet lag. By Sunday at 2 I understood. Horn and Sushi Monster get up at dawn and then run, run, run, run all day. They alternate between squealing with joy and screaming with annoyance. They get into everything, which is a cliche, but the part that isn't is that you the grown-up caretaker have to spend every waking minute getting them out of everything.
Horn is so named because he ran around the house with a cardboard rhino horn on his head shouting, "Daddy! I got a horn! I never got a horn before!" His parents were just about crying they were laughing so hard.
All in all an enjoyable weekend. And I haven't even mentioned the many fascinating talks I got to hear (and utterly revolting pictures I got to see) about fungal infections and MRSA!
