Amongst other events I skipped this trip, I slept through the keynote session on Thursday morning. And it was probably the one thing I didn't want to miss - I've never yet laid eyes on our enigmatic CEO - the brains from which the entire company takes its marks. It wasn't until 10.30 that some little shard of conscience woke me up with a jump. Since that was 7.30 West Coast time I can only presume that I'm still jet-lagged. But I'd had a horrible night's sleep - awake for hours in the middle, and tormented by violent, disturbing dreams through the night. That's what being in the south does to you :)

I confess that pride is one of my many sins, and the form it most often takes is a perverse refusal to go along with the crowd. When I finally arrived at the hotel where the main sessions were taking place, long, long lines of employees curved in every direction through the foyer, each company employee waiting in line patiently for a free lunch. &^%$ this, I thought, and I went to Starbucks for coffee and a sandwich, and sat and read my new novel.

The afternoon was a time of maximum exposure to acronyms as the marketing team unveiled our sales initiatives for 2000. It was snoringly boring, but I have to admit that we have some impressive technology to offer. By four o'clock, I was free, and, since there was still plenty of light, I decided to go for a run outside. Quizzing the desk clerk at my hotel, I found out that there was a park within running distance. I set off soon after that on one of my nicest recent runs. It was such a wonderful spot around which I ran for forty minutes, that I even composed a little poem as I was running. Okay, maybe a little sophomoric, but at least I don't thrust my musings on you too often! The photos that go with it I took the following day.

At first sight, my path seemed unpromising. I ran over the clogged freeway, holding my breath against the fumes.
But I soon branched off into a tiny gem, into Lake Crabtree County Park, whose wooden and tarmac paths wound through woods and along the lake.
As I pounded heavily along those paths, there were few other sounds. Geese honked anxiously at me as I passed. My steps sent scratching squirrels shooting back up their trees.
Evenings insects trilled mildly seeming to calm the lake A lake now glowing blood-orange as the suns last spokes shimmered across from the West.
As I left the lake, and headed to the park entrance, the Western horizon dimmed to lemon-yellow.
Only the fast naked trees retained a red glow, ganging up against the sky.

After my run, I realized that I was too tired to make the effort at socializing at the second party tonight, so I took a shower and didn't even bother fixing my hair. For a second, I thought that I'd found a new hair do. But after contemplating a while, I decided it was a hair don't after all.

So I spent my evening as I often do when in our headquarters in the south, and rented a hotel movie - "The Sixth Sense". It was surprisingly good and quite scary.

But no nightmares that night - instead I had a long, crazy dream about Christmas shopping. I suppose some people would say that was a nightmare after all.

The final morning's session was a gathering or our own division, Consulting Services. Quite a motley bunch - looking around the auditorium at the mostly scruffily dressed, middle-aged men with colossal bellies, I thought it reminded me of news clips I remembered from my childhood showing trade-unionists having their "shop floor" talks before a strike. We suffered through three hours of utterly inane pep-talk which left me feeling that the people I work for are lacking in both energy and vision.

There was nothing I could do about the five hours between the end of the event and my late afternoon flight, so I filled it with a good arm and shoulder work-out, lunch at the campus cafe, and an afternoon walk around Lake Crabtree County Park, where the recent passage of a storm had left the park deserted except for me, the squirrels and the geese.

In the park with my minivan

Finally, it was time to go to the airport. As I drove in and surrendered my Mitchmobile (an in-joke I'm afraid), the clouds threatened more rain. No sooner had I reached the gate before the rain was rattling against the terminal's window panes. Of course, I was immediately sure that my flight would be cancelled.

The rain returns just as I check in

But soon it was like someone swept the sky clean again, and beautiful silver linings edged the few remaining clouds, low on the horizon.

Weird clouds (and lighting effects due to taking the photo from inside the terminal)

I had a great, uncomplicated journey home. A Chilean colleague of mine, Yvonne, nabbed me the spare business-class seat next to her, so she and I sat in relative comfort. I barely knew her, at the time I sat down next to her, but we spent the entire flight in an increasingly intimate conversation. It's amazing how quickly confidences can develop when you fit well with each other. Our talk took its start in discussion of the event we'd just left, started to get a bit more personal when I asked her advice (she's a project manager) on how to handle the personalities on my current (rocky) project, then finally deepened into areas like the difficulties of relationships, growing up gay and spirituality. Yvonne is probably ten years older than me, but she's maintained a spontanous joyfulness which I wish I possessed to half her degree.

Our dinner on board included my favorite dish, a chicken-caesar salad, to add to my comfort level. When we arrived in Dallas, I found that my connecting flight was one gate away (in contrast to my usual experience at DFW of having to catch the train across a couple of terminals), and I got to the gate to find I'd been given an upgrade to the front row of First Class. I guess it was my day.

So now I'm almost home again. I spent the first hour of my flight burrowing into my new Trollope novel. I've been trying to analyze why I find Trollope so readable, and I've come to the conclusion that I've developed a slight addiction to seeing his two noble characters per novel. There are usually two of them, at least - one man and one woman - and their gentlemanly qualities of honesty, courage, modesty, kindness, and consideration make me think, at least for a while, that people aren't so bad. And it gives me a model for how I'd like to live my own life, not that I very often match up to those qualities.

I know I probably shouldn't call the female character gentlemanly - but really, in Trollope's novels she always has those same qualities - maybe an unhealthy appetite for self-denial is in there too with the mix. I've probably painted these characters as being nobler than saints, but it's their flaws and complexities that make them fascinating, and, since these complexities inevitably lead them into tricky situations, I find I recognize things and issues from my own life. I hope my life ends up like the endings of most of his novels - with the man getting his noble woman (in my case, I'd rather get the noble man, of course:).