I was targeted for four hours of acronym hell today. Some pushy sales bigwig female (they seem to proliferate in my company like Stepford wives) with a broad North Carolinian accent was in town to prod us through some of the latest sales methodology. I'd tried to get out of it, advancing the usual argument that I'm not a sales person. But to no avail. As I drove to work this morning, pretty awfully tired after a poor night's sleep, I was strongly tempted to pull a u-turn and call in sick. I fall asleep on a good day even during classes in which I have an interest, so I foresaw an incredibly tedious day ahead of me given my current state.

So you can imagine how happy I was when I realized that a two hour conference call related to my current project started at the same time as the class! Yes - my escape route!

After I finally sneaked into the class two hours later at half-time, I realized that I probably couldn't stomach even the remaining two hours. I'd missed the part where the jargon was defined, and now I was clueless as everyone else spouted VBR this, EB that, and green-sheet whatever - I felt like I was drowning in acronym soup.

Acronym Soup

So I escaped after about half an hour. I did learn though that we should use our AEs, ACs, and SEs to establish a VBR with our EBs in order to push forward our SSOs. Thankfully, we consultants don't have an acronym defined for us yet so I guess nobody will notice if we absent ourselves from this whole affair.

My Dad wrote me another letter today. For a working-class guy who hasn't been in a classroom since the age of fourteen, my Dad writes such great letters. Without even meaning to (and believe me, my Dad hasn't a stroke of affectation about him), he can be evocative, touching or romantic. Today's wasn't one of his best, but he did write about a trip he and Mam made back to St Albans, where they lived for most of the eighties. My Dad writes:

"It was nice seeing St Albans again. I was surprised at how much I'd missed it. You know what I enjoyed the most? Going out for a walk at night when it was quiet, walking around the Abbey, and down the old streets; it takes you back to earlier times, before cars and planes and those infernal mobile phones. Wouldn't it be wonderful to just close your eyes and see it as it was even just one hundred years ago."

My Dad included in his letter, as he often does, another photo of my Mam. Before long I'll have the whole family on here! My Mam's an old woman now - but I can't think of her that way. I don't know if she looks like an old woman in this photo or not. She just looks like my Mam, whom I haven't seen in four or five years (shame on me). Strange - my Dad always sends pics of my Mam - never including himself. And he says things like "Your Mam misses you". Are all Dads the same or what? :)

My Mam in St James Park, London - taken recently by my Dad