Red Nose

Exploring the Sant Ocean Hall

I mentioned in the last post that Joe took me on a private tour of the Sant Ocean Hall, where he's a volunteer docent. It's magnificent! I loved the living coral reef, with Nemo and Dory swimming  around the brilliant coral. Psychedelic!

I even loved the male giant squid, hanging head down in his case. His is a face -- if you can call it a face -- that only his mother could love. He's pretty big, almost 20 feet long all told.

He's not nearly as big as the female giant squid, though. She's laid out horizontally. From the tip of her head to the end of the longest tentacle, she's about 25 feet long now. The liquid that's preserving her caused her to shrink from her original length of 35 feet. You go!

My favorite, though, is the life size model of Phoenix, a right whale currently living in the North Atlantic ocean. The model is precise -- right down to the scars Phoenix has from dragging a fishing net that got caught in her baleen. She's 45 feet long and hangs from the ceiling of the hall. She's so big I had to take three pictures of her and stitch them together.

So next time you come to DC, get in touch. I can hook you up with a great guide who'll be happy to take you on a personal tour.

But he's coming home with me.

Our Version Of A Spa Getaway, Western Maryland Edition

I always know I'm getting close to a weekend full of laughter and peacefulness (yes, peacefulness) when I spot the Sideling Hill cut in the distance, just before rolling through Hancock, Maryland.

Joe and I headed out to the Cumberland area last Saturday to celebrate his brother's birthday. We went up late Saturday afternoon because, hey, it's a three-hour drive and we are pretty much past the point of doing that twice in one day. Luckily, Joe's sister offered up her guest room to us for the night so off we went, in the mist and drizzle, to the mountains. The clouds parted just as we approached the cut.

Joe's sister and her husband live on a ridgetop surrounded by woods. I think they must infuse the air with relaxation gas, because all my muscles start easing out of their knots as soon as we turn off I-68 and onto the twisty, back country roads in Flintstone. You wouldn't think that was possible, especially when you round a sharp turn and come face to face with a big old cow standing on the side of the road, just hangin' out chewin' some roadside grass, but it is.

We finally turned off the pavement just before sunset, headed deep into the woods and up the hill.

The nice tree man was there to make us feel welcome.

 

The koi among the lily pads in the pool swam up to have a snack.

 

A bee sipped from the gorgeous fall flowers.

On Sunday afternoon we had a party for Joe's brother with great food, and of course, cake!

After visiting, laughing, and eating, it was time to head home, east through the cut, back to reality. Oh well, we can always go back!

Getaway

Sometimes a gal's just gotta get away, especially when a cute guy suggests it, so I informed my boss on Thursday that I would be taking today off. Joe and I got up at 3:30 am on Saturday, threw some stuff in a bag, and jumped in the car.

Two and a half hours later, we crossed the Route 90 bridge into Ocean City.

We did a whole lot of nothing, and it was good. The weather was extremely conducive to beach sitting and ocean swimming and we took full advantage of it. It's August, though, so there were some jellyfish floating around. But they weren't big jellies with stinging tentacles; they were little disks of clear gel. The rising tide swept them onto the beach, small crystalline hockey pucks. They weren't even particularly jelly-ish. Kids collected them like crazy, scooping them up with sand shovels or picking them up with their hands and collecting them in buckets. One kid even skipped them through the surf like stones on a pond.

They didn't bother me -- the water was too nice to be bothered by a few little gelatinous blobs. I floated in salty bliss until I turned pruney.

We spent a good bit of time with SonnyeBoy too, which was another kind of bliss. He turned us on to a great little BBQ joint in West Ocean City, slightly off the beaten path, with excellent food and cheap prices. It was great -- one of those places where you order at the window, then go sit at a picnic table on a screen porch. When your food's ready, a waitress hollers your name and you go pay and pick it up.

And then you eat. And lick your fingers.

Sometimes, you just gotta get away.

There's A Buck To Be Made Here

We're home.

Sigh.

It was a great vacation, just great. I love Ocean City, and one of the things I love most about it is the Boardwalk, that 30-block strip of wooden planking devoted to thrill rides, delicious food that's wretched for you, and cheesy souvenirs.

 

Yep, as a friend of Joe's likes to say, "There's a buck to be made here."

You can make a buck off rides:

You can make a buck off kites:

You can make a buck off raffling Harleys:

You can make a buck off fabulous bad food:

You can make a buck off dead Michael Jackson:

You can make a buck off bad art:

And you can even make a buck off Jesus!

Ocean City Love List

I am in my favorite place in the whole entire world, with many members of my family, enjoying the first day of a whole entire week off work.

I could get used to this.

So, in honor of relaxation and rejuvenation, I give you this Friday's Love List! I love:

• Dozing off on Kent Island (100 miles from Ocean City) and waking up on Route 90 (10 miles from Ocean City).
• Breakfast at Coach's Diner.
• Sitting on the porch watching the clueless boaters clog the one block road to the boat ramp.
• Walking up to the Wine Rack to buy the paper.
• Sitting on the porch reading the paper.
• Walking up to the combination wine and beer store and fine dining restaurant to collect the free newspapers and buy beer.
• While at the fancy wine and beer store, discovering that they stock ginger beer! Hello, Dark and Stormy!
• Finding a refrigerator full of food at the house.
• Sitting on the porch, eating a bitchin' lunch.
• Public Wi-fi.
• Sitting on the porch doing the crossword puzzle.
• Taking a nice long ride around the area on a beautiful afternoon.
• Inflating and filling up the lounge pool. (I did not go in the pool, however. The water was too damn cold. Next time for sure!)
• A choice of refreshing beverages.
• Sitting on the porch drinking refreshing beverages.
• The ocean! It's pretty much right next door!
• Sunsets over the bay.
• Cookouts with hamburgers, hot dogs, and strawberry shortcake.Lounging int
• The faint smell of hot asphalt. (Go on. Mock me. That smell says "summer" to me.)
• Being here, with no agenda, no to-do list, no meetings, no nothing.
• Sitting on the porch, just being.

Ahhh!

Pocket Room, Pogue Review, Planes Remaining

The lovely and talented Fredlet emailed me asking for pictures of my cute lil pie-slice pocket room. Here's a view from the armchair. I'm standing as far away from the bed as I can get.

You can see the flat screen TV there on the left. That milky window looks into the bathroom. If you look closely, you can see my iPod nano in the dock on the clock radio.

Okay, now a look from the other direction.

Here I'm standing right in front of the TV. See the floor-to-ceiling windows? Every once in awhile I'd kind of glance down and get a little bit of the heebie jeebies.

Anyway, enough about the room. The keynote speaker for the conference was David Pogue, of the Dummies books fame. He was wonderful! His speech, on the power of simplicity, was insightful, thoughtful, and hilarious. He even sang for us!

The rest of the conference was very good; most of the sessions I went to had a lot to offer, especially the session on using games immersive learning simulations and the progression session on writing effective questions.

And, I kinda lucked out on the trip home -- maybe the travel gods figured I'd suffered enough back in March. There were thunderstorms all day, which doesn't bode well for air travel, so I went to the airport way early in hopes of a snagging an earlier flight.

Lo and behold, I did! For the grand sum of $50.01, I was able to switch to another flight, take off in between lines of storms, and get home three hours before I would have on my original flight. Score!

As we were taxi-ing across Georgia, we passed this lineup. I have a feeling that a lot of folks may not have been as lucky as I was.

Hotlanta

So, let's play "Where is Mary now and what the hell is she doing there?"

I'm in Atlanta for my annual STC conference. I had an 8:00 am flight, so I've actually been here a few hours. In those few hours, I registered, unpacked, went down and registered for the conference, went to the restaurant to have some lunch, found some friends and had lunch with them, went back to registration with my great good friend Linda to sign up for her table at the fancy-dancy banquet, signed up, found more friends, talked hockey with my great good friend Karen, hugged a bunch of people, told a bad (and by "bad," I mean "excellent") joke, and finally came back to my tiny little pocket room to relax before the next round of bonhommie and glee.

Not bad for three and half hours!

My room really is pocket sized. It's in a round tower, so it's sort of the shape of a badly cut piece of pie. Despite its small size, it's quite efficiently laid out, so it seems bigger than it really is. The radio has an iPod dock (sweet!) and the flat-screen TV is wall mounted but on a telescoping arm so you can see it from wherever you are. And the view is pretty awesome.

In fact, I think I'll turn the TV on now. I have to see if they carry Versus. If they don't, I'll have to find the nearest sports bar. Can't miss Game 2!

Which reminds me -- you really must check out this spectacular save by our rookie goaltender. It's crazy good!

By The Lake

It was such a beautiful day in Seattle!

The Seattle skyline, from across Lake Washington -- just a tad hazy in the early evening.

A lone sailboat takes advantage of the breeze.

The sun was low in the west, bouncing off the boat and water.

Where could this sweet little passage lead to? A secret garden? An enchanted castle? No -- it's right between the La Quinta Inn and Burgermaster!

It Went Fine

I'm home. I'm tired. But it's okay. The presentation went just fine, although I did sort of leave out a whole chunk of content that I wanted to talk about. No matter; if I ever get to do this presentation again I'll stick a slide in to remind me to talk about it.

It's nice to see smiling faces before starting a presentation.

The venue was great, but I would expect that from a meeting room on the Microsoft campus! Alex, my lovely assistant, got me set up using the main projection screen and a wireless remote to advance the slides, so yay. Luckily -- because I am paranoid about these things -- I had the presentation on my netbook and on a thumb drive, so all I had to do was turn over the thumb drive and voila! Presentation!

The clouds and rain returned this morning. No problem with that, though; my flight left at 7:00 am.

And so, back to work!

It's Just A Little Stage Fright

It's mid-afternoon and I'm sitting in the lobby of the La Quinta Inn in Kirkland, Washington, just east of Seattle across Lake Washington. It's a beautiful, beautiful day. It was a beautiful day yesterday too -- I even got a fabulous view of Mount Rainier on the way to the hotel.

My hostess for the trip met me last night and we went down to the lake. After strolling for a bit and taking in the glorious view, we had dinner at a very nice joint called Hector's. I had Dungeness Crab Macaroni and Cheese -- oh so yummy!

But check-out time was noon, so here I am, hanging out in the lobby until time for my presentation tonight. There will be about 40 people there. They are coming to here me talk about storytelling and technical communication.

I am nervous. I have gone over, tweaked, read, altered, thought about, and stewed over my presentation for hours. I keep thinking of new things to say, then I forget them. I woke up in the night with a brilliant inspiration, but it didn't seem quite so brilliant after a shower and cup of coffee. Good, but not brilliant. I added some slides, animated others, wrestled with the OpenOffice version of PowerPoint, checked the presentation on the business center computer, printed out a copy of the slides so that I can scribble on them, and fretted a little more.

Then I went and got lunch and read my book. I purposely did not think about the presentation. Instead I read about Bret "Hitman" Hart and his life as a pro rassler. It's not that much different from the circus, really.

Now I'm thinking about the presentation again.

I hope it goes well, I think it will, especially if I can pull off a couple of audience participation gags and get them talking. If I don't, the whole thing will last about 10 minutes instead of the 60 minutes that have been allocated.

I know. Stage fright. Nothing to worry about, really. Probably a good sign, in fact. If I wasn't nervous, I'd be worried.

Yeah, that's the ticket.