The catch though is that this next month, at least from a work perspective, is really going to suck. I can’t really go into the details, but in a nutshell all the things on my plate are coming to a head NOW, and some of those things are interfering with the others due to some legacy processes that we’re still trying to scale. Given that I work in the Agency World™, process improvements don’t happen unless you have an ROI argument or a client willing to pay for it. If it’s not built right the first time, chances are you’re stuck.

Thankfully, the experience is invaluable, and I’ve learned some absolutely amazing things about building large scale multi-platform deliverable applications. Next time around much of this won’t happen, though for the time being I’m going to have to find some of my own time to throw at the issue so that in the long run I can have some peace of mind and free time.

Unfortunately, that means that Dance has effectively fallen off my radar. I know I love to do it, but when I can’t guarantee that I’ll be free for my 8PM lessons on a regular basis on account of work, well, I can’t really do anything about that. So in order to make sure I don’t lose the hobby altogether I’m doing a measured pullback and returning to my roots and origins: Salsa. As much as I hate to step away from Swing and Tango and Ballroom and all the others for the time being I’m afraid I just don’t have the time.

Scaling that back, however, has opened up a surprising amount of time for other things, time that under other circumstances would have been spent in transit or in support of my usual posterior shimmying. For instance, my apartment garden is flourishing, my Bonsai are crawling out of their pots, and I’ve started releasing some code libraries again over at Practical Flash. Plus, of course, I’m making cheese.

Having said that, I’m looking forward to this next week. On Monday I’m speaking at Flex Camp Cleveland on “How to build your first Flex Application”. I’m pretty nervous about that one, actually, since I go on right after Ben Forta . Yes, that Ben Forta, the guy who’s pretty much the face of ColdFusion for Adobe. Furthermore, on Friday and Saturday I’ll be volunteering at the Cap City Classic. The original plan was to run the Half Marathon, but splints stopped my training, though I’ve just gotten a small post-work running group started to get me back up to some acceptable mileage. Given that, I’ll be running back and forth from my road marshal position on saturday, which nets me about 8 miles and change with a nice long break between the two.

Then in May, I’m taking a break. I have 2 weeks of “vacation” scheduled, one for the Adobe Community Conference in San Francisco (Which neatly coincides with my birthday. Hint Hint), and then a week of careless lounging at the beach for memorial day. I still have to find someone to help me run the May Adobe User Group presentation night, but I should be able to get that done fairly easily. I hope.

Ahh well, back to polishing off my presentation, and then I’m off to go enjoy the nice weather some more.

To others, it’d be an opportunity to see new sights, to enjoy onesself. But to me… well, I guess I’m still enough of a native that I’m not that excited by castles and museums, and am more excited by getting back to the old foods that I used to love as a child. Of course, cheese is horrid for my diet, but for some reason… well, I didn’t gain any weight, I’m still at 199. But when I look at my belly now it’s… WRINKLY! Too much skin for too little volume. Doing some searching I’ve decided that the weight I lost from my waist has been converted into muscle on my legs, mainly due to the three days of skiing I managed to get in. Sadly, after the first day, my dad tore the edge off of a part of his carvers, and his skis were trashed, so I had no real way of skiing until after christmas day.

I’ve officially been up for 24 hours now- woke up at 4AM GMT+1. Pardon me if I ramble a bit.

To those of you who wanted chocolate- I have a few things, none of them dark. Since Mr. Meier pointed out to me that both Milka and Ritter Sport are now easily available in the states, I opted to acquire the pralines and baked goods that are actually hard to get over here. I apologize for teasing you, but if you want the same thing I would have gotten, either go to Le Gourmet Chef for Ritter Sport or go to Target for Milka. Those are the brands you would have gotten anyway. Though I do still need help eating Mozart’s balls…. non-marzipan lovers need not apply.

Other loot- 1 bottle of Jagermeisters Superior Ancestor (I think) for Jameel. A book for Katie. A Rock for Ree (Plus pictures of the mountain it came from). 2 bottles of good fruit schapps (Pear and Apricot), one bottle of Honey Mead, one bottle of Riesling. The draw this year was somewhat sparse… for the following reason:

Austria, by law, does not allow stores to be open after 2PM on Christmas eve, nor at all on Christmas day. Also, stores are by law required to be closed on Sundays. This is the country that is gracious enough to collect the 10% Catholic Tithe directly from your paycheck as a ‘church tax’… so yeah, the reasons are apparent. Thus, me myself and I were rather busy preparing for Christmas even without realizing that it would be the last shopping day… until the day I left- which of course I had to do at 4AM in the morning, before any stores opened. So I looted my parents booze supply, and picked up a few things in duty free on my way back.

No sense going into what presents I got- you’ll all be eating the results soon enough .

What else- on the flight back from framkfurt to atlanta I sat next to a Nigerian woman who was reading what I could best describe as a tabloid for pentecostl crusaders in Nigeria. Lots of Holy this, Holy that, rather droll really, accounts of The Lord Made Her Fertile and such…

…and then I looked at the title of the book I was reading, and she noticed it, and asked to see it, and I realied that I was reading the exact same type of thing: “How to make friends and influence people” is actually a really good book, but mainly tries to get its point across by giving real world examples. Is that any different from what I initially wrote off as religious drivel? No- in fact, she asked if she could read it during the flight- I was cool with it because I now had some neat little religious tolerance diversity trains of thought to explore, plus for some reason the current popular music feed from germany on the airplane radio had some really phat hip-hop tracks from this cute little17-year-old soul singer and this other group called The 411. So I was happily occupied.

Wait- so what did I actually DO while I was there? Well, day one was arrive at home, die. Day two was skiing. Day three was putz around on computer, wander around town, go shopping a bit. Day three was pick up rickie from airport day. Day four was visit the christmas market with my sister day. Day five was try-to-go-skiing-and-realize-they-close-1-hour-after-we-got-there day, and presents! Day six was skiing, day seven was skiing, and day eight was stay awake 24 hours on trip back home just so I can make sure I’m not as jetlagged as on the way there day.

Big events… I had no fights with my parents. The whole Guilt cycle that they put me through I realized wasn’t really their fault. It’s simply the way they justify the things that they do, and confronting them about it really wouldn’t help at all- they don’t, and wouldn’t realize there was something wrong. The only way to get them to change their behavior is to make them enthused about the change, to make it seem like it’s something they want. Anyway…. The major highlight was my mom being rather irritated at my… uhm… willingness to report them to the authorities if they ever did something shady. It didn’t seem to sink in with her that saying nothing is accessory to duplicity. Which gave me this interesting side track to think about what it would take to do the proverbial horrific ‘Sell your own mother for money’ thing. Personally, I wouldn’t do it for money. I’d do it for Ethics…. which, arguably, is much more dangerous.

Oh, I completely forgot to send a postcard for you Annette, even though I bought one. It’s now happily sitting on the table in Austria. Sorry….

Ok, that’s me, signing off. I have lots of pretty pictures of large rocks with snow on, and a few gorgeous shots of Atlanta and NYC from the airplane, but those will have to wait until I’m done crashing. Good night, everyone!