puppies, kittens, and see you in Prague

The Animal Rescue League desperately needs foster homes! Foster homes are critical for providing pets with temporary homes until a place becomes available for them at the shelter. That means that fosters help save lives because they prevent having to euthanize pets when space at the shelter isn't available. They currently about 275 cats in foster with over 40 different people, but it just isn’t enough. Already in May, they've taken in 519 cats. Unbelievable! If you are unable to adopt a pet, please consider fostering--the application is here. There are plenty of puppies and kittens that need foster homes, as well as adults--wouldn't you like to have a puppy or kitten in your life, even just for a short while? :)

I leave tomorrow for Prague! First for vacation, then for work. Please check back to this blog starting Sunday--I'll be posting photos of our travels around the Czech Republic.

finally here in san fran!

I'm done with the conference and in San Francisco! Just back from an awesome dinner at Cocos in SOMA where they serve food made from fresh, local ingedients. We had fried green beans with dipping sauce; garlic, goat cheese, and arugula pizza; truffled mushroom flatbread; and a bottle of California zinfandel. Delicious.

Good to talk to Krista about politics and learn that I'm not the only socialist-minded person in this country, and good to make fun of Facebook status updates with her.

Her condo that she just bought, with an awesome city view, is amazing. There are cafes and coffee shops all around, plus a dog park and a walking trail. Made me want to move to San Francisco and work for Adobe...though I want to move here every time I visit. Sigh...it probably won't happen (though Krista is always happy to point out what companies are hiring, including Adobe!)

i want to work for adobe

My hero of the day: Jim Sartain. He's the senior director of software quality at Adobe and was one of our keynote speakers. Wow! His talk was so inspiring! He talked about the processes he's using at Adobe to achieve significant increases in quality and decreases in rework (this is pretty much what this conference is about.) But his philosophy is coaching instead of mandating, and letting his teams choose which processes they want to adopt and then letting the teams hold themselves accountable. I would love to work for him!

What's more, when I introduced myself and told him I'd be taking pictures, he offered to get up onstage right then so that I could get a good shot. He's great--he seems really down to earth. I made sure to tell him how much I love Adobe products!

exhaustion & lions

I’m beat. I’ve worked many 12+ days but not so physically demanding since my Kennywood days. I've been waking up between 3:30 and 4:30 and not being able to go back to sleep and then running around the convention center from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. in heels lugging a heavy laptop and going to different sessions to take pictures and notes on technical topics of which I have only the faintest grasp. And then among the noise and constant activity, I have to write. I am used to writing in my own office with absolutely no noise! It feels a little like working in a newsroom--I know I have to take the files to be printed by a certain time, and I need to do all my edits and lay out the photos right up to the minute then run three blocks to the nearest Kinko’s to have the newsletter printed. I would not like being a journalist.

After finishing work late yesterday, I went out to eat on my own. What’s up with the aggressive homeless here? Three separate times, grizzled homeless men not only asked me for change, but started following me when I ignored them (I had the phone to my ear pretending to talk to someone.) Luckily I walked faster than they did.

And cable TV sucks! After watching a show on DeDe, a sweet guy in the Phillipines who developed such heavy warts that he looked like a tree, and shows about crazy couples who have eight and 12 children, I tried to think of which I'd prefer: looking like a tree or having a gaggle of children. Maybe the kids if they went to boarding school in Switzerland and were shipped back when they were 25 or so.

Is it Thursday yet?

More pictures….San Jose University campus.

Our reception kicked off with a performance by Chinese Lion Dancers. It was awesome! I’ll have to post a video after I figure out how to compress the files so it doesn’t take 10 hours to upload.

made it to san jose

Whew. I always forget what a pain it is to fly to the West Coast. I got to the Pittsburgh airport early like I always do. The airport was nearly deserted—there wasn’t any line for security. So I had an hour wait before my first flight. At Chicago, during my two-hour layover, I planned to do some work online, but the WiFi wasn’t free. After eating a crappy bagel sandwich and grapes for dinner, I started writing and completely forgot the time. Before I knew it, I was boarding the plane without peeing beforehand! I had a window seat and thought it was such a pain to get up and use the airplane toilet that I suffered through four and half hours of holding it. (That night, I had a nightmare about desperately needing to pee but the only toilet was in a crowded room.) It was a packed flight. The guy beside me kept elbowing me, the woman in front of me immediately shoved her seat back into my knees, and the guy behind me kept kicking my seat back. Air travel sucks.

When we finally got into San Jose at 8:30 p.m. (11:30 our time), I was exhausted. Luckily my bag came to baggage claim as soon as I got there, and the taxi ride into the city was quick.

I'm staying at the San Jose Crowne Plaza. The lobby is colorful, modern, and nice. But they gave me the keys to a room someone was already staying in! Luckily they weren’t in the room when I went in. So they put me in another room, apologized for their mistake, and gave me coupons for free breakfast.

This morning I got up late (5:30 CA time, 8:30 our time) and went to the gym. I’m happy that few people ever use the hotel gym, because there was only one elliptical trainer, and it was all mine! I was upset that I forgot my MP3 player (which is essential to working out for me), but I got to watch cable TV, which was a treat. In fact, I haven’t stopped watching episodes of home renovations on TLC, except for checking out the Suze Orman Show when I got in. She made me feel bad about spending money! I pride myself that I live below my means and consider myself frugal. Not anymore! There’s a segment called “Can I Afford It?” where people call in to ask advice about whether they can afford something they want. It was crazy! People had $10,000 in combined monthly take-home pay, $100,000 in savings, and $75,000 in retirement, and she said they shouldn’t buy a $400 bed for their son (because of their debt)! It made me feel bad about all my shopping trips to Target and clothes from Ann Taylor Loft. Hmmm…I would consider saving more except for the fact that I plan on spending a lot of money on our back yard this year, and plus there’s the trip to Prague that promises to be expensive because the dollar is so weak.

It's sunny but a cold front has come in, so it's chilly out. Today I got to walk around some and explore. The conference starts in just two hours, so I'm starting to get ready.

Some photos from today...the photo of me and the tree is, I think, the tree I've decided to get--a flowering dogwood!

Off to California!

The conference I’ve been working on since August starts Sunday! In some ways, it feels like my own wedding all over again. I did so much work on it for the year leading up to it, and when it was so close, I was all nerves and excitement and manic joy and frantic worry hoping that it didn’t rain (it didn’t) and that it would turn out well (it did).

I feel the same way now. At the conference, I’ll be creating a daily newsletter, taking pictures, and talking to the attendees to get good testimonials for marketing next year’s conference. It sounded like a piece of cake until now. While I’ve done as much work as I can on the newsletter, I’m still nervous. My days will be packed from around 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. each night, and I'll have to meet the newsletter deadlines in those times plus help to handle any crises that happen.

And I'm always anxious about traveling alone. While I think that dying in an airplane crash would be a pretty good way to go (just a few minutes of pure terror, and then you're dead), of course I'd prefer not to crash! Plus I'll be gone from Dave for two full weekends plus a week, which sucks. And I'll miss the cats!

I will be SO happy on Thursday at 5 p.m. when the conference ends and I can head to San Francisco for a fun weekend.

I'm off to San Jose. Wish me luck!

(Photo is Dave's from 2000.)

Hooray! Prague!

I’m so happy! I’ll be going to Prague this June for work, and I’ve been worried that Dave couldn’t go with me. The flights are really expensive, and there would be two full days of travel, so Dave was waffling on whether it was worth it. I’ve been anxious about having to travel there and back by myself…and I’d want to do some sightseeing but am not at all confident in my ability to get around on my own in a foreign country without getting ripped off or hurt. And it just wouldn’t be as much fun without Dave there.

So last night he decided to go! Yay!!!! It looks like a side-trip to Vienna is really doable (just five hours away), though I love the idea of renting a car and exploring small Eastern European towns. If we drove all over the south island of New Zealand, where not only do you drive on the left side of the road but the steering wheel is on the right side of the car, on narrow, windy roads clinging to the sides of high cliffs with no guardrails, surely we could get around Eastern Europe? And Romania…ah, if we could go to Romania! That’s number one on my wish list of places to visit, but I think it’s too far away. We’ll have to see…now that we know he’s definitely going, this will be the fun part: planning out what we want to do there. Yay!!!

Miami Won Me Over

I liked Miami! I knew it was going to be warm...but 80 and so humid? Warm ocean water? It was a shock to my system. My mind couldn't get around it, so I refused to put on the AC in my hotel room and sweated through the nights. But there was a lot to see and do, and I liked walking around and checking out as much as I could. Here are some of the highlights...

A beach walk was a nice way to see the beach but not have to go onto it and get all sandy. It went all along Miami Beach so that I could walk from my hotel (at 39th Street) to South Beach (10th Street) easily. This is a view from the beach walk down to the beach.

Yikes!
My favorite part of Miami was walking along the beach at sunrise.

The Art Deco District in South Beach had a lot of cool buildings.

See the rest of my pictures on Flickr.