Long Overdue Update

Wow, I didn't realize quite how long it had been since my last post. It's been a busy two weeks, and I'm only conscious now because I got a lot of sleep last night. Last week I was in Austin, TX for a couple of days and then spent all day Friday with a customer here in San Diego. In between, I tried to fit in as much work on the book as possible, but got an incredibly small amount of sleep. The week before, I was in Kansas City; I had never been there before, so it was a nice experience. Unfortunately, I again had to spend every free second working on the book, so I didn't get to explore too much.

When I used to have to take longer business trips, back in 2005, I made sure to see the local sights, try some of the local food, and generally make the trip as fun as possible. I was only in Kansas City and Austin for two days each, but it was my first time in both places, so I at least wanted to try some yummy food. Kansas City is known for its barbecue, so I did some research and came up with a local barbecue place that had rave reviews and was known for having some of the spiciest barbecue sauce around: LC's Barbecue. The people in front of me in line had seen it on FoodTV, and I found it on RoadFood.com; I took the website's advice and got the "burnt ends" with fries and baked beans. I learned a whole new barbecue vocabulary in my short time there, and would definitely recommend it.

In Austin, my hotel was right next to a Cajun Seafood restaurant called Pappadeaux's. I talked to a local colleague about it and realized it was a chain of restaurants owned by a Greek family, and that they also had chains of Mexican, BBQ, Steak, and burger restaurants.....pretty much everything but Greek. Even as a chain, I had heard great things, so I tried it out. The restaurant was packed and everyone seemed to be having the "Crawfish Catch" special. I wasn't quite ready to work that hard (digging the meat out of over a pound of crawfish), and ended up with the "Pontchartrain Panbroiled Fish Fillet Topped with crabmeat & shrimp in a brown-butter wine sauce with dirty rice." It was fantastic, and to make up for turning down something as down-home as crawfish, I also ordered the Fried Alligator appetizer. It was very good, and though I expected it to "taste like chicken," it was actually more tender and flavorful than any chicken I've ever had.....yummy!

After my culinary adventure, I later learned that the owners of Pappadeaux's, the Pappas family, does have a Greek restaurant. It's called Yia Yia Mary's, and it's in Houston. For those of you that didn't immediately shout, "No Way!!!!," my Greek great-grandmother's name was Mary, and I called her Yia Yia (Grandmother) Mary all my life. It was such an amazing coincidence that I will absolutely have to go there if I ever visit Houston, even if I have to drive all the way across the city.

In between trips to the middle of the country, I went on our annual visit to Las Vegas for the first weekend of March Madness, with my dad and a bunch of friends. Though I flew home a big loser overall (as expected), I had a lot of fun. Next year I'll be trying the dartboard approach to picking winning basketball teams, since it couldn't be any less effective than actually trying to choose teams based on my incredibly poor knowledge of college teams. Or I just have to focus my attention on the ridiculous Wheel of Fortune quarter slots, where last year I found $200 in chips and this year I walked away a winner almost every time I sat down. Say it with me.....Wheel! Of! Fortune!

We also had a great Easter, where I came away more of a winner than I had in Vegas....I found $20 in an Easter egg. It was great to have a fantastic (home-cooked) dinner and see lots of family, in between very impersonal trips to random business locations. It did, however, make for a long string of being away from home. Sunday-Tuesday in Kansas City, Wednesday-Saturday in Vegas, Sunday in Orange County, Monday-Wednesday in Austin. It's stretches like that that really make you miss your bed (and your wife!).

D's doing well and having a good time with softball. They won in the bottom of the seventh last week with a walk-off homerun against a really good local rival. They have two to four games a week, with practices every other weekday. She's at school right now (on Saturday), preparing the school newspaper for publication....it's a tradition that happens every six weeks during the school year. Today, the students had more of their pages done prior to arrival than ever before, so hopefully they'll be done in record time....they're usually at school from 8 in the morning until 7-9pm. I often join them to help edit pages, and might go in later if they're having trouble, but I was able to read a bunch of them last night and edit from the comfort of our couch.

I (surprise, surprise!) have more book stuff to do this weekend as well. It somehow feels like even though there are four other authors, I'm doing just as much work as if I had done the whole thing myself. Every week or two, each of us has a chapter due. Then we share them with each other, and every person reads, corrects, and comments on every other chapter. Then we incorporate all the changes/suggestions that everyone made on our own chapters, and distribute a "Version 2." We go through the whole thing all over again (review, revision) until we have a somewhat official version 3. Then we have to submit that version to the publisher, who has their own reviewers and editors look at every chapter. I'm close to version 2 on my first chapter, I've reviewed all the other first chapters, and I've reviewed version 2 of one person's chapter. This weekend I have to finish V2, review some others, and start my second chapter. I'm tired again just thinking about it.

Last note....on Monday we get to go see one of our favorite musical artists, Jason Mraz, in a private concert on the roof of a swanky hotel in downtown San Diego. I won tickets from a radio station contest, and I'm really looking forward to it. The concert is right before the Padres' opening night in Petco Park, which is only a block from the hotel. Unfortunately we don't have tickets to the game, but we are going to see the Padres get beat by the Dodgers next weekend. I'm looking forward to it!