Panorama

I'm not really in Philadelphia, I'm in Bensalem, which isn't the most attractive little city in the world. The window of my fourth-floor hotel room is quite wide, and the view really isn't very attractive -- until the sunset started, and I saw the most beautiful display of gold, pink, white and blue.

And I realized that even though I like my cozy-bear-cave basement apartment very much (when it's not under water), it would be nice to see the sky more than I do.

The Road Show is over. We did two performances today, and are all heartily sick of hearing it. We're going to meet in the hotel lounge in thirty minutes, and the VP is going to give out the gifts that the Comms Manager (hereafter to be known as "CC" the "Comms Chick") and I bought last Saturday. Then dinner out at a local Italian restaurant, then bed. Tomorrow morning we have a tour of this center, followed by two focus groups. Only one for me, since I'm on an earlier flight.

I'm facing more than six hours of flying tomorrow. I called the travel agent to find out how much it would cost to upgrade to first class for the second (4+ hour) leg of the trip, thinking I'd be willing to expend $100-150. But I found out that upgrading just the one leg would (for reasons that make no sense to me) bump the entire itinerary to an unacceptable level.

I'm looking forward to seeing my daughter tomorrow.

My New Nickname

Let's see if I can make a long story short. . .

The presents were very well received this evening. So well received, in fact, that I felt very good about the whole thing. The VP got hugs, people were so pleased. I suppose I could reflect on the fact that she didn't really pick them out, and so there was a certain level of dishonesty, but there was such delight it seems extremely petty to even think about it.

But before the gifts, two of the directors handed out nicknames to all of us. During the session today, one of them had done a spontaneous dance she called the "Snake." (You had to have been there.) Someone else on the team called out, "That's what your nickname will be now: Snake." She was so bored by sitting through eveyone else's presentations for the umpteenthh time that she decided she would create new nicknames for all the rest of us too.

In the lounge, she announced each nickname and we had to guess who it was. It turned out that I was "Host."

"Host?" I repeated blankly.

She reminded me that a day or two ago, during a discussion of pregnancy, I had chimed in my affirmation when someone referred to an unborn child as a parasite. "That's what I called my daughter when I was pregnant," I told them. That stuck with M.

"Also," she told me, "the rest of us feed off of your energy!"

"Just remember," I replied, "Ripley had a very big gun." [You all get the Aliens reference, right?]

So now my office nickname is Ripley.

Miss V's is "Friday." As in Girl Friday.

People have very seldom given me nicknames, but I like this one. I also think that people were tickled enough by the nicknames that they are going to be used.

I finally get to have a kick-ass nickname.

I think I need a new icon for my work posts.