wizard of the moon

I had a fabulous day in Ann Arbor, despite my almost complete lack of sleep. I slept <4 hours on the plane last night, awoke groggily at 4:45am Pacific time (7:45am Eastern) as we were getting ready to land in Detroit, and then had to find my reserved taxi and make it to the Ann Arbor office in time for our morning's meetings. The meetings throughout the day were pretty good; I was pretty proud of myself when, during the icebreak survival game, I convinced the team I was on that one of the five items we should take to a desert island was an 'enormous bucket of Legos' -- because the bucket could be used to carry/store water, and the Legos could be used as entertainment and to build useful things. I was v. proud of myself and think I demonstrated what it takes to be a manager.

After wrapping up for the day, a bunch of us crashed a happy hour for some of the other managers in the Ann Arbor office. We chatted for a couple of hours, enjoyed the Irish-pub atmosphere, and generally bonded, before the other two team leads from California and I adjourned to have dinner at a posh restaurant down the street.

However, there's a plumbers' and pipelayers' convention in town this week, which is why we had trouble finding rooms, and the restaurant we wanted to go to was participating in this downtown 'block party' for the convention. They blocked off a stretch of one of the main roads in town, played live music, and showed some great antique cars. The weather was perfect, so when we were told that it would be over an hour before we could get a table, we grabbed seats outside the bar next door and drank (Guinness, in my case) until our table was ready. Two other people who are friends with one of my team leads showed up, and the five of us had an absolutely marvelous time.

Then we went into the restaurant, and the marvelous time turned downright hysterical. It was also delicious -- I had one of the best french onion soups I've ever had, followed by an absolutely perfect filet mignon, and paired with a fabulous, expensive bottle of wine shared by the table. I'm extremely happy with the team I'm working with; I feel that the three of us have struck up some instant rapport, helped along by the camaraderie we developed tonight over several glasses of wine and beer. And I laughed harder, longer, than I have in a long time, so that says something about tonight's festivities.

Now, though, I'm desperate for sleep -- during the only break of the afternoon, I actually took a twelve-minute nap in my temporary Ann Arbor office. I just hope that the people sitting outside that office, who belong to the team that I am now involved in, don't recognize me and realize I'm the California lead -- I turned off the light, shut the door, laid facedown on the floor, spread my pashmina over me, and actually fell asleep. It was just enough to keep me going the rest of the afternoon, but I don't want to repeat that misery. The only bad thing about today was that I didn't get to watch any Olympics at all :( But Ann Arbor is totally gorgeous -- I could see myself living here, which is v. interesting, so I'll have to come back someday when I have time to explore and am not just looking forward to getting back to watching the Olympics with Tammy in the evil city. Sigh. Goodnight!