turn your face away from the garish light of day

I am going to be so dead tomorrow -- it's one a.m., and I wanted to go to bed three hours ago, but alas I have too much work to do. Today was good overall despite not sleeping well last night; I made it to Mountain View in time for the 8am start of the half-day big-boss staff meeting I had to attend, and was even able to get breakfast and caffeine beforehand (so key). I sat in that stuffy, increasingly warm room until around 1:30pm, and then worked my ass off without rest all afternoon to prepare stuff for a check-in with the big boss at 5:30pm. We checked in (verdict: everything done so far is great, but there are miles to go before I sleep), and then everyone who had been at the staff meeting left for a senior staff dinner at Sundance Steakhouse.

I'm surprised that I've never been to Sundance; it's the closest steakhouse to Stanford campus, so considering that I went to Stanford and then lived around there for over four years, it's a little odd that I never made it there. However, I suppose I was poor when I was a student, and many of my friends are vegetarians, so I really never had occasion to go there. Verdict: the appetizers were great, I had a great glass of pinot noir (in fact, when the finance lead asked me "what is it?", I said "delicious"), and my prime rib and baked potato were great, but I was increasingly annoyed that it took almost an hour between appetizers and the main course. Granted, a couple of people ordered soup/salad...but their dishes had been cleared for at least twenty minutes before the entrees showed up. I thought this was unacceptable, but that's probably because I needed to get back to the city, and I had not bargained on a 2.5hr dinner. However, it was fun to hang out outside of the office with the people I spent so much time with on vc, so I suppose it was worth it.

I came home and promptly turned on the Olympics, but I've barely watched tonight's coverage because I've been so focused on my evil laptop. Tomorrow won't be any better; I have to slog furiously all day if I'm going to be ready for Wednesday, and I have class tomorrow night that I don't want to skip since I missed the last two, so it's unlikely that I'll be able to watch coverage tomorrow night. We shall see what we shall see -- but for now, wish me luck in my quest to pull off this summit that I'm planning. If I survive to the end of day on Thursday, I'm taking Friday off and just booked spa treatments (using the gift certificate the big boss gave me after the last conference I planned), so this weekend is looking lovely. Goodnight!