Even though I slept a reasonable amount last night, I was exhausted today; I felt like falling asleep in the big boss's staff meeting, even though doing it from Dublin meant that I could call in from the much more reasonable hours of 4-6pm rather than getting into the office early. I would have gone to bed an hour ago, but I'm trying to return to my old diligent workhorse self, and so I agreed to do a 10:30pm conference call tonight to discuss some pressing issues with one of the projects I'm working on.
Woe is me, I know. Today wasn't all bad; in fact, other than my exhaustion and my lingering cough (sniff sniff), it was quite good. I had some time in the morning to catch up on email, and then I had a lot of good meetings, including lunch with a guy I work with pretty closely but usually only see on videoconference, and a catch-up cup of tea with my old friend Darragh (he's 'grand', as they say here). Then, I managed to get out of the office a little after 6:30 (after a frustrating 6-6:30pm meeting that got completely hijacked by a different agenda item, and when I finally asked at 6:25 whether we were going to get to the item that I was there for, the person running the meeting said, "I'm meeting with the big boss about this later today, so let's table the discussion until tomorrow." I would have reached through the VC and killed him if it were technically possible and I wouldn't go to jail (I'm convinced I would not do well in prison).
Anyway, after getting out of work, I met up with Alaska Matt and his lovely wife Kia for an extended dinner at a restaurant overlooking Grand Canal, ideally located between the office and my hotel (and only a few steps from their apartment). Long-time readers will remember that Alaska Matt was one of the expats in India with me; he later went on to spend significant time in India and Japan, and he and Kia have been in Dublin for almost a year at this point. We had a lovely dinner, with much discussion of the relative merits of Alaska and Iowa, a lot of burning jealousy on my part regarding how much they've gotten to travel, quite a few ridiculous jokes and stories, etc. However, the most random part of the meal was the waiter. The first glass of water that he brought me was cracked, so he brought me another one -- and this glass turned out to be pretty badly chipped on one side. I probably would have drank it anyway (or not drank it, since I hate water), but Matthew looked askance at that idea and I realized that what I thought was an ice chip on the side was actually a glass chip. Finally, I gave in to pressure, and when the waiter came by again, I started to say, "I hate to say anything, but..." at which point he cut me off and said, "then don't say anything," and walked away. And I mean *really* walked away -- it didn't come off as a joke when he walked away and didn't return for five minutes. But, when he did come back, he asked me what I was going to say, and he did bring me a third glass of water, so I guess we made up.
So dinner was lovely, although it made me miss them more than ever. We parted ways a little after nine p.m., and I came home and did my conference call (in my pajamas, with a sweater over them to mask the fact that I was in my pajamas, since it was a videoconference). Now, after slogging a bit more, I really need to sleep; I only woke up in the middle of the night once last night, and I'm predicting that I'll do so again tonight, but hopefully I'll get to sleep again quickly. Goodnight!
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