Mowing the Lawn

I'm feeling strangely nostalgic as my trip nears an end. Perhaps "nostalgia" is the wrong word. That's a longing for the past. What is it called when you long for the present? What is it called when you feel emotion for a place that you know will someday become a memory? I suppose it's a type of anticipatory nostalgia. I'm sure I'll be back, perhaps even this year. But the writing is on the wall. My days traveling to the UK for business are numbered. It's difficult to manage clients in the UK from Seattle. With the eight hour time difference, many of the people I need to talk to and work with are in the office from midnight to eight AM when I should be asleep. There are just too many late nights and early mornings with long days in between. For the past year, I've been working to hire a team that can be based in the UK. My boss has always been based here. We've now been able to fill seven of the other eight positions. The only thi...

After 24 hours in the cocoon I call the Marriott Maida Vale, I finally emerged a few minutes ago for fresh air, exercise and food. I've done far too much sitting around and staring at a computer. It's strange this is what I call work. This sitting, typing, talking, thinking, writing. That's the new reality on the edge of cyberspace. It doesn't feel right to call it work sometimes. It doesn't burn enough calories. It doesn't get me dirty enough. A stain on a shirt every now and again when I spill something at lunch. What does it say that my clothes are so clean as to make a stain look out of place? If my hands are clean, if my palms are without callus, have I really created something of worth? There is danger when we stop being part of the creative process. There is danger to the human spirit when we can't see the product of our own hands. When we become just one step in a process, just one role in a factory, we stop being fully human. We are com...

London | 6:55 PM It's been a long time coming. Assuming nothing goes wrong between now and midnight, I'm only five hours from being able to launch the project that has been keeping me up at nights (with work, not so much with worry). Update | 12:15 AM Here we go. The first sign that something is happening. Update | 6:35 AM What a day (and a night). We were in labor for 4.5 hours, but at 4:45 this morning I helped give birth to a brand new web site for Mothercare . This is what has been occupying the majority of my professional life for most of the past nine months. Perhaps I'll write about it sometime, but not now. I've been awake for 24 hours. I need to get some sleep. The site will probably need feeding in a few hours.

Maida Vale | 7:20 PM I've decided not so sit around the hotel for the evening. I received a phone call from work not long after returning from the launderette. After 30 minutes or so talking on the phone and answering email, it was starting to feel too much like just another weekday. I need a break. Kilburn Park Park Underground Station | 7:30 PM I'm surrounded by people speaking Eastern European languages. Maybe it's Polish. There's a news dispenser outside the tube station for the Polska Gazeta . The promotional sign reads "Polish language only. Don't bother if you can't read Polish." I won't bother. It was nice of the publishers to spare me the trouble. In any case, I have all eight pages of the London Weekend Hotel Edition of the USA Today to help pass the time on the tube. It's supposed to contain the best stuff from USA Today over the past week. I'm impressed they were able to find eight pages. Interestingly, it contain...

On a scale from zero to three, with zero being best and three deserving adjectives like "abject" and "utter", this has been a 2 Tasty Kebab week. Tasty Kebab is the kebab and chip stand next to the train station a few blocks from my hotel. It's not great food, but it's convenient and fast--rare qualities in London dining where dinner can easily last three or more hours. The number of times I'm forced to visit Tasty Kebab is in direct relation to how busy or chaotic my week has been. (By the way, avoid the fish and chips unless you like your fish with the scales still on. Ask Braeden and Emma about it some time.) On the plus side, I was fully expecting this to be a 3 Tasty Kebab week. The fact that it stopped short at two is really rather positive. On the other hand, even a 2 Tasty Kebab week has left me so exhausted that it is now 4:30 in the afternoon and I've only been awake for a hour. I should be rushing off to the museums before they close...

My habitual clock is telling me that I'll be getting on a plane tomorrow morning to head back home. My calendar, though, reminds me that I still have six days to go. My heart, caught in the middle, is heavy. So are my eyelids. I'll wake tomorrow to a full weekend to myself in one of the world's great cities. I should be out and about. I'll probably just sleep. Maybe this time will be better. I've spent a few weekends in London on past trips. With all of the work there is to do on these trips and the difficulty of adjusting to a drastically new time zone, I'm usually too sleep deprived come the weekend to do anything but sleep. This week has been a little different. I'm still working 14+ hours a day, but I've managed to get at least five or six hours sleep each evening. So, where to go on the morrow? I can always do the tried and true. The British Museum. St. Paul's. Walk from Hyde Park to Green Park to Buckingham Palace. The Tate Modern....

I've never been one to bemoan Mondays.  Sure, I've occasionally regretted that the weekend was ending.  I get annoyed, though, by people who act like Monday is the end of the world instead of just the start of another week.  These annoyers are probably the ones buying up all of the infernal posters showing a kitten clinging to a branch with the caption "Hold on.  Friday's coming." If I were a superhero (which I'm not) and I had a kryptonic weakness (which I don't), it would be cat posters with cutesy sayings.  I'm not talking about the kind of weakness that makes you give into temptation like having a weakness for chocolate or babies.  I mean the kind of weakness that makes you lose your temper or become irrationally irate.  Of course, can a hatred of cat posters really be called irrational?  I puts it to you, guv'nor. Back to Mondays.  More specifically, Mondays in London.  The problem with Mondays here is that they never seem to fully start or fu...