what day/country/time is it?

Well, this afternoon finds me here in Calgary. It's been a busy few days. My last post was the 19th, and I was going to post-date some posts, but apparently that confuses folks that use newsreaders so I will summarize here instead.

The 19th was my last day in the office in Paris for this segment of my commute, and a couple of the guys there and I went into the city proper to an Irish pubs to consume too many pints of Guinness. I have French lessons 3x/week for 2 hours/day, but I am far from able to appreciate humor or make jokes/participate in banter. Likewise, the guys speak English far better than I French, but it takes a long time being forced to function in a language to appreciate nuance, etc. In any event, it was fun.

The 20th I flew back to Houston, saw SHG for about 10 minutes and promptly went to bed. The 21st, yesterday, we went to retrieve a dining room table and big TV (42"!!) that he and I bough respectively from my boss, who is leaving the company and moving to Buenes Aeires. The day rapidly deteriorated with the news that SHG's cat's earlier health issues are signs of cancer. There's not a whole lot I can do, but be understanding: I had a German Shepherd that died of cancer when I was 25 after a previous major health incident a year earlier. And of course I have my zoo now. It's a tough time for SHG, and I know what's he's going through.

Today, I came up to Calgary for a few days. I am taking a break to eat and clear my mind before embarking on a few hours of work to prepare for tomorrow. OK, more than a few hours. I have everything done, I just have to rearrange and repackage it as appropriate for the customer. I made the realization on the plane ride up that the reason the movies suck on domestic/shortish-haul flights suck is because that they need to be general audience because everybody sees the monitors, you do not have your own screen like on an international flight. Anyway, I stuck to my book and slept as usual.

I'll be back in TX for a couple of weeks before heading back to France. I have a little more time to post here when home because in France I am doing my job there and my job here, so it's long, long days - most of my work days were about 13-14 hours. I hope for that to drop off a bit. Also, I still do not have stable high-speed internet in my apartment there. Feh.