Thursday, December 31, 2009

ketchup, part two

It was a surprise to me when a long-time client wanted to fly me to Paris last month for a meeting with him, but -- hey -- it's Paris and it's a good client, so why not? He said that Jerry was welcome to come also (paying his own way, of course), and when has Jerry ever turned down a travel offer? So off we went, via Air France, in business class.

I had been to Paris once before, Jerry multiple times, so we had seen the basic tourist stuff: this time we could just get to know the city better. My client wined and dined us, had a driver pick us up and drop us off, and we spent some time at some very high-end places. He put us up in a very nice hotel, not far from the Champs Elysses, and we stayed a couple extra days at a hotel in the Latin Quarter. We got to know some new neighborhoods, got really good at taking the Metro, all in all a trip that was very Paris. Came back, Paris to New York, on the new Airbus 380, which was phenomonal...

Then, soon after we got back, we had a trip planned to Tucson, Arizona -- a pre-busy season, relatively warm getaway. I had never spent more than ten minutes in Arizona and had low expectations, but Tucson turned out to be a good match for us: un-pretentious, easy to navigate, plenty of access to the desert sun.

And then back to the Siberian Minnesota winter, which is where we are now... Temperatures for tonight, New Year's Eve, could hit minus 15 degrees.

And I'm done catching up. Anything from here on will be current and will hopefully not include any references to Tiger Woods or to the disintegration of the Minnesota Vikings.

Happy New Year to all! I'm hoping that 2010 will be more settled than 2009 was.

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