I’m spending four days in Austin at a training session for our new Customer Relationship Management software. 8:30 to 5:00 pm in a classroom for four days in a row. I can’t remember the last time I spent one full day in class, let alone four. It’s a very good course, though.
This is my second visit to Austin, but I don’t really have the time or the energy to do any sight seeing. The last time I was here was for World Fantasy Convention a few years ago. Didn’t get to see anything then, either. I’ll have to come back here some time when I can actually be here. It’s only a three hour drive from where I live. It just seems a long way off. My one impression of the city this time is that you have to drive past your destination on the highway and make a U-turn to go back to it more often than not. Just about every route I’ve mapped on Google maps has involved at least one U-turn.
I wrote my Storytellers Unplugged essay in the hotel room last night and put it up on the dashboard for automatic posting tomorrow morning. I also wrote the first draft of another essay last night. I can’t finish it until I get back home because I didn’t bring all the reference material I need, but at least I figured out what I was going to write about, which is a big step ahead of where I was two days ago.
I’m reading Eclipse by Richard North Patterson. I’ve had it on the nightstand for quite a while, but kept picking other books to read first. I read one of Patterson’s books before (he’s not to be confused with James Patterson), also while I was in a hotel room, although that one was in Caracas, Venezuela, and remember enjoying it. This one is quite good, too. It’s set in a mythical African country that might as well be Nigeria. No, it’s not about e-mail scandals, but about how US oil companies play ball with corrupt local officials to keep the oil supply flowing in our direction, because if we didn’t it would only flow to China instead. The main character is an American lawyer who gets sucked into the case of a member of one of the country’s oppressed factions, a man who has grown to be a pacifist leader against the brutal regime. He’s accused of orchestrating the murder of three oil company employees as a way of discrediting him. The lawyer is trying to figure out how to save the man’s life–his kangaroo trial is the prelude to a certain execution. Good stuff–one of the most complicated trial thrillers I’ve ever read.
The Amazing Racers are having a blast in Russia. A cold blast, that is. Running through the streets of Siberia in their skivvies–what a challenge. I thought Phil’s eyebrow was going to go through the roof when he saw some of them run in to the pit stop. The Unit was pretty good this week, too, though if I’d been a member of the team, I would have punched out the guy in the cold storage truck and the annoying man in the apartment.
