| H eading back to the hotel, I stopped at a little Mexican place for a late dinner.
The surroundings seemed strangely familiar.
After a few moments it occurred to me that it had once been a "Hops", and that some of my more widely-flung coworkers and I had enjoyed a wonderful time after a conference there, back in the earlys days of the project. (By way of explanation, I work with a group that encompasses more or less the entire state of Florida.) I realized, sadly, that I had lost connection with practically all of the people that had enjoyed that table; that despite our efforts, the institutional knowledge and history of our project's origins had been scattered to the four winds; that, although the carnitas taco was tasty, my burrito was pretty bland. Not that the food had been spectacular when it was "Hops", mind you, but I didn't have all these unexpected bags of sadness to deal with at the time. Anyway. I ate and headed back to the hotel. I'd purchased a standalone DVD writer, a sexy silver beast, 
for the purpose of backing up my photos
to a firmer media than flash memory and a hard drive. Great plan, except Windows 2000 refused to recognize the drive.
Googling for related error messages revealed answers like, "This is the point where I usually just rebuild the machine from a source image." So at this point the machine starts taking ten minutes to boot up and randomly gives me the Blue Screen of Death™ whilst whining that it can't find some unspecified boot device. I am this close to drinking the Kool-aid and buying a Mac. Giving up on the DVD writer, I slept well, then took the hotel shuttle to the airport the next morning. |
I
caught up email in the airport hotel atrium, which is a fairly nice piece of
architecture on the inside, and large enough that birds moved about
freely. (By this time I'd checked the bag with my camera in it-- it's sparse illustrations until we
unpack in Ohio, Gentle Reader.)
The flight north was routine. I requested, and was granted, an exit aisle row for the extra leg room. Sharing the seat row with me was a gentleman who was the spi't'n'image of yet another person who worked on my project. It wasn't him, but I had to ask him to be sure. Indianapolis, where I began this life, was grey and gloomy. A passel of bad storms had harassed the area the day before and left lingering low-hanging clouds in its wake. Tremendous construction was underway at the airport where my father worked; a new terminal was being built about a mile to the west, and talk was that FedEx might buy the existing terminal for its own use. Taking the back roads (and how do I still remember them?), I drove past the schools I would have attended, had the family retained Hoosier status, and was struck once again by the fundamental practicality of the midwest. Florida schools strive to be soaring works of architecture and design. Midwest schools look like prisons-- squat, square, functional, efficient. From all indications, Indiana's student performance far outpaces our own. Another example of midwest practicality: Near my old house, there is (and always has been) a jog where the roads don't quite meet. If you miss the jog, your car's in the ditch and you're hailing a tow truck. Not to worry, though: there are a couple of yellow signs with diagonal black stripes to warn you about the ditch. In Florida, they'd have warning signage in every direction for a hundred meters-- or more likely they'd've just filled it in. The midwestern solution is far more practical: "Don't drive into the ditch." |
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