Just another day…. show, tear down, eat dinner, sleep. Nothing special to report. Dinner in the hotel restaurant was an elaborate 2 hour affair. Bah. So much for packing – I’m packing by the cram-it-all-in method.

I seem to have turned a corner on business trips. This trip feels different. I guess maybe the travel part is less worrying to me, and I’m getting more comfortable with wandering around alone. I’m still not comfortable enough to eat in real restaurants alone, which is why it’s nice that my coworkers will eat with me. We just didn’t all arrive on the same night for this trip.

More to come later… at the moment it’s just the start of the day.

Later:

We had dinner at an Indian restaurant that was right around the corner from our hotel. The food was very good, but again, way too much for the two of us.

After dinner I stopped at the Container Store, since it is my last chance. Tomorrow night will be busy and I leave early on Wednesday. I did manage to “contain” myself (that was for you, Brian), but I bought two measurement conversion magnets and a steel shaker with a lid (for cinnamon and sugar) that I’ve had my eye on. They did not have the little gadgets that I went in for. I’ll have to go to the one in Schaumburg or order them online. I didn’t make it over to Sur La Table, which is a little disappointing…. I’ll have to see if there’s a convenient one in Chicago.

The food here at the exhibit hall may be the best I’ve had in all the US halls. It’s nothing special, to be sure, but it’s EDIBLE! It still costs way more than it should. I can hardly complain since there are options immediately outside the convention center. We’re just too busy to go that far.

It sprinkled and rained all day. Tonight after the show two of us went to Le Colonial, a French Vietnamese restaurant. I had the filet main dish and we split an appetizer platter, a side of rice, and a side of beans. We also had dessert. I should have said no to dessert, but a bite of chocolate sounded appealing (just not the whole cake). The coconut rice was amazing. I want to learn to make that. The beans were also delicious. The steak was delicious, the salmon I sampled from my companion’s plate was also tasty. No complaints except my overly full belly. It was probably more than I’ll ever spend on dinner on my own, but I was along for the ride on this one, and boy was it good! There is a Le Colonial in Chicago, but the menu is different. I’m sure it’s still excellent.

Did I mention that it was a 15 minute walk straight uphill to get there? Worth it, but I was so out of breath when we sat down. At least after we stuffed ourselves we could kind of roll downhill. The neighborhood was not someplace I’d like to walk alone, but no one bothered us. It is just kind of a hint when you start seeing signs for massage parlors and adult stores.

The hotel we’re at gives out umbrellas. One of our umbrellas broke while it was in the stand at the restaurant (or another hotel guest swapped our working one for their broken one)… whatever. We passed by a sister hotel on the way down the hill and the doorman told me to go inside and exchange it. I’ve now got an umbrella with the other hotel’s logo. Hopefully they don’t mind the swap.

Setup went fine and quickly and we were done by 10 a.m. I headed back to the hotel for a little while, then headed out to tackle the BART and go to the Asian Art Museum. The BART wasn’t really necessary – I could have walked, but my feet were already tired from 2 hours of setup and I knew I’d be walking a lot around the museum, plus I just wanted to try the BART. It reminds me a lot of the U-Bahn in Germany. One of the stations I was in was connected to a Bloomingdale’s, so I wandered in there briefly (and back out). There’s an upscale grocery down there, so I may go back if I need something.

I loved the Asian Art Museum. I didn’t get the audio tour (I can’t stand those things), so I just wandered and read plaques and took pictures. I know I’m probably not getting the full educational experience, but I sure did appreciate the beauty of the pottery and sculpture. It did make me wish I knew more about the gods and goddesses and the symbolism. If I were a potter or ceramics artist I would definitely spend a lot of time drawing inspiration from this museum. Here are some gorgeous examples:

My photos don’t do them justice – the colors and detail work were amazing. I also enjoyed all of the whimsical beasties:

A proud little lion.

A cute rhinocerous.

A rather whimsical looking dog.

Ferocious beastie. The plaque says he is a spirit guardian meant to scare away grave robbers.

Another proud lion.

Representations of wind and thunder.

Angry looking diety, and to my untrained eye it looks like he’s holding a wrench.

This reminds me of Dragon

Fierce looking dragon.

I had been worried about my trip to the museum because the surrounding area is supposedly not so safe and possibly filled with homeless. I did see some probably homeless people today, particularly when I stopped at a Burger King near the main library for a drink. No one approached me and I never felt unsafe. I did have one guy ask me for directions while I was using a BART ticket machine, but unfortunately I couldn’t give him any more help than the labels already posted on the machine. I hardly look like a native. I guess I’m just friendly looking and look like an American who speaks English.

After the museum I came back to the hotel to nap – I didn’t sleep well last night because some moron knocked on my door and rattled the handle at 1 a.m. (local). I was not expecting guests, so I tried to ignore it, but it woke me up and I didn’t get back to sleep for an hour. During that time I got up to use the bathroom and stubbed my toe very hard on a bench at the foot of the bed. Argh. Stupid drunk people. Not your room!

After my nap I had a gourmet Quizno’s dinner and attempted to go to Office Depot. They were closed, but luckily one of the two Walgreen’s within a block of my hotel had lightbulbs, masking tape, and furniture wipes, along with Sno-Caps and white cheddar popcorn. Yum. I’m all set. I’ve been entertaining myself with Netflix Instant Watch this evening. I know, boring, right? I’m not much of a night-lifer at home, and I’m certainly not much of a night-lifer in a strange city by myself.

Oh yes, and my hotel clock is 20 minutes fast and there does not appear to be any way to set it. Strange.

MSN-MSP: fine – Security was very backed up, but maybe that’s just because it was all vacationers leaving on Friday afternoon (You mean I have to take my laptop out? Oh, I can’t have this large of a plastic bag full of shampoo?). At least the Madison TSA seem fairly nice about it all. There was some issue with the jetway that kept us waiting for 15 minutes standing in the jetway at Madison, but they finally fixed it. They were apparently concerned that it was rising on its own and might take the door off the plane. Hmmm. The flight was supposedly so short that serving drinks wasn’t possible. This might be true since it was a DC9-30 and larger than some of the other planes I’ve been on for that leg. Despite the delay we arrived on time, leaving me about 20 minutes to shove down some food before the next flight.

MSP-SFO: no food. I guess they stopped serving “meals”. I’m glad I shoved down that burger. I was in the second to last row where the plane narrows and the aisle is barely (and I seriously mean JUST BARELY) wide enough for the drink cart to pass. It scraped my armrest every time, and once hit the end of it quite hard. That was a jolt. The flight got rocky toward the end. Someone behind me said it was the worst landing they’d been through, but it really wasn’t too bad. I was on a trip one time where the whole plane bounced – HARD. That was worse. I can’t believe the two people sitting on the window side of me didn’t get up the whole time. I can’t sit for that long in a plane seat or my back hurts bad. I have to try to find someplace to stand without putting my butt in someone’s face, which was nearly impossible on this 757.

At SFO I got my bag without too much delay and followed the signs to find a taxi. If you’re ever in SFO, do yourself a favor and DON’T follow the signs. Just exit at the nearest door in the baggage claim. I walked all the way to where the taxi signs said to go out and I was at the wrong end of the taxi line and had to walk back almost the whole way to get to the front of the line. Durrr…. maybe this works well if there’s a huge line of folks waiting for taxis, but tonight there were more taxis than people. The taxi ride was somewhat terrifying. I admit that it was probably pretty average, but I’m not used to going 85 and weaving between people who are going 60. I had to force myself not to look forward or it freaked me out. I enjoyed the city lights. It’s easy to tell that it’s hilly here even though it’s dark – the lights on a grid in the neighborhoods kind of map out the curves.

The hotel is fine. It reminds me of another hotel I stayed at in San Jose except the lobby here is even more minimal: desk and elevators. The hotel is in part of an office building and squeezed between two national retail stores (yay, shopping!). I love that their WiFi asks for your member number so hopefully I won’t get charged and I didn’t have to go hassle the desk guys about it. On Friday night the area (4th and Market) looks pretty well populated, so if I had to grab a bite I’d feel ok about walking. Even though I ate that burger 6 hours ago I think I’ll just call it a night. Tomorrow I have to be up bright and early to go set up our booth and get our 1 hour of union labor all sorted. Joy. The upside is that I get the rest of the day to wander around. I may even try the BART.