jetset/lag blues

Flew the red eye to London over Sunday night / Monday morning. Fortunately I was able to sleep in my coach window seat for about...4 hours total? I dunno, combining three interrupted naps. The crappy thing about flying that far east is that hours of your day / night literally vanish into thin air. The flight took off at 8:40pm, Mountain Time, and landed in London at lunch time, 12:30pm the next day. But the flight was just under 9 hours and I felt like I had slept sitting up for only a few. Because I had.

It's a good thing I slept a bit on the plane, because last night, Monday night, I was up all night waiting and working on materials for a client meeting today, and finally closed my eyes just before 5am, then woke up every 45 minutes to check my email for the the next 4 hours, before taking a shower and going to the office.

So today, Tuesday, I'm a wee bit tired. Tired I can handle. What's really annoying is that right around dinner time (it's now 6pm in London), my eyes still sting a little, I'm still breathing heavily (a not very commonly portrayed symptom of being really tired - I sigh a lot), but mentally, I've been active and firing enough of the day now that I'm warmed up and it's going to be hard to slow down to go to sleep. So now I'm finding myself in the place where I should go to bed soon and just sleep through the night, but I'll be lucky if I get to bed before midnight.

UPDATE: 7:50pm. 

After an invigorating urban walk to the grocery store and then home, I felt even more awake. Made and ate a delicious burger and salad. Ate. Glorious food coma coming on. There may be hope for me tonight after all

UPDATE 7:51pm. Bon Iver's "Re: Stacks" just came on shuffle. I think if I listen to this song over and over again, I could sleep. Love that song. Buy it today. So beautiful and simple. That's my plan tonight. Re: Stacks on repeat and a Tylenol PM. 

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Boulder show on Wednesday.

Laughing Goat poster.pdf Download this file

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So cliché.

We spend a lot of effort trying to be unique and avoiding clichés. I just (mostly inadvertently) had the most cliché Boulder / Happy Valley experience and decided that cliché isn't so bad. I want more cliché.

I drove my Subaru to go fly fishing at the neighborhood Louisville, CO lake. So cliché.

Then there I was, fly fishing in my plaid shirt and trucker hat. So cliché.

As I was wrapping up, I enjoyed the perfect weather and gorgeous sunset over Boulder and the Indian Peaks Wilderness. So cliché.

I walked around the lake, back to my Subaru and said hi to two friends from the neighborhood that happened to be there. So cliché.

I put the key in the ignition and opened up the car doors before I broke down my fly rod and, of course, Nick Drake's Pink Moon was playing on the stereo. So cliché.

So I happily drove home to my happy, beautiful wife and happy, loyal Black Labrador. So cliché.

We wanted pizza. So we're going to go get delicious pizza. So cliché. (Okay, that's just super cliché for me, and I never plan to fight it.)

I'm gladly cliché. At least around here.

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home by toothpicks

Thanks to my cousin Anna for finding this. This man's creation and creativity blew me away. He did a great job of capturing the stories of the San Francisco Bay.

<p>Scott Weaver's Rolling through the Bay from Learning Studio on Vimeo.</p>

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Cheddar, Somerset, England

I love cheese. This was fun visiting Cheddar, seeing how they still make cheese in small batches by hand and age them in the Cheddar Gorge's caves with its constant humidity. Tasty stuff. 

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The secret to temporary happiness

Sent from my Windows Phone

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More Munich / Salzburg / Hallstatt photos

In a previous post, i shared some of the simple photos I took with my phone. Now, all the real photos from our 3-day weekend can be see on my facebook page here, along with some commentary.

Here are a few selects.

London Symphony Orchestra

The LSO last night was amazing. Jaime and I were really blown away and felt like we witnessed something truly world class.

There was one point during Stravinsky's "The Firebird" when the intense inferno movement starts and I nearly jumped out of my seat. I was listening and reading the Program(me) notes, when the sudden BANG! hits and if I had coke and a popcorn, I would have been sharing them with the nice folks three rows back and maybe the double basses on the stage in front of us.

They also played this Suite called "Fire and Blood" inspired by the "Detroit Industry" mural by Diego Rivera. It's by an American composer and he was in the audience and got a huge applause when he made his stage call after his piece. It had tons of brake drum clanks and ratchets and fun percussion, plus mariachi band-esque Mexican influence (based on Rivera and his wife), and a mind boggling violin solo throughout one of the movements. Read more about it from the perspective of the conductor, here.

Jaime really liked watching the conductor - he was having fun up there. Kind of like this kid (you should watch this all the way through).

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Freedom

William Wallace was dragged behind a horse to Smithfield Market, steps from where I work in London, then hung, drawn and quartered here. Right next to an Anglican church that's been here since 1123.

That kind of stuff just isn't around the corner from the office in the States.

And in a weird way, that's why I like the States, especially the west. Relatively unspoiled country, well cared for by Natives until we showed up. No Anglo-Saxon ancient history tickling your feet at every corner. You can go to the grocery store, then drive into the true wilderness

Still, this is pretty cool.

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Munich/Salzburg/Hallstatt trip

I'm sitting on the Stansted Express train to go back to central London from the airport. I thought I'd post a few camera phone shots from one of the coolest weekends I've had in a long time. I'll let the photos speak for themselves and provide more commentary from my computer, along with nicer DSLR photos later.

Sent from my Windows Phone

See the full gallery on Posterous

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