Month: October 2003

California recall election. Not much to do now other than sit back and wait for the results. And read the Sacramento Bee’s Recall Fly On The Wall blog.
My money is on a yes vote in the recall ballot by a narrow margin (possibly even after a recount), and then Arnie winning the election, largely thanks to the huge number of absentee votes posted before all the recent mudslinging. Bustamante will be second.

Actually, I could get used to dieting. Tonight: smoked salmon salad with lemon and mint dressing, followed by fresh fruit salad, all home-made, of course. Delicious.

Well, the diet has officially begun. I weighed-in this morning at 13st 10lbs (that’s 192lbs for the Americans, or 87.2kg for those who work in metric), and set a target of 12st 10lbs (178lbs or 80.8kg) to be reached by 2nd December – eight weeks from today. I’ve got off to a bad start by having four of mum’s home-made cheese scones for lunch, so it’ll have to be just salad for tea I think. This could be harder than last time.
Also, the observant amongst you will notice that my weight has not quite got to the level at which I started when I dieted last year. My start weight last year was 13st 13lbs, so I’ve managed to keep below that, even though my lifestyle has definitely got less healthy since then.

It looks highly likely that Steve Coppell will leave Brighton to go to the Reading manager’s job. This would be very bad for Brighton, undoubtedly, but not as bad as if he were to be replaced by Glenn Hoddle (shudder). Dark days ahead, which is a shame now that we are at the head of Division Two.

Beer tonight, believe it or not, with Paul F, listening to jazz courtesy of Nette and Lou. Nette has a most beautiful voice, and Lou is pretty handy with the guitar. Great for time-zone-confused people.

Virtual Stapler, via Weebl. How handy.
And speaking of Weebl, there’s a new Weebl and Bob that we need to watch in order to understand the next episode, due later this week.

Now back home. Expect a resumption of near-normal service.

(Written during the course of Sunday…)

Airport blogging. Charlotte-Douglas Airport.
I’m absolutely knackered. I don’t think I’ve drunk so much in one weekend in my entire life. We got back to the hotel at some absurdly late hour, having toured a couple of bars in Charlotte with some absolutely fabulous people, particularly Anna, Alicia, Dwight, Jason and Claire – they really looked after us brilliantly and made sure we had a great time. I gave away a shedload of my business cards to complete strangers, and apparently we arranged to meet a girl in London next weekend that Dwight just randomly accosted in the bar and said "Hey! I want you to meet these guys! They’re from England!" We called this a "Dwight moment". Dwight is a huge bloke, 50% bald, with a totally disarming and engaging manner. He creates Dwight moments with people completely at random. A few years ago he had a moment with an extraordinarily beautiful woman in a bar, and she fell for him entirely. That was Alicia and they’ve recently married. Lucky bastard! Maybe I need to start creating a few Graham moments.
Actually, I don’t remember big chunks of last night’s events at all, and Neil, Kev and I sat over breakfast this morning trying to piece everything together. Unfortunately, all I have is a set of pieces, few of which actually fit together into any sort of order. I think they are the same, and we kept having "Oh, and what about the Siegfried and Roy conversation?" and "What about when you told that woman about meeting the Duke of Edinburgh?" discussions, not to mention "do you remember the ‘to ming is a verb’ discussion?"
Anyway, I can’t sit here looking at this any more, as I’m simply too tired. I have got to the airport very early, so can relax here and have a nap. Earlier, I took a stroll around the Uptown area of Charlotte and rattled off a few pictures which I will share with you, before zipping here in a stretch limo (well, you have to do these things in style you know!).
More later.

UPDATE: Dallas-Fort Worth Airport.
Well, the Dallas skyline doesn’t look quite like it used to in the titles of the TV show (cue bad impressions of Larry Hagman talking about the way his "Daddy" used to do things, and Ken Kercheval just acting badly). The airport, however, matches the state of Texas by being absolutely vast. AA have three whole terminals here to themselves – there are silver aircraft as far as the eye can see. I’ve just walked from the far end of terminal C to the middle of terminal A, eschewing the option of taking the trAAin. That’s how vast this place is – the airline actually have their own rapid transit system within the airport to move people around just between their own gates. Apparently, Delta, Continental and all the other airlines have their facilities away in other parts of this enormous airport, which, as you approach it by air, you can see is about the size of a small English county (and that isn’t much of an exaggeration).
However, in spite of its vast size, and in common with Charlotte, there are no power points here to enable me to power the laptop, so I’m glad I charged the battery fully before I left the hotel, as I’ve got another hour and a half here, and it’s good to be able to plug the headphones in and get some audio entertainment to block out the sounds of the place. St Louis, San Francisco and Los Angeles all feature them, and dead useful they are too. However, there is WiFi available here, and I’m becoming increasingly convinced that it might be useful to have functionality on the laptop. Mind you, that assumes I could get it to work. I had problems with the high speed net access at the Marriott in Charlotte – I couldn’t send email, as access to both the SMTP servers that I normally use did not seem to be working. It cost US$9.99 per day, but that probably makes it comparable to the Net2Roam costs that I would have incurred. I also doubt that it was working at the claimed 10mbps, as it seemed to be slower than my home 512k broadband access.
I’ve just taken another Advil, but this time not to combat the hangover (which has nicely abated), but to deal with my cold symptoms, which seem to be getting steadily worse. Getting a short nap on the flight from Charlotte helped though.
The weather here is disappointingly cloudy, so the view towards downtown Dallas isn’t as good as it might be. And, frankly, you’re not going to see much anyway, as there isn’t a good line of sight available – the outside of the terminal is cluttered with airbridges, aircon kit, pylons and goodness knows what else, which not only diminishes the view, but means that the interior of the terminals are much more dependent on artificial light. It’s not a great airport design – I can see why people don’t like it. Charlotte, on the other hand, has a clean and simple, elegant and functional design, that was highly usable.
Hmm. Maybe I need to start an airport review section. My favourite airport that I’ve been through is, undoubtedly, Santa Barbara. It’s small with a good atmosphere. Of the bigger airports, Barcelona would probably be my favourite. Functional, with a little bit of character too.
Oh well, homeward bound. Apparently it’s turned chilly at home, but having played my long sleeve shirt card on Saturday morning at the luncheon for out-of-towners at Cynthia’s house (nice lady – though one of those aggressively single late fortysomethings, but great fun), I’m left with a rather light Claiborne black short sleeved t-shirt to withstand 12 degrees Celsius. Not well planned. Still, the pimptastic jacket should come to my rescue.
One thing is for sure – when I get back, I need to do something serious about weight loss. I’ve been quietly accruing pounds over the last few weeks and months, and this trip has really compounded matters due to the vast quantities of food and drink consumed. So, I’ll be off beer and on vodka slimlines, off lard and on lettuce, and off my butt and out walking. And I’ll log my progress in the sidebar of this site – I’m going to work on the same basis as the last time, losing around two pounds each week. To cut myself a little slack, my aim will be to lose 14 pounds (one stone) in eight weeks. I’ll have a weigh-in on Tuesday morning. Anyone up for joining me?
Right, time to go find a bottle of water for the flight (at least there is no shortage of stores here), and then get some reading and people-watching done. I’ll publish this when I get home.

This morning, I don’t have a hangover. I’m still drunk. I’m sure the hangover will kick in later. And my voice seems to have been replaced in the night with that of Mike Reid. "Pat! Pat!" – or, alternatively – "Runaround!"
(Nobody outside of the UK will understand that).
The ceremony yesterday really was excellent – it was so obvious that David and Andi totally love each other – and the food and drink at the reception was also brilliant. And the pubs that we went to afterwards were great too, with utterly brilliant people – I hope I can keep in touch with them.

Urf. I have a mighty hangover. Outside, hundreds of people are running past the hotel in part of a charity event for breast cancer charities. Inside, my head is buzzing, the direct result of mixing beer, wine and champers – never a good idea.
Today – food and gladhanding, then the ceremony and reception. Looking forward to Neil arriving halfway through the ceremony.