Alberto and I got home yesterday from spending a week and a half in Houston.
He went to do the tile job that Mr/Mrs Frink had asked for, and I went to work in the Houston ePartners office and also to touch base with as many clients and contractors of Backstage Presence as possible.
The trip went really well! The Frinks found us to be good houseguests, we found them to be even better hosts, and everyone had a grand old time.
I also got to touch base with some friends - Alex arranged for a small group of us to meet up at The Flat, which was a very cool kind of ambient loungy kind of place with yummy frozen mojitos! People who came out were Alex, Bartek/Edyta, Brenda (another bro), Nicol (Alex's friend who is going to work for me :D ), and we also saw Kai at West Gray Cafe. It was a ot of fun and everyone enjoyed themselves. Thanks for putting the group together Alex!
I also got to see Tarush there! That was a nice surprise - he drove in from Dallas on Saturday night just to see me and also met up with us at the Flat :) That's a good big bro! He also got to meet Alberto which was an added plus. Thank you for coming to town!!
We also got to spend an evening with Bartek and Edyta and learned more about what has been happening in their lives, and also a little more about Polish geography. Edyta made a very yummy traditional Polish meal for dinner which I repeated 50 times but now cannot remember - but it was really good with egg noodles and mushrooms and onion and herbs and spices and other things that I can't recall. Thank you for the lovely dinner!
Backstage Presence had a great barbecue on Sunday that Gene and the Fashionable Events crew helped us put together. It was a small group, but just the right size and everyone got to hang out and chat with each other in a non-work, non-stress setting. It's nice to do that every once in a while!
I also gave Tracy a thank you gift for everything that she's done with Backstage Presence, and I think she liked it :)
We got to have dinner with Brent and Andrea at Collina's, got tipsy on wine and great pizza and then went back to their place to play some high stakes poker. Ok, so it wasn't very high stakes, but we all had fun and Andrea ended up kicking everyone's ass!
One special treat was being able to see someone I haven't seen in many years, and who happened to find me on the internet a week before we were flying out. That was Gina, one of my old friends from Girl Scouts, and her now 10-year old daughter Kyra. I haven't seen them since Kyra was maybe 2 years old, and quite a lot has changed.
Kyra is absolutely beautiful, and is also very tall. She looks quite a bit like Xavier (but only the good parts! :) ) but she has Gina's razor sharp wit. She is clearly extremely intelligent and is also a very loving sweet girl. I was really happy to see her and be able to witness the young woman she is turning into.
We spent the evening getting caught up on what each other was up to - and then we went to a party that happened to be going on across the street! Everyone there was Mexican so Alberto immediately felt right at home and it was just a matter of minutes before he and Trevor were off to the garage for some tequila shots and beer.
Those guys were really nice, and also stuffed our tummies full of food. It didn't matter one bit that we told them we had just eaten fajitas - they wouldn't take no for an answer as they handed up shrimp cocktail and carnita tacos, along with some fresh and very cold beer. Who am I to cause trouble? ;)
An hour and a half later, we mosied back across the street and wrapped up the evening.
The ePartners office is just across the street from the Galleria, so I got to enjoy walking to Starbucks for coffee every morning, and having lunch in the Fox Sports Grill and La Madeleine. There wasn't much work for me to do, but I did get the opportunity to interact with a few ePartners colleagues on a more one-on-one basis, which I always enjoy. I hope that I can continue to visit the ePartners Houston office and work from there as needed.
On the weekends we had a great time swimming in the Frinks' backyard swimming pool! Alberto liked it so much he started asking if we could put a pool in our yard too! I have to admit, it was really nice....
So, it's back to the real world. Well, kind of....I am actually back on a plane today, headed to Mt. Vernon Illinois for 2 days of CRM discovery with a client. Then it's back to SD on Friday where we'll spend the weekend at home before making a brief one night trip to San Francisco. I will be there for a Microsoft training on the 24th, and I am taking Alberto with me. I hope he enjoys it!
