I think I may have a slightly addictive personality, which came out Monday night when I was working on a small presentation for Tuesday. The assignment was to create a 5-7 minute presentation. Now I *know* that some presentations can take 10 minutes to cover a single, high value Powerpoint page, but I still spent 3 hours on this silly thing, which ended up being an 8 page argument for Accenture doing more sponsorship of the arts. A good chunk of that time was searching the web for the right graphics. This is not a sign of brain cells being used in the most effective manner. Stephen Covey would not be impressed.

What made it worse was that the training, and my subsequent work, was in Etobicoke (see note below about travel to and from Etobicoke) and I hadn't yet done my laundry, and I needed to pack for a week and a half on the west coast, where I am as I'm writing these words.

Nuts.

Reminds me of the time I spent 3 days working on an algebra proof for my Grade 10 math class. I ended up producing a rigorously-defined beautifully formatted 3 page proof for a problem that the teacher later admitted he'd written up incorrectly. I bet he never even looked at the result.

So anyway, Monday night, I picked up sushi at Sushi Bistro on the way home (9:15), put on my laundry (9:45), ate dinner watching the National (when did they get their new theme?), put the laundry in the dryer (10:55) and then installed and played the first mission of the Starcraft Expansion Pack (12:15) before finally starting to pack. Which I finished at 1:30, leading to my second night in a row of 4 1/2 hours sleep.

Tuesday we wrapped up the presentations course (which went well, although I was for some reason quite tired and didn't do a great job on my 7 minute presentation) and I got on a plane back to Seattle, where I'm writing these words.

And now for the good news: this is my last trip out here for this project. I don't have another project lined up yet (although a couple in the 'States are possibles) and I might actually get a few more days at home before my next project. And mom and dad, if you're reading this: I'll come and pick up Hoover on the March 3-4 weekend, and I'll have my cat at home again!
posted by Tom at 5:22 PM | link |