Wow, I am so tired. The flight out of Chicago was delayed by 2 hours . . . Not gone to pic my stuff up, will do it in the morning . . .

But here is what I wrote ealier!

Friday 17^th Feb

After much speculation about weather etc . . . I managed to leave Madison and make it to Chicago. It was about a 40 min flight . . . hardly time to get comfy. Had a few interesting moments today, once again it was hit home to me that you have to be careful when you pen the written word, subtle inflexions can be missed and entirely change the context of the subject you are trying to address. As such I am going to make more of an effort to pre type all my emails/blogs - anything really to make sure I look at all the wriggly lines. Hopefully this will force me to pay more attention to what I write instead of mindlessly drivelling on . . .

Today was also a strange day as it was the first time I really missed Smurf. Don’t sound surprised there, this is a tale about extremities. You can miss people after a few minutes, hours or days, but to realise that you have not seen some one for the best part of 3 weeks with no scope of being able to see them again for nearly double that. . . Wow, that is really missing someone. It is also the first time I doubted whether I made the right choice coming out here. So when I say it was the first time I missed her it was the first time I had that heart sinking moment of not know when I am going to see her next. Horrible feeling, never felt like that before.

On balance it has driven me to make more of an effort. I will call my Smurf as often as possible, hopefully every other day until she is sick of me! It will be tricky as I am living in 3 time zones and I get a little mixed up, but just the couple of minutes we spent on the phone today really cheered me up. I must also be careful as I do not want to make phone calls when I have time constraints. I have made a couple of calls to her already when I have to cut the conversation short, that kind of devalues the effort. Well it does in my eyes, “Hi, how are you . . . yeah . . yeah . . . great . . . got to go now . . .” are those calls worth making? I think it depends how and why they are made.

I am going to try and book the flight for Smurf to come over in April this weekend and I am going to gear myself up to getting my apartment inhabitable for when she can make it out. I have booked a week off and will have to go back in for a few days then spend more QT with Smurf. I know she is going to kill me for this, but I am going to put a picture up of her! Don’t kill me babe, some people that read this have not met you yet! Despite your best efforts I have managed to get some piccies of you that are not just hands or hair, but they can be posted on another day!

I have a 2 hour lay over here in Chicago and I am thoroughly shattered, I am going to arrive in Portland about 10:30pm, I have to drive to pick up my stuff and then go back to my hotel, I should be done by midnight. Hopefully I will have time to post this up and crash out.

I have made a decision to do some work tomorrow (boardsheep will have an email from me!) and I will be working on Monday too (Presidents Day, as I am not a President I don’t think I qualify for the day off!). No one is forcing me to work, so don’t go giving me the sympathy vote just yet! I will need that in a week or so! I am, as they say, a little behind the curve at the mo and need to put some time in now to get ahead a little! Today with the customer was tough, real tough. . . I have lot to do repair some broken bridges.

On the plus side I should get at least one day up at Hood this weekend and next weekend will most likely be 2 full days. I am keeping a snow count of how many days I have spent on snow, so far it is 1.5 days out of 17 . . . I think that is less then if I was in the UK, but they were damn good! Now I am inducted into my health care thingy I feel a little safer about boarding.

Americans use the word “so” as a linking word instead of “and”. It really pisses me off, so I do nothing about it . . . ;) soooooo . . .ssssooooo . . . pah!

I am out of steam now. I have a day of domestic crap to look forward to tomorrow. I need to find a laundrette, a dry cleaner (they are not the same over here . . .) get my new bindings, go to the PO box, then the office to email/fax and the bank, get some groceries, and then, only then, if I get all that done I can go boarding . . . . on Sunday . . . If I have any energy . . .