Mmmmmm.....dumplings.....

When I'm in places where walking is so easy to do, and totally the norm, it makes me think that it is a shame that Austin doesn't have a method of public transportation for me frequent. I got up way too early (again) this morning to give myself plenty of time to get ready and then find, on foot, the place where I was meeting Ellie at 8am this morning.

I managed to find it without any problems, and the 4 block walk was actually rather nice. I got there way early, and so I plopped myself down outside the coffee shop, pulled out my book, and waited for her to meet me. I am in town for a pre-bid conference, and without going into too much detail...it was essentially a meeting for all the folks that intend to respond to the 58 page RFP that "hit the streets" last week. A chance to get questions answered in order to reply with a valid response. Well, we get in there, get our seats, get all settled....and then the person moderating the meeting, comes in and says "Well, folks, this isn't going to be a long meeting because over the weekend, we decided that we didn't like the RFP as it was, and so we are scrapping pages 1-58 and working on drafting the amendment. It should be ready in about 2 weeks, and then we'll have this meeting again then. Hope no one traveled too far to get here, sorry about the inconvenience." So, at 9:12am, the meeting was adjourned. Well...shoot, what do we do now? It gave me some time to get to know how business works in DC a little better by asking a lot of questions to Ellie, although, she's probably sick of me by now, and I was about to be sick of myself too because I just don't get it all....but then I have to remind myself that she's been doing this for 14 years, and I've been doing this for less than 3 months, and I need to give myself a break and some time for it to all soak in completely.

The HP folks that we are hoping to work with on this deal then treated us to lunch at one of Wolfgang Puck's restaurants, The Source, which is attached to the just opened Newseum right in downtown DC. We had to kill some time and wait as it didn't open until 1130 for lunch, but it was 100% worth the wait! Oh my goodness....it was sooooo good!! We all had the same thing from the Prix Fixe lunch menu....pork dumplings for appetizer, and halibut for an entree. I pretty much licked both plates clean it was so delicious! I think I'll have dreams about those dumplings tonight, they were that good. The dessert was a scoop of mango sherbet AND a passion fruit cheesecake. Even if I had really liked either of those options, I didn't have any room left. It was a great business lunch and made the trip worth it. There is so much to be said for being able to connect with the people that you work with in person. I decided to accept the offer for a ride back to my hotel where the car was, because after putting my foot into a real shoe for the first time in over a week, it was swollen to all get out!!

Next on my route was Herndon, where HQ is located. I was advised to take a different route than what I had on my handy map print out by the concierge, and managed to find where I was supposed to be for the first leg of the drive. But then, it got ugly. I was trying to follow the 3 different maps that I had to get there, and I ended up doing circles in a town called Tysons something or another for a good 30 minutes. Ugh, how frustrating. I've been taking pride in myself lately for being able to actually find my way around better than I was used to doing....and then I come here and get lost twice in two days. All I was trying to find was the damn 267 road and it wasn't anywhere to be found!!! Well, I finally did, and after that it was smooth sailing to the hotel. I checked in, and of course got onto email to play catch up from the day, right away.

Well, my plans of heading into the office for a bit this afternoon were squashed after opening the computer, and so I ordered a (lousy) salad from room service, and got caught up on some work. After all of the music talk from last night, I am really missing my iTunes and the ability to listen to all of my music. I did manage to make do (I just googled this to be sure that I was using the proper term, see http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/makedue.html) with some tunes on my phone, but it's just not the same as jamming it real loud at home with the surround sound speakers. :)

Ok....I really need to get some sleep, but I'm probably going to read some more until I get sleepy. So much stuff happened today, and I have a lot to accomplish tomorrow that I just can't sleep right now.

(Well, now that I've stumbled across this site while editing my own post...I might not pick up my book....this might be more fun. I know my mom might enjoy this one. :) http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html#errors.