I’m not a fan of Terminal C at Boston’s Logan airport. There just isn’t much in the terminal. There IS, however, a kiosk that sells Crocs. Today, I broke down and bought a new pair. These are red, bright red. I also have another pair coming in blue that Paul ordered for me.

And I mean BRIGHT RED. Mario Batalli is known for his orange Crocs. I like mine in red.

Reggie and I are sitting at the airport, ready to leave shortly. We leave in about 30 minutes.

This should be a nice, short flight.

I went to see my doctor today for a good old-fashioned physical. I need to lose a few pounds, and the MRI showed obvious signs of MS. Other than that, I’m in pretty good health.  He is a little concerned that I was having dizzy spells and wants to make sure that it really is MS. So he sent me down to the vampires to take some blood to be tested.  I’m off to see my new neurologist on April 28. He wants to see me shortly after that.

I just handed in my self evaluation for the impending review. Do you have any idea how glad I am that I don’t have to do this again for another 50 weeks?

I’m now a Certified Sage SalesLogix Administrator.

Working in the IT industry, I don’t put a lot of faith in certifications. It means you can pass a test. But in this case, it gives me some credibility at my company.

I was wrong about something. The worst part of business travel is the return back to the office. No matter how connected we are with our PDAs, wireless network connections, VPNs, mobile phones and other misc. tech toys, something always happens while we’re out of the office. At least it does to me. Somehow, I always spend at least a day mopping up whatever “broke” while I was gone.  Last time I was gone, my boss changed a system password because it was “wrong” meaning it wasn’t what was in his master spreadsheet of passwords, one that I don’t have access to and can’t update. This time it was duplicate records found in a system that have been there for ages and suddenly became an issue while I was away.

Stuff like this makes me want to never take a vacation day again. I just hope this reflects well on my review, which is supposed to be Thursday.  I know one thing that’s going to hurt me this time around is my focus. I don’t focus well when I have things coming at me from multiple directions.  When that happens, whatever catches my attention last is what seems to get done. I have a coworker who seems to know this little flaw in my system and exploits it. All of the work she needs me to get done seems to get completed because she nags me so I’ll do it right then and there. I’ve asked my boss to send her away for a two-week basket weaving class. I’m not kidding. I forwarded him the eight e-mails I got from her over a six hour period of stuff that needed to be done. I offered to send everything that came up last week to further demonstrate my point, but I think he got it. 

I’m nervous about my review. Sure, I’m good at what I do. When I do something, my work is top-notch. But my lack of focus and my frustration with people is going to hurt me this time around. At the same time, I do expect a nice raise this time around. I’m way too valuable to the company to leave for better money. And right now, I don’t want to leave the company. I like what I do and the people with whom I work. They money just isn’t what it should be. I could easily whore myself out, selling my soul, and making good money at the same time.

I don’t know. I’m just really frustrated right now, not just with work, but with life in general. My stress level is up and my MS is kicking my ass. Just getting over the flu isn’t helping that, either. I had a dizzy spell today. It’s common with MS, but it still sucks. There is one thing that makes me feel better when I’m stressed like this—Reggie kisses. Pugs have a way of making me feel better.

One of the many things I like about flying jetBlue is their snacks.  jetBlue doesn’t serve meals. Instead, they offer tasty snacks and encourage you to take a few.

Coming back from Phoenix, I took the Terra Blue chips. They’re potato chips made from naturally blue potatoes. I also took a bag of the Chocobillys chocolate chunk cookies. Maybe I was just hungry, but these little cookies were really good. Perhaps I should send some to Sarah as a gift. She’d like these.

I picked up some strawberries today at the grocery store and wasn’t sure how to eat them without just eating them right out of the box. They were that good.

Instead, I melted some white chocolate with some light cream and vanilla and poured it over the berries, which i had cut into slices.

This was some serious good eats.

My friend Beth makes an incredible tomato basil soup. Today, I decided to try making some of my own, using a bit of a different technique.

First, I chopped up a bunch of tomatoes. They were of two different varieties, which gave me some variations on flavor. Additionally, I chopped up a yellow pepper and a small yellow onion. Then I tossed it all in some olive oil, basil, plenty of salt and pepper, roasting this in the oven for about 40 minutes. Then I threw some loose basil in a big sauce pan, poured the roasted vegetables over the basil, and then hit this with an immersion blender.

My god, this was good. The only thing I’d do differently next time would be to remove seeds from the tomatoes.

I’ve been listening to and ready Rudy Maxa’s comments for a long time. He knows the travel industry rather well.

I found a recent blog entry on his site rather disturbing.