July 18, 2003
Dear Everyone:
First and foremost: Mother is definitely better. The crisis appears to be resolved and efforts are underway to ensure that something like this doesn’t happen again. Or, at least, we can watch for warning signs and mitigate things as needed.
So why is this week’s Letter so late? I took the train.
A few weeks ago, a manager in “Grapevine” asked if
I could come down there and teach a group of his people how to use the
document management system.
I had no problem with that, except for the timing.
It would come right after our return trip from
So the manager recommended that I take the train. He said that it takes a little longer (5-6 hours), but it’s more restful since you don’t have to drive. You just sit back and relax and read or work on the laptop.
So I arranged for tickets going down on Tuesday and returning on Thursday. A co-worker even offered to drive me to and from the station so I wouldn’t have to leave my car there overnight. The trip down was fairly easy, only starting a half-hour late due to a freight-train-versus-truck in Rodeo. I even had lunch on the train. I made a mental note to avoid the ready-made sandwiches on the trip back.
Training in “Grapevine” went well, although there are extra modules exclusive to this particular project, so it takes about an hour longer.
The return trip yesterday was also fairly
uneventful, if you don’t count Loudmouth Louie, an opinionated army
vet around the age of
58-going-on-12. That is,
until
The train people did their level best to keep us
informed and assured us that none of this was their fault, which it
wasn’t. (Loudmouth Louie
didn’t care whose fault it was as long as it gave him something to
complain about.) The train
that derailed belonged to a different company altogether, but the fact
of the matter is, there’s only one set of tracks going from
Antioch
(through Pittsburg) to Martinez.
So we sat on a side track for over 2 hours until they could
arrange for us to pull in to the
Which is when we realized that the people traveling
from the other direction had been sitting in the triple-digit heat
waiting for our train to arrive.
We got on the busses that had ferried them from
I tried to call a taxi cab, but someone had torn
the pages out of the phone directory.
So I asked a harried station person to do it for me.
“Ten minutes,” she said.
Twenty-five minutes later, I called “Jeannie”, who drove over and
picked me up and took me to my office where my car was located.
Ultimately, I got home around
Lesson learned: Don’t take the train to “Grapevine”.
In other news…
Last week, after spending a few days with Mother,
“Jeannie” and I, and “Frankie’s” two girls, “Rosa” and “Liza”, drove
down to
We saw five plays: Present Laughter, Richard II, Antony and Cleopatra, Wild Oats, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Of them all, the first and last were the best. Of those two, Present Laughter comes out on top.
“Jeannie” and I drove home on Sunday, with “Rosa”
and “Liza” taking Mother’s car back up to
As I was puttering around, getting things done, I
checked the TV listings to see if there was anything playing that I
might want to “watch”.
Coming up at
Sorry. I’ve already seen that.
Love, as always,
Pete
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