asleep at the wheel

I actually leave the house around 4am. I arrive in the Houston office when it's barely light. If I'd delayed it would have taken longer, inching along in bumper-to-bumper traffic. I find a conference room and get my presentation sent off. Then we breakfast with analysts, I do an informal meeting with another colleague and decide to head home. But I stop at Spec's first to look around, get some fun wine. And I stop at a couple of convenience stores to get garbage food. I stop in Ellinger for a Wild Cherry Pepsi like I always do. I eat some snack mix, some cheese and, yes, some of those awful sugar candy hearts. But I get home without falling asleep. But barely.

Oh, and it drizzled a little on the way over and then as I left Houston, the wind kicked up straight out of the north and it rained pretty hard and the trucks drowned me. But I drove away from it apparently. It likes to rain on me on that trip.

Whenever I go to the home office, I like the looks I get from people who think I'm someone new (I have an employee number under 500, ass wipe, and I actually made money on stock options) and I'm amused by little displays showing which building is which in 3D which is pretty confusing when the dummies change building 1 to 2 and 2 to 3 but left the conference room numbers with wrong prefixes. I even smile at the cowhide elevator walls. That's not leather, friends, that's cow hide with tufts and barb wire marks and probably a brand somewhere. I'm mildly amused that they decorated with 0's and 1's etched on glass building panels and that the badge readers are so subtle and modern that I can never find them. I think it's funny that they named the cafes dot commissary and 'Z'Rose and Juan's' (subtle, that one). Mildly. It looks like an office campus for a dot.com but we are really kind of a stodgy company with no debt. And heck, now that Enron has flamed out, the mayor is touting my little company as a great Houston asset.

But, just between you and me, I'm glad I don't work there at the home office. Particularly because of the traffic and general, let's face it, ugliness of Houston. It's nice on the campus, they have a 'real' gym, the food is pretty good in those cafes but, yeah, our 'campus' is better. Just as many buildings, but not so tall! And in Austin.