Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around. -- Love Actually

So where’ve we been? Maybe “"where are we?”" is a better place to start.

Toronto. Hotel bar at the Airport Sheraton. Let’s just work in reverse succession. Spent the evening studying more of the purchasing system applications I’ve been sent here to ingest. I’m still behind on the pre-requisite work for the course, which should have been completed before I arrived. I figure on completing one more session tomorrow night and the last on Wednesday night. So that definitely means no Tuesday post for Christian Carnival. And it puts the Thursday linkery in serious peril for the second week running. Yes, I realize, I’ve been off the ball. Anyway, before studying was a swim in the hotel pool and before that…

This reverse thing isn’t going to work. I’m too tired and brain-overloaded to make it happen, at any rate. Problem is I’m not sure where to rewind to and begin anew at – I haven’t even looked at the blog lately so I’m not really sure when I last posted, or about what. So let’s go with middle of last week-ish. Ended up the week at home by finding out, late Friday afternoon, that I was headed to Toronto on Monday morning, and had to book travel arrangements and complete a solid 12 hours of pre-req work. Problem was, I found all this out at about the same time that we were supposed to be leaving with 11 high schoolers for our work weekend at the young life camp. So they all had to wait at the train station while I finished booking my travel, then I showed up with the other rental car and loaded up the remainder of the kids, and off we all caravanned.

The sudden stress of oncoming travel, coupled with the looming fact that I wasn’t going to get the pre-req work done, kind of overshadowed my weekend. But we worked hard, played a bit, worked hard again, and I even caught a nap in there at one point, which is a rare thing indeed for me. I think a guy just sleeps better after a long day of moving and hauling rock, splitting and stacking wood, and completing various tasks requiring serious tool dexterity.

Sunday came around and we got the kids back to the city, returned the cars, and I went straight home to study the afternoon/evening away. Next thing I knew it was midnight and packing and fretting and a much needed prayer. And joy of all joys, I actually slept like a baby for 3 sweet hours before grabbing a car to a plane to a car in a different country. Blew through customs like a cool breeze and found the Accenture offices to be just a hop and a skip (no jump included) from the airport – in fact just across the freeway from the runways, which they have a keen view of. So I was on time for class and continued my long stretch of “learning-at-every-waking-moment.” Which continued until I was ready to go bonkers around 6 this evening. I threw my stuff in the hotel and went to find some goggles, as I hadn’t packed mine. Returned for a swim and then straight back to the studying, until just now. What I need is a decent meal and a decent drink and a decent 5 hours sleep. I’m hoping to get at least 2 of those, considering that dinner is at the hotel bar. Its hard to screw up a decent drink. Usually.

One of my favorite marketing maxims has always been:

Price. Service. Quality. Pick two.

So very true.

And so we pass from the past into the present and begin to speculate, or re-speculate, or, whatever. Basically I’m here through Friday evening and its class-all-day, study-all-night, and I’m supposed to find time to keep looking for and applying for roles in the meantime, and submit my time and expense report, and balance my budget, and treat my freshly ailing hands, and blog, and feed the reindeer, and everything else in between now and then. When then comes, I’ll hop a plane to Dulles, where Grace and my sister will pick me up, or more likely, I’ll rent a car and go see them, briefly. Then I’ll stay the night with a family from Brec’s dad’s church, and go to her wedding on Saturday. I’ll leave early evening in hopes of getting back to the city by midnight, catching a few winks, and leading the high school lesson on Sunday.

Hopefully I won’t be slotted to fly somewhere far on Sunday night, and I can push the flight til Monday morning. Perhaps I’ll even be unstaffed another week. Who knows. I could use it, after this stretch.

The camera is still with Brec but hopefully I’ll return home with pics-a-plenty, from their moving weekend through their wedding weekend, and nothing in between. In the mean time, there are a few pics on the crap-cam, so perhaps I’ll find the time to get them up this week, as opposed to any real substantial blogging. Side note, the crap-cam’s better function, my phone, does not work in Canada. Does Sprint not exist in this country? Can’t you get Sprint bars on the moon by this point?

Well, there you have it. At least I haven’t been relying exclusively on personal-update posts for material lately, right? Give me some credit. Just a little?

Come on, have pity on me. In the course of this post, I’ve had the worst club sandwich known to man, with the worst Caesar salad ever made, and to cap it off, they screwed up a good drink. I am categorically convinced that my drink of choice is way too cool for the average bartender to comprehend. At least hotel bartenders. A jack and water, no ice. Usually they won’t give you the ice, because you specifically say “no ice.” But you still get them in separate glasses, with notably less jack than water. Its not like I said “a jack, and a water”. I said “a jack and water, no ice.” What is so hard to understand about this?

And I’m back, yet again, to the nature of my complaints about life. These are the things I have to take issue with. How blessed can one guy be? How unthankful?