Kory Gunnerson? I love that guy!

I'm entering week three of my three weeks away from home, pulling out the final stretch in Ft. Worth, Texas. This week of meetings starts after lunch on Monday, which is something companies do to allow people to fly in Monday morning. This does nothing for those of us who live two hours from the airport- not to mention that Monday morning is the worst time to fly- but we appreciate the effort. In any case, I'm here with a couple hours to kill, so I thought I'd list a few things I've noticed recently.

Last week I was in LA, and I saw updated versions of the same commercials they played constantly last time I was there. First was an update of the "The world is open. This is the key." commercial I mentioned here. The commercial now says "The world is open. You have the key." I still don't think it makes sense. The other one was for a job search site called The Ladders. It's commercial used to say "$100K+ jobs for $100K+ people" which I thought was a very hoity-toity way to assign a convenient dollar amount to a person's life. It has now been changed to "$100K+ jobs for $100K+ job seekers," which makes me think I wasn't alone in my take.

This weekend I was back in DC, and Ramya and I stopped at a bar with some friends called "Trademark" right down the block from the Patent office (and yes, I was there for about 30 minutes before I got the reference). They walk past it all the time, and no one had ever been there, so we thought we'd check it out. The first hook is that if you have a special shot or drink you like, you can spell it out on a little card and they "trademark" it for you. We were never really sure what that means (like, do you get a cut of the price if someone else orders it?) but it's an interesting way to simulate work in your pleasure- like maybe if someone made a bar at Navair where you had to order by telecon. But you have to listen to an hours of people talking about stuff you don't care about first. Anyway, no one ordered Dave "Golden Goose" because shots were like $12. Everyone got one overpriced drink (I stuck with water and free peanuts), and then we decided to get an appetizer. We settled on some $13 crab cakes- sure they seemed a little spendy, but you get three, right? Here's what we got:I wish I had put a dollar next to them for a size reference, but the lemon kind of helps. They had a footprint less than that of a quarter, and were basically the size of a marshmallow cut in half. Thirteen dollars? What kind of rare opilio kobe crab is this? They weren't even that good. We spent the rest of the time speculating about what you could get for thirteen dollars at various other restaurants- I believe Ramya and I have had a full meal at Monterey (with tip) for less. And that included unlimited tortilla chips.

The last thing I have right now is just this morning, Facebook (if you don't know what it is, ask someone younger) sent me a notification that says "Kory Gunnerson just joined Facebook. You both went to Purdue. If you know them, perhaps you should add them as a friend." Really? A kid from Ohio went to my major university 10 years after I did? Sure I know him! Come on. Sometimes Facebook will let you know if 10 of your friends are friends with someone because you might know them, but this seems like a stretch.

Okay, that's all for now. I'll post about Ramya's first foray into competitive running when I can get the pictures off of my camera!