Markus’ Blog

Phew, finally. Took over the keyboard from my tipsy schveetie. Please disregard the last two posts, they were made under the influence of Napa’s awesome wines. lololol

Interjection by the Wife - The Hubby’s typing is about as bad as mine is. LOL

Well, the Hubby’s typing sucks that much even if he’s sober…

Like we’ve heard before in my schveetie’s blog, we were drinking for pretty much 12 hours straight. We started at Mario Andretti’s at about 10:30 am and haven’t stopped since. LOLOL We managed to visit 10 wineries during our tour. Pretty good. We had some more wine at the wine tasting at our B & B thereafter and some more for dinner. Now, we’re pretty much ready for bed. Mmmm, pillow…

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…. (says the Wife)

See you later, in a more sober state.

Again, the Hubby thinks he’s going to get to write this post…oh, wait a minute, he’s dragging me off of the chair…. Ha ha ha…I just typed Charro. LOL The Hubby just told me that “I’m not getting that much wine ever again.” hehehehehehehe

Okay, now what?

The Hubby laughs. And then zerberts me in the ear.

And yet again. I guess he really wants to post. Oh well…how boring.

The Hubby thinks that he’s going to get to write this post, but he’d be wrong. LOL

That is, if I can type wthout having to backspace all the time cause I’m too drunk to be typing properly.

Thanks for your interest in the public service announcement. Now back to your regular programming.

Well, almost. We’ll leave San Jose in about two and a half hours and head North towards San Francisco. There, we’ll drop of my team mate at SFO Airport and continue on to our lovely B & B (La Belle Epoque) in Napa City.

I’m looking forward to spending a lovely weekend in Napa and to tomorrow’s tour of local wineries. That’ll be fun. We’re on a “guided” tour. I don’t know if it’s actually guided, but it’s a minivan taking us from winery to winery. That way, neither of us has to worry about driving and not being able to “sample” properly. lol Hey, we do have our priorities straight!

Sunday morning we’ll do some sight-seeing and looking around by ourselves. Sunday afternoon, probably some time around 2pm, we’ll have to get going to drive back to San Francisco Airport and fly home.

Yesterday was the day. I finally got to see and hear the performer, who I heard so much about over the last three years, live and in person. — And I have to say: Oh boy, can that guy ever sing.

But it’s not only that, he’s a good entertainer. He’s fun to watch, makes his audience laugh and is not at all concerned making a bit of a fool out of himself right on stage in front of thousands of fans (taking dance lessons from his opening act, Angelique Kidjo, for instance). On top of everything else, he just seems to be having a real blast being out there performing for his audience.

It was a great show. I’m glad I got to see him.

I am in San Jose already. It was easy and eventless. There were no hassles with US immigration, just “come on in”, the plane was on time and the view of San Francisco and the bay as we were approaching was fabulous. We had to wait our turn to land, so we did a full circle around the city. Very nice.

We departed 8:13am and we were circling over San Francisco by 9:45am. At 10:18am, the planned arrival time, we were off the plane already walking towards the baggage claim area.

The drive down from SFO Airport was easy and fast as well. Got to the office at about 11:30am. Our manager was very surprised to see us that early.

The only thing that sucks so far is the rental car I got. Although basically brand new (it had like 850 miles on its odometer — and no, I didn’t read tripometer by accident), it SUCKS SWEATY GOAT BALLS. Yes, it does. It’s a Chevrolet Cobalt LS and the only good thing about it is its nice red color. No power mirrors, no central door locks, no power windows, no telescopic steering wheel. Yeah, that’s what I found so far. Of course, this is the car we are going to have to keep over the weekend for our Napa trip as well.

This was the first time I got a North American rental car for one of my business trips and it sure lives up to its infamous reputation (before I had a Hyundai Sonata, a Mazda 3 Sport and a Mazda 3 Sedan, all of which were very nice).

Now, no more ranting about the car off to finding something yummy to eat. I’m HUUUUUNGRYYYY!!!!

It seems like marketing surveys conducted via telephone are getting “fashionable” lately. That doesn’t make me very happy. I had somebody phone yesterday and two of them phoning today. Both times (today) I thought it would be somebody else and rushed to the phone.

Pisses me off when the first thing I hear after picking up is … silence, because then I already know what’s coming next. The call gets dispatched to a call center agent who subsequently starts rambling about some survey or something — and, of course, they are persistent. I even understand why. 99.9% of all people they phone want to get rid of them as fast as possible, so the first thing they are trained in are techniques to keep the callee on the line. That pisses me off even more.

Usually, I try to tell them politely that no I am not interested once or twice, and when they keep rambling and rambling, I finally hang up on them. Not very nice, but what else can I do? I’m not going to sit there listening to them (especially when I have a suitcase to pack for a trip the next day).

The second guy that phoned to night, unfortunately, only got a rude click (from me hanging up) right away. I was so annoyed that I didn’t feel like having the same useless discussion (which he was trained to not listen to anyways) yet again. Even less nice to hang up right away, but hey, it’s still better than having to deal with my annoyed sounding, pissed off voice — that’s what I’m telling myself, anyways.

We should really get ourselves entered onto those “do not phone” list pretty soon. Maybe that helps.

For the first time in weeks (not to say months) I’ve seen one of the new Vancouver trolley buses (they are New Flyer E40LFR) in service this morning. Interestingly, it was running on route #8. This was the first time I saw one of them on the Fraser run, ever.

Could that mean that the “minor” power steering problem is on the verge of finally being solved, after almost two months? I sure hope so.

For now, though, Translink is still saying:

Due to a minor power steering problem with some Vancouver trolley buses, the following routes will potentially experience service disruptions (as well as loss of accessibility until further notice).

During the morning rush hour: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 17, 20, 22, 25, 32, 41, 43, 49, 84.

During the afternoon rush hour 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 15, 17, 20, 22, 25, 32, 41, 43, 49.

It’s that time again: next Wednesday morning I’ll be on a plane to San Francisco for the quarterly business trip. The rest of Wednesday, all of Thursday and most of Friday will be spent in San Jose. So far, nothing new or exciting.

However, this time around, Brigette will be coming down on Wednesday as well. She’ll be on a later flight from Seattle to San Jose directly. The reason for her to fly out of Sea-Tac is because there are no direct flights from Vancouver into San Jose, besides it’s cheaper to take a direct flight from Seattle.

Wednesday night we’ll be seeing Josh Groban in concert (yay for Brigette who’s a die-hard Grobanite). Thursday and Friday are going to be “business as usual” for me, but Brigette will get to explore San Jose and, of course, the Great Mall of The Bay Area. Sound like a girl’s dream?

Friday evening we’ll be making our way to Napa. Friday night, all of Saturday and Sunday morning, we’ll be spending in the Napa Valley, drinking wine, enjoying the scenery and, generally, having a good time. Sunday evening we’ll be flying back to Vancouver.

My mouth sure did ache more than the last time around. It’s still a little sore — and swollen. All in all, I think I am not doing too badly, though.

A couple of Advil always did the trick, I never had to revert to Tylenol 3’s. I’m going to take some Advil tonight before going to bed, but that should be it. No more pain medication after that. The swelling has gone down considerably as well, today.

In a couple of days my mouth is probably going to be almost back to normal, and within the next week and a half or so, it should be completely healed.