Tomorrow my friends and I head out for the European vacation that has been in planning for many, many months and has undergone a number of transformations. It began when a couple of friends invited me to join them for part of their month long trip to Avignon in the South of France.  An excuse to go to Europe is…

Tuesday night, we arrived at the chic, clean, trendy, sleek, and minimalistic Motel One Munich too late to do much other than check in.  One thing that I found pretty amusing off the bat was that the hotel reception was an extension of the bar.  The hotel greeters/concierges or whatever you call them were also the bartenders.  There was a…

Our meetings in Paris with our French office and our Belgian office went so much better than any of us expected or hoped for. With all of today’s technologies at our fingertips, it’s easy to think that we can accomplish anything through email,phone calls, web or video conferences. This week certainly proved that there is no replacement for good old…

Well… I had a nice blog all written up from Paris.  I was just getting ready to post but wanted to add a few pictures.  Apparently that was a bad idea. Everything I had written went <poof!>  Argh!  I may have woken my hotel neighbors with my cursing. So, here’s another try without pics.  Those will have to come later. We arrived…

While at the kc airport this morning,  I heard “Mazzy Star – Fade Into You”. I’ve always loved this song. Might be my favorite by this honey voiced specialist in the bitter sweet. Our flight to Minneapolis was remarkably ahead of schedule. I was happily seated by a very attractive fellow holding an iPad. It gave me the perfect excuse…

Two weeks ago, my director told me that they needed me on a week trip to Paris and Munich.I’ll spend St. Patrick’s Day in the air and spend Sunday through Tuesday in Paris, then fly to Munich, work through Friday evening, see my coworkers off and spend the weekend in Munich.  I tried to find friends/coworkers interested in joining me to see the…