It's day three of my multi-city travel adventure and I'm already exhausted. I read somewhere that Gary Player* travels a million miles a year, playing in golf tournaments, designing golf courses, wearing white pants with white shirts and whatever else he does. That's a lot of freaking miles.

*Gary Player is 72 years old. I realize he's an athlete, but still, this is the saddest thing that I've ever realized in my life: I am not, nor will I ever be and never have I been, in better shape than Gary Player is right now as I type this. Gary Player can do one-handed push-ups. Let me repeat: he's 72 years old! I'd be disgusted with myself, but it wouldn't do any good. I enjoy bacon too much.

The best part about this whole time out here was when I set my alarm for 6:45 AM ET by accident, and woke up at 3:45 AM PT screaming because I thought it was time to go to work. I was only after I got out of bed and started weeping softly that I realized I had another 3 hours to sleep.

I can see why people like to live here (weather's nice, people are reasonably friendly, urinating on the street is confined to one part of town), but it only took one morning commute for me to want to go Falling Down on everyone that I came in contact with. How are there so many cars? There are so many cars here that they give away gasoline, instead of tickets, in radio giveaways. They have commercials that talk about energy conservation equivalencies in terms of how many cars it would be the equivalent of taking off the road, as in "if you turn your computer off when you leave the house, it would be the equivalent of taking 100 cars off the road." In Soviet Russia, you don't turn computer off. Computer turns you in ... to KGB!*

*Does anyone else miss Yakov Smirnoff? I know he wasn't funny, but he made me feel like there was a sense of balance in the world.

Labels: Gary Player, Los Angeles, travel, Yakov Smirnoff

I'm having trouble keeping up myself. After the aforementioned trip to Europe, which was beyond outstanding (even though that sounds like a dangerous medical condition), I found myself back in New York for 10 uncomfortable days. After that it was off to Montreal in formal celebration of Jeff Pepe, bachelor extraordinaire and a go-go. From there, home for a day and then off to Atlanta on a work-related jaunt.

Long story short, by my completely made up mathematics, I'm about two metric tons behind in packing my things and four hogsheads behind in unpacking them. Or maybe that's the other way around. The point is this: I'm tired and my brain hurts.

Is it too late to talk about Owen Wilson trying to kill himself? Probably, but even so, I'm still interested in making a tasteless joke about it. Ah, forget it.

Book update: we're in our final round of edits, after which the salespeople will begin to sell it. My understanding is that we'll know by January if the book is a horrible flop or just a disappointing failure.

Labels: books, mathematics, travel

There was an industry conference, so I rented a car and headed up to Stowe. The drive was awesome, just a little over 5 hours with a stop for gas. Again, I'm an idiot, and didn't bring my camera, so I have no pictures.

I'm a little peeved that I'm not going to get the chance to hit the slopes, but I'm only going to be here until Tuesday morning, and tomorrow's eaten up by the conference. What kills me most is that the powder looks awesome. They got snow here yesterday and the weather forecast has flurries for tomorrow. It's cold at night and the days have been in the 30s. Basically, the weather is perfect.

Meanwhile, according to the sign that I saw on Interstate 89, just before the exit for Stowe, this is moose country. I haven't seen any yet, but dammit, I will see one before I leave.

Labels: moose, skiing, travel, Vermont