I had a fantastic time with MJ while he was visiting over New Years.
To celebrate we met up with some friends in Old City Philadelphia for dinner at Triumph Brewing. I had been to their location in New Hope never been to the one in Philadelphia, and I have to say I prefer their Philadelphia location. Beer-wise I went with the Triumph John Bull Pale Ale which was quite good.
After dinner it was off to Penn’s Landing for the countdown. It was chilly and drizzly out but fun anyway, great company.
While he was visiting we also went to see Sherlock Holmes, which was fun but forgettable. I think part of this has to do with my preference for Basil Rathbone and Peter Cushing as Holmes and as lovely as Robert Downey Jr. is I don’t think I could get over that.
In the week since the visit I’ve been busy catching up on things from the holidays, managed to accomplish the Herculean feat of getting my inbox below 20 emails (from a peak of near 200 before the holidays) and I have a whole pile of Ubuntu related meetings in the coming weeks. Last Wednesday I attended Mark Jason Dominus’ PLUG Central talk on “10 useful tools and how I wrote them” which was enjoyable as his talks always are (slides here). Tomorrow I’ll be heading down to PLUG North for PostgreSQL Replication Solutions presented by Bruce Momjian which I’m really looking forward to.
Speaking of speaking, based on a blog post by Rikki Kite I picked up the pdf version of Confessions of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun and have been reading it and 40 pages in I’m still captivated. Spending this past year exploring the world of public speaking has been quite the eye-opener for me and I have to say that I’m quite pleased to have decided to get into public speaking, something you couldn’t have paid me any amount of money to do just a year ago. Books like this help a lot, knowing that it’s natural to be nervous when you speak and mistakes are things to be anticipated and handled rather than avoided.
My mother is coming to visit on Friday and we’ll be spending the weekend exploring Philly! I had my sister visit in the spring of ’09 but in all my years of living down here I’ve never had my mother visit so I’m looking forward to having her stay here for a few days. Moving stuff is coming along, but I’m trying to avoid packing too much until after my mother’s visit, I don’t mind living with piles of boxes but I’d rather not do it while I have company :)
Monday, Jan 11th, 2010 at 20:10
Sounded like a nice event…. you two look good together…yeah…
What have you been doing with MJ’s glasses?
1)painting and decorating your new place-to-be whilst wearing them…
2) trying to convince him that there are lots of stars in the sky by secretly speckling them with paint…
3)that is in actuality a correct representation of how starry eyed he is about you?
I go for 3, no wait, 2….
Mother visiting? GET CLEANING….!!
Monday, Jan 11th, 2010 at 20:15
Oh, I forgot….. for me, the ultimate portrayal of Sherlock Holmes has to be Jeremy Brett’s version for ITV in the 80’s and 90’s here in the UK. He has a fantastic, commanding voice, and would have made an excellent choice for Dr Who…
If you ever get the chance check out the series on DVD.
Monday, Jan 11th, 2010 at 20:33
Haha, it was rain on his glasses, since it was raining. I didn’t suffer so badly since my jacket had a hood, which I pulled down for the photo :)
And yeah, cleaning for mother visit… aaahhh! :)
Tuesday, Jan 12th, 2010 at 21:03
Ah, this is a happy post to read about :-)
I need to pick up that book. I’m terrified about public speaking (secretly) though I did win a few prizes in school, need to pick up ;)
Wednesday, Jan 13th, 2010 at 9:34
I used to hate speaking to an audience, until I followed that old advice to imagine the audience without clothes, and it works….nah, I’m kidding myself…still dislike it.
Wednesday, Jan 13th, 2010 at 9:38
It’s funny, within the first couple pages of the book the “audience without clothes” thing is brought up – and how although it’s a total fallacy (it doesn’t help a vast majority of people), it’s always the first suggestion made when the subject of public speaking comes up.