Emily was in town (from NY) for a long weekend and as part of the events we decided to take a trip up to French Valley Airport with Kurt.  The 4 of us (Lisa, Kurt, Emily and me) flew from Montgomery (KMYF) up to French Valley (F70) for a brunch at the French Valley Cafe.  Since I hadn’t flown in about 3 weeks, the way up was a little rusty.  However, by the return trip I was feeling much better.  The cafe was pretty nice, not to expensive and the service was decent.  Instead of my normal Eggs Benedict, I opted for a ham, cheese, pepper and tomato omelett.  Tasty.

Good food, good company and good flying.

F70:

Last week I had the opportunity to fly back East for a customer meeting.  Travel plans had me flying out to Syracuse on Thursday for a meeting on Friday.  I decided to extend the trip out and return on Sunday, which would allow me to head up to Lake Placid for a couple of days to visit with John and Sandy.  I hadn’t seen their place in Lake Placid… very nice.

Getting there was fairly uneventful, but I had to leave my condo on Thursday at 4:30am to catch the flight.  The connection in Atlanta was delayed a few hours due to mechanical issues.  So all and all I didn’t get to the hotel in Rome until about 9:30.  That made for a long travel day.  Even so, it wasn’t the worst experience I have had traveling and the meeting the next day was pretty smooth.

Sandy picked me up and we headed up to Lake Placid.  After John returned home from work we had a very nice dinner.  Sandy and I took the dog for a nice little hike the next morning around the peninsula and stopped for some treats and coffee on the way back.  We all then met up with a friend of John and Sandy’s at the Lake Placid Lodge for a really great lunch.

Later in the afternoon, we went for another short hike up Henry’s:

We finished the day off with some Pizza at Cafe Rustica.  John was unfortunately on call most of the day.  He did make it home for a while before we were off to bed.  The next morning, we packed up and relaxed a bit, drove to the airport and I was off to the west coast.  As luck would have it I ran in to Kurt in the Detroit airport.  He had been visiting his Mom for the weekend and we just happened to be on the same flight back to San Diego.  He managed to get a whole row to himself on the plane so I actually went back and sat with him.

Anyway, not a bad trip.. especially since it was on the company’s dime.  Thanks again to John and Sandy for putting me up for a few days.

I suppose it’s been a random thing, but most of life I have just gone by “Mike”.  For some reason a lot of people at Tomax called me Michael.  I think I introduced my self with my full name a few times and it just kinda stuck.  I suppose it was about 50/50 Mike vs Michael.  When I started my new job in San Diego, I suppose I just decided that I was going to go by Michael at work.  I don’t really know why I decided to make the switch, maybe I am getting older, maybe I feel like it sounds more professional, who knows.

Anyway, what’s interesting is that even though I exclusively introduce my self as Michael, I still get about 50% of the people referring to me as Mike.  Now I don’t find this offinsive or anything, after I have gone by the nickname for my whole life.  I just find it interesting.  Especially since it happens right when I am introducing myself to people.  In my line of work you are continuously meeting new people in person.  A typical exchange will go as follows:

• Me: Hi, I’m Michael MacFadden
• Shake Hands
• Other Person: Hi, Mike.

I just find it interesting that I will introduce myself with Michael and some one will immediately respond with Mike.  If some one introduced them self to me as James I wouldn’t respond with “hi Jim”.  So it doesn’t really bother me much, but its kinda of like the more it happens the more annoying it is.

This post has the potential to turn into a rambling rant… I’ll do my best.  San Diego is one of the most beautiful cities in the country.  It’s generally sunny and mild, there are rolling hills, canyons, and of course the coast.  As far as cities go, its pretty clean and aesthetically pleasing.

However, even here I just get the feeling that human beings have a tendency to ruin nature.  Highways, power lines, mining / quarries all seriously mar the landscape.  The noise of the trafic, the garbage on the side of the road,  run down buildings and people who don’t maintain their property are all very diminishing of what would otherwise be possible the closest to paradise you can get in the continental us.

No matter how “nice” a city, there are always the industrial zones, infrastructure, low income areas, etc which I just find depressing.  Through my travels of the mid west, I have found the uninhabited or very sparsely populated areas of the rockies to be must more serene.  I just seems that no matter what the master plan is, whenever a human population reaches a critical mass in a given area, the area is permanently scared.  As the population increase, I suppose that finding these untouched landscapes will be come more and more difficult.

I better start planning for my retirement home now….

So for those who don’t know, I have really gotten behind the San Diego Padres this season.  Going to a game was one of the first things I did when I got here and I have been to quite a few since then.  My company has season tickets and gives them to employee’s to use as an occasional perk.  One of my co-workers got a pair for this past Wednesday but was unable to use them and gave them to Rob and I.

So Rob and I were already jazzed for the free game on Wednesday, when we got an invite from one of our vendors to join them for a customer appreciation event for which they had rented out a Tower luxury suite for the Tuesday night game.  So basically we go to hob nob it in a private suite for the Tuesday night game, and then go to the Wednesday day game about 14 hours later.  The suite included free dinner, drinks, and dessert, a great view, and some nice seats.  It was pretty style’n.

Then for the Wednesday game we got to see a nice 13-3 blow out.  Not to shabby either.  Anyway, definitely the first time I have seen two MLB games in less than 14 hours.  Here are a couple pictures of the suite and from the seats on wednesday.