saavedra77 | Been Offline ...

Sorry I've been out of touch, y'all. I was on the road doing focus groups for work, most of last week, with only intermittent internet access. Since then, I've been recovering from jet lag and trying to transcribe and table the reams and reams of data I brought back. We have to draft a report summarizing all of this by next Monday, so I'm going to be working insane hours, all week, too.

I was in Texas for most of the week. I met up with E., my project manager from the Bethesda office, in Houston Wednesday, where we conducted a two-day series of focus groups with pediatric patients and their parents.

Texas felt nice, although not nearly as ... Texan as I'd expected (this was my first visit, there). The temperature was in the eighties, humid--which is to say, very comfortable, to me. Physically, the suburbs north of Houston looked like every other suburb I've ever seen, only with more Tex/Mex and Cajun food amidst the malls and overpasses. (Our hotel literally stood in a WalMart parking lot ...) Culturally, the only major difference I noticed--apart from some rather faint accents--was that people talked about church a lot more, or more openly.

Thursday evening, E. and I bonded over enchiladas and margharitas: we talked about her three hijas, about our exes, etc. It's funny: our working relationship can be a little tense, at times (E's a great one for panicked, last-minute requests), but once the workday's over, she's someone I really enjoy hanging out with.

Friday, we were off to western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio (Pittsburgh and Youngstown, to be more precise), where we rushed through three of the biggest focus groups we've done, all in one day: about twenty people per group, lasting about an hour each. Very adrenaline-intensive, and it gave me a thumping case of writer's cramp, but it was a highly productive day.

I finally got back to Seattle late Saturday, slept about a dozen hours, and then joined sarrabellum , sleepwhenimdead, a bunch of other ex-Hampshire college people, and attam to see "The Hithchikers Guide to the Galaxy", Sunday--which was a chuckle, albeit not a particularly memorable one. (I'm probably just jaded from seeing the BBC series, years ago--I knew all the jokes, already, and it just seemed like a louder, abbreviated, more American version ...)

OK, I'm rambling: Time to go to sleep, so I can get up early, tomorrow, and finish transcribing those reams and reams of data ...