Well, I'm back home now. Flew back in on Saturday, and I'm barely able to stay up past 7pm thanks to the jet lag. Taking today off of work will help - especially since the new 'use it or loose it' policy will make me loose about 2 days worth of vacation as of midnight tonight.

The pupster looks to be doing just fine now that Janine and I are back to a tag team. With Janine at work today, however, it's just me and the dog. She was a little bit of a pain in the middle of the day, but a sleepy morning and an hour-long romp through a field full of snow has had her quiet for most of the day.

Not much else going on today... kinda boring, really. I have hockey tonight, but between then and now I'm just surfing around on the couch. Mondays sure can be rough. ;-)

So I went to Amazon.com to try and find some info about the Sony PSP. One thing that stood out in the search results was a Whitepaper. The reviews are definitely worth a read!

I'll let you guess where I am.

I'll give you a hint...

It's an island where the locals eat 'Fish n Chips' and they all drive on the wrong side of the road.

If you guess London, you're right. England is also an acceptible answer. I'm actually taking a bit of a detour from the beginning of yet another business trip to France. This time, though, I decided to wander outside French borders and head through the Channel Tunnel to a little island that we had a little war with back in the 1700s. I think that most people are over that little tiff by now, eh?

I got here in Friday afternoon, and have been having a great time wandering around the city, getting a little lost, and seeing a few theatre shows. Yes, it's spelled 'theatre' out here... I still think it's a little pretentious.

Unfortunately the love of my life (a.k.a. Janine) is stuck at home with no extra vacation time. She gets to walk the dog through the foot-plus of snow that dumped back on her side of the pond and go to work at a factory, while I get to wander around London-town drinking pints, seeing the locals (the 'bad teeth' thing is horrifically true)... and then eventually go to work at a French factory next week. But for now it's fun time!!

For your information, I've only had the following conversation once after getting to know some random friendly stranger (to my surprise):

Friendly Stranger: So, what's your name? Me: Austin. F.S.: Ahh... as in 'Austin Powers'? Me: Umm... *insert bad english accent* Yeah, baby! F.S.: *excited giggles*

So maybe the excited giggles didn't happen, but it went pretty much like the rest.

Finally home from 'vacation'. Since I haven't posted in about 2 weeks (and my blog needs some filler for the moment), here are the highlights:

- Fun Christmas in the Bay Area with family and a few friends. Things went very smoothly at the family table, for once!

- Tahoe was a blast! Skiing was great (sometimes I forget that I do miss the sport), Neener and I got a kick out of cross country skiing on our last day, and family-time was good. While we were in Tahoe, a huge storm dumped about 6-9 feet of snow in 5 days by the house - even more fell at higher elevations. Yes, that's feet!

- Due to a 6:30am flight yesterday, we spent our last night in Reno at a casino close to the airport where I found a $30 room rate with tax (pretty good room for the price). Janine made back the room rate (and them some) on a $0.25 slot machine.

- Back home now with a dog that grew while we were left and a mountain of mail. I don't wanna go back to work, but I don't have much say in the matter at this point.

- In two weeks we'll be in Michigan for a wedding shower & postponed Christmas.

- In three weeks I'll be in France... and possibly London, if I play my vacation cards right. ;-)