Winter weather travel

Today and tomorrow are a whirl-wind trip to Tulsa, Dallas and back home to Houston. Right now, it's the end of a long day and I find myself sitting in a fairly comfortable hotel in Dallas, where it's snowing.

I got up this morning at 4:20 and was on a plane by the time the boys woke up for school. Tulsa was the first stop for the day. I spent some time at a client updating part of their document management system (MOSS) and waiting for my colleague to join me so that we could do a production install of the system, and then migrate the development environment to the new prod instance. Not to be, however. He was scheduled for a later flight and fell victim to the line of storms - snow, ice and rain - extending from Chicago all the way to Houston.

When I arrived in Tulsa, it was snowing a little bit, I grabbed a cab to the client's office and got to work. By mid afternoon, I was done, so headed to the airport for the flight to Dallas. Flight was slightly delayed, but nothing like what I expected, given the weather. I made it to Dallas by 4:45 and headed to the hotel to check in.

Once here in Dallas, I got settled into the hotel and changed for a trip to Stoneworks Rock Gym in Carrollton - about 5 miles from the hotel. I bouldered around there for about an hour, then headed to Pei Wei for dinner. The rain picked up pretty strong while I drove from the gym to dinner; during dinner, it changed to snow.

This evening, I think I'll finish a magazine I started reading at dinner and then dig back into a book I started last week (Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer). Tomorrow finds me booked with conference calls starting at 8:30, a meeting with Microsoft on our eDiscovery services, and lunch with a potential client. Then it's back to Houston in the late afternoon, early enough so that I can go vote.

Spring Camp Out

We had a fantastic Cub Scout camp out this weekend at Jack Webb's ranch in Chapel Hill. The weather was beautiful - not too hot, not too cold, no rain, and decent sunshine.

We camped in the rolling hills of a pasture surrounded by clumps of overbrush, live oaks, some pines, and perhaps some maples. There was a nice little creek running through the pasture with a few log crossings and a small footbridge. The boys didn't feel obligated to cross on those, though - several ended up soaked.

Jackson and Porter were both presented their Scout ranks at the camp fire - Wolf for Jackson and Tiger for Porter. Also at the camp fire, we retired the school's old American flag - a truly beautiful ceremony, full of pride and patriotism. To close the evening, several of us gathered around the dying fire to say the rosary, for which we'll earn a patch from the National Council on Catholic Scouting.

The boys and I slept well Saturday night and woke early Sunday for breakfast with our friends. Jaime Brito and I made a breakfast of bacon, eggs and sausage - with fruit, cereal and anything left over from dinner that anyone wanted warmed up. Pat Swanson led a Scout's Own service at 8:30 and shared with us the poem "IF" by Rudyard Kipling. I was moved to tears - the poem was just what I needed. I believe God sends us messages in so many ways, and today he did so as I stood with my boys among friends at a camp out.

The boys are understandably wiped out. It was a good weekend.