Month: July 2008

Partially I assume because I have been flitting only between the conference centre and the hotel, and partly because Atlanta is a nondescript City in America’s South, I have found the recent downtown tornado damage to be the most interesting thing here…

Back in March a category “scary” tornado plundered the downtown area, and the damage is pretty obvious. I always though America’s mid-west was the most perilous place to get in the way of Mother Nature, but the prospect of a 200 mile an hour wind loaded with 1,000 sheets of shattered glass feels like a greater threat than the possibility of a mid-west twister dumping a cow on your head.

In LA yesterday and today and off to Atlanta tonight… Missing the girls of course, but liking the sun here in LA.

Actually, it’s a somewhat pointless LA visit given that my flight was delayed by 9 hours yesterday and I missed every meeting as a result, bugger…

 

So today, far from living the Entourage life, me and a few colleagues are working next to the pool in The Standard, where we’ll be for the rest of the morning, nice. Building up the psychological strength required to endure the next few days in Atlanta with 12,000 of our closest Microsoft friends 😐

Finally have some architect drawings for the house, can’t wait to get moving on the renovation, at least now we can see light at the end of this single story tunnel.

Between now and getting some builders in we need to organise a DA with the notorious Local Council, which may take some time if our previous experience is a guide, so there’s a good chance we won’t get moving until early 2009, frustrating but fine.

Doing what we can to make the place habitable within the constraints of the future plan means tidying around the house and pulling down most of the sub-standard crap erected by the previous owner… A real lesson I think, our house seems to be the product of a long term owner, we actually bought it from the people who had built the place back in the 50’s, and ever since then they have tinkered and toyed with it, never spending more than the cost of a cappuccino on the project in hand; Christ it shows…

A gentle tug at the pergola at the rear of the place (ok, gentle tug with a big hammer) resulted in the entire structure cascading over me, the table and the BBQ… Who knew that would happen? Previous owner I think, hence why he sold the place!