Cats go to Panama City

I went to Panama for about 72 hours this week. This was the view at sunrise from my hotel room. Many of the skyscrapers in Panama City have cranes on top of them which tell me that there are either a lot of large buildings being built or that Panamanians have a different aesthetic relationship to cranes than we do in the US.
Here is my super-cool team that I will be working with for the next 4 months: Hugues, Jorge, Ben, Anita, and myself. On our first dinner out we played "one lie, one truth" where each person relates 1 truthful fact or story about themselves and also 1 lie. One of the people at the table spent a year in an African prison.

Look! - its me getting ready for day 2 of work in Panama....I am avoiding learning the real definition of business formal - so polka dots are still fair game...Sun setting on Panama city.

More cranes!!!

I'm doin' it!

In the words of Bill Murray, as he was tied to the mast of a moving sailboat, in 'What About Bob': "I SAIL!"
Here is Rittenhouse square in Philadelphia (right in front of my apartment building) on the first day of spring. Philadelphians are picknicking and playing frisbee and all is right with the world.

Here is the view from my office window. In the foreground we see a lot of train tracks which are pretty cool and the beige building in the center is Philadelphia's Museum of Art which is currently housing a Frieda Kahlo exhibit that I am looking forward to seeing.

Here is my fabulous kitchen featuring my first home-cooked meal: tofu, spinach, whole-wheat tortillia, and cheddar cheese. Dinner for the next two nights looked remarably similar.

Good friend competing in his first chicken wing eating contest...apparently the winning strategy is to only eat about half the meat on the chicken wings: this seems wrong to me and I am now jaded about the prospects of this alternate profession.

Emma meets me after work at a Japanese restaurant. My ice cream is "black sesame" and tastes like peanut butter....eh...no serious stomach problems but also no developing superpowers: I would say I am indifferent.

Stay tuned friendlies because this blog is being posted from NY and tomorrow we're off to Panama City!

A Cat's guide to moving

Step 1: Load worldly belongings in 15 minutes from friend's parent's basement in haphazard manner filling only 1/3 of truck volume.
Step 2: Find second friend to share driving responsibilities so that important activities such as radio control, hydration & snacking, and blackberry mapping of route can be attended to.
Step 3: Make bathroom break on the New Jersey Turnpike and buy more liquids.
Step 4: Find local friend's parents to stay with the first night in town and then engage Friend #3 to move all worldly belongings into new abode.
Step 5. Slowly push items toward walls and loosely group items by color.
Step 6. Your Cat is now ready to start living a fabulous new life in Philadelphia. Thank you to all my friends - come visit...I may even have a bed by then.

Happy Valentine's Day 2008

There appears to have been some late-night gang signage in Palo Alto, CA.
Catherine and training friends from NY, London, and Johannesburg.
Catherine after going for a run today at lunch but before swimming in the pool...almost made me forget about the 10 hours of class.
Consultants at lunch between training sessions
The Valentine's artwork I surprised the class with this morning (they are MandMs)

First week of work

My first week at a "real" job has not seemed very real: I spent two days in New Jersey learning about benefits and then received my precious new toys: laptop and blackberry. My blackberry (also known as Ping) and I are still in the honeymooon phase. After New Jersey, we headed to Puerto Rico's El Concistador resort for the first year retreat. Above is the view from my balcony the first morning
One of the sets of pools in the side of the cliff the resport is built into
another view
In the distance is a small island I swam to from the larger private island (Palomino) owned by the resort, where the office organized a formal dinner on the beach with dancing and a limbo contest. (I ended up representing my new office)
Here is me after my first day of work with a throat losenge

Cats go to work?

Tomorrow morning I leave my parents' nest again. There will probably be fewer tears than when I was 18, but the transition into a new job (having absolutely nothing to do with what I spent 7.5 years of higher education studying), a new city (which I have heard is much safer than it used to be), and new friends (haha...they don't even know what is about to hit them) will be accompanied by the same exuberant anticipation.

Of course my final week in SF has not been without a few rallies around the adventure-pole and has included:

*acupuncture and Chinese herbs (I don't recognize a single ingredient - it must be awesome!)
*acroyoga: apparently a combination of acrobatics, yoga, and Thai massage
*and a flying trapeze class at the SF circus center

...with these three first-time experiences under my belt (including a long conversation with a young lady in clowning school but who also really interested in contortion), I feel ready for just about anything...even say, sailing catamarans in Puerto Rico on my new job's dime (probably even plural).
ladder up to the flying trapeze platform
another unwitting class-member

Fasting...

Objective:
Try out fasting for 24 h as a way of giving the digestive system a break and cleaning the "tubes"

Disclaimer:
Anyone who knows me, is aware that my emotional and physical balance is sensitive to the regular intake of food (read: When meals are late I often become cranky, snappy, and in extreme instances will lie down on the ground and cry). Taking this into account my fast consisted of half a piece of fruit 4 times during the day and lots of water.

Results:
My energy level was higher all day than usual and I had more free time (since I didn't have to find, prepare and eat food). I also wasn't weak as a result of not having eaten more than 400 calories in total. Nevertheless, I did think about food quite a bit, although I was surprised to find that the craving for food faded through the day - separating this emotional impulse from the feeling of physical hollowness that did persist.

Conclusion:
Not as bad as I had feared. It felt pretty good as eating adventures go, but there was not definite proof of improved cleanliness of the digetive system. I think next time I could manage just water (with lemon juice).