Raftery in town for a few weeks

Looks like they make Pepsi in central Indiana - well, at least the orange-flavored lightly sugared water otherwise known as Gatorade.

And how do I know about the PepsiCo supply chain? None other than Mike Raftery is in town for the next couple of weeks implementing a planning solution at various Pepsi manufacturing facilities. He's basically a temporary consultant road warrior without the road warrior pay. At least some of the places are close to his Chicago hometown, so the travelling isn't quite a nightmare.

Puppies are adopted

Those little bundles of joy have now been dispersed all around Hamilton County now. Thanks to Rebecca's marketing plan of the 'Little Rascals" theme, they went pretty quickly. Each puppy was named after a character in the TV show (Petey, Spanky, Alfalfa, Darla) - and there was a big sign that said, "Come meet our gang" - the public ate it up.

It also didn't hurt that they were some of the fattest and cutest puppies to ever spend a night in a shelter.

And yes, I just found out that Venus was adopted too !!!

Hello Atan

And this is a bit of a late post, but we forgot to announce that the Whittaker's have a new beastie, Atan. Hope I'm spelling that right.

He's a Vizsla, which means that Tim now wants us to have a small habitat for quail for him to hunt. Apparently buying quail and releasing them in their backyard is not really the same thing - plus neighbors tend to frown on people walking around with a hunting rifle - it is Meridian-Kessler after all.

Chic-chic hotel

Not to say that I would want to stay there, but I did have to run into the Normandie hotel in San Juan to meet someone for a SCUBA dive. The place was a classic Art Deco kind of thing, and it's probably has a long history in Puerto Rico. A colleague of mine was actually staying there, and commented, "Yep, cool decor, but the workout room needed some help" Ah, the price of style.

Happy Hour

Continuing with the "life could be harder" theme, the hotel I'm at has a nice little free Happy Hour each night from 5:30 to 7:30.

OK, so the margarita was no Adobo grill, but it was infinitely more affordable.

It's not everyday . . .

It's not everyday that you're walking down the street, and you see a little lizard something. I'm sure Patrick could identify the genus and species, but I just thought he/she) was kind of cute.

My life could be harder

Off to Puerto Rico for a week to work on a little project - kind of a last minute thing, so no Patrick. This will be the third Valentine's Day apart :(

I always forget how far this freakin' island is - you think it's just off the coast of Florida, but dude, it's really far south.

I am doing a little hotel jumping - half the time in the Old San Juan the other half in the Residence Inn, but at least it's better than my last experience at the Courtyard Marriott. Whew.

Regardless, despite all the last minute details, I did get a chance to spend some time on the beach at least - so it beats going to Canada at least.

OK, the new airport is cool

One of the reasons why it was time to take the puppies back to the Humane Society was because I had to make a trip down to Puerto Rico for work. With Patrick still gone, it was kind of the final push to get the puppies down to the Shelter where they had a better chance of getting adopted.

But in other news - the new Indianapolis airport is cool. At least it's better than the last two major metropolitan projects - the Lucas Oil Fieldhouse and the downtown library. Although I'm not quite sure why we built a new airport the same size as our last one. True, they can someday expand - but can we work on getting an actual international flight to somewhere first? I mean, I'll even fly direct to Prague - anywhere in Europe non-stop would save me about 6 hours everytime I have to go across the pond. We'll see.