One nice thing about the long plane and train rides on my trip to Finland was that it gave me time to read (especially on the flight home, when the power at my seat wasn’t working!).  And the lack of English-language newspapers encouraged me to read the books that I’d brought with me instead of blowing my time on USA Today.

On the flight to Finland, I mostly read magazines I’d brought along to read and discard, as well as doing some reading in preparation for the session, but I did squeeze in one book, Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders, by John Mortimer.  Since Leo Kern is no longer with us, I guess this will never be turned into a TV production, but I could hear him thundering in my head anyway, along with the rest of the cast (especially She Who Must Be Obeyed).  This was a quick read, but definitely fun — recommended.

In Tampere, I found myself eating dinner alone most evenings (my IBM contact recommended I stay at the Tampere City Center, which was quite nice, but almost everyone else was at a slightly less-expensive hotel, the Cumulus, four long and cold blocks away).  Fortunately, the dining room was well enough lit to let me read while I waited for my meals; the book which kept me company was Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything.  I enjoyed Bryson’s wandering around cosmology, evolution, and other scientfic topics nearly as much as I’d liked his Notes from a Small Island, and considerably more than I’m a Stranger Here Myself, which, as a collection of columns, was less consistent than the other books of his that I’ve read.

I was sufficiently busy throughout my stay in Finland that I didn’t finish the Bryson until the end of my flight to Frankfurt.  So I started Neil Gaiman’s American Gods partway across the Atlantic.  I’d been meaning to read it for quite a while, probably ever since I saw it win the Hugo at ConJosé, but I knew I’d need a concentrated chunk of time, and the flight seemed like the perfect opportunity.  I’m not sure I got out of my chair after starting the book — and, even though I was exhausted when I got home, I continued reading it, and finished it on Sunday.  It’s been a long time since I’ve been that intensely involved in a book or had finished a long novel so quickly.  I strongly recommend the book, and am planning to read more of his stuff soon.

I enjoyed getting back to reading SF so much that I decided to read another novel almost immediately, Ken MacLeod’s Cosmonaut Keep.  I’d seen MacLeod on many panels at Interaction, where he struck me as intelligent and entertaining, so I put him on my “to read” list, and put the book in my briefcase, where it made several long trips without being opened.  But I pulled it out after this trip, and started it a couple of days ago.  I didn’t have quite as much free time available to read it as I might have liked, so I had to split the book over several evenings, but it was well worth the time — lots of ideas and politics, not to mention sex, drugs, and some awful lines from SF of the past.  This book is the first of a series, and I’m looking forward to reading the others. 

But not yet — I’ve also been getting the library at work to buy books for me (not fiction, at least not deliberately so), and it’s probably a good idea to finish them and make them available to folks on the waiting list.  So the next book I plan to read is Freakonomics, which made its first trip in my briefcase on Friday night.  I’m on jury duty next week, so I may have some good blocks of reading time available.

Note to my readers:  if you’re expecting anything profound, read some other posting.

I managed to stay awake, if not entirely coherent, until a normal bedtime on Saturday night.  But when I finally did go to sleep, I slept well and for a long time — Diane convinced me to get out of bed fairly late on Sunday morning.

I’d gained weight in Finland (no surprise there!), and so I knew I needed to start working it off.  So I went to the JCC and managed to do a reasonable time on the treadmill, but I gave up after only a few weight machines.

The rest of the day passed uneventfully.

Monday, it was back to work; I’d been keeping up on my e-mails, so I didn’t have the inbox from hell to worry about, but I did have to get back to work on my projects.  There was one break, though — one of my colleagues celebrated his 40th anniversary at IBM, so there was coffee and cake and a good time (the caffeine was welcome, but I probably should have skipped the cake).

I like to go to the JCC on Tuesday mornings, but that wasn’t possible this week; I had an early call, and then a colleague from Phoenix was in town.  We had collaborated on some articles last year, and needed to decide what kind of follow-on activity we might undertake, so we’d blocked out the entire morning to make BIG PROGRESS.  After some discussion and serious thought, we decided that neither of us could commit to a major activity at this time, so I erased the workplan from my whiteboard (it’s saved in my mail, anyway).  That was BIG PROGRESS, though not quite what we’d expected when we scheduled the meeting.

Yesterday, I took advantage of technology and handled my first call of the day while waiting for the 5,000 mile service for Diane’s Prius; I had hoped to do that on Monday, but every time I called the dealer, they told me that there was a 90-minute or longer wait for the “Express Lube”, which didn’t seem very express to me!  Wednesday morning was a much better time to go; I think the whole process took less than an hour (I’m not sure, because I was on the phone for most of the time).

Then I drove home to meet the insurance inspector — he was there to look at the roof damage we took on New Year’s Day.  In the meantime, I’ve gotten estimates from three roofers (they vary widely, so I need to be sure that they’re all specifying the same work), and we’ll get the process started next week.  Fortunately, the tarpaper stayed intact, so we don’t have to take urgent action.

Today, I did manage to hit the JCC first thing, and then it was a full day of fun, excitement, and meetings.  I took advantage of my time on the treadmill to finish listening to the “Getting Things Done…Fast” CDs that a colleague had lent me; I found them helpful, but they wouldn’t have been nearly as useful if I hadn’t already read the GTD book.  I am a long way from being a black belt, but my inbox is empty, and that’s a start.  I need to get up the courage and initiative to tackle the home office next — there are dozens of projects waiting to be defined!