I type this from the Westchester Marriott, one of my favorite hotels in Westchester County (the other two I like here are the Rye Town Hilton and the Westchester Renaissance). They took good care of me (and their other guests) during the Big Blackout last August, providing free food (though they did manage to get a battery-powered cash register in the bar) and lightsticks.

I’m hoping not to repeat that experience, of course, but I was pleased when I arrived today to be treated to access to the concierge lounge. I’ll be even more pleased tomorrow at breakfast time, but it was nice tonight, since I made away with a bottle of water to sustain me in the workout room.

I decided to travel light this time, so I am XM-less. With Bootcamp over, I don’t feel that I’ll fall behind if I can’t listen, but it would be nice to have some nice music right about now.

I’m also camera-less, unlike my trip to Japan — but I’ve finally gotten around to replacing my old digital camera (a Kodak DC280, which gave good service until the LCD started to go). We visited Fry’s yesterday and picked up a Casio P-600, which is much smaller than my old camera, offers a better zoom, should work better in low light, and, in general, should remove any excuses I have for not taking good pictures. Well, most excuses — the camera doesn’t have an image stabilizer, so long exposures will still be a problem if I can’t find a place to put the camera instead of holding it. I was tempted to bring it with me on this trip, but I didn’t think the hassle of getting a camera pass for IBM would be worth it for the very few possible picture opportunities which might come up.

I didn’t even bring a GPS, so I can’t geocache, either. I guess I’ll have to work.

Tomorrow, I’m supposed to give a colleague from Israel a lift to the meeting we’re both here to attend; her plane is due at JFK at 5:30am, so I hope she makes it through Customs and traffic in fairly quick time. I’ve never cleared US Customs at JFK (I’ve left the country from JFK a number of times, though), so I don’t know how plausible it will be for us to make it to the meeting on time.

But for now, I think it’s time to call it a night.

I thought I’d have a lot to write about this week, but I don’t — I’ve been too busy at work to do anything fun or noteworthy!

But despite the best efforts of the stockholders of IBM to keep me busy, I did manage to find a few things to talk about.

The most interesting, at least at this writing, is the Hebrew Beginner’s Course at Milingua. Diane actually discovered this one, not me, but when she sent Jeff and me a note when their word of the day was “Kehillah” (which is the name of the high school he will be attending in the fall (yikes!)), I took a look at the site and decided to give it a try. I’d gone to Hebrew School when I was a kid, and I can sound out the words in the prayerbook, but I can’t understand Hebrew, nor can I read it for meaning (barring the words I recognize from prayers). I just finished lesson two, the alphabet — so far, so good. Of course, I haven’t gotten into anything new yet, either!

I’m still pleased with XM Radio. I had to have it on in my office today to mask conversations in nearby offices — but I left it on long after the conversations ended. I really enjoyed calling Earle Bailey at Deep Tracks and asking him to play some Seatrain, and having him play it five minutes later. I wish I’d thought to ask for their version of “Flute Thing”, though.

Next week, I’m off to the wilds of Westchester County for the kickoff meeting on an IBM Academy study on Wikis and Weblogs; it should be interesting. I hope so, anyway!

Shabbat Shalom!