'Back in the US for a few days

Hopped the pond to Minneapolis today for a week's round of meetings …the usual 3-hour drive up to Schiphol required me to hit the road at 5 am. Ugh…but was up at 3 :30 anyway…not sleeping well. On the way over, I watched the Bond film “Quantum of Solice “(much better than expected), read 150 pages of a book of European history (got the background for the first world war firmly in mind now…), and arrived to find warm summer temperatures and, paradoxically, mounds of snow in the parking lots. The locals are telling me that I hit it lucky.

I’ve dropped anchor in an Embassy Suites: the contrast between the lush atrium interior and the stark parking exterior always intrigues me. I suppose it’s the Mall of America in miniature. So different from the inns and apartments that tend to be the norm back in Europe.

I always celebrate the first night of being back in the US with a big slab ‘o meat. I’m sure that it’s terrible for me, but it is so good.

Otherwise, jet lagged out…plans and notes to write, but it will keep… Until then, to bed (if I can get over the novelty of understanding every word on all 200 television channels)