Where Is Hawkins?Where travel is cheaper than psychotherapy.

I got my letter from the US Treasury Department that said, sure, you can go to Iran. Just don’t bring your sat phone or your GPS. Hell – how will I be harassed now? But I can get a Presidential waiver and bring them along. That’s worth writing a letter to President Bush. Knowing me, I’d get the waiver and then it’d turn out my Iridium phone wouldn’t work because it’s from Iran and blah blah blah. Which leaves me to rent a Thuraya phone instead. Too bad Thuraya doesn’t work in the US, otherwise that’d be hella pimp.

But enough about that.

Frankfurt is coming up in 22 days. I suppose I should consider a hotel at some point. Stupid Starwood does me no good because the Frankfurt Sheraton is too expensive and sucky by all accounts. So, Priceline it is and maybe I’ll end up at the Le Meridien. Not another Marriott, I hope. I wouldn’t mind a Radisson SAS however if it’s anything like the one in Brussels.

I need to get back into travel writing. I’m working on two coworker’s “week in London/Paris” trips – that’ll be this weekend. I’m thinking of a “72 Hours in…” series of books or at least, online articles. Who knows. I have to get back into a normal pattern first.

So I’m a lot better than I was earlier in the week. The Margo thing still weighs heavily on my mind, though.

If she’s on my plane to Frankfurt on the 19th, I’m going to eat my gun.

Anyway.

I got to see “The Fog of War” – the documentary about that Cold War whiz kid, Robert McNamara. The very true list of 11 lessons learned by the director are:

Lesson #1: Empathize with your enemy.
Lesson #2: Rationality will not save us.
Lesson #3: There’s something beyond oneself.
Lesson #4: Maximize efficiency.
Lesson #5: Proportionality should be a guideline in war.
Lesson #6: Get the data.
Lesson #7: Belief and seeing are both often wrong.
Lesson #8: Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning.
Lesson #9: In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil.
Lesson #10: Never say never.
Lesson #11: You can’t change human nature.

So I’m back from Amsterdam, and what a fucked up trip. Seriously, I miss a shooting at Amsterdam’s Schiphol’s airport, and Margo managed to end up on the same LHR-ORD flight as I (3 rows back, opposite side of the aircraft). Of all the times for my upgrades NOT to clear…

“He who loses control loses.”

I’m in Dallas killing off time until the 9+ hour flight to Zurich. How do you kill off 4 hours at DFW? Lounge hop. 4 OneWorld lounges!

Why is it that my fake blog is better than my real one?

Also, my old picture site is back up, so it’s now a manual process of moving my captions for 600+ photos from the old site to the new site. That’ll be a “rainy-day” project.

6 more days until I’m on my way. I’m such a mess. Haven’t thought about packing, haven’t laid out an itinerary, haven’t done much and am contesting with a lot of work time. Fuck.

Then there’s museum prep stuff that I need to get a move on for this new exhibit. Mamet wrote it best in The Spanish Prisoner – “It’s one thing when your hobbies get in the way of your work; it’s another when they get in the way of each other.”

It’s Jan 3 – 363 days to go for the end of the year. It’s looking better than 2003 did. I managed to pretty much kill two relationships with two very good people and managed to travel a lot. But other than me steamrolling over people, it was not a bad year.

But I must say that I’m looking forward to heading out to Amsterdam.