It's gonna be a L-OOOOO-NG week...

I peeled my (_]_) out of a warm bed at 4 AM this morning in rain-soaked California and headed for a quick shower. On my way to the airport. For a 6:30 AM flight to Dayton. Through Dallas, since I didn't want to get stuck in snow this time of year. All in the name of professional development. Week three of a six week program designed to turn me into a lean, mean six sigma process improvement machine.

Now our Dayton office has a bit of a bad food reputation among my colleagues in California. I've been told to take my own coffee (and to stop at a grocery store and pick up bottled water with which to brew it) because the office coffee is reminiscent of folgers brewed in dishwater, the hotel water tastes like a swimming pool, and there's neither a Peets nor a Starbucks within a 15 mile radius. And the *food* is worse than that. We shall see...

For now, I just need to get from here to there. With a minimum dependence on fast food.

So John packed me a bit of a care package. Some tasty salted pig parts, sandwiched between homemade parmesan bread. A few hunks of Iberica Spanish cheese. A handful of dried white peaches. And 4 mandarin oranges.

Once through the security maze in San Jose, I slid back into my shoes and set off in search of Starbucks... it was going to be a long day and I needed one last fix. I sipped my orange scented latte with the first of my mandarins.

One positive side effect of the recent west coast storms was a tail wind into Dallas, where we arrived an hour early (and killed about half of that waiting for space at the gate). I settled in to wait for my connection with a sandwich, another mandarin, a couple hunks of cheese, a big bottle of ice water, and a textbook on statistics.

I was on the ground in Dayton by 5:30 eastern, had my luggage by 6, and grabbed a cab to the host hotel. It was close to 7 by the time I was settled in and ready to think about food. I pulled out the hotel guide to see what was in walking distance.

Hmm... there are the usual complement of fast food joints: the arches, the king, the colonel and yet *another* Arby's (roast beef of questionable origin's clearly popular in this area...I spied no less than 9 of them on the 7 mile trek from the airport. And 39 listed in the Greater Dayton Area Yellow Pages). Perhaps not.

There's a Cadillac Jack's across the street. Not a candidate for dinner on my own the night before the Buckeye's battle LSU.

And there's a pizza place that delivers, but the pictures in the ad don't look good. And if you can't make pizza LOOK good...

Exercising my burgeoning skills in data-driven decision making, I ripped into my care package and dined on a couple of oranges, the last of the pig parts and cheese, the baggie of peaches and a bottle of water I'd procured in the lobby. And sent thank you vibes flowing across the country...

From the Archives: In an exercise of deja vu all over again, John kept me fed.

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