Paul's life… too boring to be of interest to anyone

Its 6:23am here in Chicago, and I am writing this whilst still in bed. I have the curtains open, and I have a view out onto Lake Michigan. Yesterday, after a fitful nights sleep I went off to the BP Data Centre here, which was literally a hundreed yard walk from the hotel. Despite staying awake and trying to get myself onto US hours, I had woken up a number of times as if the body was saying ‘come on you should be up’. At about 10am, we went off on the tour of the data centres, the one which was close to my hotel, and one about 25 miles the other side of Chicago.

It was whilst travelling across Chicago that I had my ‘who the heck wants to hire a donkey’ moment. (Some blog readers may understand this reference). I saw a sign saying ‘Lingerie Football’… I had to double check the sign, and then said to my colleague who was driving, ‘what the hell is lingerie football’… he just laughed. Apparently, there is a televised league of women playing American football in their… well, lingerie. Beggars belief really, but it seems there is an audience for it.

We finished the tours at around 3:15pm, without having had a stop for lunch. I had been restrained at breakfast with just porridge and a piece of toast, so when I returned to the hotel I was very hungry and ordered myself a panini, which is normally a toasted flat bread, but which turned out to be just a toasted sandwich. I did some e-mail / work, and stopped about 6pm. I was starting to get quite tired, but knew I couldn’t go to bed just then. So, I went for a walk, and walked to ‘Soldier Field’ where there is the Chicago Bears American football stadium, then I walked to the shore of Lake Michigan… I was quite surprised how lively the water was. Then walked back to the hotel. Isuppose I could have got a cab and gone ‘downtown’ for a looksee, but I was really quite tired, so went to the hotel restaurant for a meal, and returned to my room. Lights out about 10pm… I awoke at 4am feeling refreshed… doh… so went back to bed and dozed till about 6am. Hopefully I won’t feel quite so tired today. A few piccies taken with my Blackberry…

The first two are from the hotel room window. The third one is the old building containing the larger of the two data centres I saw. Lovely old building, gutted to convert into data centre space. Then one of the skyline, one of the Chicago Bears stadium, and finally the Lake side.

I have the morning working, and then go to the airport to catch my flight down to Houston late afternoon, getting into Houston about 6pm.

In other news, Tricia tells me Nikki has bought herself a car.