23,000 Miles in 19 Days

It was a helluva ride. London-Chicago-London-Barcelona-London-Shanghai-Hong Kong-London. It ended about a week-and-a-half ago and it whipped me pretty good. Typically a one week business trip to Asia is pretty exhausting, so putting a trip home to Chicago/Michigan and a quick jaunt to Spain ahead of it was a sure way to get totally knackered. And pretty fierce cough that I can't totally shake. This was the kind of cough that makes your ribs sore because of the hacking and the fact that my malady started while I was in China did not provide much comfort. No more raw bird meat, I say, no matter what that nice waiter says.

I might've even been able to shake this thing sooner had I been able to navigate the National Health Service labyrinth, but I couldn't. I literally have no idea how to get in touch with my doctor. In fact, I don't know my doctor's name (probably because I don't "have" one). I had a dinner with a fellow expatriate the other night who has a private doctor he's going to refer me and my family to, so that we might be able to receive medical care should we need it. The whole situation would actually be quite funny were it not so dangerous.

As some of my loyal readers have noted by email to me directly, the blog has been inactive for a while and that obviously corresponds to my lengthy business travels as well our family vacation to Venice, from which we just returned a few hours ago. We took a ton of great pictures, so hope to upload those in the next couple days and say more about the trip. The short of it is that we had a really nice trip to Italy - Tracy planned a great trip, the kids did really well (hard for them to get too upset considering we ate little but spaghetti, pizza, and ice cream for three straight days), and I just loved seeing Venice. It's one of the few places on the planet you can honestly describe as unique. Ben's birthday party is this Sunday, so between that and the Venice pix, I'll hopefully have a lot to post in the next few days.