Dateline: on the couch in the Shire, Indy, 13 December 2005

Where did I leave me last?

Had a fun night with Jerry and Vonne Mei in the nice Cincy hotel Saturday night. Ordered room service and Jerry was flabbergasted by having food show up at the door.

Sunday on the way home from Cincy my spouse suggested my increasing crabbiness was probably a sinus infection coming on after my cold of last week. So very correct.

Good news was that our new healthcare system has a great immediate care over the weekends. So I take the babe and make the stop and get the Amoxy and I am covered for the trip.

Flight from Indy to Midway during snow storm on Southwest.... Ring any bells. Better outcome for us, but stuck at Midway through most of the Packer-Lions Sunday night game. So very frequent flier: at the airport bar nursing beers and eating chili til they turn me out. Pack not far behind at half. I miss the great win by flying to BWI, arriving at 0030.

My Air National Guard handlers never manage to find me, so I cab it into Baltimore. At the Renaissance, they keep asking me if I'm "Frank Barnett." No reservation for Tom.

It's now 0130. Try the local Marriotts and one a few blocks away has a room, but the Renaissance manager takes pity and give me the huge living room of a gigantic exec suite overlooking the harbor. They wheel in the queen and I'm out at 0200.

Up at 0800 and once clothed, I navigate to find the Air National Guard senior leadership conference registration. I need to get a photo ID. Amazingly, they have several dozen handlers in the reg room, but no one showed up at the airport last night and no one at any hotel has my reservation.

But I take the picture and then I'm shunted by a handler backstage in this enormous ballroom. The kind of set up is one with lots of black curtains hiding a host of backstage gear and geeks.

They were so ready for me but I was pretty wobbly. About 6 antibiotics in and I'm still very foggy, careful not to turn my head so fast.

But the Mac checks out fine and I glance at my watch: 1000 and I'm onstage at 1030. Just enough time to run three blocks to the Hyatt and the Budget location there. I check in and get a key. Now 1020 and I run to the vators to get up to 3. Car isn't there as promised. Now 1023 and I'm back at the desk. Manager now walks me to 2 and we find the car.

Dash out of parking garage and over three blocks to valet parking at Renaissance. Run upstairs to 3rd deck and find that US Air Force Chief of Staff went long on Q&A, so I have until 1045.

So I get geared up with coffee and water. Room must hold well over 1k. Kind of set up you see for big IT company gigs.

At 1050 the MC (a one-star) tries to quell them. Finally at 1055 his intro is over and I step around curtain corner and am on very large stage with my clicker and clip-on. Clip-on works like a dream, but clicker has a weird delay, so I'm wandering a bit on this large stage, blinded by a long bank of lights that makes the wide crowd (about 60 yards spread) seem like an abstraction.

But diving in, it goes well. Responses are strong, laughs come fast, and I get into the groove. I finish the BFA brief at 55 slides in just under 50 minutes.

I handle about 5 questions and then get wonderful eagle statue, made in China (natch).

Quick wave to applauding crowd and I'm behind the stage with handler. Grab bags, hit head, and down to front entrance. Handler gets car and I tip the driver. I have no idea if anyone pays for the parking because I'm gone with pre-printed directions from the valet in my hand.

I have 120 minutes to get to the Pentagon to brief the new Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, a Cheney man by the name of Eric Edelman.

I'm on 295 and cruising. I hit the Pentagon Mall parking garage at 1310 and head into Macy's looking for the head, knowing well where it is found (not my first time at Macy's).

Steve DeAngelis shows up at 1330 and we walk the tunnel over to the PNT. Just in time to start the show at 1400 for about 10 assembled. Various titles. I go 60 and then 30 on Q&A.

Then Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability Ops (Jed Nadaner) runs us to his office for a cramped conference room full of young staffers. It's one of those classic inside PNT rooms when you end up showing on the long wall with everyone crammed in on the other side of the long table.

I go about 35 and then we go 55 on Q&A. Pretty intense. They know my stuff well and go long on all sorts of deep theory and real-world questions. Frankly, they stump me more than once, but Steve executes several nice saves.

Then off with Nadaner for a good chat in his office. Steve handles more of that. At this point I'm hurting. I had almost passed out a couple of times from dizziness in Baltimore, and by this point I'd been performing for several hours.

Ah, but the fun does not end!

Back to Mandarin Oriental to check in.

Steve wants a beer in the lobby. I have two.

Then a couple of key Enterra financial backers show up. We chat, do dinner, and then I'm pulled, by interest and desire, into a late-night business meeting at the Ritz Carlton at Tysons that runs til way past 2300. Welcome to my world, says Steve.

More beverages (of all kinds) than I wanted over the course of a long day (I wisely alternate between diuretics and hydrating liquids), but as always with Steve, it's an education from the ground up, so worth the time.

We're back at the Mandarin sometime past midnight.

I need to meet Steve at 0630, so it's an hour to prep the clothes and the bags. I order a wakeup and room service coffee.

Down for the count, I'm in reasonable shape when the call comes.

Steve and I head to Crystal City and the Hyatt. We work the joint brief for a while, and then he kicks off the Association for Enterprise Integration (AFEI) conference as MC. I read papers to catch up across the morning while Steve dashes off to another business meeting. He returns just before noon and we do the joint presentation in a swift 45 minutes.

Good feedback, despite both of us being (as usual) too critical of our own performances. But that's what keeps us trying harder.

Steve dashes off to another meeting, promising to return to wrap up MC duties at the end of the conference (yet another amazing exhaustingly day for the big Energizer Bunny that is Steve), but I mercifully bail into my rental, drive to BWI, catch some Japanese, and then fly home on sked on SWA.

Home with the family, I get to coax Vonne Mei into sleeping, get my ass kicked by Jerry on Mario Party 7, watch a few weird anime vids online with Em, and watch Kev navigate a couple of Kong levels.

Tomorrow I start reviewing the Army and Marine interviews (about two dozen in all) to get my head together to write the Esquire piece. It will have to wait until after next week's family vacation.

The head's feeling better.

I got plenty of blog posts done on the flight home. Funny, but I hadn't given a damn about such writing for about a week, and then I felt I had something to say on the flight home today, so again it flows.

Here's the catch-up effort:

■ China's fifth column in Africa? The deuce you say, general!

■ SysAdmin: the videogame

■ Getting reasonably realistic about the long war

■ Iraqiana: keeping it real

■ The revolution has begun in China--from below

■ The revolution has begun in Asia--from above

■ Malaysia: Islam's leading "lead goose"

■ House of Saud prepares for the end of days

■ America's shame is New Core's gain

■ Doha's unlikely alliance