Lopez Family blog

It seems I only blog when I’m away from home. That’s probably due to not having any time to do so when I’m home. In any case this time I’m in Mexico… Mexico City to be exact. We got here on Monday evening and went straight to the hotel. On the ride to the hotel I had more than enough time to get to know the cab driver. I found out that there are about 20 million people living in the Mexico City metro area. Now that I think about it, that was the only interesting fact that came out of our converstaion. Not a very good return if you think that I spent about one hour talking to this guy. In any case we made it to the hotel which was in a very posh part of town. You know when people think of Mexico they usually think of barefoot kids with a punctured soccer ball playing on a dirt road (well that’s how they show it on TV anyway). I’m sure that still exists but the area we were in was rather nice, there were mostly new buildings with very cool architecture. Another thing I noticed was that the polution didn’t seem to do much to me. I didn’t really notice it and haven’t felt any of the symptoms that people say they experience. The work bit was, well, work. The most exciting part were the cab rides to the office because both days the driver was convinced we wanted to go somewhere other than were we wanted to be. I don’t know how it would have worked out if I hadn’t been able to speak Spanish. Because of work scheduling I get to spend the weekend in Mexico before heading out to San Francisco to see another client. At this point you’re probably feeling really bad for me I’m sure. As exciting as Mexico City seems to be, I’m escaping to a town called Queretaro. I’ll meet up with some friends and see what happens. I can’t remember the last time I had a weekend where I could just wing it. Should be fun! 

I haven’t had to traveled for a while which has been nice. I’ve been able to enjoy coming home in the evenings to play with Natalia and when we’re lucky (i.e. Natalia sleeps more than half an hour in her crib), have some quality time with Lisa.

This time I’m in Dallas, TX doing a new type of gig in which we not only do a performance assessment of the customer’s website but we also do a data analysis workshop so the customer can see how we went about doing the assessment and can in theory do it for themselves in the future. There are other firsts that will/are happening during this trip. My colleague Jean and I are presenting together for the first time, this will be the first customer we do the workshop for and this is also the first time that I will be part of a performance assessment without Stephen. Exciting times.

This, however, is not my first time in Texas. Texas and I go way back, I basically grew up in Texas and have many, mostly distant, memories of my time here.  Ever since I found out I was coming to Dallas a couple of weeks ago, the line ‘All my ex’s live in Texas’ from the song ‘All my ex’s live in Texas’ by George Strait has been in my head.  I’d thought nothing of it until I realized that in fact, all my ex’s DO live in Texas. Granted I never had a huge dating history but the girls/women that were a big part of my life still live here. Wife and daughter excluded.

I’ve never been one to look people up and try to find out what they’re doing and how they’re getting on with life. I’m busy enough with my own life to really give much thought to anyone I don’t talk to or see on a regular basis. This however has stirred my curiosity and I can’t for the life of me get it out of my head. So I’ve set off to find out what my ex’s are up to.

I will, perhaps wrongly so, categorize the ex’s into three types. Ex number one was the high school sweetheart. A bit of a stretch but I’ll roll with it. I do have fond memories of our time together, we both played soccer and I believe that’s how we met. We hit it off and were dating not long after we met. We lasted a good while together and it wasn’t until she started hanging around with a new set of friends that we began to grow apart. Out of the three she’s the only one that I’ve actually had contact with. I believe she found me on one of those websites designed to help you find old high school friends. She’s currently married with two kids and seems to be happy with life. Good for her?

Ex number two was a girl I always wanted to date but she was way too cool for me. This is the movie type story where the geeky guy gets the girl. It wasn’t until long after high school that I ran into her at a party and we hit it off. She actually remembered me and said she’d thought I was alright back then. One thing led to another and we did long distance dating for a while. Unfortunately unlike in the movies it doesn’t all end in happiness (or maybe it does if you consider that I would not have met my wife, had this relationship not ended). She turned out to be nothing like I expected and I became disillusioned with her and where things were going. This I must admit broke my heart. As far as I know she’s nowhere to be found now days but I must admit I didn’t try very hard.

Ex number three was not really an ex at all. She was more like a mega crush who of course like all proper crushes never amounted to more than a really good friendship. This was another stereotypical situation where girl is too cool for geek. So there’s really not much to say about her. I think she’s married and that’s pretty much the extent of what I know of her.

The real treat of this trip isn’t the fact that we walked to and from Chicago O’hare terminal C to terminal B several times but rather getting to know my coworker Jean. You never really know someone until you’ve traveled with them and it turns out that she’s kind of cool and even thou there’s an age difference we’re pretty similar people.

So there you go, I went to Texas thinking about ex’s and came back with a friend.

Another article published with more babbling from me about how websites work. The title of this master piece:

Smart Start Hotel Executive Report: Persistent Connections

If you want to read the article click here