Taking a moment

Feels like forever since I last blogged about what's going on here in the World of Suw, but with a half-hour to kill on the flight from London to Lisbon for SHiFT, and no real motivation to do any of the things I should be doing – like writing the talk I'll be giving or finishing the article that's, oh, a month late – I thought I'd just have a little bibble here.
I'm disappointed to have missed seeing Neil whilst he was in the UK, but my own travel schedule has been pretty mad and his signing was here and gone again before I noticed. San Francisco, then Brussels, now Lisbon and then, after a single night back in the UK, Vienna. I can't wait for the travel to stop. I honestly don't know how people like Neil and Cory, who always seem to be somewhere that's not home, manage to travel so much without getting utterly exhausted. Or maybe they do, and they just never mention it. Me, I'm booking 5th October off for a damn good sleep. Anyone calling my mobile before 4pm will be directed straight to answerphone. Meantime, I have to go be all chirpy and sociable when right now I feel more like I want to bury myself in writing and coding and working on ORG stuff.
Of course, the last two conferences were ORG-related, but that somehow doesn't manage to make me feel less guilty about being 'out of the office'. (When your 'office' is your coffee table, that whole phrase fails to make any real sense.)
The conferences I've been to have been great though Рinspirational and fun and full of very cool people. I am, however, coming up to some sort of monthly Dunbar limit. If I have to engage in small talk with one more stranger I swear I will scream. Unless they can fix my MySQL problem or have a spare £100k kicking about with which to fund ORG, in which case I'll just grovel appropriately.
I am fed up of flying too. The gate agent today got really snotty because the name on my passport (Susan) was not the same as the name on my ticket (Suw), primarily because I didn't book it. I felt like kneeing him in the bollocks, frankly, the git.
Plus there's a guy sitting near me with a cough that sounds as if he's trying to retch his heels up through his intestines. It's probably quite a satisfying cough to cough – lots of gurgling phlegm – but as an onlooker, it's quite vile.
In other news, Kevin got his work permit through and has started work at The Guardian. He's having a great time – good bunch of people, interesting challenges and a far more interesting neighbourhood to work in. Within a week, he'd located a local wine bar that does champagne tastings, so Monday night we went out to try a little champers. I wasn't quite prepared for the volume of free champagne on offer from Ruinart, so ended up getting completely hammered. Kev took tasting notes, which he's going to write up and I'll post them here as soon as he emails them to me. Suffice to say, the champers was great, the Dom Ruinart was lovely, but we plumped for ordering a couple of bottles of the Blanc de Blancs as that was more within our price range.
Right… about to come in for landing, so better shut the laptop down.