Baltimore, MD and Charlotte, NC

Back on the road this week headed initially to Baltimore, traveling with my boss and boss's boss as this time of year is usually strategy and planning sessions for the upcoming year.  Good trip traveling with intelligent good people, then no matter how difficult things might become you can work it out together.  One of our "road" conversations usually turns to the joys of travel.  We saw an incident of arguing over the armrest on a flight so I was delighted to see the Soarigami (funny but for real) is set to debut sometime in 2015.

http://www.cntraveler.com/stories/2014-12-01/soarigami-could-end-battle-for-airplane-armrest?adbid=10152946844548982&adbpl=fb&adbpr=21317493981&s_cid=social36556577

I like staying in the harbor area of Baltimore whenever I visit, so peaceful in the early morning.

And the hotel, love it, had a grand staircase and a library.

As an aside whenever I'm in Baltimore I try to imagine what it was like when my Grandparents Thelma and Bill lived there with my Dad and his brother Richie during the mid 1930's.  I looked for their house one time but it's an empty parking lot today.  They left Hartford, CT and moved to Baltimore for a short period of time and then moved back to Hartford, this is one of my ancestry mysteries I hope to solve one day. 

This week I started the 30 day plank challenge (thank you wedding support group).  I'm determined to get to the 5 minute mark although it may take me more than 30 days to get there.  It starts off deceptively simple:

12/3 - 20 seconds - Houston

12/4 - 20 seconds - Baltimore

12/5 - 30 seconds - Charlotte

12/6 - 30 seconds - Houston

12/7 - 40 seconds - Houston

I'll report progress . . .

And then on to Charlotte where the holiday spirit is alive and well there too which makes being on the road this time of year not so bad:

Back home in Houston, so proud of Johnson Space Center who's in the news this week as they successfully launched and landed the Orion spacecraft.  Upon landing on Friday one of our downtown restaurants, Reserve 101, had an exclusive viewing of Ardberg whiskey with a local company rep on hand to discuss their company’s first-of-its-kind experiment of sending some of it into space.  They discussed the effects of anti-gravity on aging whiskey.  Very cool event.


Hope you are enjoying the holiday season!