Dallas #1

Maybe it's having the whole job situation dealt with, but i felt a lot more relaxed today than I have for the past couple days. Whatever the cause, I realized a lot of things today...

1) It was really fitting that I began the trip in Chicago.
While I wrote my Druker proposal at LAX, it was actually Chicago where the whole thing began. Three years ago, my girlfriend at the time and I were in Chicago visiting her brother during winter break. We had been fighting for something like three straight months over the phone and the trip wasn't all that different. On the last day, heading toward O'hare we got into another fight and sat silently driving toward the airport. Looking out the window I began to wonder what all the skyscrapers were doing around the aiport. Three days later we would break up. Three months later I would write my Druker proposal. Three years later I would be back in Chicago. It almost seems worth it now.

2) I have a car in England!
Maybe I should really be planning my time around Heathrow, but all of a sudden today I realized I had a car in England and a few days to spare. Suddenly, Heathrow, Gatwick and the Tate Modern have been expanded to include Bath, Stonehenge, Land's End, Oxford and the Lake District. I've never been so psyched in my life. I just hope I can pick up driving on the other side of the road or things could get interesting.

3) I have a guide-book problem
Upon realizing #2, I drove straight to the nearest Barnes and Noble (or was it Borders?) and purchased guidebooks for England, Holland, Hong Kong and Korea. It took like two hours for me to decide on which guidebook to get (Lonely planet? Fodors? Both?) Big thanks go out to Rick (HKG), Tom (AMS), and Joshua (ICN) for all their travel suggestions. I've spent the last five hours reading guidebooks. Woo hoo!

As you could probably imagine, today was an "off day" regarding airports. I drove to the "cultural district" in Fort Worth and saw the Kimball Museum and Ando's Museum of Modern Art. The light in the Kimball really was great, but the quiche in their restaurant was amazing. Can't really explain it yet, but there is something about those two museums being right next to one another. Yin and Yang or something.

In airport news, I head off to the Las Colinas busines park (across the street from my hotel) and the DFW business center tomorrow. If I have time I'm driving down to the Texas Book Depository and the Dallas Galleria. And then I'm off to Korea...