Running on the beach

This morning we walked down the railway trail to BIOS. There was a free tour, and it was worth exactly what we paid. It started with a 45 minute PowerPoint presentation. I am sorry to say I'm not kidding. I can barely be convinced to sit through ppt presentations when I'm being paid, and was seriously considering leaving.

I haven't ranted for a bit, and I can't stand PowerPoint, so here goes. Almost all ppt presentations are dreadful at best. Especially work ones. People put in too many words, too many levels of indent, stupid graphics, and overdo the slide dress up options. Then they read them verbatim. I'm ready to slit my wrists at that point. That is probably the single fastest way to lose my respect. If there is one piece of software I'd like to see banished from the world it's ppt and all its ilk. This ppt was way too much history, maps that were mostly dots, and photos of people long dead.

The rest of the "tour" wasn't much better. There was only one scientist willing to talk to us, on what sea urchins can teach us about human mortality. This could be dynamite exciting, but it just died and lay there on the floor. I will be writing a long feedback note to them. The tour guide was nice, and enthusiastic, but I think he was following a script. Gah.

Shortly after I headed out for a run in perfect running weather. Warm and sunny. Love it. I ran past the beach and down to the tip of the island, then looped back to the beach. I took my shoes off and ran back and forth a few times. So nice. I let my feet dry, brushed off most of the sand, and ran some more, this time through the golf course and some ocean front properties.

I was reminded of my buddy Alan, of "I want to schedule my work the way most people schedule their vacations" fame. This when he was running, and I was not. Now I do, and he can't unless bears are chasing him. He was talking about how it was nice to run for a bit, walk to look at something, then run to the next thing to look at. That's exactly what I was doing, checking stuff out.

I was gone about an hour and a half, then fell into the pool when I got back. The rest of the day was sitting in the sun, reading, blogging, slowly drying off. That's sort of weird, here. In Calgary one dries off in a few minutes from being totally wet. An hour later I was still pretty damp and the sun was behind a big cloud.

Lamb burgers last night. Kebabs tonight, they were so yummy we had to do them again. With couscous, salad, and of course, wine. I could seriously get used to this.


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