Lots going on these days.

- I'm Cali Bound (what an incredible piece of motion picture art).

In a few hours I'm leaving for Anaheim California to attend an ERP software conference. This will be the second time in the last 12 months that I've made it to The Golden State as well as the second time that I will fail to make it to the city that I really want to visit out that way: San Diego. I would have tried to do a short weekend drive-by but the weeks that it took me to get my head straight from doing that in San Francisco last year have caused me to conclude that I need to bring my butt back so that I can have a weekend at home to recover.

Even still, this will be my first time in Southern California and I plan to make the most of it.

- As providence would have it, I am going to be right down the highway from Los Angeles where a certain International baseball tournament that I've been feverishly following just happens to be reaching its climax. I have secured tickets to the Semifinal game that the US team will participate in as well as the World Championship match. The fact that the games start at 6 PM PST means that I should have ample time to check out the City of Angels afterward.

- My hotel is right across the street from Disney Land, a shame as I have absolutely no interest in checking it out.

- I'm fortunate to be able to take this trip as travel budgets are being slashed to the bone at the job. This fact makes a recent "Investigative report" by a local TV station claiming to reveal excess in State University travel spending but in actuality just provides a platform for right-wing ignorance and anti-intellectualism (I would provide a link but the report has mysteriously vanished from their website) that much more annoying.

Things are so tight that all travel has to be approved by the University Provost who - if you're not aware - is the second-ranked executive in the entire organization behind the President. The irony is that the time it took for my request to make its way through all of the required channels of bureaucracy for the purpose of scrutinizing costs, my conference registration fee, air fare, and hotel costs all went up resulting in hundreds of dollars more in expenses.

Go figure.

Gotta step (literally). God willing, I will holler at you soon from the West Coast.