The company is called Philly Dance Fitness, www.phillydancefitness.com. The site is still under construction, but please check it out and pass the link on to anyone you think would be interested. I’m hoping that enough traffic will get search engines to pick up on it. Any suggestions are also welcome!

However, this time off has given me a chance to consider starting my own fitness business. We’ll see how that goes.

PGW workers outside our house

After smelling natural gas last night, PGW confirmed that there was, indeed, a leak somewhere. They proceeded to drill holes in the street from 1 a.m. until dawn. Around 3:30 a.m., I tried to bribe them with mint oreos to take a break and come back in the morning, but no luck.

Crews were still outside working when I left for the office this morning. Apparently, they found a crack in the gas main, which is now sealed.

I’m trying to be grateful that we didn’t asphyxiate or that our house didn’t explode, but right now I’m just grumpy from the lack of sleep. I wonder if there will still be a four-foot hole in front of our house when I get home…

Tigger

Tigger has officially recovered from a week of illness.

We were scheduled to fly from Sacramento to Philadelphia on the same plane, with one stopover in Denver. About an hour before the flight, we saw online that it was delayed by 40 minutes. We figured, no problem, it’s the same plane so we won’t have to worry about running to catch a connection. At the gate, the sign also noted the flight’s continuing service to Philly. Seth checked with the gate agent to be sure and was told that because the plane was delayed, they were going to substitute a different one that would leave just before we landed. We were livid, of course, because there were no other flights that would get us home that night. Worse, we arrived literally five minutes after the Philadelphia flight had taken off.

I want to know why United couldn’t hold the plane 15 minutes if they knew that several connecting flights were arriving late? Based on the customer service line in Denver (which took an hour to get through btw) it seemed like the same thing had happened to several other passengers. I remember gate agents holding planes all the time in the past when they knew that passengers were coming in from flights that had been delayed. Isn’t it more cost-effective to do this than to pay for hotel rooms for dozens of people? It would certainly make those passengers happier. I, for one, will not be flying United again anytime soon unless there’s an extremely compelling price difference.

But I just read about the Great Urban Race (thanks Kat). It’s only five hours max and a similar mix of clues and running around. I’m so sad I missed it this year but I’m keeping it on the radar for next year. Check out the link – there are races all over the country, even in my lovely hometown of Madison, WI.

Yesterday I was so excited because I stopped into a Mexican bodega for something to drink and found a pina flavored Jarrito (pineapple soda). In Mexico they used to “recycle” the bottles by buying 2-liters of the soda, pouring it into the glass bottle and recapping it. You could always tell because the soda came up to different levels in each bottle. No wonder I was sick so many times there. But I did survive, thankfully.

My little Jarritos experience prompted me to buy a “huevos rancheros” burrito from Whole Foods later that day. Mexicans don’t really have burritos, and the huevos rancheros usually have more of a tomato sauce flavor to them than the burrito filling. So, overall, it missed the authenticity test by miles. But I have to say, it was tasty. Maybe I can get some real Mexican food if this flu scare results in lower airfares.

Saturday was really cool because we had the chance to attend sessions focused on the technological end of sharing information. These were hosted by Barcamp, a free conference where the people who attend actually present the sessions. There’s a board with blank note cards in each hour-long time slot, and you can literally pick one up, write a topic that you want to discuss on it and then wait to see who shows up. It was such a cool concept. You end up with a much more collaborative, interactive forum rather than a session where someone is talking and everyone else is listening for the majority of the time.

Anyway, I learned quite a bit. It also pushed me to test out the latest fad – twitter. We’ll see how much time I have for it. I worry that it’ll become like blogging – something I enjoy doing but find myself forgetting to do because I just have too many other things going on. I wonder how much more time I’ll have when I’m done with the wedding planning. Seth thinks I’ll just find other things to fill my time. He’s probably right.