January 15th, 2019
So my first beef with escape Lounge is that ‘escape’ is lower case, and Lounge is uppercase. You are not cool, escape Lounge; fire your marketing people now. right Now.
Second is that if you are going to promote top of the line beverages, don’t serve bottom of the barrel house brands and then upcharge for it when customers pay $45 bucks to get in.
Which brings me to lousy ‘pretty’ food and mediocre service.
But hey, good soft seating and staff warmed the screaming baby’s bottle.
I know there is a connection to AMEX Platinum lounges, but this is a disaster. Save your $45 bucks; go to an airport table-serve, sit-down restaurant, grab a corner table, food, drink, and wifi. Unless, you want to drink a lot of free cheap liquor.
The Good:
Convenient to Southwest Gates even though it’s in an adjacent terminal.
January 15th, 2019
- When you can’t help, stop trying (I struggle with this everyday.)
- Live your life. (It’s just that simple.)
- If it hurts, stop it.
November 10th, 2018
In the words of a dear friend, ‘no one is the bad guy in the story of their own life.’ In the words of Santa Fe resident, George R. R. Martin, ‘no one is the villain in their own story.’ Aristotle said, ‘because of pleasure we do bad things and for fear of pain we avoid noble ones.’
April 28th, 2018
Weelllll, looks like the second spraying will happen Monday…
Death to the Tussocks!! We shall prevail!
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;…. In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man. As modest stillness and humility.”
(WS H5 A3S1)
April 23rd, 2018
Fucking caterpillars. Silicon Valley has been invaded by a nasty and destructive moth, borne from the pupa of an exotic caterpillar. To be exact, the Western Tussock Moth: https://web.stanford.edu/~siegelr/insects/tussock.html
Previous tenants failed to alert me to the first and second infestations, but last year I hired a local company to trim the tree and spray this year. They are making a fortune spraying and it takes weeks to get on their schedule. (FF) Finally the tree has been sprayed; phew. Hopefully the tree will survive and I won’t have to spend 10K to have the tree removed…
January 1st, 2018
Someone wrote this introduction for a talk I was giving. It should have started with the last bit. “She travel hacks her way around the world when she’s not unceremoniously telling start-ups why they will fail to scale.”
Elizabeth Houck is an innovative senior marketing professional in hardware and software Project Management, skunkworks R & D, go-to-market wizardry. Before entering technology in 1995, Ms. Houck worked in television and film with CBS, NBC, Warner Bros., Castle Rock, Viacom, Paramount, and Harpo Productions. Aging parents returned her to Silicon Valley where she worked on content streaming and cloud computing with Philips and Sun Microsystems. Ms. Houck is Principal of Blue Egg Partners and provides consulting services in cross-functional team leadership, process evolution and management, enabling her clients to bring new products and services to market on plan. Ms. Houck holds a BCS, College of Santa Fe, Santa Fe, New Mexico, UC Berkeley’s, Haas School of Business – Product Management Certification, member of the Project Management Institute and speaker on process management and travel hacking.
November 18th, 2017
You are in the customer service business – yes, yes you are.
You are successful if your employees and customers are successful.
You know your goals.
You innovate.
You reward success.
October 20th, 2017
Expedia, oh, Expedia, how can you give me wine and roses and not give me wine and roses…
You know, if it weren’t about the money it would be a funny story…
On my travels, I booked via my iphone on Expedia.com place in Lodi called wine and roses. This was after searching google for it. Unfortunately after clicking on the correct wine and roses expedia link I booked the wrong wine and roses property. I ended up in with a booking at w/r in Australia! A fact not lost on the desk staff in lodi (where I had booked a non-refundable massage and dinner.) Who said, if you have enough money to buy your way out of a problem, you don’t have a problem? On this day of wine and roses it was me; albeit an expensive lesson!
August 3rd, 2017
Home after 25 days and return travel of 25 hours.
Travel Day: Drive from Stratford Upon Avon to LHR (London Heathrow Airport) return rental car, catch shuttle, check in, go through security, hit a bit of duty free to get rid of the last 20 Pounds, hit two airport lounges, board, fly back to US, clear customs (Global Entry,) go through security again, hit the club lounge for 4 hours, board plane, fly to ABQ, shuttle bus to rental car, pick up rental car, drive 1 hour and 15 minutes home. Left at 7am UK time Arrived home around 1:15am plus 7 hours.
Day 1: Asleep at 2:30am up at 7:30 – 5 hours sleep – good but felt like a zombie by 5pm. Ran a few errands and only got into the wrong side of the car once, but also tried to drive on the left once… ooops.
Not really functional after 8pm; 11pm to sleep.
Day 2: Awake at 5:15am, 6:15 hours sleep, ;-). By 11am I have a headache and feel like a zombie. Only tried to get into the wrong side of the car once. But also tried to downshift and clutch my automatic Prius. Asleep at 9pm.
Day 3: Awake at 4am – most excellent. I think I’m about done with a mild case of jet lag, no sleeping aides.
Friends coming into town tomorrow!
Ooops: screwed up dates – twice – blame it on the lag…
