12-I-2002.
This is where the records get very murky, as there were just a handful of emails for the whole month. Either something crashed, or I migrated... there's a warning from Earthlink about some email quota, but then I don't expect any overload to be an issue, I had access to Berix's FTP somewhere, probably her own site.
The pictures of the trip to her place have the date of 18th, which means I've probably returned on 17th and been there since 15th. She being in Pennsylvania, this was about 200 miles trip, nothing much (I'm becoming a seasoned long distance driver here), and I distinctly remember hearing some speech by GW2B (the 2 was added later, for Gulf War 2) where he pleaded for uniting the various services and agencies, like the CIA and NSA under one roof (so they wouldn't hit chinese embassy again). The words "homeland security" were repeated a dozen times. Now these were probably premiered on the SotU speech, which history says happened on 29th... so this was probably some trial speech... ah, the archives say there was a radio address on 12th, which sounds much closer. So I'm moving this from 17th to 12th.
I see there was yet another run of EONS imports around 16:00, but then it probably wasn't done on my machine but by the Leevor folks and I only got the archives later. My UT messages stop around noon, and changes in the code begin around 21:00... which means I left after lunch.
The weather was cloudy but no rain. Some patches of snow left here and there. I ran out of water in my beer cans (Guiness, courtesy of the USquad guys for some problem of theirs that I solved last spring) which I was using as ashtrays. The corolla came without ashtrays, the previous owner was probably some antismoker, so I managed. I pulled over at the last gas station north of town to fill her up and stuffed some snow in the left can, which served just fine.
The ride was smooth and uneventful - only remember I was listening to that moron while enjoying the relaxed speed limit through that bit of West Virginia (70 mph). Finding Berix's place wasn't much of a problem, I just overshot her place by a dozen meters.
There was a laptop waiting for me, and we improvised a desk for me as well, went out to have lunch. She drives some huge black sedan, I almost though they stopped making those, American make, black, long, all automatic and she parks it in a remote corner of the lot, lest someone scratch or dent it.
Then we worked and worked - mostly setting me up with various software we'll have to use - the vfe, the contact info framework (InTouche), making sure we have the same set of folders etc etc.
I see she had a typical american ashtray to the left of the keyboard, and didn't have another one so I used a small coke can (don't think I drank that). Though I can't remember whether she still smoked, or did only occasionally. Probably quit just recently, as she looked more rounded than two years ago. That typical ashtray had the cigarette slots in the middle, so the whole cigarette was just above it, no end protruding out, which was safer in one way - it couldn't fall out - but clumsy in all other ways: you had to be very careful how you pick it. One wrong move and your fingers are in the ashes.
Then we went to dinner with Kristin. I was still surprised with some of the natives' habits with food - like having the salad as an entreé (which is a misnomer in the US, it's not a pre-meal as in the french original) before the main dish, so I just nibbled at the salad until the main dish arrived and then moved it on the side and ate it as a side dish, as is our habit. There was a guy from the local fox group, who organized a meeting where Kristin had a lecture afterwards. It's been a kind of privilege to meet her, she's a kind of guru (or gooroo, as I once wrote...), she (co)authored several important books on Fox.
There was an awkward moment when we formally met, after knowing each other for a few years on UA, when I thought I'd find a common point by mentioning that our ancestors were together in concentration camps. The uneasy silence was abrupt... which I didn't get until a few years later - it's a jewish thing, they simply don't like to be reminded that they weren't the only victims, that they don't really have any kind of monopoly on that, no matter how much effort they publish to that effect. And I meant it figuratively - my grandfather was a PoW, not a camper.
Berix booked me a room in a hotel nearby, just a couple of miles - still can't remember how I found her the next day, nor how I found the hotel both nights, as the whole area is virtually without any landmarks. I was orienting myself by the river and the highway. The room was okay, though a little cold and gloomy, but that's partly due to the weather and the view through the window. Maybe I brought the laptop and browsed a little, don't quite remember.
The next two days we alternated in working, going out to eat (not always - there was a breakfast with just sandwiches, "ham or baloney?") with one lunch being plain old big burgers, what with the spongy bun and a thousand cows average in the middle, at a real diner, with the seats looking like something out of some of our trains, the layout being exactly the classic railway and generally all that folklore. We discussed the dispute between George and MTV. Ironically, I sided with the former and she with the latter (as he came to see her when she was just a rookie, and kept good relationship with her no matter what).
To me, MTV looks like the lowest piece of slime, m$'s mercenary, taken a contract to bust the fox community and corral it into dot net. He had a role in the big screw they ran on us, when they asked whether we want fox to stay in the VS, at the price of losing its local data engine, loose types, command window and a few other goodies, but with the gain of going unicode, 64-bit, sharing the runtime with the rest of the dot net, opening files above the 2G in size... on the common calendar. IOW, the seven wouldn't be out for many months. Some seven years later it turned out they were lying greasily, that these weren't any technical limitations but just raw blackmail. At least three guys, separately, surpassed those limitation this way or other, practically writing their own versions of fox. Well, MTV was very loud painting the community as a bunch of idiots for not bowing to the will of the big m$, and George called him an insolent ass each time. So then they both vanished from UA for several years.
Also met Sharlene, her accountant, briefly, in some restaurant where she was with her husband. She's a rather plump blonde, looks somewhere around my age. Her husband is a true worn out cowboy, doesn't have fifty kilos with bed. As if he just stepped out from some movie. The bar was on the seedier side, but bright, windows everywhere. Too bad we stayed just a few minutes, both he and the place look interesting.
Third day, after lunch, just packed it in and drove back to A-burg. Still not clear whether this happened on 12-14th or 15-17th... no clue.
Mentions: Annenburg (A-burg), Cecilia Roxbury (Berix), EONS, fox, George Whiteley, Kristin Peiser, Leevor, Majkrosoft (m$), MTV, Sharlene Weiter, UbiquAgora (UA), USquad, VFE, in serbian