It's been a long, long, long time since I've posted something on the blog. And I'm working on a much longer piece about innovation, the financial crisis and creating value in the 21st century. But in the meantime, I figured I would post something a bit more superficial. Namely, the highlights of my life between my previous post oh-so-long ago and the present.

Let's start with my trip to England in late November, where my debate partner and myself were among the many teams that competed at the 2009 Cambridge IV. We didn't do nearly as well as we had hoped, but the experience was invaluable, regardless of our performance. I also used the occasion to spend a few days in London prior to flying back home for Thanksgiving. I managed only to see a tiny slice of the city, but it was marvelous. (I put some photos from the trip up on flickr, and there will be more. Eventually.)

More recently, I had quite an adventure making my way back to Portland for the Christmas holidays. I had the great misfortune to travel on 19 December, the very day an enormous snowstorm shut down most of the major airports on the East Coast. Quite an adventure.

My misfortune began before I even arrived at the Portland, Maine "Jetport," when my cab overheated in the middle of I-95 shortly after noon. Then, after a half hour standing in sub-freezing temperatures, I arrived at the airport only to discover my flight from Portland, Maine to Newark was cancelled thanks to the snowstorm. At that point, a half-wit of an airline representative rebooked me on a flight the next day from Boston to Chicago to Portland.

Of course, when I arrived a few hours later at Boston's Logan airport and spent two hours standing in line to confirm my rebooking, I discovered that the flight booked by the half-wit in Portland was cancelled. Fortunately, a supremely helpful Continental representative in Boston booked me on an emergency flight out of Boston to Houston at 10:30 that night, shortly before weather shut down the Boston airport until the next morning, with a connection in Houston to Portland.

Which left me at Houston's gorgeous George H. W. Bush Intercontinental airport for nearly 12 hours. Among the airport's many peculiarities is a large "George Bush" rotunda, complete with a large-than-life bronze statue of the 41st POTUS.

My flight back to Maine last weekend was far less eventful. Though I did encounter a particularly inept barista at a coffee stand at the Newark airport. So confused was she that the woman in front of me cancelled her order for an iced coffee when the befuddled barista failed to understand the request.

Which brings us to the present. I'm sitting, sniffling, in my dormitory with a cold. My third malady of the 2009-2010 academic year.