The big thing of the last couple weeks was a highly productive work trip down to HQ, in Mountain View, California. I had a few reservations about going, since this was gonna be the same exact trip I’d attempted two months ago during which my back went completely insane.

The flight down on Monday morning was pretty uneventful, with some but not much discomfort. Met a fellow LDS Googler flying down for a completely different reason, small world.

First thing I thought when I arrived was, it’s way too sunny down here. Stockholm syndrome from Washington weather perhaps?

Another thing I thought was, good criminey this company is massive. You really don’t get a good feel for Google’s size from Kirkland’s modest satellite office.

And I had only seen a small corner of Google’s operations in the Mountain View area.

While the primary purpose of my visit was to meet with one person, it turns out that every other team I was currently supporting was based in the same small cluster of buildings, so I quickly filled up my calendar with appointments. The two buildings I primarily met people in were about eight minutes apart by bike – the primary short-distance mode of travel at Google HQ. And I was extremely gratified to find that I could ride these bikes without any fuss at all – the first time I’d gotten behind handlebars in about three months!

So I flew in Monday morning, arrived on campus that afternoon, not much time to do more than meet-and-greet, get assigned a temporary desk, learn where meals are taken, etc. The next two days were a flurry of meetings – some arranged in different buildings back-to-back – meet in one building at 1pm, bike to another building at 2, bike back to the first building at 3, etc.

Other days were more relaxed. While my regular meetings were taken in a relatively remote corner of campus, I did take Thursday morning and walk around main main campus. Partly because I planned to do it anyways, but also because I’d spotted a poster advertising an earthquake simulator, part of some emergency preparedness outfit advertising their wares.

I’ve had several people ask if I’d ever been on “the slide,” which Google’s known to have in one of their offices. I always had to say no, I’d never stumbled across it. Until now.

That light fixture in the background deserves its own photo segment.

Friday was a good day. A team I support manages a hardware lab, so I got to go tour that. No pics unfortunately.

That afternoon I had possibly the best meeting of the whole trip – a ton of work I thought needed doing turned out to be unnecessary, all taken off my plate.

Took one last night tour through main campus.

Saturday morning I flew back. Had a few good omens – my favorite Enya track came up on Pandora right off, and I hit not a single red light on the way to the airport. Overall it was an immensely successful trip, so, huzzah to that.

That afternoon while I was just chilling, the missionaries knocked on my door. I hadn’t seen this pair before, and invited them in. Odd, they usually let me know before they come, since they only drop by when they have an agenda.

“Sorry, you said your name was, Jeff?” At that the wheels started turning. Wait, you should already know my name, since you’re here to get me to invite friends to stuff, right? Unless…

“Are you two… tracting?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. Well, then, this is awkward.”

I had to explain to them that I was not in fact a golden investigator, inviting missionaries in without a second thought, rearin’ to receive the Gospel. I offered to have them by for as long as they wanted, but they had doors to knock, and off they went.

That evening was a halloween party at a friend’s house. I’d had grand ambitions to do myself up as a psycho axe-murderer, but had precisely no time to do any of the necessary prep, so I adopted a more attainable guise.

That night, and early the next morning, I spent prepping for an Elders Quorum lesson on the godhead. Lots of neat stuff in History of the Church volumes, old sermons by Joseph Smith on the subject. Lemme tell you, they really don’t write general conference addresses like they used to.

Ended up preparing way too much material – just so many money quotes and mic-drop moments. Oh well, next time I have to teach on that subject I can use the rest of it.

And, there will be a next time. The week prior I kind of got my marching orders as far as Church service is concerned. Got a calling to teach Elder’s Quorum once a month, and our home teaching assignments got revamped on top of that – went from three people in one home to seven people in seven homes. Boy howdy.

This last week’s theme is, Get More Sleep. Been getting off work at hours ranging from 8pm to 1am. And when I do get off work “early,” there’s other things that get in the way of a good night’s rest. On Monday I was just nodding off at 12:30am when a friend I’d been texting let me know that her roommate hadn’t picked her up at the airport like she’d arranged, and I was the only one she knew that was still awake, and would there be any way I might be able to pick her up.

I enjoyed a final few minutes of bed rest, while it took me what felt like forever to type out the words “You got it,” part of my sleep-addled brain trying to present some reason why I couldn’t make it. She lived in north Seattle, so it was 2:30am by the time I managed to nod off.

On Wednesday I’d signed up to do a dinner night with some friends. I had a frozen lasagna, but I’d need to get off work at 3:30 to get that prepped in time, and I didn’t have anything else to go with it. Ended up cheating a bit and having the group over to my office. Did a fun tour afterwards.

Friday was a fun day. To celebrate a few promotions on the team, our manager had us all go out to a nearby brewery. He made sure to bring Fresca and other non-alcoholic drinks as well.

That night I had friends over for games, cake, and a movie.

This morning I went out to look at places. Found a rather expensive condo that has some nice features, but the decor is wacky, looks like a Russian mob boss lived there.

The weather’s been getting cold, and there was some weird fog this morning. All burned off now of course, but it took till like noon for it all to go away. It was so thick I could see it rolling down the street from a hundred feet away.