Somehow whenever I’m on a plane with wifi access I feel super motivated to advance my career so I read a bunch of stuff, poke around on LinkedIn at the people I know and the people they know, and draft a bunch of emails which I don’t actually send but help me to get a clear idea of what I want.

I have ended up in Germany during both of the most recent World Cups (2006 and 2010), for obscure and unrelated reasons.

I have ended up on a US Navy vessel on July 4 for two years in a row. One was pretty far west (2009: USS Lake Erie in Pearl Harbor, HI) and one was pretty far east (2010: USS Intrepid in New York, NY). And trust me, you ain’t seen fireworks (or truly understood the term “police presence”) until you’ve been to New York City on the 4th of July.